Funny..I was thinking the same thing. But...could it be that the past team was as lax on D as they were in passing? Reality was that we were a pretty good D team before Wes went down.
I think this young roster of athletic guys is a total upgrade from recent years defensively. Our bigs are faster, younger and play above the rim more. I think our passing will be improved as well as pick and roll defense and rebounding. Better defenders coming off the bench is a good thing.
I agree. And for as good as LMA was defending 1v1 in the post his help defense was atrocious at times.
No way this roster is an upgrade defensively. Mostly because of the fact that almost all of them are unproven players and we know refs won't respect unproven players.
Wow, we're more than two months away from the start of the season, and we're already complaining about the refs?
Seems like we should break things down into types of defense. My guess is that we'll be better at some compared to last year, worst at others. For example, I think our "help defense" will be much better. Overall, the whether better or worse than last year, I think our current team has a much higher "defense ceiling" than last year's team. After 2 years of playing together I think we'll have an excellent defensive team. The downside seems to be that some of our better defenders can't shoot. Here's to each player improving throughout the year
Henderson-Solid and smart defender Plumlee-Athletic rebounder and hustle guy Aminu-Good perimeter defender with great size Connaughton-Heart and soul of that Notre Dame defense and had a game winning swat in the tourney Davis-Scrappy, long defender with great shot blocking I'm sure I'm forgetting people but you see my point. All those guys are bigger, faster, and stronger than the people we had before with the exception of Lopez, who was stronger and bigger, but quite possibly the slowest runner in the league
They can play the scheme with this team and they will properly be better playing then last year team. This guys are all quick jumpers and there very long. They all recover very well too.