First Game Defense

kwill · Post #1 » by **kwill** » Thu Oct 30, 2008 2:50 pm

I have seen a lot of surprising posts this morning about the great defense played last night against the thuggets. I DVRed the game and watched it twice and I beg to differ. We have a lot of work still left on the defensive end. The team defense was not very good, rotations were slow.

Boozer defense was still below average. Boozer showed better on the pick and rolls and rebounded really well as usual. His problem is that he does not move his feet well laterally, and players just blow by him. On at least five plays, including the very first play of the game, I saw his man just dribble right by him. It just frustrates me when I watch him on the offensive end use incredible foot work to score 20 + points and he can't or wont move his feet on defense. I hope he improves on defense because he was awesome on the offensive end tonight.

The most surprising defensive effort of the night was Memo. He moved his feet, kept his guy in front of him and took charges. Color me impressed with Memo's defense from last night. Well Done Memo!!!

troy · Post #2 » by **troy** » Thu Oct 30, 2008 4:01 pm

I completely agree with you. This is no Championship caliber defense.
Boston had an awesome defense from day one last year. It's the same with the Lakers , at the beginning of the season they were already playing above average defense last year.
Utah is not. Sure there is more intensity displayed by Okur and Boozer but it's not enough. Our interior defense is still incredibly weak. Example ?
Denver scored 48 points in the paint yesterday. And this is absolutely huge. Only 3 teams out of the 24 that were playing last night did more in that area , and one of those team is the Jazz.
The only decent interior player offensively for Denver was Nene. All the other players were more perimeter oriented and they still managed to score 48 points in the paint.

It's really frustrating because our other players play good defense : Brewer, Price , Kirilenko , Korver all did a great job defensively. But since the support is not there behind them we still have problem shutting down other teams.

I really can't see how this team can win a championship with this kind of defense. I'm not sure we're going anywhere with Boozer even though he is really great offensively.

idajazz · Post #3 » by **idajazz** » Thu Oct 30, 2008 4:21 pm

I was going ape **** during that friggin lay up drill they let Denver run during the last 3 minutes.

That crap has to change or they will never win a championship.
They have got to be able to get a stop in the last minutes of a tight game. Especially in the post season.

outerspacefella · Post #4 » by **outerspacefella** » Thu Oct 30, 2008 6:35 pm

We still need a respectable enforcer down the paint.
Boozer and Okur will give their best, but neither of them is a respectable basket defender. We need someone to step up the last minutes of contested games...

hoops4life · Post #5 » by **hoops4life** » Thu Oct 30, 2008 8:23 pm

I don't buy Boozer giving his best on D most nights. If he truly does than that is sad.

Post #6 » by **JStockLivesOn** » Thu Oct 30, 2008 10:14 pm

hoops4life wrote:I don't buy Boozer giving his best on D most nights. If he truly does than that is sad.

Concur. But I'm going to wait to totally shred him this season for now. Even though it still wasn't near where it could/should be, I thought he was a bit more engaged last night than usual. Baby steps, right?

qman · Post #7 » by **qman** » Fri Oct 31, 2008 3:27 pm

Personally I thought our biggest defensive problems were caused by Korver needing help and nuggets taking advantage our players being out of position.

But Korver also hustled and made a few plays.

Boozer got beat a few times but I think he was focused on not getting into foul trouble.

awesomator · Post #8 » by **awesomator** » Fri Oct 31, 2008 4:42 pm

Everyone needs to step back off the ledge! Our interior defense is just fine (I believe Booze even managed a huge block down the stretch...).

1) You realize the Nuggets scored 110.7 ppg last year, right? We held them to 94 pts...

That's:

16.7

If we lower our average PA by 5/games we will move from a middle of the pack defensive team from a year ago (13th) to a top 5 team.

2) First game of the season! Relax defensive chemistry takes time. Our already improved defense from a year ago will get better as the season progresses and we get our players back.

3) Our strongest asset will never be our defense... Jerry's philosophy on D prohibits that. We just foul too much and give up too many points on FT attempts. Which is fine, it's part of the game plan, but it will never allow us to be an elite defensive team. As long as we stay competitive (top 10-15 PA) we will be in a position to make a long playoff run.

In any case, it's ONE GAME! Give it some time before you declare the Jazz the worst defensive team in the history of basketball (or just wait for Walton to declare that for you).

outerspacefella · Post #9 » by **outerspacefella** » Fri Oct 31, 2008 5:03 pm

We will be in serious trouble if we continue to allow people to get to the basket uncontested.
I can easisly see the Rockets, Mavs, Spurs and even Hornets torturing us if the pattern continues... not to mention Lakers...
The Hornets without Chandler tried an interesting approach to this issue agains Mavs; they went hard overprotecting the perimeter and helping from the weak side when an opponet went thru... of course they were several times allowed illegal D...

hoops4life · Post #10 » by **hoops4life** » Sat Nov 1, 2008 1:51 pm

awesomator wrote:Everyone needs to step back off the ledge! Our interior defense is just fine (I believe Booze even managed a huge block down the stretch...).

1) You realize the Nuggets scored 110.7 ppg last year, right? We held them to 94 pts...

That's:

2.6 pts lower than this years (early) league average Points Allowed
5.92 pts lower than last years league average Points Allowed
16.7 pts lower than the Nuggets average from a year ago
5.3 pts better than our own Points Allowed average from a year ago

If we lower our average PA by 5/games we will move from a middle of the pack defensive team from a year ago (13th) to a top 5 team.

2) First game of the season! Relax defensive chemistry takes time. Our already improved defense from a year ago will get better as the season progresses and we get our players back.

3) Our strongest asset will never be our defense... Jerry's philosophy on D prohibits that. We just foul too much and give up too many points on FT attempts. Which is fine, it's part of the game plan, but it will never allow us to be an elite defensive team. As long as we stay competitive (top 10-15 PA) we will be in a position to make a long playoff run.

In any case, it's ONE GAME! Give it some time before you declare the Jazz the worst defensive team in the history of basketball (or just wait for Walton to declare that for you).

Nuggets were also without their top scorer, don't forget to mention that.