Isocleas2 wrote:The biggest impediment to the Bucks running something other than the drop defense (besides Bud) is Brook Lopez. He can't play in a switching defense its why the Bucks were able to originally sign him for basically peanuts. The drop defense resurrected his career and got him paid, but the fact remains he's a one trick pony. If you crave flexibility in defensive schemes the Bucks will need a new center.
Brook's basically splitting C minutes with Portis, fwiw. He's not the impediment, because the drop defense isn't the primary issue. Brook is limited, and getting older, but what we saw last night wasn't really about Brook, or the drop scheme - the systemic problem, I'd argue, is how we defend guard screens.
Going back and watching clips from last night, I was wrong to initially only flag hot shooting. Dean Maniatt was right to point out the Jazz were running the same action that the Heat killed us with last year, and that for all of our tinkering with schemes so far, we are still defending guard action the same way. We could still drop back into the paint, leave mediocre shooters open on the corners (where we're accepting we'll occasionally get killed), and either go under or switch guard screens up top. Now, only a few teams can really kill us with it, and we have bigger problems imo (I really have no idea what to make of our bench), but we have the personnel to do a better job on this kind of action, imo.