Also, I don’t know if JB is hard of hearing or what but he always has a couple of defensive miscommunications per game. Like, not switching, leaving his man, etc. I don’t know if he doesn’t hear his teammates or forgets the game plan but it happens quite often
The whole team has sucked at communicating on defense for much of this season. And it's strange, because I didn't feel like that was a weakness for us last year or even early this season (our early stumbles were due to offense, not defense). Our help defense and off-ball effort used to be very solid.
Now, we botch stuff like matching up on a simple ball screen. We give up multiple open layups and dunks every game because both defenders will stick to the same guy while the other runs unimpeded to the rim. We spend too much time guarding empty space on drives and post-ups, neither in far enough to help nor out far enough to defend the kick. In the occasions that we do rotate out well, we don't help the helper. All of these point to the fact that we're too often not on the same page on defense. The frustrating part is that we're seeing Horford and Smart, our two best defenders, make the same mistakes that everybody else is making. Our defensive rating in the last 15 games is 110.3, which is middle of the pack. A team with our defensive talent should be much better than this.
Last night we didn't take a single thing away from LA. They got free runs to the rim AND wide open threes AND we couldn't clean up our own glass AND they got out in transition off of our turnovers. The Clippers did whatever they wanted, and we didn't stop them.