Bravenewworld wrote:antistrat wrote:guille4s wrote:No he is not. He is awful and he doesn't care much about that side of the court
Well that just isn't true.
DRPM has him as an above average defender, and so does opponent PER allowed. And if he was so horrible, how in the world did the Timberwolves finish 12th in Defensive Rating when Love and Pek are both poor rim protectors? They were making up for it somehow.
Because you had two capable big men and 18 teams took the year off.
How about this, how about instead of thinking that is a good stat to point to. How about we stop and realize that its a perfect description of their poor defense.
They are 12th... slightly better than 50%, at the very bottom of the teams that did not tank for the draft and there are two big men who are both statistically 20+/10+ guys.
Yah, that's not appalling is it?
Because it definitely shows something positive when you have these two big men and are ranked right next to a team that often played a SG at the 4.
This says two things about the TWolves big men.
It means that neither are very good at dealing with their man.
And the help defense blows.
Help defense can be fixed by a different system and man to man is something the player has to become better at.
Love was fantastic defending in isolation and defending post ups. That wasn't an issue. The only play type he had a problem defending was spot up shooters - probably because he's always thinking about rebounds and would rather do that than run out to contest a shot. But according to Synergy on every other play type he was either above average, good or great.
So there's no way around it... Love was good defensively last season and that's one reason why the Wolves had a top 12 defense.