Official 2014 NBA draft thread

[Porckchop]

Ricky is not a great on ball defender, he interrupts passing lanes and takes chances for steals. But every pg drives by him with ease. When u dont have defensive bigs thats a problem and it was a problem this year.

[Camden [enjin:6601484]]

Ricky is not a great on ball defender, he interrupts passing lanes and takes chances for steals. But every pg drives by him with ease. When u dont have defensive bigs thats a problem and it was a problem this year.

He is a great on ball defender, but our bigs (Pek and Love) have trouble helping on the P&R and I continue to believe this is why PGs put up big numbers against us. Ricky has really quick feet and is very smart in drawing fouls. He's also good at contesting shots. One on one it's very rare to see Ricky get flat out beat.

He needs to continue adding strength so he can fight through picks harder and handle the more physical PGs, but he's still a very good defender, imo.

[khans2k5 [enjin:6608728]]

Ricky might be one of the worst defenders in the league against the PnR. He can't fight through screens and he never gets around them. Teams score at will because it is a 2 on 1 every time they run the PnR on Ricky because he is so easily screened out of the play. The only way our PnR defense gets better is if the big can hold off a 2 on 1 long enough for Ricky to recover. Pek can't do that. Dieng can, but he isn't ready to be a good 1 on 1 defender yet which still leaves a hole on the defense. Ricky is a good help defender playing the passing lanes, but his 1 on 1 defense is hardly ever needed because the other team just has to set a pick to take him out of the play.

[Hicks123 [enjin:6700838]]

Great call Khans, I was going to state roughly the same thing. While Ricky does a lot of good things on the defensive end with steals and interrupting passing lanes, as khans points out, he is an atrocious PnR defender. For a guy with his size, he needs to become much stronger fighting through screens at the top of the key. He often times shows little interest in getting around these picks, which as noted, ends up in an uncontested shot or drive against the paper-mache defense of Love and Pek. He needs to learn to anticipate these scenarios and figure out a way to either fight through or simply get to better positional spots on the floor.

Also, comment about Stauskas. While I like the guy, he is certainly not going to help our team defensively. As some have already called out, while a more efficient shooter would be welcome on this team, we simply can't win consistently against top-shelf talent if we continue to suffer on the defensive side of the ball the way we did this year. Stauskas does nothing to help us here. Not sure that this is a good arguement not to draft him, as I don't know if there are other potential draft picks that could help in this area, but we certainly should be exploring the idea of getting a player with solid defensive along with at least a respectable offensive game.

[longstrangetrip [enjin:6600564]]

Great call Khans, I was going to state roughly the same thing. While Ricky does a lot of good things on the defensive end with steals and interrupting passing lanes, as khans points out, he is an atrocious PnR defender. For a guy with his size, he needs to become much stronger fighting through screens at the top of the key. He often times shows little interest in getting around these picks, which as noted, ends up in an uncontested shot or drive against the paper-mache defense of Love and Pek. He needs to learn to anticipate these scenarios and figure out a way to either fight through or simply get to better positional spots on the floor.

Also, comment about Stauskas. While I like the guy, he is certainly not going to help our team defensively. As some have already called out, while a more efficient shooter would be welcome on this team, we simply can't win consistently against top-shelf talent if we continue to suffer on the defensive side of the ball the way we did this year. Stauskas does nothing to help us here. Not sure that this is a good arguement not to draft him, as I don't know if there are other potential draft picks that could help in this area, but we certainly should be exploring the idea of getting a player with solid defensive along with at least a respectable offensive game.

http://nbadraft.net/players/terran-petteway

Read and enjoy, Hicks...

[mjs34]

Ricky might be one of the worst defenders in the league against the PnR. He can't fight through screens and he never gets around them. Teams score at will because it is a 2 on 1 every time they run the PnR on Ricky because he is so easily screened out of the play. The only way our PnR defense gets better is if the big can hold off a 2 on 1 long enough for Ricky to recover. Pek can't do that. Dieng can, but he isn't ready to be a good 1 on 1 defender yet which still leaves a hole on the defense. Ricky is a good help defender playing the passing lanes, but his 1 on 1 defense is hardly ever needed because the other team just has to set a pick to take him out of the play.

Nothing could be more misinterpreted. Why do you think 95% of the teams rely on the PnR for a major part of their offense? Because it is very hard to defend. It has very little to do with the man being picked, and almost everything to do with the big getting out and stopping the momentum of the ball handler. Pek is absolutely atrocious at executing it, and Love while having the ability only makes the effort half the time. Dieng is very good at it because he understands that positioning is everything. A good big will not only stop the ball penetration, but close the passing lane as well. The first allows the picked player to get back into a good defensive posture. No player in the NBA can guard a PnR without that big help. The PnR doesn't create a 2-1 against the big, it creates it against the guard, thus giving the ball handler that half a second needed to penetrate.

Ricky has been abused by moving and cheap picks all season, with no retribution from our bigs. Could Ricky improve his fighting through the picks? Certainly, but that isn't what is creating our problems on defense. Ricky has been guilty of losing focus the last couple of games and paying too much attention to the pick, while his opponent went away from it, but that hasn't been a problem over the course of the season. This team has no defensive identity, and regardless of how good your perimeter players are, you will always succumb to the PnR without adequate play from the bigs., It should be clear to anyone that this team has not focused on defensive principals enough. Not really hard to believe when you consider the coach running things.

[Q12543 [enjin:6621299]]

SJM, While I generally agree with your observations on Rubio's defense (and the advanced stats show that he's a big-time plus on defense), I do think this year's team had a couple of defensive principles: 1) Don't foul, especially early in games, and 2) Turn teams over more than we turn it over.

Those two principles resulted in us having the 12th ranked defense in the league, which is very solid. The problem is that this is an unusual path to defensive efficiency in the NBA, and ultimately, it tended to backfire late in games where having an approach that forces the opposition into contested and uncomfortable shot attempts would have been more effective. This requires defenders that gamble less, play more physically, and basically play sticky man on man and help defense. Both Ricky and Brewer tended to get burned by trying to make hero steals late in games (especially Brewer). When those steal attempts don't pan out, it usually means someone has an open shot.

But yeah, I think a good, defensive-minded coach that demands stout defense and 100% effort would go a long ways to improving our team.

[mjs34]

SJM, While I generally agree with your observations on Rubio's defense (and the advanced stats show that he's a big-time plus on defense), I do think this year's team had a couple of defensive principles: 1) Don't foul, especially early in games, and 2) Turn teams over more than we turn it over.

Those two principles resulted in us having the 12th ranked defense in the league, which is very solid. The problem is that this is an unusual path to defensive efficiency in the NBA, and ultimately, it tended to backfire late in games where having an approach that forces the opposition into contested and uncomfortable shot attempts would have been more effective. This requires defenders that gamble less, play more physically, and basically play sticky man on man and help defense. Both Ricky and Brewer tended to get burned by trying to make hero steals late in games (especially Brewer). When those steal attempts don't pan out, it usually means someone has an open shot.

But yeah, I think a good, defensive-minded coach that demands stout defense and 100% effort would go a long ways to improving our team.

I think the first is just a product of lack of effort at the rim, and the second is due to the style of D that Rubio and Brewer tend to play. Adelman has actually criticized both of those areas in interviews, which led me to believe it wasn't a part of anything he might be preaching.

I was much more comfortable with Ricky's attempts because they usually occurred in the opponents backcourt, and Ricky wasn't putting the team into a 5 on 4 situation. There was almost always the inbounder behind Ricky, whereas Brewer would tend to sellout at any time.

[Camden [enjin:6601484]]

An optimistic video breaking down James Young, for those who are in favor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bCJ8qr8nak

[bleedspeed]

Like his size- Good option in the 20's.