wire28 wrote:Q00 wrote:ComboGuardCity wrote:Josh is just lost on defense and its looking more like a trend unfortunately. Its actually pretty mind boggling.
Read the thread "Josh Smith's defense". The OP makes very good analysis of the causes of why his defense has looked that way. When you have poor defenders around you and a poorly coached team defensive system, even Ben Wallace would look confused on defense.
There are constant defensive lapses around him from his teammates, causing him to have to try and cover the whole court himself. Combine it with a coaching scheme that tells the players to all follow the ball to the paint, regardless of the opposition's personnel, and all out chaos will ensue when you face great 3 point shooting teams.
Smith is a good defensive player, both team and individual. He's proven that over a 10 year career. Cheeks has never had consistently good defenses in his coaching career. Jennings and Monroe have never been consistent defenders. So I think you have to look at them as the reasons why Smith looked confused so often. The Knicks game was a good example. Cheeks simplified the game plan to basically just Smith v Carmelo on defense, knowing they had no other way to beat us. Smith was able to just stay locked on Melo and not worry about covering other teammates mistakes, and he shut him down for the most part. Smith is a good/smart defender and one of the few we currently have. If we want to improve on defense, we shouldn't be trading our best defender. They need to trade the real problem players/coaches and get back better defenders/scheme to put around him.
joshua is a great defender, when his man actually has the ball. even more so when his man is in the post.
however, when he does not have the ball, he is not. he is a big man at heart, despite his size so he tends to lag more in the paint, even if his man is camped out for three. its just who he is, no problem in admitting that is a flaw in his game defensively.
and really we shouldnt expect him to be too cognizant of the position because again he is a big man at heart. he isnt used to having to worry about his man floating around the perimeter for 48 minutes.
if he was playing PF im sure we would be pleased with his defense, but he's not, he's playing SF and his defense as a small forward is horrid, to put it frankly. you can play help defense and still leave yourself in a position to contest the shot if your man gets the ball or close out enough to make him put it on the floor. thats hard to do when you are literally under the basket and your man is in the corner for three.
We would clearly be better defensively with Smith at PF instead of Monroe. Not so much because it puts Smith in a better position to succeed, not having to chase around perimeter players, but because it puts our team in a better position having our two best shotblockers in the paint. Not to mention removes our worst defensive player who is borderline useless on that end in Monroe.
See, if we could protect the paint with just Dre/Moose like they are supposed to, then Smith wouldn't have to help inside when someone gets beat. He could trust those two to guard the basket. But when that duo has been one of the worst defensive duos in the league, statistically, Smith doesn't have that luxury.
I believe we can succeed defensively with Smith at SF, but it requires the 2 bigs to be able cover inside by themselves, which I personally expected we would have, but it just hasn't happened, and I largely blame Monroe. So we need to get Monroe out of that lineup and move Smith inside. He's not a bad team defender at all. Like any team defense, everyone needs to be on the same page or everyone looks bad, and you need each man to have some sembalance of consistent individual D too. It can be constant helping on mistakes all the time if you want to be a great defense. At some point guys need to start
helping the others by staying with their own man and not getting beat all the time.
