Re: Official Spec Thread: Heart and Hustle Magic 2.0
Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2021 6:20 am
SOUL wrote:pepe1991 wrote:SOUL wrote:Isaac actually played great defense on SIakam. I remember doing a post about it where Siakam did a lot of damage on whoever he was switched on but struggled against Isaac. Kawhi, well, he's a star.. takes an entire team to shut down stars and even then you just want them to shoot a lot to get a lot of points usually.
Takes whole team, but individual defense of Gordon and Isaac did nothing to prevent Siakam and Kawhi from averaging 50 ppg from wing spots on some sky high 65% TS.
In mean time, Isaac flat out was usless on offense. 6,6 ppg on 27,5% FG.
Gordon did, by stats better, but he was always left open by scheme of Raptors defense.
Yeah but this stat isn't showing 1 on 1 defense. I went play by play of the games with Siakam vs Isaac and where he scored.. and like I said he didn't fare that well against Isaac if we're talking about straight up individual defense. But that's rare throughout a game now that it's just a straight up defensive matchup with 2 players with no switching or anything else. Siakam either would score after working really hard vs Isaac or just miss, compared to him getting switched on by anybody else.
So in theory, if we had more great defenders throughout the lineup it would've been harder for those guys to have big series, but yes, even having 1 or 2 great defenders doesn't mean much in the long run if the team defense isn't good.
Offense has nothing to do with what we're talking about either. I'm just saying if you're framing it as bad individual defense as in Isaac should have and could have done more, he really disrupted Siakam. As far as slowing him down on a whole as a team, we did a bad job. Personally I don't care how someone is slowed down (bad shooting night, bad defense, good defense, etc) as long as we get the win.
I'm not framing post to paint Isaac or Gordon as bad defenders. I'm pointing out how it looks when elite offensive wings meet elite defensive wings especially when "elite defense" also offers little to nothing on offense .
It's one way road.
My orginal point was that Okeke/Isaac /Wagner combination of two, at wings, simply does not provide enough high quality offense to be taken in considirations as serious future pairing if team's goal is to be anything more than glorified 42 wins team.
NBA wings are some of most elite nba players and most elite nba teams provide their offense from that positions. There is no scenario where Okeke, Wagner or Isaac are guys who are your 20+ ppg scorers on above average efficiency. it's not their game. Not to mention all 3 are probably PFs in nba and only good at PF spot. But hey, as long as Hammond is there i don't expect any logical roster structure. There is 14 years of trackrecord to prove it.