Bright Side breaks down our D in gloriously painful detail

[rsavaj]

http://www.brightsideofthesun.com/2012/ ... bad-suns-d

Some quality stuff, guys. The author watched over 700 defensive possessions from this season on Synergy and presents his analysis.

Really points to how A)inept our defensive strategy is(which is Elston Turner's only freaking job on this squad), and B)how lazy some of our players are, the main culprits being Gortat, Morris, Brown, and Beas

[bigfoot]

Here's the data that backs up the article.

S. Brown -90
M. Morris -90
G. Dragic -108
M. Gortat -112
M. Beasley -179

Basically these players hold the worst plus minuses for our team. As the article states Gortat and Morris are involved as the bigs in PNR defense and Dragic and Brown are the smalls trying to fight through screens. It's not a surprise then that our defensive problems are with PNR defense and the bigs are sagging instead of hedging hard.

As the article states ... Beasley is just Beasley and is lost on defense 11 out of 12 possessions.

[Kerrsed]

The Bright Side has really become The Dark Side.

Seems every article i read on there makes me feel bad man.

[rsavaj]

It reminds me of early in the 2010 season when the Suns struggled through December before getting blown out at home. The result was a massive “simplification” of the defense which in reality meant hedging hard on all ball screens, all the time.

I believe that Turner (and Gentry too) want to make the Suns into a great defensive team like the Celtics were but to do that it requires a LOT more time and/or players with excellent ability to read plays and make calls and adjust to a variety of situations and they clearly aren’t (and maybe can’t) do this.

So, the bigger question is this. Do you abandon the plan (and I HAVE to believe this is part of a plan) and simplify which might get you some short term gain but ultimately is a limited strategy since covering ball screens one way all the time can and is exploited by good teams.

Or, do you stick with the plan and hope that the players learn the system and improve and over time, you end up with a better overall defensive team.

And look, say what you want about the coaching staff — they are not fools. They are trying to get the team to do something and clearly it’s not working but it’s not like they are just rolling the ball out there and letting them do whatever they want.

in response to Seth:

Fools or not, by watching their defense, I don't believe they have a clear strategy
They are not doing anything particularly correct. If they are going to sag on PNR plays with certain teams/players, then the way in which they are doing it is incorrect. Gortat waiting back is fine, as long as Dragic understands that he is going to step back and separate himself from his defender setting the pick. In that case, Dragic should be fighting through that space created, not over the pick. Why? Because fighting over the pick automatically puts dragic behind the player with the ball trailing the play and allows that ball handler to drive hard at Gortat forcing him to have to stop a quicker guard AND possibly stop the pass to the Roll man because dragic is out of the play.

Additionally, if that scenario were their strategy, it requires everyone else to stay at home on their man. If the idea here is for gortat to rim protect, and let dragic through the space in order to cut off penetration, then there should not be a need for everyone else to step into the play, allowing the guard to kick to open shooters.

If you hedge hard, it requires dragic to fight through the screen, and requires the other big to rotate to the “roll” man. The other two players then need to rotate down to the closest players to the ball [or anyone under the rim], forcing a skip pass or a pass up top to reset. When Scola decides to do this without anyone else knowing, it leaves the roll man wide open, causing everyone to collapse or allowing a wide open jumper. Again, everyone has to be on the same page. You do one or the other. It is that simple.

Clearly, they are not teaching this correctly, because they have one player doing one thing, and everyone else doing something else.

I also am not on board with this while compex versus simple thing. This is simple. You do one or the other. You pick a strategy and implement it. You don’t combine two diametrically opposed strategies and implement it. It is not hard to understand. It is difficult to implement. However, when you understand what to do, it makes it easier. I don’t think they understand. Scola hedges hard and traps more times than not. Gortat less times than he should. Each player seems to decide on their own and nobody else is aware of what they are going to do. That is the coach’s fault.

I know a lot of coaches. I also know quite a few former NBA players. Not everyone really understands the game simply because they are employed at that level. I assure you everything I just said was a foreign language to Mike D’Antoni.