The “it” you are thinking of is great team defense covering for lulls in offense, which happen to every team.
what's to blame for the big drop in team defense from the last couple seasons to this season then? is it just lack of effort?
If you think Melo and Kuz are a wash defensively, you weren’t paying attention to just how much he improved on that end. Nobody else on the planet, except for die hard Russ fans, will ever agree that he and Dennis are on the same level defensively. You are significantly downplaying both KCP’s and Caruso’s Championship contributions on the defensive end. None of our guards or wings come close to what they brought. The fact remains: LeBron wanted Russ so he could coast through the regular season and had to ship off or let go a big chunk of the guys who helped him win his last Ring. He completely undervalued his Championship team mates, just like you are doing now. That’s fine, you still can’t ever take away the fact that they are Champions, no matter what anyone types about them.
it's a combination of roster turnover, influx of bad/unmotivated team and individual defenders, and lebron and AD just absolutely coasting. but again--and i swear i'm not a vogel stan--this is not a head coach issue. you can't just make anyone play defense.
@FrontOfJersey22 Dennis was pretty decent on defense Bradley style (faster laterally now than Avery) before he got Covid at the worst possible time, our playoff run near the end, and wasn’t near that good after he came back, plus he’s another shrimp sized defender who gets overmatched on switches. Score a couple points for Westbrook with his slightly taller size, strength and vertical toward evening that up. I have a hunch we haven’t seen his best there yet either. So not as one sided as you make it sound.
Vogel: OK, Rob. So right now we have 4 square holes and 8 round holes. We have 3 square pegs and 6 round pegs. Rob: Gotcha. Tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to take 1 of your square pegs and all six of your round pegs...and then give you back 9 square pegs and one peg that is shaped like a rhombus. Vogel: But why would you do that? Why not just give me one square peg and 2 round pegs? How am I supposed to shove all those square pegs into round holes? And nobody wants a rhombus peg. I bet teams have been trying to get rid of that for years. Rob: It'll work.
Russ’ on ball D isn’t terrible. It’s mostly his unwillingness to fight through or go under any screen. Once he screen comes, he goes,”whelp, they stopped me.” The biggest issue I witness is when he’s off ball. He floats around in no man’s land often.
Rob, “It’ll work. And if it doesn’t I have all the juice here. Be mindful of your tone. With LeBron and AD as well, but you already know that.”
There are two sides to basketball. Melo offensively adds more than Kuz did for the Lakers and Kuz has Melo beat defensively. Russ has been decent defensively this season. He hasn’t been great like Caruso, but at the same time he isn’t the weak link you make him out to be. But when you look at the other side of the floor, Russ has been spectacular offensively the last 13 or so games. His overall impact is greater than the parts we traded for him.
Yes, basketball is played on both ends of the floor. Our problem is our offense doesn’t score enough points to overcome the fact that our team rarely plays more than one decent quarter of defense a game. You can keep shouting that the Russ experiment has worked out but a team with four Hall of Famers playing a home heavy, soft schedule so far, has in fact, underachieved.
MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES for the win. Errrr …. the too many to date losses. And, maybe it’s just me but those suck a** Lue’s a great coach comments by Bron and AD after the Clippers loss make me fearful these two guys are into political mode and aren’t giving full effort now, wanting (hopefully wrong here) Vogel gone. James has his boy (for whatever irrational thinking based on the guy’s NBA won-loss record) Fizdale maybe he now wants to take over … and AD’s boy DJ just got benched.
If we have to sacrifice FV to get this team motivated and win another title , why not ??? Sure let’s just LBJ coach the team , he is already doing it anyways.. but I think after retirement LBJ is gonna play hockey , he just bought the PENS .
I don't know about the second part of your sentence that isn't included in the quote, since we have no proof of that, but the quoted part is probably spot on.
Yeah sadly I think LBJ is really not interested in playing basketball this yr.. he has other more important stuff on his mind .
Anything , anything political happens he is the first to tweet about it and express his feelings… I don’t really wanna get into details but he just seems uninterested.. just a guess ..I got no proof , maybe just injured .
I don’t really wanna talk politics here but yeah LBJ has very strong feelings about certain issues and that alone can take a toll on you . All I am saying is that in today’s crazy world stuff can effect you and LBJ never had any problem speak his mind even if it went against the system… He is basically an entrepreneur with a NBA contract.
No, not feeling you at all with these last comments about other things are more important. He’s chasing Jordan and he’s chasing Kareem. His legacy is of utmost importance to him. IMO.
