Minnesota Sports Forum

I agree that no one is beyond reproach when it comes to our defense, including Wiggins (although being a 19-year old rookie is certainly a pretty good excuse). You simply can't be this bad without pretty much everyone screwing up pretty consistently. That being said, on paper, we shouldn't be this bad. If you gave Thad Young, Gorgui Dieng, Andrew Wiggins, Hummel/Brewer/Shabazz, and Mo Williams to Steve Clifford, Scott Skiles, or Tom Thibodeau, I think any one of them could out-perform Flip and his staff. I'm not saying we'd be world-beaters defensively, but I don't think we'd be historically bad. It's simply inexcusable, but there is no one to be held accountable because the coach's boss is himself!

You don't need 5 good defenders to play good defense... IF you have a good scheme.

But isn't Sam Mitchell more of an "old school" guy. By that, a guy who's more willing to stick with principles around "hustle, intensity, effort" rather than using advanced metrics to force opposing teams out of their comfort areas on the court?

NBA defenses are more complex than ever. But I don't think the Wolves have a coaching staff that's bought into the current way the NBA is being played... offensively or defensively. That's what you get when you put a retread in charge... and he hires other retreads who agree with him.

Our current coaching staff, except maybe Young Saunders, is outdated. They just don't know how to handle today's NBA on both ends of the floor. We need Flip to get Hoiberg (I think our young nucleus would entice him + we need a guy that can handle young players) here fast.

Camden wrote:Our current coaching staff, except maybe Young Saunders, is outdated. They just don't know how to handle today's NBA on both ends of the floor. We need Flip to get Hoiberg (I think our young nucleus would entice him + we need a guy that can handle young players) here fast.

Agreed, Fred can be our Steve Kerr. Get him here Flip.

There are a couple things that make our defense a disaster versus just being bad. First and foremost is nobody can stop the ball. Every PG has their way with Mo and Lavine and it makes life easy to pick the spots you want when little resistance stops the offense right out of the gate. Lavine needs to be pressuring the ball down the court at all times to slow down the opposing offense. The second is the lack of rebounding behind Dieng. I can't count the number of times he successfully challenges the shot at the rim only to have his man grab the board and get the easy second chance bucket. At this point Thad and Bennett aren't getting it done so we need all hands on deck on the defensive glass. If we can close the rebounding gap it will greatly help our defense overall. Finally, there is no resistance when defending the pick and roll. We either need to switch more often or hedge hard and tell the weakside defender to get his ass to the paint to protect it if the hard hedge breaks down. Having the big half be there to hedge and half play to recover back to his man is not a strategy to stop the PnR. Those three things have been flat out atrocious this season and we'd be way better if we found a way to address and fix them.

I understand the defense sucks but is it the coaches? They probably deserve a large portion of the blame but more than anything I'd go with a lack of talent and under developed young players as the primary cause for bad team defense.

Tactical unit wrote:I understand the defense sucks but is it the coaches? They probably deserve a large portion of the blame but more than anything I'd go with a lack of talent and under developed young players as the primary cause for bad team defense.

Historically bad.

That falls on coaches and players. As noted, you can hide deficiencies with a good scheme. But to tell young guys they can be good defenders with not much more than effort and intensity puts their inexperience in the spotlight.

khans2k5 wrote:There are a couple things that make our defense a disaster versus just being bad. First and foremost is nobody can stop the ball. Every PG has their way with Mo and Lavine and it makes life easy to pick the spots you want when little resistance stops the offense right out of the gate. Lavine needs to be pressuring the ball down the court at all times to slow down the opposing offense. The second is the lack of rebounding behind Dieng. I can't count the number of times he successfully challenges the shot at the rim only to have his man grab the board and get the easy second chance bucket. At this point Thad and Bennett aren't getting it done so we need all hands on deck on the defensive glass. If we can close the rebounding gap it will greatly help our defense overall. Finally, there is no resistance when defending the pick and roll. We either need to switch more often or hedge hard and tell the weakside defender to get his ass to the paint to protect it if the hard hedge breaks down. Having the big half be there to hedge and half play to recover back to his man is not a strategy to stop the PnR. Those three things have been flat out atrocious this season and we'd be way better if we found a way to address and fix them.

I was watching San Antonio the other night and I was amazed at how damn hard Tony Parker and Danny Green worked to anticipate and get over the top of ball screens. It was as if their life depended on it. I think the ability to get over a ball screen quickly is one of the most important traits of a good defense. Our two (healthy) PGs suck at it. And frankly, Rubio isn't that great at it either, although he is disruptive in many other ways.

The fourth issue I'd add to your list is transition defense. We are horrific at getting back in numbers off missed shots and quickly matching up. Someone from the other team inevitably sprints out to the 3-point line unnoticed and gets a wide open look. That should not be happening.

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

Tactical unit wrote:I understand the defense sucks but is it the coaches? They probably deserve a large portion of the blame but more than anything I'd go with a lack of talent and under developed young players as the primary cause for bad team defense.

Historically bad.

That falls on coaches and players. As noted, you can hide deficiencies with a good scheme. But to tell young guys they can be good defenders with not much more than effort and intensity puts their inexperience in the spotlight.

Agreed, it's both. Certainly having a bunch of first and second year guys play contributes to the problem. I wouldn't expect even the best defensive-oriented coach to turn us into a top 10 defense. But I think there is some pretty decent raw material to work with. Dieng is a good shotblocker and very long. Wiggins is an athletic marvel. Thad Young played on some very solid defensive teams in Philly. To be the worst all time eFG% defense....well, again, someone should be fired for this. Philly isn't exactly chalk-full of experience vets, yet they are miles ahead of us defensively. I give credit to coach Brown and his staff.

Wanted to bump this thread again to talk about why I think we need size, which also implies we need competent defenders in our front court.

http://www.teamrankings.com/nba/stats/

We suck at opponents eFG and TS. Yet is really interesting when you breakdown where those # are coming from. We are middle of the road in giving up 3s, and quite good at not giving up foul shots, yet we are dead last by a long shot in opponents rate and totals for 2 pointers made. Which basically means we are giving up easy baskets inside. As we can all see this is a team problem (men losing cutters, mixed up assignments). But in reality if we had one competent anchor on D in our front court I think it would do a world of difference for us. Unfortunately, I don't think Dieng is that guy (though I had a lot of hope for him). I can't really describe what is off with him, but he defensive movements seem to robotic to me. He doesn't have that fluid aggressive stance that seems to be embedded in great defenders.