cupcakesnake wrote:cgf wrote:cupcakesnake wrote:
Definitely all 3 players are poor defenders, but I think Randle is the only one where it seems more like an effort problem. Towns is always high effort, low awareness, with clumsy feet. He's overzealous as often he is clunky with his footwork. Brunson is 4 feet tall. Randle legitimately has quick feet, immense strength, solid length, and good verticality. Yet unless the ball is right in front of him, he seems to want to take a break.
I'm not jumping on the guy after a bad series, I loved a lot of what he did this year. On the season though... ho man the defense was awful whenever he was on the weakside, the backline, or in transition.
Does it matter if Randle is letting a defender by him because he’s resting to play offense / his brain just switched off; or if Towns is letting a defender by him to avoid a foul / because his brain just switched off; or if Brunson does it because he’s arguing with a ref / resting to play offense? It seems silly to describe a player who carries such a heavy offensive workload as any of them do, as quitting on their team for their defensive frailties.
…even if they are taking defensive plays off; which I’d dispute. Julius is not a very smart player, so when he’s away from the ball his decisions are often baffling…but man, does Karl look like a dumb-dumb when he’s making some decisions defensively too. Don’t think it’s about caring for either of them but just about them being low IQ players.
Functionally, probably not so much.
I do think Randle is the most frustrating though, only because he seems to me to have the most defensive potential. It's not there upstairs, but again that combo of strong body, quick feet, and verticality just make the lack of effort more frustrating.
I think Towns effort-level is consistently higher than Randle, but Towns can be more damaging because you can't hide him as easily when he plays center. Towns has some mobility issues and very poor defensive feet. Mentally, I think I agree with what you're saying about their low defensive iq's.
I think Brunson is easily the worst defender of the bunch and it's not even close. People tend to care less about small guards on defense, but I think that's wrong since we routinely see small guards implode their team's defensive rating in the playoffs. Against the Pacers, Towns has been totally fine on defense and Brunson has very much not been fine.
This is perfectly reasonable, although I think it’s tough with Brunson because he’s strangely the one I trust most defensively to be where he needs to be, even if a lot of guys can just shoot over him even if he does everything right. When he’s not pacing himself on the defensive end he can make the right reads, has quick hands, and quick feet, with a powerful trunk.
I would probably agree with Julius being the most frustrating just because we saw for a 72 game season just how good he can be when locked in both on- & off the ball…but Karl can be so frustrating too. The unnecessary fouls are just so annoying; like if you’re not going to stop the bucket, don’t exacerbate the problem by giving up cheap and-1s and putting yourself in foul trouble.
Plus it’s not like we haven’t seen Karl lock in for stretches and suddenly become a genuinely good defender. We might not have got past Detroit without multiple Towns defensive stops, and not just forcing guys into contested jumpers, forcing turnovers and deterring guys at the rim.
So Karl isn’t a distant 2nd in the most frustrating defender category for me…though maybe that’s just cause I’m currently dealing with his defense, while Julius benefits from some light nostalgia.
