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I'm looking through the number one picks and I think to myself, "How come none of these guys are good defenders?" (I'm excluding Greg Oden from this for now).

For the last 5 years, all the number one picks seem to be either horrible defenders or bad defenders.

2006- Andrea Bargnani
2005- Andrew Bogut
2004- Dwight Howard
2003- LeBron James
2002- Yao Ming

So the next guy is atleast an above average defender, however, not an above average player:

2001- Kwame Brown

And even after that, these guys are good defenders too:

2000- Kenyon Martin
1999- Elton Brand

And looking at this year, Michael Beasley is not a great, or even good defender either.

So is just bad timing or do teams look for offensive players more so then defensive players? I guess I could understand, there aren't many defensive players that you would want to build your team around, but so many of these teams did not need a franchise player.

So what's your take on this?

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Kingz

howard/james/ming are horrible/bad defenders?

Kingz wrote:I'm looking through the number one picks and I think to myself, "How come none of these guys are good defenders?" (I'm excluding Greg Oden from this for now).

For the last 5 years, all the number one picks seem to be either horrible defenders or bad defenders.

2006- Andrea Bargnani
2005- Andrew Bogut
2004- Dwight Howard
2003- LeBron James
2002- Yao Ming

[/thread]

Andrew Bogut is an above-average defender this season. To say nothing of Dwight Howard, who is top-5 in blocks and the league's leading defensive rebounder...

Dwight Howard is neither terrible nor bad. He's decent at worst with potential to be a whole lot more.

LeBron is at least up to average this year.

Yao has anchored one of the NBA's best defenses for the past few years.

this thread has tons of potential to be a bargnani bashing thread

Bargnani and Beasley are indeed bad defenders. Unfortunately you're wrong on pretty much every other point.

Like said, Howard, James, and Ming are all pretty damn good defenders, Bogut is decent.... they all 4 are better than Kwame brown in terms of the total defensive package.

OH MY GOD.

Bogut is slightly above-average.
Howard is above-average.
James is above-average.
Yao is damn good.

And though Bargnani isn't a good defender, he isn't noticeably bad, either.

HOW do you have Yao listed as a bad defender.

obviously he averaged all of the players defense into one to form his conclusion.

In which case Bargnani brings the entire group down to below average.

Can this thread be locked? Every time I see Bargnani's name mentioned next to these number one picks I kind of cringe.

Dont know if we're watching the same league or wat

Lebron is a great defender and so is D12

Well I think he's expecting some response that pertains to a team that drafted a player #1 overall based on his defense.

Okafor had a chance but ORL rightly took Howard over him. (Edit: Chandler was a #2 pick too wasn't he?)


Ideally you want a #1 pick to become the complete package.


You can be a great defender on a bad team and it wont make a difference. Defense is a team goal while we've seen a single Offensive player can take over a game. Thats why the James, Mings, Howards are taken.

But none of those guys (except Bargnani) would I consider bad defenders at this point in their developement

Bargs only plays bad help D...his man to man is alright.

Dwight Howard.

And of course Greg Oden will be (probably at least ).

ROFL. Dwight is a great defender. Lebron is a good if not great defender (especially this year). Yao is a good defender, and bogut isn't bad. (improved alot this year).

Can you send me the stuff your smoking? Kuz the dro I got isn't working like yours.

Dwight Howard is a 1st or 2nd team all NBA defender this year. Thus, this thread is dumb.

as much as i hate bargnani, if you watch him is man d isnt THAT bad