Dr Comeback wrote:Throughout his entire year at Duke he showed a really concerning combo of bad fundamentals, poor condition,m lateral quickness, and inconsistent effort.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6-Xpc2LKxg[/youtube]
The Good 5:29 - Jabari with the great help and rejection rotating off of Tarczewski to erase Hood’s mistake after biting on the pump fake.
7:52 - Hood “dies on the pick” forcing Jabari to step up and contain the ball. RHJ tries to get through the gap by splitting the hedge, but Jabari’s quick hands results in a clean strip.
8:45 - Cook goes under the ball screen and Jabari does a great job of discouraging and stopping the drive by showing his body directly in front of McConnell after he turns the corner coming off the screen. McConnell hits Ashley on the pop and he makes an unlikely 3-pointer. Good initial defense by Jabari to stop the drive.
23:32 - Another high ball screen action ran by 'Zona. This time the on-ball defender goes over the top of the screen. Jabari once again sits back to stop the ball-handler from driving down the “highway” after turning the corner. Because he’s low in his defensive stance with knees bent, chest up and back straight ready to move he forces McConnell to retreat his dribble taking away any gaps/seams that McConnell thought he might have. Excellent pick-&-roll defense.
27:55 - Jabari does a great job of fronting the post and forcing Mayes to over throwing the high arcing entry pass resulting in a turnover.
40:17 - Amazing recovery to get the block from behind on Tarczewski.
The Bad4:43 - Poor defensive awareness from Jabari not hedging/stunting to buy Thornton time to recover off the back screen.
34:20 - Poor gamble to jump the passing lane for an improbable steal.
1:09:10 - Another poor gamble to jump the passing lane this time out of the 2-3 zone defense.
The Meh9:16 - McConnell with the nasty hesitation and inside-out on Jabari. Because Jabari gets outside of his base of support with most of his weight on his left leg thinking initially McConnell was attacking baseline, but a bounce off and inside-out dribble gets Jabari off-balanced unable to change directions to recover back on the ball. Doesn’t have the explosive second bounce to contest Ashley.
19:28 - Dawkins abandons Gordon to double the ball which means Jabari needs to rotate over to Gordon and Matt Jones sinks down to cover Ashley. Jabari is a split second late rotating over giving up a dunk to Gordon.
20:00 - Zona runs a high middle pick-and-roll. Jones goes under the ball screen with Jabari sitting back/“up to touch” with the screen to prevent the drive once McConnell comes off the screen. Jabari is late to recover giving up the wide open mid-range jumper to Ashley that barely goes in.
48:58 - Jabari coming over from the weakside to contest RHJ. Doesn't time correctly jumping too early and gets beat by RHJ for the reverse.
There were more good than bad defensive plays from Jabari this game. For a sieve you'd expect more, but we saw otherwise. You're really stretching it if you think Jabari is as bad as Harden defensively. I feel like too many people are basing their analysis on DX's draft video which is where all this Jabari is bad defensively is coming from. I'll breakdown the game against Clemson and 'Cuse tmr.
