Because we no longer have either Melo or Kanter. Not that I have a personal problem with either of them, but their defensive effort was typically not good. And they were well below average defensively even when they gave effort.
How about the other end of the court. Kanter and Melo won us a handful of games my man. Who is going to replace that bench scoring?
The only thing obvious I see is your new replacement of Kanter who has a history of missing games got hurt last night.
Who gives a rat fuck about bench scoring. We have plenty of options offensively if we need buckets. Bench scoring isn’t going to win championships. Having a bench that isn’t going to consistently blow leads is going to help much more. How? Well, harder to blow a lead if you actually stop the other team. Improved defense leads to improved shot opportunities and easy buckets, which is one way we can “replace” the scoring of Kanter/Melo. But you know what is impossible? For Kanter / Melo to “replace” the defense of a superior defensive player. As the saying goes, defense leads to offense. Offense doesn’t lead to defense. O and defense wins championships. The idea that the #1 offense or whatever from last year is suddenly going to have scoring issues is not very well thought out imo.
A certainly can't argue with that. But we'll just have to see how the offense looks. The prior bench didn't have good enough offense to make up for their ample defensive deficiency.
that wasn't because of Kanter though he led the team in offensive rating and TS%, was 2nd in offensive win shares, and was 3rd in OffBPM the problem...he was on the bench with Melo and Simons, two of the worst defenders on the team
The best offense cannot make up for dismal defense. The argument can be made that Kanter was a part of that problem.
We added “superior defensive players”? So right now you are assuming we will be a better defensive team like I am assuming we will be worse off offensively it sounds like. We will see. You almost lost me when you said you didn’t give a fuck about bench scoring. Well when you have a history of injuries to your starters…..you better start giving a fuck about it.
Fair point. I just know you gotta get buckets. I think Melo and Kanters offense and rebounding and ability to get to the line WON more games than their defense cost us is all.
Well quite a few on here seem to think the injury prone Zeller is going to do more for us than Kanter this season…..I just don’t see it.
right but this is really going down a tangent because I was talking about Kanter's nearly elite offense, and that a big issue with his defense was that he was part of a 2nd unit that included Melo & Simons. Making it worse is that at the top of the 2nd and 4th Q's, it was usually CJ, Simons, and Melo on with Kanter
Sure, but Kanter has been consistently bad defensively. On several teams. To the point that they wouldn't even play him. If you built enough good defenders around him you might be able to hide his deficiencies... but I think good teams would still take advantage of him to the point that you'd have to take him off the floor. But you're right, that unit was TERRIBLE defensively.
