Tony is better than what he has shown so far. Just give him time. I would rather play him that play scal. just give him time; not that scal will have any playing time when and if Big baby and Daniels come back. A lot of now playing bench players are not going to have any playing time come April. Thats the way the cookie crumbles - as they used to say when I was young.
I much rather Scali in there. With Scali, you know what to expect. Consistently good team defense.
With TA, you might get a show, but most likely you are watching him help the other team.
I don't know that I'd characterize it as good. Against most NBA players Scalabrine is a liability to have on the floor in your defensive rotation.
He will properly execute those rotations to the best of his ability, but that isn't good enough far too often for me to be comfortable with him getting more than 10 minutes in any given game.
As for Tony.....*sigh*....
Regarding Scal, I think it depends upon how he's used. In the past, I think against true power forwards (Amare, Big Al, Garnett in the past, etc.) his defense has been excellent. Against small forwards, he struggles. Unfortunately, our team is deeper at PF than it is at SF, so that's where Scal will see a lot of his minutes.
This season, Scal has struggled a bit more with Scal at PF, and there have been some negative effects of that. Overall, though, I consider Scal an above-average defender.