No-more-rings wrote:King Ken wrote:No-more-rings wrote:Jordan is one of the best mid range shooters ever, so i don't think it would be as easy to limit him like you say.
And what do you mean you can't do much with Harden? His scoring efficiency sees a noticeable drop almost every postseason.
Mid range v. zone defense at 195 when you can't shoot threes isn't a great value in all honestly. You can easily bump him off coverage with a defender like Middleton who's 6'8 240 and force him into Lopez and Giannis. Easily.
His numbers went up with OKC, in Houston is only drops as he is the system and you are forcing others to beat you other than him. Which you can do with hard traps, soft zones and putting a defender like Iggy, Exum when he was healthy, on him and using Gobert or Green to protect the paint and using Green to do that and protect the lane.
And outside of GS, it really hasn't been super effective in his recent run. You still got to outscore the Rox which is not easy to do whatsoever especially when at times you are playing 3-5 trying to scheme out Harden.
Not sure what this even has to do with the fact that Harden is just a more difficult matchup for any generation than Jordan is. Especially with today's rules.
Against HOU, you almost have to do a soft zone just due to Harden's playmaking skills. Against Jordan, I would go with nothing but hard zone and force him to beat me from modern 3pt NBA range.With a hard zone, I would also force MJ to create for others as well without slashing. That's when he struggled heavily. Of course in his era, I couldn't do it with Randy Wittman, Craig Elho, and guys like that. It's not possible. They just don't have the ability which is the biggest problem with MJ's era. The ability just wasn't there to defend him. The personnel just wasn't available.
I’m not a Mj stan nor an anti-Harden guy, but judging by your posts in this thread you seem to have some weird agenda against him. I mean the way you are talking about him it’s like he wasn’t one of the top 3-5 offensive players ever at worst. Zones do not slow down goat caliber offensive players, period. Lebron’s 11 finals was a rare exception, and there was clearly a mental thing going on with him too but that’s a different debate different day.
Jordan is in another galaxy as an offensive force than Giannis, so that example is reaching for straws at best. I recall having this argument with someone before, maybe it was you or maybe not.
But seriously like what the hell is “mid range vs a zone isn’t any good” supposed to mean exactly? 2 points is 2 points, and the way you are talking makes me question how much you really understand how a zone works. Younger Jordan was quick and crafty enough to be able to score inside anyway, and the versions that became elite at midrange would just shoot that all day. I honestly don’t know how you think a zone would stop prime Jordan. It worked on Giannis because he couldn’t shoot from anywhere, and didn’t have the type of craftiness to manage points otherwise.
As to all what you wrote about Harden, I don’t really know what to say other than it’s a fact Harden’s 3 often abandons him in the playoffs, and couple that with tighter whistles he loses value. The thread was scoring only, and there’s no coherent argument for Harden better as a playoff scorer, unless you like to ignore numbers in order to fuel your agenda.
What are you talking about? Zones, box and 1s and traps do slow down all players. To say it doesn't is telling to whom I am talking to.
It works v. anyone. The difference is with Steph and Harden is their shooting ability with their playmaking makes zones less effective. While Jordan's slashing will be much less effective as that's the purpose of a zone. Force slashers to shoot. Always has been the purpose of them. Soft zones are to force the worse player to shoot and really should be used by teams with the right personnel like MIL, GS, PHI, etc.
MJ would be MUCH easier to stop in this generation. How you can't see that is beyond me. That doesn't mean he won't be great. That doesn't mean he won't be effective. But this 40/8/8 nonsense was 100% nonsense. It's much harder to score in the NBA today than it was in the 90's for stars and superstars. It's not even close either. Just much better schemes, zone implementations, strategies and personnel than it was back then. I don't see how this is even up for debate. Let's just go straight to the tape.
It's like you defenders want to say something but really don't understand the game at all so it's like everything you say is just nonsense.
How is Jordan in another galaxy in scoring than Giannis? It's like you forget we got Jordan full game tape as well as Giannis. We see exactly what each players do, their weaknesses, their strengths, and their actions. We got footage.
"Younger Jordan was quick and crafty enough to be able to score inside anyway, and the versions that became elite at midrange would just shoot that all day."
This is another thing I hate about all MJ stanleys which you are even if you claimed your not. The MJ that played in 1995 did not play the same way he did in 1988. Stop combining the two. Stop trying to make this super Jordan that never existed. This is why arguing with you guys is always a **** show. Because you combine 195 MJ in 1988 with 212 MJ and make these super player that NEVER existed!
Do you understand what a zone defense is? By definition a zone defense is a type of defense, used in team sports, which is the alternative to man-to-man defense; instead of each player guarding a corresponding player on the other team, each defensive player is given an area (a zone) to cover. How did Jordan himself feel about it?
And that was Jordan's argument: He believed that allowing any defense, or a zone, enables teams to gang up on the star. Gone will be the highlight-show moves and plays, the ESPN-ization of the game that others contend has been detrimental to sound play.
The NBA historically has been a man-to-man-defense league that encouraged great individual play.
But as coaches, like Hubie Brown in the 1970s, began to devise defenses to help out, the NBA instituted a series of defense rules that began to look like the Internal Revenue Service code. There was good reason for each of them, but when combined they made little sense.
So games often are spent with players pointing to lines on the court where a player is supposed to be or isn't.
Actually, many of the illegal-defense rules were designed to aid the centers, like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who were being smothered in the post area.
But the result has become a slower, unappealing setup game in which the ball is dropped into the post while the post player works with another player and three players stand around and watch.
See: New York Knicks, Miami Heat, et al.
Let's focus on what Michael said.
e believed that allowing any defense, or a zone, enables teams to gang up on the star. Gone will be the highlight-show moves and plays, the ESPN-ization of the game that others contend has been detrimental to sound play.
Because this type of the defense will slow down any version of Michael Jordan or ANYONE who's played basketball.
It's not just a zone, it's because cutting off all driving lanes at the top of the key and forcing him to get the ball out of his hands. Tell me which version of Jordan would be successful with this type of defense?
Once again, until you understand the game better, you just don't understand or even know what you are talking about.
