RealGM

$30 million



I say thank ya Jesus!! The Lord is good. Lemmie hear amen!!!

JWizmentality wrote:$30 million

I say thank ya Jesus!! The Lord is good. Lemmie hear amen!!!

Amen! When evaluating Grunfeld, you have to put this on his side of the scale.

lol who cares bout him he sux nyway

BigA wrote:Amen! When evaluating Grunfeld, you have to put this on his side of the scale.

+1!

Tappy can go blow sunshine out his bonghole.

http://www.hoopsaddict.com/2009/02/06/t ... rris-show/

"They played hard throughout the game. Obviously they are having some struggles on the defensive end right now, with their rotations and how to guard screen and rolls and what not. They are a young team; they’re playing the young guys right now, so you can sense a little bit of that.”

Our struggles on defense is that we can't play defense.

Man, this team hasn't played the pick-n-roll well since the Doug Collins days. Eddie Jordan had no idea how to defend it and would just go to a zone scheme where they switched everything up top and everybody else sagged into the paint. It resulted in open shot after open shot after open shot. Tapscott doesn't switch as much but it's still clear that the bad principles installed by EJ are still in the players minds.

There was actually instance where Roger Mason Jr (now with the Spurs) got benched for making a stupid defensive play. He thought he was doing the right thing (no doubt what he learned from EJ) but Popovich wasn't happy. It's going to take years of new coaching for this team to learn how to play defense. All because we let EJ's idiocy marinate too long. What a waste.

LyricalRico wrote:Man, this team hasn't played the pick-n-roll well since the Doug Collins days. Eddie Jordan had no idea how to defend it and would just go to a zone scheme where they switched everything up top and everybody else sagged into the paint. It resulted in open shot after open shot after open shot. Tapscott doesn't switch as much but it's still clear that the bad principles installed by EJ are still in the players minds.

There was actually instance where Roger Mason Jr (now with the Spurs) got benched for making a stupid defensive play. He thought he was doing the right thing (no doubt what he learned from EJ) but Popovich wasn't happy. It's going to take years of new coaching for this team to learn how to play defense. All because we let EJ's idiocy marinate too long. What a waste.

I'm not that pessimistic. I think it could happen more quickly than that.
But first we need a defensive guru type coach with proven principles
and the willingness to condition PT on both effort and execution.

edit to add - the principles also have to make sense for the personnel
but I don't see that as that big an issue for most of the roster.

I'm pretty sure idiocy percolates, rather than marinates.

dobrojim wrote:I'm not that pessimistic. I think it could happen more quickly than that.
But first we need a defensive guru type coach with proven principles
and the willingness to condition PT on both effort and execution.

Funny how that is exactly what Eddie Jordan used to do when he played Songaila(and Ruffin) and all that resulted in was the entire board loathing Eddie. We need to make up our minds on what we want.


Also, I thought for sure when I read the title of the thread it was going to be one of those "what could have been" type dealies. Ahhh, what could have been...

i'm going to go out and estimate that there are tens of millions people on this planet that knows how to defend the pick and roll especially in a man-to-man scheme. You fight through the screen. You could go lazy and go under the screen if the guard isn't a good shooter. You could also switch on the pick if you're big enough to cover the guy setting the pick. That's about it. Basketball is not hard stuff. Even the most gimmicky of defensive schemes are just simple rotations that can be learned in a matter of hours if not days. It definitely won't take years for the wizards to learn how to play defense.

One problem with instilling defense is that it takes up so much practice time during training camp to drill the rotations to the point of pure reaction. EJ just felt that installing his vaunted hybrid princeton was a more pressing issue than drilling defensive schemes into players. I would agree with this to a certain extent. Offensive schemes are a lot more difficult than defensive ones and generally deserve more practice time dedicated towards it.

what i think is an even bigger reason we suck at defense is that other coaches like the aforementioned Pops put a premium on defensive effort by doling out playing time accordingly. Under tappscott and jordan, a player is much more likely to be yanked for a boneheaded offensive play than a defensive one, so players take cue from that and just not exert themselves as hard on defense as on offense. to be a "complete 2-way player" is overwhelmingly exhausting. i know i don't play my hardest on defense EVERY trip down the court.

anyway, pick and rolls are not even our weakest defensive element. i would say stopping dribble penetration is - namely those of the crab dribbler. if ever there was a case of playing off your man and daring him to take the long ranged jumper, it would be when playing lebron.

When I watch the wizards I see players that don't know where they're supposed to be on defense. The defensive system they have installed would work fine if everybody knew where they are supposed to be. There's nothing wrong with the system. And there's nothing wrong with the players -- if they just knew where to be, the defense would be fine. They spend a lot of time on defense and yet they just don't get it. I think that's because EJ himself, and his understudy Tapscott, understand the theory but not the practice, so they can't really communicate the nuts and bolts of what needs to be done to their players. That's something a good defensive coach will bring to this team. It won't take any new personnel and it won't take more time during training camp. All they need is someone who understands defensive principles and can communicate them.

Devin Harris is on the Wizards? Cool! How'd we get him?

spaceman_E wrote:

dobrojim wrote:I'm not that pessimistic. I think it could happen more quickly than that.
But first we need a defensive guru type coach with proven principles
and the willingness to condition PT on both effort and execution.

Funny how that is exactly what Eddie Jordan used to do when he played Songaila(and Ruffin) and all that resulted in was the entire board loathing Eddie. We need to make up our minds on what we want.


Also, I thought for sure when I read the title of the thread it was going to be one of those "what could have been" type dealies. Ahhh, what could have been...

Come on. EJ, defensive principles? You can't say those things in the same sentence.
If EJ knew anything about D, he kept it to himself while he was coaching this team.

edit to add in response to ZTB - I disagree profoundly. Our players do not
appear to have any idea where they should be. Otherwise we wouldn't
be constantly allowing open shots. Ooops, I may have misread or misunderstood
you. In either case, I don't think we have a defensive system or a coach willing
to stand back and say what we're doing isn't working.

pancakes3 wrote:i'm going to go out and estimate that there are tens of millions people on this planet that knows how to defend the pick and roll especially in a man-to-man scheme. You fight through the screen. You could go lazy and go under the screen if the guard isn't a good shooter. You could also switch on the pick if you're big enough to cover the guy setting the pick. That's about it. Basketball is not hard stuff. Even the most gimmicky of defensive schemes are just simple rotations that can be learned in a matter of hours if not days. It definitely won't take years for the wizards to learn how to play defense.

One problem with instilling defense is that it takes up so much practice time during training camp to drill the rotations to the point of pure reaction. EJ just felt that installing his vaunted hybrid princeton was a more pressing issue than drilling defensive schemes into players. I would agree with this to a certain extent. Offensive schemes are a lot more difficult than defensive ones and generally deserve more practice time dedicated towards it.

what i think is an even bigger reason we suck at defense is that other coaches like the aforementioned Pops put a premium on defensive effort by doling out playing time accordingly. Under tappscott and jordan, a player is much more likely to be yanked for a boneheaded offensive play than a defensive one, so players take cue from that and just not exert themselves as hard on defense as on offense. to be a "complete 2-way player" is overwhelmingly exhausting. i know i don't play my hardest on defense EVERY trip down the court.

anyway, pick and rolls are not even our weakest defensive element. i would say stopping dribble penetration is - namely those of the crab dribbler. if ever there was a case of playing off your man and daring him to take the long ranged jumper, it would be when playing lebron.

Good post. I think people put too much reliance on the "right defensive scheme". I'd venture to guess most NBA teams use the same schemes and principles. I think our defensive problems are attributable to four things: (1) players that have physical limitations at their positions to be good defenders (e.g., Jamison), (2) lack of players that care about defense (e.g., Arenas), (3) inexperienced players that don't know what the heck they are doing (e.g., McGee and Young) and (4) a lack of accountability for playing bad defense (coaches). With respect to the last one, its a whole lot harder for coaches to make the team accountable when the best players are probably our worst defenders. Its a double edged sword...sit your worse defenders and have no offense, or play your worse defenders and have no defense. I guess if I had to pick my poison, I'd go with defense. But I can see going the other way too, especially when you have all your money wrapped into the offensive players.

I was focusing on the second part. Ruff and Song in the game because they are fundamentally sound defenders and give maximum effort each night. Mainly, because if they did not they wouldn't be in the league.