Grant Hill Snubbed... Left Off All-Defensive Teams

[GMATCallahan]

Are you seriously telling me there are 15 better defenders in the NBA then Grant Hill. Hill did a great job this year guarding the best players out there and made monta ellis life horrible. Yet he cant crack 1st or 2nd team. I think Stern is behind this madness.

Paranoia isn't going to get you anywhere.

[GMATCallahan]

Grant Hill didn't get snubbed, he's a good defender but all of the guys on the 1st and 2nd defense teams besides Kobe are better then him defensively.

On the other hand, Kobe making an all-NBA defensive team, let alone the 1st team is an absolute joke.
Dude isn't even a good defender anymore, wasn't able to limit CP3 and let him destroy them, or couldn't stop the Mavs from raining treys on his ass either.

Although Bryant certainly constitutes a dubious selection (see my previous post), when a great offensive player such as Chris Paul is on top of his game, even the best defenders may be incapable of stopping or limiting him. And the task of chasing a water bug such as Chris Paul is especially arduous for a big guard needing to navigate screens.

As for the Dallas series, the Lakers suffered a team-wide defensive breakdown as the Mavericks exposed L.A.'s physical limitations and psychological weakness.

Chris Paul is the best PG in the NBA, but that doesn't change the fact that if you're an all defensive NBA first teamer then the least u should be capable of doing is limiting him, as opposed to having him put up even better numers then his reg season numbers.
Fisher was "guarding" CP3 at times in the series too, but that doesn't help Kobe's case either since if he's such a great defender he should be the one guarding the opposition's primary perimeter threat full time instead of having the near 40 year old on Paul at times.
Bowen was able to limit Nash, Payton was able to limit Michael Jordan, Bill Russell was able to limit Wilt, but Kobe lets CP3 **** them over in any position he wants.

Then again in the Dallas series, Peja's swishing J's like it's 2004, JET is going bananas after struggling vs Brandon Roy on one leg, JJ frickin Barea is looking like a Tony Parker clone... And where is this amazing record breaking now 9 Time All NBA 1st teamer? Apparently still busy replacing Osama Bin Laden at hide and seek.

No excuses for the snitch

This argument is flawed in numerous ways.

First, I already said that Bryant's selection proved dubious.

Second, great defensive players cannot necessarily limit great offensive players when they're on top of their game; ask Eddie Johnson, Brent Barry, Charles Barkley, or any number of former players turned analysts. An analogy to the Kobe Bryant versus Chris Paul match-up was Latrell Sprewell versus Kevin Johnson in the 1994 Western Conference First Round. K.J. was more explosive than Paul, but Sprewell (an All-Defensive Second Team member that year) was much younger and far more athletic than Bryant. Well, K.J. averaged 26.7 points (up from 20.0 during the regular season), 9.3 assists, 8.7 free throw attempts (up from 6.9 during the regular season), just 3.0 turnovers, and a .492 field goal percentage as the Suns swept the 50-win Warriors three games to none.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-LElKxA2vw[/youtube]

Third, and to that point, some of the examples that you cite are more mythic than real. Bill Russell, for instance, did not substantially limit Wilt Chamberlain, who averaged 28.7 points and 28.7 rebounds in 142 career meetings with Russell. Seven times, Chamberlain scored at least 50 points versus Russell, with a high of 62.

http://hoopedia.nba.com/index.php?title=Russell_vs._Wilt

Fourth, and to that point, Gary Payton did not really limit Michael Jordan. To the extent that Jordan struggled in the second half of the 1996 NBA Finals (he shot 5-19 from the field in Game Four and 6-19 in Game Six, although he still attempted at least 11 free throws in each contest), the credit should go to the Sonics' trapping defense. To quote Tom Friend, then of the New York Times, in the spring of 1997:

Karl has a four-guard offense to solve, not to mention the erosion of a certain power forward, and he has 24 hours to do so. Last June, his team was trapping Michael Jordan into oblivion, but now the Sonics' coach is afraid to trap Kevin Johnson or Jason Kidd, for fear of an early summer.

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/01/sports/sonics-sputtering-again-in-round-1.html

Or to quote longtime basketball writer and former coach Charley Rosen:

G.P. has always been a shoot-first point guard, favoring post-ups, open middles, and high-and-low screens to locate his shots. He was also a confrontational player, demanding perfection form his teammates and his coaches, but never from himself. Payton's reputation for playing outstanding defense gained him All-Defense honors for nine seasons, and a famous nickname, "The Glove." Even so, during the 1996 Finals, the Chicago Bulls set out to prove something that they already knew — that Payton's rep was mostly bogus. In lieu of playing solid contain defense, Payton routinely gambled for steals at every opportunity, and when he failed he put his teammates in jeopardy. The Bulls limited Payton's room to maneuver by posting Michael Jordan, who had little difficulty catching, shooting, driving, and generally having his way against G.P. Payton's game was, and is, less than meets the eye.

http://bbs.clutchfans.net/archive/index.php/t-100347.html

Fifth, J.J. "frickin" Barea could indeed resemble Tony Parker at times; ask the Miami Heat about him. Just because Barea didn't possess much of a reputation didn't mean that he lacked game, but most basketball fans just analyze the sport based on hype, reputation, and myths.

Sixth, blaming Bryant for the collapse of the Lakers' team defense and their lack of foot speed against superior ball movement and floor spacing makes little sense. Let's also remember that the Lakers were attempting to win their conference for the fourth consecutive season, something that hasn't happened since Boston won the East four straight times from 1984-1987 (and there weren't quite as many playoff games in those days). Mentally and physically, Los Angeles was surely drained and the Mavericks' ability to spread the floor and open the middle for a plethora of penetrating guards rendered them very difficult. Again, Bryant probably did not deserve his All-Defensive spot, but Gary Payton probably didn't deserve all nine of his All-Defensive selections, either. These honors often reflect reputation, notoriety, precedent, and simplistic defensive statistics as much as anything else. I mean, what do you expect? They give the coaches these ballots while they're busy coaching or organizing their teams; the coaches didn't exactly go off on a month-long retreat with scouts, scholars, statistical analysts, reams of data, writers, executives, endless video presentations, academic debates, and various symposiums. Indeed, to borrow a phrase from the historian Daniel J. Boorstin, awards and honors of this type merely constitute "pseudo-events" (see Boorstin's 1961 book titled The Image: Or, What Happened to the American Dream).

And the bottom line is that contrary to how many fans analyze the sport, the NBA is not a matter of five one-on-one games occurring simultaneously. Defense is about five players on a string, about the space that they need to cover, and about the offense that they need to face. The Sonics didn't even assign Gary Payton to Michael Jordan in the first two games of the 1996 NBA Finals (even though Payton was the Defensive Player of the Year, an award that he surely did not quite deserve), nor did they assign Payton to Kevin Johnson in the 1997 Western Conference First Round. The reason was that they knew that against the best offensive guards or players in the NBA, they were going to need to send help defenders regardless. Ask former Defensive Player of the Year David Robinson about the issue.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW4uXlRGAF0[/youtube]

[ShawnBronald]

Did a year old thread really just get bumped?

[GMATCallahan]

Did a year old thread really just get bumped?

... no, it's almost two years old ...

[sunskerr]

Did a year old thread really just get bumped?

... no, it's almost two years old ...

go away