GoodBehavior wrote:lilfishi22 wrote:LesGrossman wrote:How bad is Ayton really? I followed the Wolves for a long time and got more and more annoyed with Towns because he visibly put no effort or throught into defense while showing off on the other end (causing ignorant "fans" to consider him a good player). I hope Ayton is just incompetent, not unwilling?
I tend to lean incompetence right now over unwilling. He's just slow on rotations, gets stuck in no-mans-land and sometimes just ball watches. But with experience, being around a good defensive influence (Baynes, Bridges - calling him out during games) and hopefully playing in a good defensive scheme, we can minimise a lot of that incompetence and really put to work that length and athleticism which should lend itself to elite defense.
Incompetence is way too harsh of a description.
Despite having a dreadful first month on D (Human Statue on D), Ayton ended up the year with a better DPRM, DWS, and DRtg than Mikal Bridges, who no one would characterize as incompetent on D. Ayton was one of the best defender on an admittedly terrible defensive team. Richaun Holmes was the team best defensive player. But by the end of the season, I thought Ayton was better than Richaun.
His weakness by far is PNR coverage. It takes big men a couple of year to get the PNR coverage right, so we'll have to see. Unlike poor PNR defender (Kanter, etc), Ayton has no physical limitation that prevents him from being elite on PNR. If Ayton is competent on PNR coverage, he would be above average on D.
You can't compare different positions with advanced stats. Centers will always be better because rebounds count as defensive stats.
Ayton needs to be compared with other Cs, not a wing.