Dwight Howard roamed freely against Al Horford in the playoffs last season.
Well Horford shot 48% from 16'-23'. League average was 39.7%. I need to go back and take a look at his # of attempts. But would you first buy a blanket condemnation of Mike Woodson's offense? Al had a criminally low usage rate for such an efficient player. Coach Woodson's strong preference was for dangerous, ball massaging 2s, Johnson and Crawford.
Can we agree Phoenix is going to need the help anyway? Given the unreliable defensive efforts of Jamison, Davis, Turkolgu?
Here's another picked-from-the-ether stat:
Prior to joining the Cavs, Jamison had played for 7 bottom five defenses in 11 seasons. And played for a team that ranked in the top half just once. In his lockout-shortened rookie year, Golden State ranked 12th.
Al Horford will make the odd jump shot here and there but he isn't going to kill you.
Orlando had Dwight Howard roam off of Horford all series long and that was the main reason why Atlanta's offense flat-lined. Their isolation heavy offense couldn't function because whenever Joe beat his man he had Dwight Howard waiting for him two steps away and standing between him and the basket. Led to a lot of contested jump shots off the dribble. It was Horford's inability to keep Dwight Howard honest defensively that killed Atlanta's offense in that series.
I thought Mike Woodson handled Horford fairly well offensively. He wasn't a go-to scoring threat as a starting center. He will have more advantageous matchups in the post against power forwards though so he'll be more of a scoring threat on your squad.
But last season, I thought Mike Woodson got the most out of Horford that he could have. Horford was as efficient as he was because of his small role offensively. He wouldn't have been able to able to be as effective an offensive player in a larger role. The team was best off with Horford playing the role he played.
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Baron Davis is a good defender + has a matchup advantage over your point guards. Jrue Holiday and Beno Udrih aren't talented enough offensively to force a defense to collapse consistently anyway.
I think Jrue will post good point per game numbers next season but his scoring efficiency still needs a lot of work and I don't know how long that will take to come. I'm going to have to see it before I give him credit for it (scoring efficiency).
As I wrote earlier, Gerald Wallace has a matchup advantage against both Hedo Turkoglu and John Salmons so he'll force the Suns to help.
Al Horford also has a matchup advantage against Antawn Jamison. There is simply no way that Jamison can cover Horford in the post.
When Cousins gets in foul trouble or is simply being abused by Dwight ... then Horford will have to switch to center to defend Dwight. That will allow Jamison to defend someone else. Jamison can defend McDyess or Mosgov well enough. If you go small and force Jamison to play G.Wallace, then Wallace will have a matchup advantage against Jamison too.
Eric Gordon has a matchup advantage at the two. He scores his points on a remarkably low number of touches/shots though. He is more of a third option offensively. Not a guy who forces the issue ... just lets the game come to him and takes what is available. He'll be a big weapon offensively because of this but he won't force the defense out of position very often.
Topic: CB Draft Ballot Results! (link to file on page 8 and page 1) (Read 54048 times)