How much will our defense and rebounding suffer with Hayward as a starter?

[SHAQATTACK]

have to wait and see.  He ll be somewhat rusty for a good while.  Need to have patience.

I think his excitement along with Kyries extended rest should provide some great basketball

[Timdawgg]

I cant wait to see. I still think a lot of fans are still underrating Hayward defensively by a large margin.

[playdream]

In my opinion Baynes should only start against those huge 5 that can destroy you inside the paint while also can fairly run, means not much (Embiid, Cousins and..?)

All other situation playing the small ball will be our advantage, means AL-Theis/Williams

[SCeltic34]

For those of you who don't think our defense will suffer, how about our rebounding?  Correct me if I'm wrong (I haven't looked at the advanced stats) but I believe we had a dropoff last season when we played smaller lineups last season.

The luxury we have is that our starting lineup offense is incredibly potent (at least on paper) and we have a deep bench.  Regardless of who we throw out there, it's going to be teams trying to adjust to us and not vice versa.  With that said, hopefully our small lineup (or standard lineup by today's NBA standards) can outdefend and outrebound our opponents lineups.

At some point in the season we're going to see a lineup of only ballhandlers, wings, and swings.  Kyrie - Smart - Brown - Tatum - Hayward types of lineups.  I'm wondering how that's going to look defensively as well.