Q12543 wrote:
LaVine has always been good at guarding the ball handler in space. It's when he gets screened or his guy is playing off the ball that he gets totally lost at times. He also tends to be easily fooled by cross-overs. I do think he's improved, but it's gone from horrible to just plain bad.
What I don't get is given his limited minutes why they aren't taking him and having him press guys full court. Yes, he sometimes picks guys up full-court, but it's always half-hearted. He has elite foot speed and length for a PG and could really force the other team's PG to exert a ton more energy to just get the offense set up.
I think Lavine has done much better job lately getting around screens and has currently looked better than Ricky in that area.
I agree your comment that it would make sense to have Lavine pressing opponent point guards since he has very good ability for that. Especially early in this season when he was playing only backup point minutes, he could have made opponent star PGs to waste a lot of more energy when they were playing against our second unit. Since he was anyway playing just around 20 minutes, it should not have made himself too tired.
Q12543 wrote:
LaVine has always been good at guarding the ball handler in space. It's when he gets screened or his guy is playing off the ball that he gets totally lost at times. He also tends to be easily fooled by cross-overs. I do think he's improved, but it's gone from horrible to just plain bad.
What I don't get is given his limited minutes why they aren't taking him and having him press guys full court. Yes, he sometimes picks guys up full-court, but it's always half-hearted. He has elite foot speed and length for a PG and could really force the other team's PG to exert a ton more energy to just get the offense set up.
I think Lavine has done much better job lately getting around screens and has currently looked better than Ricky in that area.
I agree your comment that it would make sense to have Lavine pressing opponent point guards since he has very good ability for that. Especially early in this season when he was playing only backup point minutes, he could have made opponent star PGs to waste a lot of more energy when they were playing against our second unit. Since he was anyway playing just around 20 minutes, it should not have made himself too tired.
True, LaVine has improved, but he's still not a good defender. I'm not sure if you saw the game last night, but when he was guarding DJ Augustin - OKC's 3rd string PG - DJ put a cross-over on LaVine that faked him out of his shoes and he went in for an uncontested layup. That happens too often with him.
I hope he can eventually become a strong 2-way player, but he's not there yet.
LaVine has improved on defense, and some of that comes from increased strength, technique, and experience. However, two things hurt him more than anything in my eyes. He tends to over anticipate a play and jump into lanes early, which in theory sounds like a good thing, except opposing guards are more experienced and quicker to counter (see Q's comment about crossovers). They can take advantage of him. If you recall, this is primarily why Troy Hudson was so bad at defense. He would get into the dribbling lane so early because of his quickness, but be so out of position to defend a counter dribble that he completely broke down the perimeter defense.
The second is his tendency to give up on a play when his guy gets by him, mostly due to the aforementioned issue. He either doesn't trail the play hard enough, or provide help defense on the guy vacated by the interior defender opposing shots at the rim (see KAT's/GD's guys getting offensive rebounds a lot).
Q12543 wrote:
LaVine has always been good at guarding the ball handler in space. It's when he gets screened or his guy is playing off the ball that he gets totally lost at times. He also tends to be easily fooled by cross-overs. I do think he's improved, but it's gone from horrible to just plain bad.
What I don't get is given his limited minutes why they aren't taking him and having him press guys full court. Yes, he sometimes picks guys up full-court, but it's always half-hearted. He has elite foot speed and length for a PG and could really force the other team's PG to exert a ton more energy to just get the offense set up.
I think Lavine has done much better job lately getting around screens and has currently looked better than Ricky in that area.
I agree your comment that it would make sense to have Lavine pressing opponent point guards since he has very good ability for that. Especially early in this season when he was playing only backup point minutes, he could have made opponent star PGs to waste a lot of more energy when they were playing against our second unit. Since he was anyway playing just around 20 minutes, it should not have made himself too tired.
True, LaVine has improved, but he's still not a good defender. I'm not sure if you saw the game last night, but when he was guarding DJ Augustin - OKC's 3rd string PG - DJ put a cross-over on LaVine that faked him out of his shoes and he went in for an uncontested layup. That happens too often with him.
I hope he can eventually become a strong 2-way player, but he's not there yet.
To be fair DJ is a VERY VERY VERY good 3rd string PG. lol
