<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Globe And Mail - Gilbert Arenas is vowing to be a better defensive player when he completes his comeback from season-ending surgery on his left knee in April. "This summer I have to work hard to get my knee back to 100 per cent and make sure my legs are stronger than they were last year," Arenas said Thursday after being named to the NBA's second-team all-star squad. "Working on getting my knees stronger will help improve my defense, too, because I can get down and play defence for a longer period of time."</div> Link http://boss.streamos.com/wmedia/nba/nbacom...1091_wasmil.asx
I'm pretty sure he said the same thing last year. I hope his knee heals fully and he could make as much of an impact next year like he has had this year. If he becomes a much better defender, he could be a top 5 player in the league.
He said that last year, but during the start of the season he kept getting cheap fouls for playing aggresive defense, and he was getting out of games for important stretches, and since the team defense on Washington really doesn't back one up, it wasn't helping the team.
Arenas is quick enough to stay in front of anyone in the league. But when he plays aggresive defense it tires him out and will have a weaker offensive output.
Actually the beginning of this past season, it was more that he kept getting cheap fouls (kinda like Hinrich was early on too), and it would take him out of the flow of the game, and affect his offense. While defense is nice, the team needed his offensive input a lot more than it did his defense, and it showed with how much the Wizards were winning when they were healthy and he was at his best.
<div class="quote_poster">og15 Wrote</div><div class="quote_post">Actually the beginning of this past season, it was more that he kept getting cheap fouls (kinda like Hinrich was early on too), and it would take him out of the flow of the game, and affect his offense. While defense is nice, the team needed his offensive input a lot more than it did his defense, and it showed with how much the Wizards were winning when they were healthy and he was at his best.</div> I'm not sure if Gilbert's D was ever nice. All he would focus on during the season on defense was sneaking up behind the center and knocking the ball loose. We never considered him a good defender slacking off on defense and just gambling for the ball.
No, I meant while playing defense is nice, not while his defense was nice, but for the first 10 games or so he was really trying, problem is he had 5 fouls in about 7 of the Wizards first 10 games of the season. That whole month he was just fouling people, I mean Gil fouls a decent amount anyways, but he averaged 4.0 FPG in the 14 games that month. He then went back to the good old matador defense. Even with all this, the Wizards as a team need to improve on defense, and EJ needs to emphasize it more. EJ is content with the matador defense the team plays, and Jamison the captain and vocal leader of the team himself is an attrocious defender. It was very dissapointing to see Haywood the guy who has the most positive effect on the teams defense on the bench and a guy like Ruffin who doesn't help on either end playing.
As many of you guys have said, Gilbert repeated the same exact words last year however he was getting tired during the defensive stretches. In no way am I asking him to be a great defender becuase alot of the best offensive players in the NBA do in fact play lackluster defense. However, he has to at least have a slight amount of defensive hustle and not just allow the offensive player to blow by him. It seems as though this year his defense was worse than all the other years before and I hope he improves in that area a slight bit before next season.
