Domejandro wrote:shangrila wrote:Domejandro wrote:I understand why people want to keep Naz Reid long-term, I would like to as well, but at some point there has to be some recognition that the dude is an absolute disaster defensively, for the most part. It is a serious problem, when projecting him as a serious piece to build around, moving forward.
"Absolute disaster defensively" is ridiculous hyperbole.
He's not great but he's not a trainwreck. And that is with the full understanding that he did suck in the Dallas series.
It absolutely is not hyperbole, Minnesota's defensive rating against Dallas cratered by over twenty when Naz touched the court.
Naz has flashes of exciting individual defense, but he is legitimately really, really bad on that side of the court. Outside of Karl-Anthony Towns' power outage offensively (and Anthony Edwards playing poorly), the single biggest factor for Minnesota losing to Dallas was Naz Reid's defense. He was horrifyingly bad at helping the helper, their bigs feasted because he failed every single possession (outside of one, that I remember) to rotate when Rudy blitzed. It was probably the worst defensive performance I've seen from a big man, despite watching multiple defensive stalwarts like drop-coverage Karl-Anthony Towns, Kevin Love, and Al Jefferson.
You and I did not watch the same playoff series.
Game 1 featured some of the worst drop coverage from Rudy Gobert that I have ever seen in my life.
Game 2 featured KAT missing pretty much every single defensive rotation.
Naz missed plenty of rotations too but they were moreso leaving the corner 3 open.
To single him out as a role player for a team wide meltdown is disengenuos.
Rudy Gobert, at 7'2 with a Gynormous wingspan, didn't affect a single pass, cutoff a single passing lane, or funnel the ballhandler right into the help in any of his halhearted "blitzes".
It was a matter of extremely poor coaching, asking players to run a system they were not used to and could not execute because it got no usage in the regular season, and one that Rudy Gobert clearly has very little enthusiasm for.
Boston blew out Dallas and held Luka Doncic to a single assist in game 1.
Luka and Kyrie were good against us, but we were also really really really bad, and that's not all on Naz Reid, who was pretty damn good guarding Jokic in the previous series while Rudy Gobert was getting ROFLstomped.
Naz Reid was the only reason we even had a chance to win game 2, and if Gobert hadn't idiotically switched onto Luka on the last possession there is a chance we might still be playing.
His offensive performance in game 5 was dreadful though and he had way too many bad turnovers and missed layups in this series.
