OrlDave wrote:PennytoShaq wrote:Blue_and_Whte wrote:
Yes.....I know its statistically accurate. I didn't write the article, and understand that it was poorly written, but I wonder if people would've gone as granular as you did had they said Biyombo held Cousins to 8 4th quarter points instead of Nik. Doubtful.
Well you have to consider context. For 3.5 quarters, Vogel put Ibaka and Biz on Cousins 1 on 1. While he got his, they wore him down.
By the 4th quarter he was grinded down. My view is that Vogel used all 3 guys on Cousins perfectly. It was honestly the best coaching I have seen since we had SVG here. We never doubled Cousins like Skiles would have done all game. As a result we conceded points but he couldn't win the Kings the game.
Really happy with all 3 guys. Vuc had a bad night on offense, but he still played solid D on Kofus and then Cousins.
I suppose. But Nik is actually a pretty decent 1v1 defender. He doesn't have the lateral movement to be a good paint defender, but he's tall and fairly long. His wingspawn is 7'4.5" giving him the highest standing reach (9'4.5"... just shy of DC's 9'5") on the team so he really doesn't have to even jump against DC. He can just hold his ground and put his hands up.
He can't defend Cousins for a whole game. If he could, Vogel would have made that switch earlier.
Vogel honestly deserves the credit for this more than anybody. He threw 3 guys at Cousins all through different times in the game. Biz came in when Cousins first sat, so Cousins couldn't really get used to him until the second half. Biz also had a ton of energy and while he got took some times, he also made Cuz work hard to get paint position.
By the time the 4th Q rolled around. Cousins had been working his tail off against two relatively fresh guys who happen to be high level paint defenders in the NBA.
Perfect time to throw Vuc on him and make him figure out another guy's game. By then, he was worn down a bit and Vuc was not. It was really well done by Vogel and personally I am happy to be able to see sophisticated NBA schemes from the Magic for the first time since SVG.