homecourtloss wrote:70sFan wrote:Ryoga Hibiki wrote:What is (was) Gasol having there that Jokic is missing?
I really don't think it's the hands, smarts and anticipation
Gasol reads the game far better on defense, he also has better fundamentals in terms of footwork and positioning. Seriously, comparing Jokic to Gasol in terms of footwork is like comparing average shooter to elite one.
Gasol is defnitely smarter defender with better anticipation. It's not even close.
Beat me to it — I think there is just an overall under-appreciation from makes a really good defender (not speaking about anyone poster specifically). I’ve had the pleasure to attend a few games that he has played, and he was a defensive maestro.
— people already mentioned his foot work and lateral movement though and his younger years is athleticism a little bit underrated
— he had great court awareness, and so he would position himself accordingly, including boxing out players, so that a teammate to get a rebound.
— he contested shots well without fouling, which isn’t easy to do. There has been a lot of talk about the high school player Cooper Flagg who has an exceptional ability to contest perimeter shots using his LinkedIn athleticism without fouling.
— he read opposing defenses so well, which made him rotate quickly and provide great health defense. Watching him play, he was communicating on the floor all the time, telling people where to go moving them around
— he was just really smart in the way that he read ball-screen actions and made the right read most of the time regardless of what coverage the team was
Jokić could get a little bit better with some slight improvement but he’s never going to be someone like Marc Gasol. What’s interesting to me is that even with the limitations that were mentioned about lateral movement, etc., I find it interesting that Jokic doesn’t read offenses as well, and as quickly as he reads defenses to create offense out of nothing. Either that or he does, and he doesn’t communicate it on court. It’s actually really fascinating.
It's tough to describe, but "offensive" BBIQ is rarely entangled with "defensive" BBIQ. Jokic is a decently smart defender, but he's not savant on that end. He's not the only example - Magic, Nash, Oscar were all top tier offensive minds, but even though they could show signs of quality reads on defense, they never materialized that on full extent.
The same thing applies to defense - I think you won't find many defenders smarter than Patrick Ewing, but his "offensive" BBIQ was extremely limited for a star.