Post#51 » by Dr Spaceman » Thu Apr 23, 2015 5:11 pm
Jordan is such a strange one. From what I can tell, a lot of his blocks come in 1v1 situations. Which is fine and valuable, but it shouldn't give anyone the idea that he's rotating around and deterring shots in the paint. When he does get blocks on help, it's usually of the "he came out of nowhere!" variety, and perhaps this is a stylistic preference, but I'd much much much rather him position himself to deter those shots in the first place. I think the problem people have is they look at the block numbers and think that there are countless additional shots he's altering on top of that, which is true of the great defensive players but isn't actually true in Jordan's case.
Further, if you've watched any of the Spurs series you'd see LAC having Jordan jump out in front of screens, essentially doubling/trapping the ball handler. On the one hand, he's a really gifted athlete with a crazy reach so it's not unreasonable to see this wrinkle come out every now and again just to apply some pressure, but the Clips do it every damn time. Given that Paul is probably the best on-ball defender among point guards, what this tells me is that the Clippers don't think highly of his ability to ICE, which is what most smart defensive bigs do. The Clippers also don't really ever switch, which kind of speaks volumes as to how much they trust their roster in general, and this includes Jordan.
Look, the Clippers were murdered last night inside simply because they were having Jordan jump out to the three point line and leaving Duncan alone in the paint. Duncan scored a million points just on layups and little flip[ shots over a rotating wing from the corner. This kept happening, and yet the Clips still kept Jordan pressing. Why is this? To me, the Clippers simply don't trust DJ.
“I’m not the fastest guy on the court, but I can dictate when the race begins.”
