Anybody remember what Josh Smith did Thursday night? 10 points, 5-16 from the field. Guess who guarded him? Thaddeus Young did. And yet where is the love for that defensive performance? I'll take a guess, it's probably being overlooked by those that only talk about Thad's interior presence on defense.
I noticed and I think Josh Smith is the perfect matchup for Thad. They are both about at the same level, but Young won that battle. I am really glad we have both Young and Bennett. Bennett has some growing to do, but his upside is much higher then Youngs.
The biggest issue I have with you LST when it comes to Young is that you underrate him as a player. You look solely at his rebounding and his interior defensive statistics (that are also impacted by who you play with) and brush off his scoring, passing ability, P&R defense and team defense in general. He's great at guarding perimeter oriented bigs, which is where the league has been heading. He's smart, gives great effort and forces TOs. He also understands rotations, and that has been on display two games in. Our team defense, other than Pek guarding the P&R, has been MUCH better than last year. I allot much of that to Thaddeus. I think you haven't watched much of him, to be honest, and that's why you write him off.
You mention versatile scoring, but that's a small fish in an ocean of criticism about him from you. I believe it was you also who said scoring is his best attribute, but you claimed he wasn't efficient... I believe he will change your mind this year.
I don't take anything on these boards personally. I just think some of the stuff said on here about Thad isn't fair. Case in point: You criticized Young for his defense on Randolph, but didn't even mention his defense on Smith. Interior defense this, interior defense that. As I've told you plenty of times, there's more to defense than just that one aspect.
That doesn't even include your man crush on Anthony Bennett. That's a whole other discussion.
I don't get why people in this board are evaluating Thad's defense just based on last year stats when he was playing for historically bad Philly team. Only prime Kevin Garnett would have been able to look any good in defense in that team.
If you look Young's defense stats from three prior years when he was playing for team that was quite close to league average, they are pretty close to elite level for power forward position. (these stats are from 82games.com)
It seems that Thad had done quite nice job in limiting the amount of FG attempts taken against him and also opponent PF overall FG% has not been that good. Even though opponent PF has attempted quite lot FTs, total amount of points scored against Thad has been less than 20 per 48 minutes that is quite good. Also it seems that opponents PFs have not been able to use much their size advantage against him since only about 34% of their shots have been taken close to rim.
We can compare those stats for example Paul Millsap's opponent PF stats:
FGA eFG% FTA iFG T/O Pts
12-13 17.4 .499 4.4 34% 2.8 20.6
11-12 18.2 .491 5.7 32% 2.8 21.6
10-11 17.4 .529 5.6 35% 2.6 22.7
I think that based on these stats Young's overall defense seems to be just fine and we can expect that it will clearly improve Wolves defense compared to last year.
Mikkeman wrote:I don't get why people in this board are evaluating Thad's defense just based on last year stats when he was playing for historically bad Philly team. Only prime Kevin Garnett would have been able to look any good in defense in that team.
If you look Young's defense stats from three prior years when he was playing for team that was quite close to league average, they are pretty close to elite level for power forward position. (these stats are from 82games.com)
It seems that Thad had done quite nice job in limiting the amount of FG attempts taken against him and also opponent PF overall FG% has not been that good. Even though opponent PF has attempted quite lot FTs, total amount of points scored against Thad has been less than 20 per 48 minutes that is quite good. Also it seems that opponents PFs have not been able to use much their size advantage against him since only about 34% of their shots have been taken close to rim.
We can compare those stats for example Paul Millsap's opponent PF stats:
FGA eFG% FTA iFG T/O Pts
12-13 17.4 .499 4.4 34% 2.8 20.6
11-12 18.2 .491 5.7 32% 2.8 21.6
10-11 17.4 .529 5.6 35% 2.6 22.7
I think that based on these stats Young's overall defense seems to be just fine and we can expect that it will clearly improve Wolves defense compared to last year.
Good stuff, Mikkeman...thanks for posting. The most interesting comparison, of course, is the comparison to Love, since Young has replaced him in the starting lineup...and the difference is striking. Love gave up 4 more points per game in 2012-13 than Thad, so it certainly seems like we have a big upgrade there defensively.
Looking ahead to Wednesday, the StarTrib reports that Young passed his baseline concussion tests and will be reevaluated today to see if he can play Wednesday. Flip reported that Thad actually lost consciousness after his collision with Butler...pretty scary stuff. But it sounds like it may not be as serious as it first appeared. Good news. Hummel gave us some very good minutes last game, but we're clearly better off with Robbie keeping the bench warm than on the court.
