Kyrie...play a little defense please

[droopdog7]

Defense is a lot about effort.  Don’t really mind that he’s not putting in the effort because easy to turn on for the playoffs as long as you have the ability, which he does.

[GRADYCOLNON]

Defense is a lot about effort.  Don’t really mind that he’s not putting in the effort because easy to turn on for the playoffs as long as you have the ability, which he does.

You say he can turn it on whenever he wants.  I'd say bad habits are hard to break.  Even if he starts working harder and 'turns on' his effort in the playoff, he won't have the necessary discipline you'd expect.  To be a good defender, not just a few possessions, you need the discipline and experience to make the impact we need to go far. Even he knows this, he just only applies it to his offense.

[droopdog7]

Defense is a lot about effort.  Don’t really mind that he’s not putting in the effort because easy to turn on for the playoffs as long as you have the ability, which he does.

You say he can turn it on whenever he wants.  I'd say bad habits are hard to break.  Even if he starts working harder and 'turns on' his effort in the playoff, he won't have the necessary discipline you'd expect.  To be a good defender, not just a few possessions, you need the discipline and experience to make the impact we need to go far. Even he knows this, he just only applies it to his offense.

Well in that case then no use in complaining about because it ain't changing (since his "bad habits" predate the cetlics).

[mainevent]

[Edited.]. Discuss the subject matter, rather than other members.  Your post acknowledged you knew better. Last warning.

[DefenseWinsChamps]

May be pertinent. May not be.

Kevin O'Connor posted "Takeaways From the Sloan Conference" on The Ringer today.

https://www.theringer.com/nba/2018/2/26/17052150/mit-sloan-sports-analytics-conference-jimmy-butler-daryl-morey

Part of the discussion was about defensive rating. It doesn't change any of the conversation we've had, but it does ADD MORE CONTEXT.

"I spent the past week or so chatting with NBA executives and coaches about the role of stats, and the one thing they agree on is that they’re occasionally misused by the public. One front-office stats guy told me that he observes people making mistakes most frequently with NBA.com’s defensive rating, which is a team statistic, not a player statistic. For example, you might see the following sentence somewhere on the internet: VanVleet leads the Raptors with a 97.8 defensive rating. But that’s not true. The correct way to convey the statistic is: The Raptors have a 97.8 defensive rating when VanVleet is on the floor. It’s a subtle but important difference between the two sentences. The former implies that VanVleet is an elite defender, while the latter says VanVleet is one of five players that make up a team performing at an elite level. Fans and writers alike made this error last season with Jae Crowder, who ranked 20th in real plus-minus and shined in virtually all other advanced statistics. The reality is Crowder was a beneficiary of the Celtics’ system and the superior defensive players he frequently shared the floor with."

[Roy H.]

May be pertinent. May not be.

Kevin O'Connor posted "Takeaways From the Sloan Conference" on The Ringer today.

https://www.theringer.com/nba/2018/2/26/17052150/mit-sloan-sports-analytics-conference-jimmy-butler-daryl-morey

Part of the discussion was about defensive rating. It doesn't change any of the conversation we've had, but it does ADD MORE CONTEXT.

"I spent the past week or so chatting with NBA executives and coaches about the role of stats, and the one thing they agree on is that they’re occasionally misused by the public. One front-office stats guy told me that he observes people making mistakes most frequently with NBA.com’s defensive rating, which is a team statistic, not a player statistic. For example, you might see the following sentence somewhere on the internet: VanVleet leads the Raptors with a 97.8 defensive rating. But that’s not true. The correct way to convey the statistic is: The Raptors have a 97.8 defensive rating when VanVleet is on the floor. It’s a subtle but important difference between the two sentences. The former implies that VanVleet is an elite defender, while the latter says VanVleet is one of five players that make up a team performing at an elite level. Fans and writers alike made this error last season with Jae Crowder, who ranked 20th in real plus-minus and shined in virtually all other advanced statistics. The reality is Crowder was a beneficiary of the Celtics’ system and the superior defensive players he frequently shared the floor with."

DRtg isn’t my favorite stat because it’s teammate dependent. It’s not a good stat to compare players across multiple teams.  However, it’s fine to use it when looking at players on the same team, in conjunction with other analytics and observation.

For instance, last year IT’s DRtg was worst on the team. That’s not because of his teammates, it’s because he was our worst defender. The same is true of Kyrie.
.

[DefenseWinsChamps]

May be pertinent. May not be.

Kevin O'Connor posted "Takeaways From the Sloan Conference" on The Ringer today.

https://www.theringer.com/nba/2018/2/26/17052150/mit-sloan-sports-analytics-conference-jimmy-butler-daryl-morey

Part of the discussion was about defensive rating. It doesn't change any of the conversation we've had, but it does ADD MORE CONTEXT.

"I spent the past week or so chatting with NBA executives and coaches about the role of stats, and the one thing they agree on is that they’re occasionally misused by the public. One front-office stats guy told me that he observes people making mistakes most frequently with NBA.com’s defensive rating, which is a team statistic, not a player statistic. For example, you might see the following sentence somewhere on the internet: VanVleet leads the Raptors with a 97.8 defensive rating. But that’s not true. The correct way to convey the statistic is: The Raptors have a 97.8 defensive rating when VanVleet is on the floor. It’s a subtle but important difference between the two sentences. The former implies that VanVleet is an elite defender, while the latter says VanVleet is one of five players that make up a team performing at an elite level. Fans and writers alike made this error last season with Jae Crowder, who ranked 20th in real plus-minus and shined in virtually all other advanced statistics. The reality is Crowder was a beneficiary of the Celtics’ system and the superior defensive players he frequently shared the floor with."

DRtg isn’t my favorite stat because it’s teammate dependent. It’s not a good stat to compare players across multiple teams.  However, it’s fine to use it when looking at players on the same team, in conjunction with other analytics and observation.

For instance, last year IT’s DRtg was worst on the team. That’s not because of his teammates, it’s because he was our worst defender. The same is true of Kyrie.
.

 

You keep saying that, and I don't disagree. I'm just adding context. 

[Roy H.]

May be pertinent. May not be.

Kevin O'Connor posted "Takeaways From the Sloan Conference" on The Ringer today.

https://www.theringer.com/nba/2018/2/26/17052150/mit-sloan-sports-analytics-conference-jimmy-butler-daryl-morey

Part of the discussion was about defensive rating. It doesn't change any of the conversation we've had, but it does ADD MORE CONTEXT.

"I spent the past week or so chatting with NBA executives and coaches about the role of stats, and the one thing they agree on is that they’re occasionally misused by the public. One front-office stats guy told me that he observes people making mistakes most frequently with NBA.com’s defensive rating, which is a team statistic, not a player statistic. For example, you might see the following sentence somewhere on the internet: VanVleet leads the Raptors with a 97.8 defensive rating. But that’s not true. The correct way to convey the statistic is: The Raptors have a 97.8 defensive rating when VanVleet is on the floor. It’s a subtle but important difference between the two sentences. The former implies that VanVleet is an elite defender, while the latter says VanVleet is one of five players that make up a team performing at an elite level. Fans and writers alike made this error last season with Jae Crowder, who ranked 20th in real plus-minus and shined in virtually all other advanced statistics. The reality is Crowder was a beneficiary of the Celtics’ system and the superior defensive players he frequently shared the floor with."

DRtg isn’t my favorite stat because it’s teammate dependent. It’s not a good stat to compare players across multiple teams.  However, it’s fine to use it when looking at players on the same team, in conjunction with other analytics and observation.

For instance, last year IT’s DRtg was worst on the team. That’s not because of his teammates, it’s because he was our worst defender. The same is true of Kyrie.
.

 

You keep saying that, and I don't disagree. I'm just adding context. 

As am I.  It would be nice if all the helpful folks adding “context” could apply some of it to their observations of Kyrie’s defense, though. 

[DefenseWinsChamps]

May be pertinent. May not be.

Kevin O'Connor posted "Takeaways From the Sloan Conference" on The Ringer today.

https://www.theringer.com/nba/2018/2/26/17052150/mit-sloan-sports-analytics-conference-jimmy-butler-daryl-morey

Part of the discussion was about defensive rating. It doesn't change any of the conversation we've had, but it does ADD MORE CONTEXT.

"I spent the past week or so chatting with NBA executives and coaches about the role of stats, and the one thing they agree on is that they’re occasionally misused by the public. One front-office stats guy told me that he observes people making mistakes most frequently with NBA.com’s defensive rating, which is a team statistic, not a player statistic. For example, you might see the following sentence somewhere on the internet: VanVleet leads the Raptors with a 97.8 defensive rating. But that’s not true. The correct way to convey the statistic is: The Raptors have a 97.8 defensive rating when VanVleet is on the floor. It’s a subtle but important difference between the two sentences. The former implies that VanVleet is an elite defender, while the latter says VanVleet is one of five players that make up a team performing at an elite level. Fans and writers alike made this error last season with Jae Crowder, who ranked 20th in real plus-minus and shined in virtually all other advanced statistics. The reality is Crowder was a beneficiary of the Celtics’ system and the superior defensive players he frequently shared the floor with."

DRtg isn’t my favorite stat because it’s teammate dependent. It’s not a good stat to compare players across multiple teams.  However, it’s fine to use it when looking at players on the same team, in conjunction with other analytics and observation.

For instance, last year IT’s DRtg was worst on the team. That’s not because of his teammates, it’s because he was our worst defender. The same is true of Kyrie.
.

 

You keep saying that, and I don't disagree. I'm just adding context. 

As am I.  It would be nice if all the helpful folks adding “context” could apply some of it to their observations of Kyrie’s defense, though. 

That seems like a passive aggressive way to try to win an argument against a person who is not trying to argue. 

I agree that Irving has not been a good defender for us or generally in his career.

I think he can make timely defensive plays. I remember when he blocked Curry in an important 4th quarter play in the finals the year they won. I remember multiple steals he had in the game against the Rockets earlier this year that started to ignite our team's defensive energy and turn the momentum for the Cs. I also see him far more engaged on defense in the big games.

I also think our team's defensive floor and ceiling are much higher with Irving than with Thomas.

All of that being said, he has probably been our worst defensive rotation player this year (Nader, Yabusele, and Larkin can be pretty bad too). 

[Moranis]

You mean Irving is a poor defender.  Shocking. 

In all seriousness, this shows one of the fundamental problems when you have a player that does so much offensively.  They just don't have the energy to consistently perform at a high level defensively.  That isn't to say Irving will ever be a + defender, as he won't, but for stretches when he applies himself he can at least be passable defensively.  He just can't do that and bring the offensive intensity except for short periods of time.  It happens with all great players, they just can't keep bringing it night in and night out on both ends of the floor.  It is just too draining.  As long as Irving is outperforming his counterpart by a good enough margin, his poor defense just doesn't matter in the scheme of things.

[DefenseWinsChamps]

You mean Irving is a poor defender.  Shocking. 

In all seriousness, this shows one of the fundamental problems when you have a player that does so much offensively.  They just don't have the energy to consistently perform at a high level defensively.  That isn't to say Irving will ever be a + defender, as he won't, but for stretches when he applies himself he can at least be passable defensively.  He just can't do that and bring the offensive intensity except for short periods of time.  It happens with all great players, they just can't keep bringing it night in and night out on both ends of the floor.  It is just too draining.  As long as Irving is outperforming his counterpart by a good enough margin, his poor defense just doesn't matter in the scheme of things.

You wonder if when Hayward comes back and Brown and Tatum become better offensively, if at that point Irving will be able to spend more energy defensively. 

[GRADYCOLNON]

Defense is a lot about effort.  Don’t really mind that he’s not putting in the effort because easy to turn on for the playoffs as long as you have the ability, which he does.

You say he can turn it on whenever he wants.  I'd say bad habits are hard to break.  Even if he starts working harder and 'turns on' his effort in the playoff, he won't have the necessary discipline you'd expect.  To be a good defender, not just a few possessions, you need the discipline and experience to make the impact we need to go far. Even he knows this, he just only applies it to his offense.

Well in that case then no use in complaining about because it ain't changing (since his "bad habits" predate the cetlics).

I'm complaining because he was defending for the first 25 games, then he started doing his old thing.  I just want him to hold himself up to his commitment.  I get Hayward went down so there was a front to convince everyone the season wasn't over. Now that adrenaline wore off, he reverted.  For me, it was like saying he acknowledged the team wasn't going all the way.  It may not be the truth and he just is trying to save his energy, but it is still fishy.

[Rosco917]

in a perfect world, I'd love to have a star two-way player.

But, with the injury to Hayward, I'm quite happy knowing he's able to defend when he needs to, rather than being unable to defend under any circumstances.

Without a solid second option on this team, I'd rather have him have his legs in the 4th quarter to try to close games out.

[green_bballers13]

It's going to be Kyrie's role to score a million points in the playoffs. They have Smart and Brown to hide Kyrie a little on D.

[Ilikesports17]

Defense is a lot about effort.  Don’t really mind that he’s not putting in the effort because easy to turn on for the playoffs as long as you have the ability, which he does.

You say he can turn it on whenever he wants.  I'd say bad habits are hard to break.  Even if he starts working harder and 'turns on' his effort in the playoff, he won't have the necessary discipline you'd expect.  To be a good defender, not just a few possessions, you need the discipline and experience to make the impact we need to go far. Even he knows this, he just only applies it to his offense.

Well in that case then no use in complaining about because it ain't changing (since his "bad habits" predate the cetlics).

I'm complaining because he was defending for the first 25 games, then he started doing his old thing.  I just want him to hold himself up to his commitment.  I get Hayward went down so there was a front to convince everyone the season wasn't over. Now that adrenaline wore off, he reverted.  For me, it was like saying he acknowledged the team wasn't going all the way.  It may not be the truth and he just is trying to save his energy, but it is still fishy.

It's hard to compete on defense at a high level and carry an offense for the whole year.

Very few players do that.

You can count them on 1 hand.