jbk1234 wrote:JonFromVA wrote:jbk1234 wrote:
I mean Love is under contract and doesn't have much of a trade market so I'm not really worried about convincing him to stick around. As far as Drummond, his biggest defensive weakness is the 1-5 high PNR which just happens to be the most commonly run play in the NBA. Given the fact that all of Love, Sexton, and Garland also all suck at it, I don't think there's a way to make it work. You can put Okoro on the other team's PG and try to hide Sexton. You can maybe have Love check the screener and have Drummond rotate over at the rim in a junk zone. But it's just a lot easier if you have an athletic lengthy big all the way out there who can frustrate the point of attack and still recover on the roll.
My point here is that according to the media the only thing Love, Drummond, or even Thompson want out of the Cavs is that we can potentially get them paid AND put them on another team. But maybe, it's not that cut & dry ... maybe they'd be happy to be paid and play for the Cavs if they felt we were going to compete. And perhaps Okoro is a sign that we're looking to fix our defense with them .vs. replace them.
As for Drummond and our defense, team D should never be as cut & dry as a single flaw. We all saw Zydrunas Illgauskus and his leaden feet playing show & recover when nobody thought he could move that far that fast. More recently we've seen Brook Lopez anchor the league's top defense (and he just drops back), and when Drummond was on the Pistons they were respectable on D.
So, it's not just one player wrecking the D or fixing it, it's the group figuring out how to defend together as a unit and the coach implementing a system that fits the personnel and achieving buy-in.
That's why it's important whether these guys are "fitting in" or "fitting out" ... if they're just bidding their time until they're on another team, they will sabotage any chance we have to build a defensive identity.
If we drafted Toppin or Okowungu the message would have been more along the lines of "don't let the door hit you on the way out".
Sorry, but personnel matters. Brook plays with an athletic 7 foot shot blocker alongside him in the starting unit. His lay back and play center field approach was exposed pretty badly against the Heat. Big Z played on some pretty good defensive teams as well. You can hide a guy or two on defense so long as you get buy in. You can't hide three bad defenders in your starting unit. No amount of buy in going to make Garland and Sexton work in the same backcourt defensively.
Drummond is a 7ft shot blocker and there's Okoro who can help if he's playing SF. Sexton needs a court awareness upgrade, Garland needs strength, and Love needs to give a bleep.
Just need coaching, teaching, willingness, effort, and continuity.
Did I imply somewhere it would be easy to fix our D?
It's not, but it's possible ... given the right circumstances.