Clean wrote:

dk7th wrote:

Clean wrote:

dk7th wrote:it would have been nice if he had been allowed to play under a system coach and alongside a system player, injuries notwithstanding. he makes a very convenient scapegoat.

have you not seen his defense? I personally think he is the absolute worse defender there has ever been in the NBA. I have never seen a person be confused so many times by a simple pass or simple pick. That does not even include the Amare special defensive play. The point at the player driving to the hoop and yell pick him up. The only problem is that is the guy Amare should be guarding.

I heard someone say something about Amare that I had to think about but I came to the conclusion that it was accurate. The person said that Amare has always been a terrible basketball player. The thing is that he had exceptional athletic ability that covered a great deal of his lack luster overall game. For example, he blows a defensive assignment he would just run down the player and end up with a highlight block. With that advantage now gone we are left with the low basketball IQ player.

yes he was never taught defense. that is clear. when you make the leap from high school there's a higher probability of not coming to the nba with sound fundamentals. and lets face it when you have nash hitting you with pocket passes in stride and rhythm you can get away with an awful lot, especially as the decision-making is out of your hands. he was a GREAT finisher.

i knew this when he came to new york and kept insisting that he pick up his assists. he never really found teammates that were open when he was doubled and tripled. that is the kiss of death for a team, as we have seen similarly with melo. but then lets remember he also had a severe eye injury and that wearing those goggles surely impairs what limited peripheral vision he might have had to see an orange and blue jersey.

one wonders how garnett got his defensive and passing instincts.

Coming from high school is not a valid excuse. Like you said KG, Kobe, Starbury and Lebron all came from highschool and are good players on the defensive end. Amare is just a low IQ player. Jr suffers the same fate except his is on the offensive end. It seems you can label most of the players on this team either one dimensional, old, Low IQ or lazy.

you are half right in my opinion.

sometimes it's not merely a lack of coaching but a physical limitation, as in trying to compare lateral quickness among players, and this is especially true on the perimeter. so while some players dominate offensively because of their explosiveness going forward like a sprinter, it does not necessarily mean they will be laterally quick which is what is needed to play good defense. in high school they not likely to be challenged.

only in college do they start to be challenged and in the nba it now takes years for most high school players to learn how to defend no matter what position they played in high school.

in stoudemire's case it is clear he did not need to defend, and playing in d'antoni's offense for most of his career did him no favors either. so when he says he was never taught i take that at face value.

dinglebury was a substandard defender in the nba-- maybe he had the ability but he did not have the value for it.
bryant played in italy as a boy and despite his father's terrible basketball values this did not stop bryant from gaining some sense of defense, perhaps due to the italian coaches he had. that said he has been a vastly overrated defender his entire nba career.
lebron did not value defense when he first came into the league, but he began to realize its value come layoff time and has the rings to prove that.

garnett? hard to say with him. he may well be the exception. i did not follow his career when he first came into the league, but i happen to think that he had superior physical tools to play defense at an elite level-- very russellian in terms of build and athleticism at that height.

stoudemire's peripheral vision may be hampered by the goggles, and not everyone has the same level of peripheral vision as it is. he may also lack the lateral quickness to rotate on defense in addition to not having the instincts let alone the coaching that may make up for the lack of instincts. then finally there is the desire... it looks like it may not be there.

there are plenty of problems with this team, and it's human nature to find a scapegoat even if the problem is actually systemic.