this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023
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he basically lets them play five out - and he can jack up shots way behind the arc if he wants too, while providing rim protection on an already elite defense. guy needs to stay healthy though
He does not provide any rim protection. Anyone who watched him in DC and Dallas knows that he’s near useless as a rim protector. His value is entirely on the offensive side of the ball.
Lmao you absolutely don’t know watch basketball then , players are afraid of Pingus.
Points Allowed Per Pick-and-Roll defended last season according to Second Spectrum:
Would you be able to see the numbers here for KP with Gafford on the floor vs. him off the floor?
Excellent company to be in. I'm so excited for the Celtics defense this year
Wtf you clearly didn’t watch him in Dallas. I remember seeing plenty of stats detailing number of drives he deterred while he was here. His rim protection is fine
He's definitely been inconsistent at times defensively, but that's pretty clearly due to injury. I feel like we have a pretty good picture of who he is on that end— an excellent rim protector with some vulnerabilities due to his size and frame, who mostly plays drop but isn't completely helpless in other coverages. We're well-equipped to compensate for his weaknesses, so I wouldn't be surprised if he looks even better here than he did in Washington defensively (health willing, of course)
Lmao
I agree with you, lmao. I will say that it's possible to hunt blocks to the detriment of the overall defense. You rush for a block, and the ball handler just dumps it to the guy you were supposed to guard? Uh oh!
He provides rim protection, he is just injury prone. His entire tenure in Dallas was him recovering from some injury, and he looked a bit slower as a result. The one healthy year he had, the bubble, he was pretty good
Bro a lakers fan, what do you expect
10th in Blocks per game last year. So that's more than the top shot blocker on 2/3rds of the teams in the league.
I agree with you here. The dude is going to be hunted.
Maybe on the perimeter or by beefy centers in the paint, but we have some of the best perimeter defenders in the league and Al Horford, who is still one of the best big man defenders in the league, to make up for that. He’ll slot right into the Robert Williams III roaming center role and add his length to contests at the rim, while Al comes in to match against Embiid/Giannis/Jokic, and Jrue, D-White and the Jays lock up the perimeter.
He’s definitely no AD on defense but he’s no slouch, especially if you have the pieces to surround him like the C’s do.
Al Horford is old and won't be a threat in the playoffs and most of the regular season. Putting two centers on the floor will make them really slow.
Watching him in the Robert Williams role would be hilarious. I would love to watch that. I think he'll get lost out there.
All Al needs to do at this point is guard the players I named as best he can if we match up and hit open 3s. If he’s missing, it’s not the end of the world, because everyone else the C’s play can hit them. He doesn’t need to be a “threat.” But I do think his performance in last season’s playoffs was more of an aberration and less of an age-based regression, since he hit them at the highest clip of his career in the regular season before it. So I wouldn’t be surprised if a role off the bench would help him carry that performance over into the postseason.
As for KP in the RW3 role, our defense was at its best when we were running double bigs, even when Timelord was limping around. I’m sure KP can step in and provide at least some of what Timelord did, even if it’s just being a big body under the rim when a defender gets blown by. Not that hard to picture.
He provides rim protection
The health issue is being overblown, every contending team has that issue. AD, Jamal Murray, Lillard. KP played 65 games last year. Of course your best players need to stay healthy it's a given.
Celts are pretty good at load management. Al Horford sits in a time capsule during the off-season
In fairness to the 2023 season Horford just had we’ve BEEN playing 5-out with lots of interior blocks, Zinger gives us the chance to dynamically also play some decent 5-IN like Horford used to