Post#1350 » by Tim_Hardawayy » Mon Dec 1, 2025 6:51 pm
I think you guys are sort of saying the same thing. The bottom line is this, the NBA has plenty of weak defenders. If you are weak defensively at center, you'd better bring all time great offense and rebounding or something or you won't last in this league. Every position you drop a guy defensively, makes it easier to cover their weaknesses with team defense. Consequently, the easiest position to cover a weak defender is point guard. That's why you see guys like Steve Nash and Curry have such amazing success despite not being able to guard a paper bag.
Now, what limits the position you can play a guy at in the NBA? Well basically two things, can he matchup to his position on defense, and can he perform the requirements offensively. Center has the strictest defensive requirements, but the loosest offensive ones. Point guard technically has the strictest offensive requirements... except in the modern NBA, and especially this new Heat offense, those requirements are much more decentralized.
Traditionally your point would handle the ball anywhere from 50-80% of any possession, and completely direct the play calling. In the modern NBA, I'd argue on many teams that number has dropped to 20-50% of handling, and play calling is often decided on the fly in reaction to the defense instead of running sets, especially with how the Heat have played their offense this season. A point still has a couple other requirements like being able to get the ball over halfcourt against a press and reliably hit 3's, but Tyler can do these things. At most you can argue a really hard press or double team can give him issues, but nobody is doing that for 48 minutes and you can always run a quick screen to alleviate that, not to mention a team that spends most of the time running (which has been us this year) doesn't even run into this issue much.
Ironically, the offense this season seems tailor made for Herro to be able to slot in at point guard and not have us miss a beat. But for whatever reason we're reluctant to do it, so far. Even in the game Powell missed I don't think Tyler played any point. Part of that could be to help Herro transition to this offense since he hasn't actually run it with the team yet in games.
That being said, there's less offensive pressure on a point guard in the modern NBA, and especially on this Heat team, and point has always been the position with the least defensive pressure, so it only makes sense to put your weakest defender there. I know people like to hype this "POA" defender thing, but I honestly don't think its that big a deal overall on defense. Its just more glaring when you see a point guard blow by a guy because its the first thing to happen on a possession, but if you look at the numbers as greg has illustrated, Davion isn't even really doing that great defensively as a point guard compared to our defense as a whole, he's being carried by our bigs and Wiggins.
I also think the whole POA defense is far less important in the modern NBA anyways for a couple of reasons. First, ball handling is officiated looser than ever, so EVERYONE is a threat off the dribble (just look at our team/offense, nobody expected that from us this season). Second, unless you get a rep like Caruso, officials will not let you harass a ball handler to any significant degree. Third, teams usually play with a minimum of 3 shooting threats in their lineup, meaning team defense matters more than ever because even the guys you typically don't consider a threat will burn you from 3 if left open.
All that to say, if they aren't at least trying to push Tyler at point guard, they aren't maximizing the talent on the roster. Which may ultimately not matter if they aren't going to keep him around anyways, but at the very least you ought to see what you have there. I'd argue for Tyler's long term success, he needs to be able to be slotted at the point even more than Bam needs to be a power forward, but preferably both end up playing at least half their minutes at those positions.
