Why can't Kanter be taught/learn defense?

[Hoopvortex]

Lastly, I think Stevens should be credited for finding the right people to surround Kanter and playing him at the right time and against the right opposition to make Kanter a net positive on the court.

I think the far more likely possibility to simply kanter is not good defensively individually but playing him against second units with a good defense around him and mitigate the overall impact in the regular season.

I think the two of you are not very far apart here.


A few observations:

1) Kanter has consistently been at or near the top of the league in offensive rebounding. He’s at a phenomenal 16.4% right now; in 2018 with the Knicks he led the league at 16.6%. Defensive rebounding, however, is another matter. Currently, he’s at 21.6% - nothing special; but again, in 2018 he logged an outstanding 30.6%. Sample size artifacts? Probably he’ll look better in a couple of months.

We really need to separate out offensive from defensive rebounding. They have overlapping but distinct skillsets; more importantly, different coaches place widely different priorities on the two. In our era a coach is more likely to prioritize getting back on defense, especially for ballhandlers and wings. Put another way, you can construct an effective offense with offensive rebounding a low priority, but you have to get defensive rebounds.

2) His lateral movement is not great. Part of that is a player’s anticipation; that can improve - to a point - as a player learns what the coaching staff wants and what his teammates do, where the help is coming from and what his man’s tendencies are. Only to a point, though.

Part of it is conditioning - being able to hold a defensive stance and burst off the floor. Part of it is flexibility. Those can be improved. He likely won’t ever have the anticipation of Ojeleye, the burst of Carsen, or the flexibility of Rob Williams, but he could get better. And that would make him a better defender.

3) Whatever encouraging signs the team has shown, improving defensive rebounding is a priority. Boston is 5th in Opponent eFG%, and 25th in DRbd% - meaning they’ve got to defend a whole lot of possessions twice.

Enes Kanter has obviously got the ability. It’s time for him to get more defensive boards. Whatever he can do to become a better defender is welcome; but the area where he could perhaps help the team defense the most is by doing something that he’s already very good at.

I gave you a TP for the great post. 

The highlighted part is my pet-peeve.  You have to expend a lot more energy playing defense than offense.  This is because anticipating and reacting to the offense uses a lot of energy that ends up not being productive in terms of stopping the opposing team from scoring on that possession.  There's nothing you can do about that.  However, if you can't get the defensive rebound then you have to expend up to 24 more seconds playing defense.  So, defensive rebounding has a double-benefit of stopping the other team from scoring AND saving energy expended by the other players on defense.

14 seconds, under the new rule.

Also, the defense mostly is disorganized, and you’re more likely to get a foul call after an offensive rebound. If a shooting foul, they can score efficiently and set their own defense.