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You surrender a load of defensive rebounds when you play zone.
I know it goes against Pop's beliefs but I think is something worth exploring more. Let's face it, many of the Spurs' rotation players are old, slow and/or unathleitc. With these pieces and the same old defensive schemes the Spurs will never be anything more than slightly above average on defense, it's time to mix it up a bit.
Look at the Mavs, that zone defense turn them into a very good defensive team (even now with Chandler out) playing guys like Nowitzki, Carter, Terry and Kidd (still a decent defender but too old and slow to be chasing around younger PGs all game long) and won them a championship when they had no business wining one.
I think it's worth a try.
You surrender a load of defensive rebounds when you play zone.
The Spurs have to be as versatile as possible offensively and defensively to give themselves the best chance. With a full training camp they should practice everything.
Pops to proud to admit he made a mistake
You also throw a lot of teams off their rythm when you use a zone at the right times. Not to mention that is a lot less demanding to defend using a zone than man to man.
The obvious drawback is that it also reduces accountability. Was this guy or the other guy that should've covered the opposing player?. That said, there's little accountability right now, so I would say go for it. The thing though, you have to practice it from early on. That Mavs team was switching to zone throughout the season. It can't be something you hack together later.
Pop has used it in the past to do that and it's worked. Certainly would have been a good option for throwing the Thunder off balance.
With the way Durant, Harden and Westbrook shot, I doubt the zone would function tbh.
The zone works to take opposing teams out of their comfort zone on offense. It provokes them to not run their usual plays and that impacts their efficiency.
The Thunder beat us in a game running the same ing play everytime (Durant setting a weak side screen to provoke the switch and post on the elbow on smaller guys), with the zone we could have prevented that.
It doesn't matter if you stop the initial shot if Perk or Ibaka dunks a putback because we were in a ing zone.
If you play a zone correctly that shouldn't happen very often.
That wasn't the case with Dallas.
What it comes down to is you can't give any good team the same looks on offense and hope they won't burn you. The Thunder were one of the worst teams in the league if not the worst in turnovers and we let them off the hook by not forcing them to make enough decisions on offense.
would rather the spurs fail then for them to rely on such a ified defense.
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