This is the question that's tormented me for the past couple seasons. What is the real root of our defensive incompetence? I mean I think both are somewhat culpable: we know that the majority of our roster is made up of poor defenders and we know that our coaching is subpar. But at the same time, I look at the results, and I just feel like one of those causes has to me more of a problem than the other. Games like yesterday's really put the spotlight on the problem. It was just all-around terrible defense, showcasing poor fundamentals, lack of natural ability, and an absence of effort or pride. I saw Jose Calderon, who we all know to a poor defender, continually make his job harder on himself by playing Rajon Rondo up close. I saw Anthony Parker leave the best shooter to double Garnett, which is a cardinal sin of defensive basketball. I saw our guards and swingmen double entirely too hard, almost asking for Boston to kick out and nail an open 3. I saw Chris Bosh just fail to make timely rotations and initiate contact while playing post defense. These are common sense basketball principles that our players just seem to show a complete disregard of ignorance of, and its a pattern I've noticed for a while now. If you ask me, the coaching has to be root cause here. We've never had good defensive players on our roster while Smitch has coached. I understand that. But the collective basketball IQ that our players demonstrate while on the court is just so far below their potential. It often looks like the worst in the league. These players show no growth or understanding while playing under our coaching. They just get steadily worse and their bad habits get entrenched instead of fixed (eg: Jose's approach to quick, penetrating PG's). I have a hard time believing that Mitchell is telling Jose to back off a player like Rondo or Harris, move under screens, and force them to beat you with their shitty jumpshots and Jose is just refusing to implement that. We would have to have the single-most dumb, stubborn, retarded collection of players if that were the case. Instead, it's a lot more plausible to believe that our coaching just isn't picking up on these individual weaknesses and is letting players continue to play with them instead of correcting them. It's makes a lot more sense to believe that the lack of structure in our defensive gameplans has allowed bad habits to foster.
Smitch will be gone before Christmas. BC won't wait long because he won't want to sacrifice the season. That being said, no coach is going to walk into this situation and bring us a 50-32 record for this year. Sorry. Does that mean it isn't Smitch's fault? Probably. But that won't matter. You can't fire the players so you fire the coach.
I don't know if anyone here reads articles from Raptors Republics, but one of the writer's there went to the game and said that after a particularly brutal defensive possession he saw BC throw up his hands in disgust and leave the arena. That coupled with Bosh's frustration lead me to believe that Smitch could get the pink slip fairly quickly, if he doesn't turn it around. Well if you blame the players, you'd logically be placing blame at the person who brought them in.
