Ray Allen on Defense

[Greg]

As much as we've all been ragging on Ray Allen's offense of late, how about the way he played Kobe Bryant defensively today?

I know Kobe hit that last shot, but Ray was all over him, and really stepped up defensively as Doc asked Ray to play him one on one a lot.  Kobe shot just 8 for 20 in the game, and a lot of the time, it was Ray on Kobe.  Thought he did a nice job.

Although this certainly doesn't make up for the loss in any way, shape, or form.

[Roy Hobbs]

Ray definitely played excellent defense today, especially in the second half.

[BigBaby]

he was pretty good. i don't think refs would let a non-allstar be that aggressive on defense. ray fouled kobe like 2 or 3 times on that last posession lol

[droopdog7]

Ray has always played good D on kobe.  Always.

[connerhenry43]

yup, ray deserves a lot of credit for focusing on defense yesterday, even as his shot was not falling. played kobe very well, including that last shot.

[moiso]

That game showed that Ray can still play defense when he wants to.  He was awesome against Kobe.  Those two dislike each other so I'm sure he played extra hard.  To me, this is more evidence that tends to conserve himself because he plays so many minutes.  He didn't conserve anything on defense yesterday, and he was great defensively.  Unfortunately that kind of energy expenditure really affected his offense.  Unfortunately there is no way for Ray to play high minutes and be great on both ends of the court.  I don't care what kind of shape he's in, he's too old to play the minutes he generally plays.

[Overrated]

Ray has always played good D on kobe.  Always.

Even though Kobe wasn't lighting it up last night, in the first half he was getting the best of Ray. He backed him down to the basket several times with extreme ease. I mean it was like he was backing down a child. And that's of course when Tony Allen came into the game.