What does Anthony Carter have to do with anything? I never said he was the primary defender on Kobe, I simply pointed out they did use him to defend Kobe which became an immediate mismatch the Lakers exploited. Those video highlights show exactly what I'm talking about. Nuggets perimeter defense broke down and Camby was left in no-win situations. If he cuts off the penetration it leads to a Gasol dunk. If he doesn't cut off the dribbler it leads to a layup or dunk. The Lakers were making hard cuts to the basket without any resistance and it led to easy looks. Do you expect Camby to defend two or three guys at once? In addition the Lakers had plenty of baskets in transition during the series because of Nugget turnovers and low percentage shots leading to long rebounds.
Gasol should do much better now that he has the big guy backing him up to clean up the glass. Three 7 footers who can all run the floor? Deadly!!
Funny that he spent most of his time guarding Vlad Rad though. Well of course they do, since they don't give the complete picture and were made by a Laker fan. I guarantee you I could easily put together 5+ minutes per game of Camby screwing up. I'd like to see Camby try to guard anybody for once. Camby lives for the weakside block and will bite on the slightest chance to get one. Of course the Lakers were making hard cuts to the basket, that is the same recipe that had all season long to crush the Nuggets because they knew Camby would do what Camby does. It wasn't a coincidence that the Nuggets played better with Camby off the floor. Game 1: The Lakers won by 14 and Camby was -30 Game 2: The Lakers won by 15 and Camby was -16 Game 3: The Lakers won by 18 and Camby was -15 Game 4: The Lakers won by 8 and Camby was -12
Nuggets played better with Camby off the floor? That's laughable. Those +/- differentials are more of a team stat than individual. Looking at his efficiency rating is a better indicator to show Camby's contributions during the series. Game 1: 4 (Last on his team) Game 2: 24 (Tied for 1st with Iverson) Game 3: 15 (2nd highest for his team) Game 4: 21 (2nd highest for his team) Aside from his Game 1 suckage, Camby was one of the more productive players for the Nuggets.
No, that is the truth. You clearly don't watch the Nuggets enough. Ah, the fatal flaw of the Camby "defense", pretty stats. Of course Camby will have a good efficiency rating because he is a stat whore. He grabs a lot of rebounds and blocks shots while killing his team. Pointing to pretty stats and using them to claim that Camby played well demonstrates that you know very little about the Nuggets. The +/- stats are a very good indication of how each of the Nuggets were performing in that series.
When you can find stats that demonstrate real defense, then we can talk about productivity. Rebounds, blocked shots and steals are horrible indicators of defense. Anyhow enough of this tangent, lets get back to over-hyping Bynum. No one has said Oden in this thread yet, so I will (just for the poster formerly known as Brian)
Care to explain what Oden has to do with this thread? And care to explain how we are overhyping Bynum?
I don't think Gasol did a bad job on KG, but more of it may have had to do with KG than Gasol's defense...
KG shot 48.4% against Atlanta (Horford I think), 54.5% against Cleveland (Ben Wallace/Varajao), 52.5% against Detroit (Rasheed/McDyess), and 42.9% against Los Angeles (Gasol/Turiaf). Although KG rebounded better against Los Angeles (13.0 rpg), than he did against the others (about 9.8 rpg).
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