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"Again"...Obviously he's not dominant defensively this year.
Arbitrary cutoff, but Bosh, Horford, Milsap (above 2 in both), Draymond and Kawhi are only guys above 1.5 in both. Lebron not very far behind. Only other guys with him above 1 in both are Lowry, Love, Marvin Williams (!), Butler and Demarcus. And almost Dirk somehow.
From what I remember, it's much harder for guards to rank high on D.
"Again"...Obviously he's not dominant defensively this year.
Kawhi is a beast and Tim is ... Tim. Regardless of the small sample size, a 39 year old center should not be up there unless he is GOAT ...
Read: as dominant.
He's still dominant but not as dominant. He's guarding his own assignment but last year he was guarding an entire side of the floor at times and disrupting 3+ opposing players all at once on numerous plays.
He still is doing that but not as often. He's young and athletic but he still has finite energy. His increased offensive load naturally affects his D. I'd like to see LMA take the extra offensive burden so Kawhi can be getting upwards of 7DRPM again this year.
Primarily because LMA is most potent on offense and Kawhi on D. It makes sense to play them both to their strengths and I think the team would be better for it.
Kawhi is gambling a lot more on defense than he used to, and teams are capitalizing on it. Like with Green, if Leonard has one guy he's supposed to check, he can do it very well. But if people don't think he's lost some focus as well so far, they don't know what they've been watching. Or maybe his centerfielding is more helpful to the team defense than preventing his own guy from scoring. It's not cut and dried.
Whatever Stat that attributes more wins to Patty than Manu its simply wrong.
Pop was really upset with guys getting hit with backcuts in the nets game. Kawhi was not the worst offender, but he got hit with a backcut too, and having already benched Kyle and Danny I believe, Pop gave the speech to Kawhi too.
I noticed his gambling the most in the Pelicans game, particularly because his gambles didn't pay off in that game and Holiday capitalized on them passing to the open guy. Its the one game I remember that it was very noticeable. The fact we were losing for most of the game, LMA got the ankle tweaked, Timmy wasn't having a good game and was spared bc they had a game the day after, and frankly Diaw and others sucked and were not exerting the required level of effort defensively may have prompted Kawhi in a bit of a desperation. He also wasn't guarding a star SF so he might have felt he could get away with it. The team as a whole played badly in that game, so I can't blame him specifically.
What has been more noticeable to me is that he is getting screened rather easily. It was a factor in the Wiz game.
LMA will be more involve on offense in the next months, there's no doubt about that...but Kawhi's still an elite two-way player now, not only a great defender.
Pop said he wants Kawhi to be aggressive on the offensive end, and the Spurs need it as well.
KAwhi and Tim taking over.
Exactly this.
The kind of defense he played last year was unbelievable and it was a different style to how he's now playing. He's making up for it on the offensive end (still overall top10 league) but we'll see what happens come playoff time.
My only concern is that LMA not clicking isn't because he's new, it's actually a direct result of him not being included in the offense enough.
The offense is hard enough to master for a guy who isn't a major component of it, so it's going to take time for a guy who's been conditioned to play a certain way like he did in Portland. Mixing in some ISO with the motion offense, plus letting him crash the offensive glass (something the Spurs never do, but will be imperative against the Warriors) should get him going. Hopefully as his midrange game starts clicking, he'll be able to get back to the 3pt attempts he was taking last year of 1.5 per game.
He's still elite there, despite that (especially considering the offensive load he's carrying too). I do think it's by design. I can't imagine, with how much Chad/Pop, etc.. work with him that he would go THAT rogue. With Tim in his new position (where he's guarding guys) and LMA's ability I absolutely think they are encouraging that behavior.
Then as you said, 1v1 it's over.
Spurs have the second best defense. Kawhi isn't slacking.
Lol real or fake plus minus
Bigs are just naturally more impactful defenders. A wing can only defend one player at a time, while a great defensive big can shut down an entire offense.
TD's on/off numbers were just insane during his prime.
http://www.warriorsworld.net/2011/02...-debate-close/What pops up however is that up to 2007-08 season, Duncan’s presence on the court pretty much guaranteed a double digit lead on opponents. Jesse Blanchard did a good job of explaining this during the faithful Daily Dime chat when he stated: “Kobe Bryant has been known to shut down his opponent whereas Tim Duncan was known to shut down entire offenses by himself”
Leonard's drpm was at like 4+ last year, he's been gambling more on defense but his 1v1 defense is much better than last year so I don't think he dropped off that much if at all. Cousins finished 4th last year in drpm, it's a hit or miss stat I guess.
Its by design. Are you ever going to realize this or are you going to conitue igonoring an obvious stratgegical point?
Don't get me wrong, I think Leonard is a generational talent on defense, which is why I've long been an advocate of him carrying less of an offensive load so he can devote more energy to defense/rebounding (I think his load is sustainable at his current usage. Don't like all the minutes, though), but the best perimeter defender of all-time is probably only as a good as the 30th best big of all-time. Like I said, a wing can only bother one player. A big patrolling the paint can bother the entire opposing team, taking penetration away, the low-post away, controlling the boards, etc.
Yeah, it's interesting that the DRPM generally rises through each position, with the PG usually being the lowest and each position-- SG, SF, PF, & C-- getting increasingly higher. I think this is why many strategists think that D at the PG is vastly overrated...
It's not all by design. Pop doesn't tell Kawhi to get 15 feet from his man like he did repeatedly against Dallas. On the double-hammer play, Kawhi was just out of position. Kawhi gave up the transition three because he wanted to double the paint instead.
Pointless to explain - they don't watch the games, they'll check the box score and come with Kawhi-destroyed-another-dude takes.
it just means that the stat is not as pure and perfect as, say normal +-.
He was trying to prevent a transition layup. Kawhi was the only one in position to help Manu who wouldn't have stopped Felton on his own. Not sure why you would consider that a bad defensive play. Rewatch it. Kawhi did what you're supposed to do in transition defense (stop the easy shot even if it means allowing an open jump shot).
Lol at the turn thus thread has made, stats are nothing without they eye test, aka context
Well, Kawhi's defense had a lot to do with that boxscore. He made Matthews work hard for the ball and buckets, Kawhi didn't allow him to establish any sort of rhythm, especially in the first half...Sadly, Kawhi's off ball defense often gets overlooked by fans here.
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