doclinkin wrote:The chief problem with Nene is an ironic one: he is so good at pick and roll defense that he makes our defense worse. Or leastways we rely on him such that bad habits develop, and when he's gone the squad can no longer get away with the laziness that his presence covers.
The best principle of P&R defense for a guard is to stick with your man, fight through screens and keep in front of him. But with Nene on the court, by positioning alone often he is able to both challenge the Roll man and the Guard after the pick, much as he is also able to box out multiple opponents. He's quick active and large enough to guard a perimeter player long enough to force them to give up the ball or allow the wing defender to pick them up so he can sag back and recover. He has the lively feet and spatial intelligence that many converted soccer players have (Olajuwon, Steve Nash, forgetting others, I had a list once...).
HIs raw stats do not reflect this, because he doesn't work for a block, nor collect the rebound on the missed shot, he simply plays a superior positional defense in the wide arc between the cylinder and the three point line. He patrols that space and makes 'em miss, that's enough. He is not solely playing his man on defense he is playing the angles and positions. Soccer style more than a cornerback sticking to a receiver.
But with Nene out of the game our guards forget they've gotten lazy, and in failing to fight over the pick and dropping under they let their man free for an open shot, which forces slower Bigs to step up to switch on that man-to-man defense, leading to mismatches that any savvy coach/guard braintrust can exploit (eg. Budenholzer/Teague in the ATL game; JKidd/Knight in the Bucks tilt). Nene manages to challenge and recover while playing both the drive and the pass, and give our guards time to catch up. Our guards get used to that. Nene gets a booboo on his footsie wootsie. Suddenly our defense sucks.
Compounded by the fact that Ariza isn't here to slow down that ball handler in the first place if they threaten to go off and John stays lazy and okay we're gonna be torched by tier-B perimeter players until John stops being lazy on defense and uses that speed to stick with them and gets strong enough -- tough enough-- not to be scared of the pick man.
His national teammate, Tiago Splitter, is also very similar to Nene in pick and roll defense.
