More important: Post Offense or Defense?

[Rerisen]

Spurred a little bit by the Shaq move. But the Bulls board discussed this as well years ago when we sent Eddy off.

Is it more important for a team to have post defense or offense? People know that you win with great bigs. Hakeem, Duncan, (young) Shaq, all the way back to Bill Russell.

But more often than not, these bigs are great offensive players as well as defensive and are remembered more for their ability to put the ball in the hole than their stellar defense. Thus, the refrain, you need a post scorer.

However, as the exception to the rule, the Dynasty Bulls are remembered for winning without a dominant big. Yet they did have a dominant defense! One that could slow centers (and they got through plenty) by throwing the three headed monster (a bunch of bigs with tons of fouls) at opposing bigs as well as rapid double teaming by guy like Horace, MJ and Pip. They could also stymie your offense out on the perimeter long before the ball ever got to the post scorer.

Other teams have had success with merely a defensive stopper who didn't score. Detroit won a title with Ben Wallace, while facing near peak Shaq. The 76ers got to the Finals with a tiny guard scoring and a giant eraser in Mutombo.

So what is more important, scoring in the post, or stopping scoring in the post? Would you rather have Eddy Curry anchoring your team to score, or Ben Wallace or Mutombo to stop the other guys (all 3 have very comparable PER's).

To bring things back to the present, won't Shaq really only have great value to the Suns if he can help stop Duncan, Bynum, Gasol, etc? It should be noted, he could barely stay out of foul trouble against the lowly Bulls and equally aging Ben Wallace in the playoffs last year.

[Taiwan Killa]

I think post SCORING is more important. The Bulls didn't have post defense but they had alot of post scoring (from Michael Jordan) and they won 6 championships.

Then again it can go either way. Because if you have good interior D you can guard the paint well and challenge the jumpshot because you know your bigman is backing you up.

[NO-KG-AI]

Well if we are talking guys who can control the paint on D, with help D, and man to man, then I'd go with that. But if we are talking about a guy who is a specialist defending post scorers, against a specialized scorer, I'll take the scorer.

[Rerisen]

^^

The players have to be comparable like the ones I mentioned in the example. Obviously its not fair to say Mutombo vs Hakeem or something like that, because Hakeem was also a defensive stopper, as well as a great offensive player.

I think post defense is more important. Because its almost guaranteed that in a team's trip through the playoffs they will run into some premiere bigs, and very likely in the Finals as well. If you can't stop them at all you are dead. On the other end, you just need to get easy, high percentage baskets. This doesn't necessarily have to come from a big man. It can come from another post up position player (like MJ) or it can come from a guy like Wade attacking the basket and drawing fouls and lots of Free Throws. You can get easy offense from 5 different positions, but it's much harder to stop a dominant big unless you have a pretty good defensive base at that 5 position.

The back to back Pistons would be another good example. Their leading scorers were guards, Isiah, Dumars, Dantley the first year. But they got great bruising defense in the form of Rodman, Laimbeer, Mahorn, etc.

[Doctor MJ]

Well if we are talking guys who can control the paint on D, with help D, and man to man, then I'd go with that. But if we are talking about a guy who is a specialist defending post scorers, against a specialized scorer, I'll take the scorer.

What he said.

[tsherkin]

Actually, the Bulls had a lot of post defense.

They didn't have a huge shot-blocker but Jordan blocked shots reasonably well for a small and they had Ho Grant in the first three-peat, with Scottie and MJ rotating down on doubles and the team as a whole moving well as a defensive unit. And then they got Rodman, who could man up any player in the league from the 2 to 5 spots, and even did some man D on Shaq for spells.

And they had Jordan and sometimes Pippen who scored in the post, so they replicated a lot of what you got out of a big man with their small guys.

[Texas Longhorns]

Defense

[chrice]

Post Scoring is important in general, but you win games with both a combination of offense and defense. Since you're specifying either or, you go with Post Offense by far. With the restricted zone, hand checking rules, and amount of touch fouls being called in the NBA, the scorer in the paint can really set the tone of the game. High % shots and drawing fouls/and 1s is key.

[Buckeye-NBAFan]

I think post SCORING is more important. The Bulls didn't have post defense but they had alot of post scoring (from Michael Jordan) and they won 6 championships.

Ya, post defense is more important that post offense, because you can still get paint scoring without post offense if you have someone like Wade, LeBron, or Kobe. But no guard is going to be able to protect the rim against the easiest shots in the game, because they can only guard one play whereas a center can help defend everything around the rim from 5 players.

[LakersSquad]

different strokes for different folks

[SlickWilly8]

Deffinetaly defence IMO

[kooldude]

So it's basically a choice between Eddie Curry and Ben Wallace?

I'll take post defense because you can delegate the scoring responsibility to other positions but you can't do that with interior D.

[Kabookalu]

Eddy Curry is the best representative as a post scorer in this case but people are also going to have this skewed image in their head because he commits a lot of stupid turnovers, stupid offensive fouls, he's fat, and doesn't rebound nearly as good as he should. But I'll still take the defensive big man. Maybe it's because I'm a Raptors fan, and I'm sick of seeing players drop easy buckets on us because of our poor defensive frontcourt, but post scoring can sort of be replaced with a guy that penetrates a lot (Bosh, Wade). Post defense can't be replaced at all.

[celticfan42487]

typical post scorers who can't defend also have trouble rebounding I believe. But I can think of along one post scorer who can't defend and that's Eddy.

If that's a post scorer wich also means they can't rebound, I'll take the defender.

[Nupe_1911]

Post Defense is easily more important. A team can be competitive without a real post offense but if you can not rebound and block shots in the paint you are going to lose a lot of games. See the Heat for an example.

[Bgil]

Boozer vs Ben Wallace is a better comparison.

BTW, the bulls had fantastic post-defense. Man-toman post d wasn't great in the first three-peat years but Grant and the centers could more than hold their own.

[JordansBulls]

I think it depends on how much offense your team has. If you are good on offense you might need the post defense more.

[celticfan42487]

I think it depends on how much offense your team has. If you are good on offense you might need the post defense more.

Wait a second there so you're saying....

[Parasight]

Post Offense. I'm a firm believer that superb post offense cannot be defended. A great post player can gain position effectively and once position has been attained, it's a free bucket.

As for the Curry comparison, I don't consider him an excellent post offense threat. Offense includes every aspect of being on offense. This means passing (out of double teams), positioning, strength and all other things that go into an offensive possession. With this in mind, we can't consider Curry a superb post offense threat.

[Ballings7]

I'll take post-offense.

But when I get the other big man, it's going to be a big man with defensive ability as a/the strength in his game.

As getting another offensive-lenient big to pair with the main big man, generally doesn't fit well, because of both needing the ball a lot to be effective. Either as half of their impact (two-way big man) or as their main/only impact (offensively-biased big man), on the game. Also with a mostly offensive tandem, it also depends on their abilities if they could gel effectively on offense. Having this just creates unbalance in general.

While both are different offensive players, have different roles offensively, and should mesh fine - this does relate to why Shaq/Amare's not a balanced PF/C combo, and why I myself don't think it's a championship-caliber big man duo.

Both are offensive-minded players who are not above-average defenders. Both are limited defensively.

Rebounding isn't what their known for (not Shaq for a little while now), not something you think of them about, and just not being a strength of their game. For their rebounding, they are definitely effective to an extent and respectable. But still, neither rebound consistently well, or are at a top-level in ability, and neither are upper ranked statisically (same for Amare's career). I also see Amare getting 5, 6, 7 rebounding games quite a bit, also over his career.

Amare's not a rebounder like Duncan, Okafor, Chandler, Boozer, KG, Dwight, Horford, Millsap (doesn't play over as much as Amare, but still is a better overall rebounder), Foster (ditto Millsap), Lee (dtto Millsap), Jefferson, Dalembert, Evans, Bynum, Camby, Yao, Haslem, Kaman, Randolph.