Post Up: A Man Alive

the other day nobody talked about felton and he had 26 and 14, even adam recognize rondo’s 14 but no mention of Felton

For all the great things Amare does on the offfensive end, he’s probably the worst when it comes to the two most improtant facts to winning games; rebounding and defense. Who ever watched the nyk vs bos games especially in the 4th qtr so that amare couldn’t keep skinny a** kg out the paint, couldn’t rebound when he missed, was late chasing KG on the PnR which forced him to switch on PP and lacks any kind of passion on the defensive end. Maybe that was the reason why O’Antoni (good one Enigmatic) and him reunited at last. Birds of the same feather flock together.

The showtime lakers were a GREAT defensive team. They just played at a ridiculous pace. But wow, Kareem, Michael Cooper, a 6’9 PG, James Worthy, Byron Scott, Kurt Rambis, that team was stacked on both ends of the court

The Showtime Lakers were a GREAT defensive TEAM? No way, more like middle of the pack defensively, but amazing offensively. Especially from ’84 through ’88. Towards the end there Kareem would be chugging his way up around the halfcourt and the Lakers will have already scored. lol

Damn Orange, you might want to retract that like Showtime lakers comment. The 80s lakers were a very good defensive team contray to popular believe and they would easily outscore a melo/amare led team by 15 points. I saw a stat that said that the 84 lakers own the record for team FG% in a season; 54.5%, isn’t that mind-boggling.

How bout that John Wall? Oh yeah that’s right he got a shoulder injury for doing the dougie too much.

@Allenp: Try out basketball reference sometime, and look at the Showtime Lakers TEAM defense from 1984-85 through 1987-88, during a stretch Showtime won 3 of their 5 NBA Championships…Then try telling me they played “GREAT” TEAM defense after checking your facts.

Oh and during those years, the Lakers never averaged less then 115 PPG…..

@JTaylor. agreed on everything from that 3:48 post except I don’t think we can call KG skinny anymore. for the last couple of years he has been hovering between 250-260 at 6’11, that ain’t huge but it is not skinny. Dwight is about 265 and he is considered perhaps the strongest big in the league. plus from my experience when playing I would have to say that weight has very little to do with strength when boxing out crashing boards and playing strong in general, its more about heart and mindset. So in reality KG is very difficult to keep out of the paint for any defender. Although none of this excuses Amare’s crap defense.

is it cause i’m canadian that my posts hardly ever show up on here or what. slamonline is killin me. all I want for christmas is to be able to consistently post.

@JTaylor. agreed on everything from that 3:48 post except I don’t think we can call KG skinny anymore. for the last couple of years he has been hovering between 250-260 at 6’11, that ain’t huge but it is not skinny. Dwight is about 265 and he is considered perhaps the strongest big in the league. plus from my experience when playing I would have to say that weight has very little to do with strength when boxing out crashing boards and playing strong in general, its more about heart and mindset. So in reality KG is very difficult to keep out of the paint for any defender. Although none of this excuses Amare’s horrible defense.

Yeah, Showtime Lakers were way, WAY better defensively than Carmelo/Amare could ever be.

Dance SLAM “Gangsta” Dance!

what was that 173 comments before someone got frustrated

I’m co-signing BCrawford on the 80s was all about the offense tip and it wasn’t until about the late 80s a defense first team won a chip (Det). Though the lakers were an underrated defensive team with guys like scott and cooper, their main focus was to try and outscore the oppositon.

I never said they were great, NBK did.
You said that a team coached by Mike D’Antoni and with Melo and Amare as defensive leaders would be on their level.
And I said that was asinine. I’m quite comfortable with that comment.

@nbk: Right now the Knicks rank 22 out of 30 on defense. Melo doesn’t play D and D’Antoni doesn’t coach it. Adding Melo to the NYK roster would theoretically make them just as bad, maybe not worse, but certainly not better.

@nbk – ahh, gotcha.

Just because defense wasn’t a priority doesn’t mean nobody played defense.
Magic’s Lakers and Bird’s Celtics both could get key stops when they needed, and played good to very good defense. They weren’t Riley’s Knicks’ or Heat, or the Bad Boys, but they weren’t the Enver Nuggets either.
If you watch those games, defense was played. The biggest difference was in the number of shot attempts early in the shot clock, the number of times teams scored in transition or in early offense, and the improved mid range shooting. True, there were fewer defensive juggernauts individually, but man teams played solid defense.
The Lakers were not an “elite” defensive team, but they were good.
I challenge anyone to prove that a Knicks team with Melo and Amare would be “good.” How can you even argue that? What is your basis for that assumption? Neither Amare nor Melo have ever been on a good defensive team, D’Antoni has never coached a good defensive team, and there is no indication that nay of them even care about defense.
The reason Orange picked the Showtime Lakers was because they were an offensive force, and still won championships. But, the reality is that they were elite offensive, and good defensively, which made them elite overall. The Knicks are very good offensively, not elite, and horrible on defense. Acquiring Melo would likely only change one of those things.

If defense isn’t a priority, then that would mean that nobody is playing it, right? And because teams made key stops in games is evidence that defense existed throughout the 80′s? Come on, man.

So if you’re not working on your defense or your defensive philosophies, then how can you be considered “good”?

1200*

No.
You can be a good defensive team without defense being your main defensive priority.
For example, the current Lakers squad are a good to very good defensive team, but we all can see that defense is not always there priority, and we know that Phil spends far more time teaching and explaining the intricacies of the triangle, the working on help defense.
The best, or elite, defensive teams make defense their priority. That’s what they hang their hats on.
The Showtime Lakers had offense as their priority, but they also understand that they needed to be able to get serious stops, and that they needed to be able to play somewhat decent defense if they were going to be able to ignite their fast break.
You don’t become a fast breaking team by pulling the ball out of the basket every trip down the floor, that’s Basketball 101.
A blanket statement that “nobody played defense in the 80s” doesn’t make sense. If you watch games from that period you will see that people played defense, but there were a LOT more shots in a game. If you watch the games you will see that nobody made all these crazy passes and ran these elaborate sets. It was far more about early offense, getting quick hitters, and then trying to get offensive rebounds. Then, if you get the defensive rebound, it was about advancing the ball up the court as quickly as possible to get an easier scoring opportunity.
Scoring was so much better back then because players were MUCH better offensively. They understood better how to attack, plus the sheer shot volume was higher. People like to compare Kobe, or Iverson to Jordan as “gunners” but if you look at the shot totals for those three players, Jordan has multiple seasons over 2,000 shots, while I don’t think Kobe or Iverson have ever cracked the 2,000 shot plateau.
The 84-85 Lakers took more than 7,200 shots as a team, had three players shoot 1,000 shots and Magic shot 899. (Their opponents shot 7,800 shots) In comparison, the 2001 Lakers shot about 6,600 shots.
But that’s an unfair comparison since those two teams had different styles, so let’s take a different squad. The 84 Nuggets (randomly selected since Denver always runs) took more than 7800 shots. In comparison, the 2004 Suns, took 7,000 shots and they played at by FAR the fastest pace in the league. Hell, the Nuggest last year only got up 6600 shots, and we know they run in Denver.
Bottom line, if you take a lot more shots, you score a lot more points. If the entire league takes faster shots before defenses are set, and they generally have better mid-range shots (the shots most commonly available in any game) then you’re going to have higher scoring and it’s going to look like no defense is being played.

“just because a heap of points and shot attempts went up doesn’t mean a team is bad at defense.” Uhm, that’s kind of the point of playing defense, to keep stuff like that at a minimum.

Bryan
No, that’s not. The point of defense is to prevent the other team from scoring the way they are most comfortable scoring.
The Lakers shot 7,200 times, yet their opponents shot 7,600 times. However, the Lakers shot 54 percent, while their oppenents shot 48 percent. More importantly, the Lakers outrebounded and outblocked their opponents.
Basically, the Lakers suckered people into playing at their pace, taking the shots they wanted them to take, and then the Lakers ran right back down their throats and got the shots THEY wanted.
It’s like giving somebody the jumper because you know they’ll fall in love with it, even if they can’t shoot.
By what measure did you decide “nobody played defense.” Was it league wide scoring, was it the eyeball test, what led you to decide that nobody in the 80s played defense?