ramtour420 wrote:I know man, watching TD and Felton trap people and create turnovers is soo sweeet !!!! And like someone mentioned in the game thread, when our backcourt turns up the pressure and they are backed up by our frontcourt, who are ready to swat the crap out of ppl Thats niiiiiiiiiceeeee

MAN does that feel good. We are avg'ing about 6 blocks a game and I can't remember when we last did something like that. The team is more complete defensively than we are offensively. You just had to think that with so much size and athleticism that this team was gonna be a bit better on defense. I really like that Mike said he was gonna look to put pressure on the ball and so far it looks good.

That being said we did give up 300 points last night so there is room for improvement. Just like last year we can't stop penetration on pick and roles. This is causing weakside defenders to rotate which leaves 3 point shooters wide open

knicks1248 wrote:See you man see the ball..to many times we have players doing one or the other..

There s nothing good about a lost, I hate when people said I seen some good things even though we lost. You lost for a reason, so the problem isn't fix. That's like saying the car runs great, but the transmission is fck up

I think what people are saying is that they see that the players actually understand good defensive tactics and that they see the proper rotations and energy. The reason why we lose is due to a lack of consistent effort. Take last night. The lull in the 3rd was not good, but you saw that the team was able to get back into a better level of concentration and effort on D. So yea we can indeed say that we saw good signs even in a loss. Just as you can see NO SIGNS of good D, like in the past. In this scenario where the team is showing good progress, there is hope that they'll learn to put forth a full 48 minute effort on D and win more games, but in the past there was almost no hope cuz they never showed any signs of being able to stop teams, except for that short stretch of good ball they played. Once we traded Jared that killed any chance we had to be good on D. It was slim to begin with.

Now tho we have a full roster of guys that love to defend and this is why I predicted that the defense would be the biggest area of improvement for this team. As Bip said it's amazing how much better a teams defense looks when you bring in defensive minded players. All the guys Donnie brought in have a rep for being attentive defenders. Collectively that gives this team a much tougher defensive demeanor.

dacash wrote:i think thats due to donnie walsh recognising his coaches weakness,and finding players that are defensive to match what his scheme

Now we not only have guys that are willing, but able to defend plus Donnie got us more size and length to work with. Donnie added shotblocking which we didn't have before. So before we blame Mike we need to address the makeup of a roster and how much that contributes to what you can expect a team to do defensively. This is without a doubt the best defensive roster Mike has ever had.

Bippity10 wrote:You will see Mozgov progress more defensively in 2-3 months then Nate and Lee did in 4 years. Why? Because he wants to.

JesseDark wrote:I gotta wait a little longer before I can cosign on Dantoni coaches defense. Last year during the preseason there was talk of how improved the defense was.

It's not just TALK! Have you been watching the team even play this preseason? You can clearly see that there's been a much better effort on D. No one is saying this is gonna be a defensive juggernaut. We just want to see some consistent effort on D this year and that should help to get some wins. Here's what we do know. TD and Felton are the 2 best defensive PG's we've had in years. We have multiple bigs that can and do block shots. We've got more athletic defenders that can give help and still recover. It's an improved team on defense, how much we won't know for a while, but it's not like it was last year when the team just let teams score at will.