Its obvious and widely acknowledged, Rondo is a "Matador" defender - he moves his cape when the opponent goes by him.
I've been seeing this too. Lowry torches us. Schroeder(!!) torches us. The Bulls backup torches us.
Rondo has about a dozen elite defensive games in him per regular season. Night in night out he's just not up for it, and his "jets" may not be what they once were.
Honestly penetrating point guards have exposed our bigs more than our guard rotation.
Rondo's been up and down, but largely I've been okay with his defense as a whole. When he doesn't get over a pick even 3 feet above the three point line too often its a straight line drive to the rim with no help or resistance from the defense.
This^
We are mainly getting burned by the pick & roll.
Pick & roll defense is a
team effort that keys off what the defensive big does. THAT is where we are failing miserably. I'll give a bone to the bigs a little bit in that just as often it is poor reads by the weak side wing defenders -- especially off our bench. I've spotted Thornton and Turner constantly getting caught looking at the play instead of rotating in to help if the big has to switch or trap or worse, getting caught doing nothing while their man sets up wide open in the corner.
It's a fallacy to think that guards in today's NBA can simply be faced up and kept outside indefinitely. The hand check rule changes make it near impossible. So defense against penetration has got to be done as a team.
I find a lot of the 'analysis' here to be a bit premature, given it doesn't seem to take into context the strength of schedule so far. The Celtics have played just a brutal schedule so far in these first 15 games. They've had the 4th toughest strength of schedule and 10 of the games have been against teams in the top half of the SRS rankings which rates teams based on margin of victory and SOS. In fact, they've played 5 of the top 6 teams. They have played only two teams in the bottom 10 and beat both of them. So all we can say so far is they can't beat the top teams and the've beaten the only two weak teams they've played.
We know they are not a top team. But we don't know for sure yet whether they are a crappy team or simply an average team.
If the Celtics are an average team, then playing against the 4th toughest schedule, you would expect them to have, typically, the 4th worst statistics in most categories. Sometimes THE worst. Sometimes just not so good. But over all, near the bottom. That wouldn't mean they were one of the worst teams. They'd still be average. But a lot of their statistical measures should suck, given that scenario. And so far, that's pretty much the case for the Celtics. A lot of their measures put them down at the bottom, especially on defense, but also in some key offensive categories (such as 3PT shooting).
Now, if they truly ARE an average team, as they start to play more 'weak' teams further along the schedule, the team's various statistical measures should start to climb the rankings.
The point is, by extension, a lot of this holds true when looking at individual statistics. Many individual statistics are really heavily dependent on either teammates or opponents or both. Such numbers for an individual playing on a team against a very tough opponent schedule are going to be negatively impacted compared to the same individual playing on a team against a very easy schedule.
I'd suggest waiting until we get through December (29 games) before trying to make too definitive of judgements.
In December, starting tonight, the schedule flips over dramatically. We'll get to play all 7 of the 7 worst teams as ranked by SRS. And only a few teams that are ranked as 'strong'.
If we go through that and still continue to lose most of those games, we are probably and truly a crappy team. Lottery balls, here we come!
If on the other hand get through them and win most of them, then we are probably an average team, somewhere between 11-20. Ironically, that might get us into the playoffs in the East.
Side prediction: Smart will be returning tonight, just in time to be our savior as we start playing a MUCH easier schedule. My prediction is that certain posters will be going wild with assertions of how his 'leadership' and 'defensive fire' are going to be the real reasons why we are winning more the next 4 weeks. So of course, trade Rondo.
Topic: Chris Forsberg on Rondo's defense (Read 25253 times)