Jokić gets worked up over the claim that ‘the NBA doesn’t play defense’
People think defense = hard fouls
Exactly and it’s so annoying talking to people about basketball when that’s their mindset
“They don’t play defense anymore!”
Brother, you couldn’t play defense in the NBA if you tried. These dudes play at a pace that breaks the human body with bodies that bend the court and an athleticism that boggles the mind.
Too many casual observers can’t wrap their head around the game anymore. The NBA has moved far beyond simplicity of banging bodies and playing mano a mano. It’s all schemes and principles now because you might not be able to stop a guy from scoring, but you can direct him to your best chance for defense and live with the results.
Some people believe getting beat off a live dribble or crossover but retaliating by hacking the offensive player is good defense.
The reason I no longer go to my local Y
I really got back in to basketball during the bubble, and when the lockdowns were over I thought I’d go back and play (stopped playing when I was 16 to try my hand at rugby). Man, the amount of people who treat a Saturday morning in a school sports hall like it’s game 7 of the finals is insane. I don’t mind a bit of playful trash talk in the right context but watching grown adults push and shove each other over a pick up game…just sad to see.
or defense = 70-80 point games.
And the increase in points has significantly more to do with officiating and spacing than defensive effort
It’s 1000% spacing/playstyles. We’ve got guards shooting a higher 2p FG% than prime MVP Shaq. It’s never ever been easier to score in the paint than it is right now due to the spacing and lack of big defenders hanging around the rim. Christian Braun and Keldon Johnson are shooting 60% on 2p FG. SGA is taking 15 twos a game and shooting 60%. Tre Jones is 6’1” and is shooting 60% on 6.5 2p/a per game.
Obviously some of this is due to shot selection and eliminating long twos, but it just shows how easy it is to get to the rim now. It’s basically impossible to cover the 3 point line and the rim.
People are complete idiots if they actually watch teams like OKC, Detroit, San Antonio or Miami play defense this year and don’t think the NBA plays defense.
Jokic would average 40/15/15 in any league in the world other than the NBA. Do guys try less hard during the regular season than they do in the playoffs? Sure. Does that mean they aren’t playing really good defense? Absolutely not.
I watched plenty of ball in the early 2000s and am confident this OKC defense would eat those teams alive
Today’s offenses have to be incredibly pacy and hyper-optimized for spacing to overcome a defense like OKC. You can’t slow down at all and every mistake is a turnover.
Most early 2000s offenses with that bad spacing, long 2s/under-optimized shot selection, limited movement, slow ball circulation would have no chance and this OKC defense would look historic.
It is harder to play defense now (not least because the refs have made it much harder) and as a result the best defenses today are better than many of the best defenses of the past IMO. The average points per game stats don’t tell the whole story at all.
When you go check, most of those games had the team shooting less than 40% from the field. So, for an era where I am told them, they went to the basket way more. Was the defense that good, or were they just bad at putting the freaking ball in the basket
I mean just go watch the games, they were fucking atrocious compared to now😂 defense was NOT good, everyone was very slow footed and giving space ( because they KNEW that players could not shoot as well as today).
I always tell people to go watch 2004 ECF. Pacers vs. Pistons. It featured some of the worst shot selection I have ever seen. They were bricking shots like it was going out of season, but according to those who support that era of basketball, it was because of great defense 🤣🤣🤣.
There was a game, I think, game 6, where one of the teams shot like 32% from the field 🤣🤣🤣
PS: I just saw that the Pacers shot 28% from the field in game 2. This was an ECF, by the way. Imagine what people will say if a team shot like that today?🤣🤣🤣
6 games that ECF. Highest scoring final was the Pistons scoring 85 in game 3. 3 games of that series the winning team didn’t hit 80.
Every single game had a team shoot under 35%
Detroit won game 2 shooting 35% Pacers shot 28%
Another they fail to understand is that, the court is so spaced out compared to the past eras. Most times you are literally on an island with no back line help especially if the center is a shooter.
you watch games from 20+ years ago and the spacing is atrocious, everyone is within arms length of each other lol especially 80s and 90s
Yeah, but tbf that made it way harder to score in the paint. T-Mac or MJ were regularly scoring on 3 people at the rim. Nowadays, once a player gets past his defender there’s enough spacing that they’ll have to face one help defender
Maybe I’m just misunderstanding but wouldn’t that mean the defense in today’s era is better ? As a defender nowadays you have less room for any errors and have to play smarter more disciplined defense with less help on the 2nd level
Perimeter defense, defensive reads and rotations are way tougher today.
One thing that older era players did better may be post defense, especially guards since back then even smaller players were taking low post possessions.
Defense is harder because teams have to cover a lot more ground, have more complex coverages and rotations, and have to hide bad or undersized/slow defensive players more because teams play attack the weak link offense.
Absolutely.
Just look at how many guards are “bad” on defense. You almost have to be a specialist to be truly good on defense. Defense is hard, and without a doubt defense is much more skillful than it has been in the past.
The game was so much less intuitive because there is little to no offball threats in past eras. You as a defender dont have to worry about who may or may not pop out to the 3 line and making the split second decision to defend or stay put because of the personnel of the offense. Its why today, making the offense settle for the worst shot is good defense.
Casual viewers also don’t notice the complex defensive schemes and constant switching on defense. They think locking someone up in a one-on-one scenario is more important.
one that drove me crazy is when the Lakers lost on that game winning shot to Phoenix recently and people were like, “Luka got blown by.” He followed Grayson Allen all the way to the hoop and was in position to contest, and Allen didn’t attempt a shot- He passed it out and they found the open Royce O’Neale because LeBron overhelped on Allen’s drive.
I don’t think people know what they’re watching half the time
I also don’t think they appreciate how good everyone in the NBA is at scoring. Like the bag of tools for the median 8th or 9th man in today’s NBA is deeper than it was for many 6th men in the 80s or 90s.
I enjoy March Madness, but I get triggered when someone says “I love college hoops because they actually play defense…” Brother, the scores are lower in college because the offense is so much worse.
And they won’t look at all the beautiful rotations, screen navigation, off-ball chases, positional fights, and defensive schemes that make modern NBA defenses BY FAR the best we’ve ever seen. Some of the top defensive teams we have now, it’s honestly a work of art seeing how well they defend as a unit.
Euroleague definitely allows more physicality, which is probably why people think they play more defense, but there’s also a serious underestimation of how hard it is to play defense in the NBA. Nearly everybody is a respectable shooter, so rotations, different coverages, and all of the tactics are crazy. People don’t even understand how hard consistently fighting over a screen is, and it’s expected from every NBA player pretty much or else they’ll get lit up from three.
Honestly tho, hard fouls are more often than not you can’t guard the guy for shit and have to play dirty or injure the guy just to guard him.
Great defenders don’t need to hard fouls to guard someone
Nah they think it’s like college and that good defense means triple teaming the best player and sending multiple guys to full court press all game, and nba teams don’t do that so they must not be playing defense
They just don’t realize college players are terrible so you can afford to triple team and leave two people open and they can’t handle pressure so full court pressing actually is disruptive
Bingo. I always say they’re fans of fighting not basketball.
This is the most animated I’ve ever seen him speak about anything.
Certainly anything basketball related haha
Tbh, he probably just doesn’t feel completely comfortable expressing himself in English. Obviously his English is perfectly good, but it’s not uncommon for people’s personalities to be somewhat different when they’re not speaking their native language
he doesn’t seem comfortable explaining himself in this language either lol, not everyones a talker. but i’m glad he spoke up here
I really was second guessing if he was speaking his mother tongue bc bro sounded very uncomfortable speaking it
You’re also supposed to gesticulate when talking Serbian, not as much Italians do, but still healthy dose of gesticulation when you want to make a point.
Yeah I also speak French and I am so much more polite, courteous, etc compared to how vulgar I can be in English
Jokic isn’t ego-driven at all, but I wonder if a part of his outrage is that people genuinely don’t understand how difficult it is to do what he is doing every night in the NBA. They just chalk it up to “they don’t play defense”. Also, people that have never watched NBA games up close probably don’t have an appreciation for how insanely talented the players are. Playing defense on NBA players is really hard.
I have a couple good friends who only watch college ball because “they don’t play defense in the NBA.” I’ve told them more times than I can count that the reason people don’t score as much in college is because the players/teams are much worse on offense not because the other team is playing better defense.
Agreed - this narrative discredits everything he had done offensively.
The NBA is a collection of the best and most freakish athletes in the world. Guys that are considered monsters in other sports are considered undersized in the NBA. Myles Garrett would be an undersized 4 who’s a defensive liability. It’s a crazy league. Combine that with modern analytics and specialized training and yet people still believe that the 80s was harder.
Tbf, guys who are considered monsters in the NBA wouldn’t be considered monsters in other sports, like if you put Wemby in the Premier League, he’d get out ran and out skilled very easily
Best goalie in the sport
In the sport of Casillas and Neuer? Lmao hell no. I’d take shooting daisy cutters at him all day over having to get past Buffon or Cech to score. Someone like Iker would’ve been down and up and then down again , in the same time it would take this tall mf to hit the ground once. Nevermind modern goalie foot game and ball distribution which is an entirely different set of skills. Wemby is an outlier among outliers, honestly the worst example one would’ve picked. He would be an even bigger cheat at volleyball though lmao
Not sure what’s the point of this comment, if you put Messi, Pele, Pepe, Joey Barton or Vinnie Jones, even in their best form, I assure you they would not last more than a few mins in any top level basketball competition (though the monsters on the later part of my list would potentially also take someone’s leg with them :D).
It’s extremely rare to see a professional athlete be amazing in more than one sport.
Read the comment I replied to
One of the funniest “could NFL players make the NBA?” debate points was when someone said “Could you imagine if Myles Garrett played in the NBA?” Garrett’s half-brother Sean Williams actually did play in the NBA (same mother and they grew up together but Sean’s 9 years older). Garrett is listed at 6’4” and Sean is 6’10” and played at Boston College before lasting 4 seasons and 137 games in the NBA (mostly for the Nets). Myles played basketball in high school but I don’t think he was a world beater and it is so hard just to become a rotation player in the NBA that nothing is guaranteed.
People see the scoreboards and assume laziness, ignoring the sheer speed and spacing today.
It’s also the modern rules that push a free flowing offensive game. It’s insanely hard to play solid defense and not foul because offensive players are so good from multiple levels and have learned how to draw a foul if the defender over commits. To even get on the court you have to be able to play solid defense now. The G league is full of guys who could get real buckets in the NBA they just can’t guard.
Imagine the culture shock of finding out that most NBA legends shit talk the game constantly
I get it from his perspective, because teams defend the hell out of Jokic. They get really physical with him, they send double and triple teams. He sees hard defense almost every night.
Yes and also he does a ridiculous amount of work on offense
He’s a big, so he gets all the physical work but also has to run all around the perimeter, handle the ball, set screens, create spacing, etc.
Many of the great defensive bigs of the past did maybe half of all that (at best). So yea, he isn’t going to contest every single drive on defense because he just got done running all around the half court on offense.
On top of the broader stuff that affects everyone that you mentioned - the game has become pacier and harder to defend due to the pace and space evolution.
It’s because he’s speaking in his natural language.
Turns out speaking your mother language lets you be more expressive
I’m tired of pretending I’m not watching the most skilled the league has ever been by a long shot.
Am I tripping or has Jokic been giving more insight on how he feels about the game lately? LeBron and Nash need to get this man on Mind the Game podcast
But let him speak in serbian with subtitles so he can really go off in his native tongue and get all his thoughts out
The subtitles would just be “$\(Cursing in Serbian\)$” for 45 minutes straight.
Tbh he has trouble expressing himself in Serbian too
Yeah, I know the language and was amazed at how much he struggled to construct basic sentences in this interview. I’m not saying he’s dumb or anything, but not really a guy who knows how to express himself.
Could be a classic “his brain moves faster than his mouth” and he gets tripped up. It happens to many people especially in a topic they are passionate about.
I know, you’re describing me pretty well
To be fair, some people are just not tactful speakers despite being highly knowledgeable. Ryan Coogler is another person who comes to mind. It’s like their thoughts are all over the place and they’re frantically trying to piece them together.
A lot of filmmakers are like this— Tim Burton apparently can’t finish a sentence. Might be why they gravitate to an expressive visual medium
I think we get spoiled by American athletes who are treated like celebrities going back to college or high school. When you’re getting interviewed constantly, you get a lot of practice at building some on screen presence. Not to mention the way some athletes will get coached on this by agents and team pr officers. Jokic had probably not had any televised interviews until he made it to the league.
I mean he has to force himself to speak english 99% of the time now
I think that might be the fact that he hears about all these basketball terms in English all the time and has to do some translation back to Serbian. You often hear it called bilingual brain. I also speak French as a second language and today I had to translate something into English cause I remembered it first in French.
Bye-lingual — When you’re missing topic-specific vocabulary in your native language and sentence structure/grammar in your second language, so you just start sucking at both.
Basketball is pretty big in Serbia, we aren’t lacking terms for anything bball related hah
Yeah it’s not that he lacks the vocabulary, it’s that he’s most exposed to those terms in English on a regular basis
Like the other commenter alluded to, I was talking less about the breadth of the Serbian language, but rather how often Jokic uses those terms to be able to quickly recall them :p
Not necessarily more or lately. This is the difference between his interviews with American/English sources VS Serbian.
This is a trend for Euro players. And while there is a language barrier, many of these guys are fluent in English. They know how mainstream media works.
Their English interviews get dissected and chopped up out of context in to sound bites for the masses of the world. Much less so when the interview is in Serbian, Greek, Latvian, Slovenian.
You see native language interviews from guys like Jokic, Kristaps, Gianni, Luka, the earnestness would give guys Stephen A Smith and Shannon Sharpe material for weeks.
I can say the same about Lauri Markkanen – we only learn his true thoughts in Finnish interviews. He practically never speaks his mind in English interviews, and it is not a language issue.
The only exception to the rule is Dennis Schröder, who complains in English interviews about Germany.
I think Wemby gives plenty of honest thoughts in English, maybe too many given how much material haters love to pick up and run with.
Tbf Luka’s interview with JJ was the most comfortable I’ve seen him. He’s very PRish when it comes to Slovenian media, but I don’t think he’s done any podcasts in Slovene/Serbian language
I’m glad he gets to be more honest and outspoken as time goes by. He seems like a very reserved person.
pretty sure its a language things, he always lights up when serbian media ask him questions during post games
Yeah, this is fire, I want more Jokic thoughts
Think it’s partially just the language barrier. He seems a lot more open in interviews in his native language.
I think jokic would love to talk basketball with bron and nash tbh.
They should try to get him in.
We should just dubbed his interviews on Serbian media
The secret has always been that he loves basketball so much more than we actually see.
Honestly I’ve dug it but a big part of that is him giving the Thunder their flowers recently.
I do think ppl way over blow players not plying defense nowadays. But in general the NBA rules and officiating can lean super hard towards offense.
Thinking basketball did a video on this exact thing a while ago. Rule changes or just how a rule is enforced has Basically allowed offenses a ton of leeway to do more than they ever could in the past. Think the whole gather step vs travel, shoulder down into a defenders chest, etc.. those are new interpretation within the last 10-20 years. Then take away hand checking and defense is effectively stunted. It’s not that they don’t play defense or try, but what can you do when a guy like Giannis barrels into your chest at full speed while doing 6 steps that fall under the technicality of the gather step? You take the hit, try to stay big, and then hope you get lucky. 15 or so years ago, that’d be an offensive foul or a travel.
My favorite quote was something like “if you meet your defender in the chest, then you didn’t actually beat the defender.”
This is the take
yeah i think that’s true but everybody likes the long ball, baseball fans want to see hits and home runs, football fans like touchdowns. there has to be a delicate balance, not to mention player safety.
everybody likes the long ball
I feel like there are a sizable amount of people who think differently. “All they do now is shoot threes” is a common complaint.
Me, an Iowa football enthusiast” 😳
Also spacing. There’s so much more space on the court now. A lot harder to keep up with someone in open space, especially when they can basically shove you with their off arm, and you can’t touch them as a defender.
I mean a team just won the title with defense. It sure the fuck wasn’t our 3 point shooting.
Leta be real if nba players didnt play defense someone like bam adebayo would score 83 points or something
Wizards aren’t an NBA team
That’s fair
Go easy on us man!
There are two things jokic is passionate about in life
I really don’t get the people’s obsession with him loving horses. What’s so weird about it? Nobody bats an eye with someone loving their dog. How are his horses any different? Horses are incredibly cool and fun.
It’s just jokes and lore. Not that serious. Everyone understands the man loves the game he’s basically mastered
It’s also funny to see the parallel reactions when he won the chip vs when his horse won.
That was hilarious yea. He partied it up during the chip parade tho lol
I think it’s mainly that the horse thing isn’t a common American hobby (at least not for guys). If he was just really into video games or something then I doubt people would care as much
I know many a backcountry and ranch raised man that has a deep love for his trail horses.
I’d argue if we found out Shai had dogs he was putting in dog shows and winning we’d be talking about it
Wrong order but true
Seems like he is really passionate about basketball, just doesnt talk about unless it’s in Serbian
I think the impression that NBA players don’t play defense anymore is a combination of a few factors:
The rules and officiating have slowly trended to favor the offense.
The pace and space shooting era creates fewer classic “lockdown” defensive matchups, and puts more value on things like solid rotation and communication.
People are fucking idiots.
also, the 4-5 guys in the NBA that are basically ‘allowed’ to be ASS on defense (luka, harden, etc…) are clowned online to such a large extent that they color how people see the league to a large extent. Thing is their allowed to be like that because they’re literally in the top X greatest offensive players on planet earth…
Luka isnt ASS though is he, hes not good ofc but hes not ASS
Anybody that says Luka sucks on defense at this point just doesn’t watch games
Unfortunately that’s half the media.
Harden hasn’t been awful for years
There’s a fourth point in that you can always cut a clip of one of the league’s biggest stars clearly taking a play off on defense and looking lost and/or lazy in the process. Jokic is definitely a net-positive on defense, but he’s always good for at least one play a night where it’s like “bro, just put a hand up or something.” In the age of social media, that shit spreads so easily.
Yeah, (1) is the real answer, which is the worst IMO, as you can’t even touch a shooter unless you’re in “perfect guarding position” which is really dumb for a pretty physical sport.
And (2) is the visual difference; there is so much 3 point shooting these days, where there is much less physical contact compared to post shooting.
Makes a good point about teams getting hot from 3 and you can’t stop them. Big reason defensive prowess isn’t very quantifiable is because you can close out to the best of anyone’s ability and the shot taker can just be lights out
There will be lots of times where a player will play great defense and force a tough, contested shot but get clowned for being “cooked” if the shot goes in. One of my bigger pet peeves
I too watched Luka vs Rudy
“That’s a bad shot.”
Same thing happens with poster dunks. I’m not a sadist and do love a great highlight dunk but it also says something about the guy going up to block it
That happened to Luka against Celtics last season. I think he was guarding Brown and Brown just made some difficult stepbacks over Luka. It wasn’t even bad defense, he just made shots. And Luka got all the blame after the game for playing terrible defense, they were showing the stats, saying Boston targeted him…
I don’t get the mindset of determining the “greatness” of a person defense by outcome of a single shot. Like Basketball isn’t football you can’t shutdown the opponent so why are you deciding defense impact by whether or not it feel like the variance of shot making.
Shai in that last shot against us, like, what the hell was the defense even supposed to do at that point
Legit. I do think we should have doubled but 1 on 1 nobody could guard him even a little that night. I watched closely and Braun was doing his goddamn best but he just couldn’t stop him. Not bad defense, all-time offense lol.
Great offensive beats a good defense all the time
It really cracks me up when a player who basically is God Tier IQ on the court just obliterates these narratives that exist - so many people just don’t understand the games they watch.
Edit: irs extremely clear that a ton of defense is being played in the NBA, it’s just very difficult when you have entire teams playing with great spacing and 3-4 guys on the court who all can hit threes
Now you see how reddit has no idea when it comes to NBA defense, and just just circle jerks one narrative. Apply this to every other circle jerk opinion on this site.
To be fair, a lot of media feeds people dog shit takes. The idea of help-side defense. A lot of the media voices didn’t play high level BBIQ type of defense it was mainly “I’m big af and my reach is unmatched”. Lebron is one of the podcast guys that speaks on defensive schemes, BBIQ, which plays coaches reach for X time into the game and how to counter it. But it’s very rare that he says it in public since he only goes deep into BBIQ when he has another BBIQ person with him.
Even long time players like Teague or Arenas turn into “you know tah-dah tah-dah ta, down the court and boom boom boom, off his weak side”. They have the mind for the game but if they don’t explain it then you’d have to know the play and pick up everything via watching.
There’s an audience for the knowledge, just look at how well Romo does on NFL games. But most casters/analysts don’t do it.
He’s even brings up players or coaches that say it in Europe which is sad. People really don’t know what’s going on then. Watch defenders like Draymond defend a possession and there’s even stuff like positioning to make the ball handler think extra that he nails perfectly yet not enough people care.
How can anyone ever say this is true for the playoffs throughout NBA history?
I’ve never watched a playoffs and been like, “wow this team really isn’t trying on defense”.
They all try as hard as they can almost every possession. Doesn’t mean you’re going to stop a team from scoring 120, but last years playoffs had intense physical defense throughout.
I think he was saying that people say that players only start playing defense during the playoffs and coast otherwise, which is also obviously untrue.
Obviously there is more coasting in the regular season, name me a sport where there isn’t a rise in effort in the playoffs. But I agree players do try and mostly when we speak of coasting we’re talking about stars. Role players can’t afford to coast.
yeah. tell me okc and indiana were just not playing defense in that finals. good lord. as an aside: that finals was fucking PEAK. wrong team won (in my heart), but holy fuck if that’s not peak basketball then i don’t care about peak basketball.
Talk your shit Jokic
Especially if you go back and actually watch 90s and 00s ball holy shit. This year’s Celtics or Rockets would beat the 90s Bulls by like 40 it’s crazy to watch
man I’m just mesmerized by jokic talking so passionately about basketball I ain’t even care what they saying
it was funny and cute for a while but lets finally get rid of the “Jokic is so non chalant he just clocks in” narrative once and for all. That man lives for and is ready to die for this shit
Did you not see him in any of the playoff runs? Very animated on the bench.
Only the 9 tanking teams don’t play defense.
1⁄3 of the league lol
I’d about that tbh. The Lakers are the clearest example, but there’s also teams like the Hawks, Portland, etc. where maybe I just haven’t watched enough, but from what I’ve seen there hasn’t been much defense
And even the lakers are playing kinda decent defense since the all star break
this was a really great take imo. defense isn’t worse today, it’s just different. and clearly if it was that easy everybody would be scoring like luka and harden, consistently. there’s a reason SGA just now broke wilts 20pt gm record despite us having scorers like bron, harden, curry, kobe, etc.
because the league is more perimeter oriented now and pick and roll oriented there are way more possessions and shots, not to mention points per attempt has risen.
It’s always a lazy narrative. 30 teams play 82 games, you’re going to see great and horrendous defences on a nightly basis.
There’s also many games where the refs determine the level of physicality allowed which directly impacts defensive pressure.
When it comes to the playoffs we see extremely complex defenses and defensive schemes so it’s always been an overstated problem.
For years we had people downplaying regular season stats and awards and now that people take their foot off the pedal more, in prep for playoffs they still complain.
Conversation aside, the more he talks about ball the less I think Jokic is just gonna retire to a ranch after he’s done playing. I fully believe he wants to coach a Euroleague team or go back to play there for a bit after his NBA career slows down.
he said in a recent interview with ESPN that he is going to most likely play till the wheels fall off. Meaning he probably won’t be retiring at 35 like people think barring some tradgedy.
In this interview he says he wouldn’t play in the euroleague lol. He also said that the NBA is the best league with the most talent and I think he likes being a part of that.
I like the idea of there being two ranches where centers go to learn how to play elite basketball (Hakeem and Joker)
We have the wrong people covering this sport. Narratives from idiots like SAS and unfortunately former players like Shaq have casuals believing the NBA is what they say. They themselves dont understand the nuances to how you have to play today, the amount of sheer concentration needed on or off ball on defense. This sport doesnt have media personalities covering this aspect of it and it they do exist, theyre nowhere near the spotlight (youtube).
Its not style of play, or rule changes, or money manipulation that has hurt this league the most. Its been the media.
This is what it comes down to. You have media members and ex NBA players who romanticize the game from 20-40 years ago. It’s human nature, but the context behind their analysis is wrong.
It’s why long form podcasts and current player discussions are where people should be getting their info.
Some players have questionable effort on the defensive end. But at the same time I’m not sure it’s ever been more difficult to play good defense whether that’s because of the pace, spacing, rules, or inconsistent enforcement of the rules.
The fact that everyone can shoot 3s from a 3pt line that has moved back over the years, spaces everything out and makes it insanely hard to guard people 1 on 1. These guys are so talented that there really are only a handful of guys that can lock someone down. When the 7 foot 5 center can shoot 25 foot 3s it really fucks up your team defense
This day and age is full of box score watchers because it is much harder to watch the game compared to back in the day, also a lot more distractions on social media but people still “check in” to see the score of the game.
And sadly, it is a heavily driven by narratives league, Luka is a cone on defense? Shai is an unethical hooper? Jokic also play no defense? And many others…
If anyone says any of those, I know right away either they don’t watch the game OR just a pure hater because while they’re true, most of the time it’s not.
There is defense, but the offensive play is unbelievably greater than the defense, skill wise. Eventually it catches up - usually happens in the playoffs.
I kinda love the trope of “NBA doesn’t play defense” because it filters out those who know ball and those who don’t
Man I love him even more than I already did. That narrative is so annoying to see online
The only people who say this are people who’ve never been to a game before. The hard fouls are down, but that’s exchanged with constant contact on the perimeter
I love how he says dominant in Serbian
This interview is great
What I got from this is the word block sounds like banana
It is a banana, we use a word banana to say we blocked someone.
I will say banana instead of block. I am now serbian fluent
Yes, there’s a difference between “teams don’t play defense” and you can’t stop a lot of players no matter the defence.
Players also tell it in the interviews. We didn’t try to stop “X” player because he cannot be stopped. We tried to make it a little harder for him, to tire him out, to throw bodies at him etc.
Holy shit. We need more Jokic interviews in Serbian
This comment section is going to be hilarious.
Because he’s talking about this sub when he says people don’t watch or follow the game and then talk about it.
Unrelated question, the interviewer is one of Jokic’s best friends right? Just curious, no intention whatsoever.
He’s a journalist for Arena Sport if I remember correctly. His podcast is amazing, I’m not sure if they all have captions but worth a watch.
they all do!
One of the best insiders, commenting on basketball I dunno 20 years?… I think he even passed his daughter’s birth so he can watch the game. Very passionate and has great knowledge.
Defense is significantly more advanced than it used to be and defenders are significantly more capable to top it off. The modern cross section of length and mobility is stupid
That being said, the game has slanted so hard in favor of offensive players.
Great defense is being played, but there’s only so much a defense can do under the current rule set
NBA season has become a marathon with sprint intervals. The level of energy required to play defense at the highest level given the current pace play in the NBA is not sustainable over 82 + playoffs, and if you try to do it, you will get injured and be incapable of defending NBA athletes.
The level of defense played in the dog days of the regular season fluctuates, but it’s still miles better than what’s played in any other league. The fact teams can hold guys like Ant/Luka/SGA etc to 30 given how many touches they get in the game and how many schematic mismatches they create, and how many tip-your-cap shots they make no matter how contested they are is honestly a miracle.
Like Jokic said, they’d score 50 in Euro ball on any given night and it would probably happen more than 2⁄3 times a month. For someone like Ant, the crazy shots they make become either practice 3s, or dunks where there literally isn’t a single rim presence that’s going to get up with him if he gets a crease to the hoop. The offensive talent is so vastly different between the NBA and other leagues.
Gobert is a 4x DPOY and Jokic regularly goes for 30+ on him with some of the most wild shot angles. It’s not a defensive effort/talent issue, it’s an absolute absurdity how skilled NBA players are with the ball.
Comparing scoring or even gameplay in Euroleague to the NBA isn’t really a good argument to make
My take has always been about the problem with offensive fouls in today’s game moreso than the lack of D. They kind of did bring back the handcheck but gave it to the offense with little to no officiating adjustment on defenders. You have guys like Kawhi unable to touch any perimeter player on D while their mark is ragdolling them with their off-arm to get a point. I’m a CP3 fan and I feel like he got away with this shit more post-Suns than he did when he played for the Clippers. The difference is staggering despite it being a decade apart, and it probably made him play longer than he should have.
Most modern NBA defenses would absolutely massacre old-school offenses. NBA basketball from 30, 40, whatever years ago is still so fun to watch and so good because those guys were the best players and athletes in the world, but offenses used to suck. You watch highlights and game replays and there’s no movement, the spacing is garbage, guys are taking literally the most inefficient long twos in the sport. So many possessions are designed to get shots that modern defenses literally intentionally funnel guys into because they’re worse than any other shot the offense can get.
OKC defense would make most of these old teams look like they were playing in .75 speed. Probably force 30 turnovers.
Jokic is humble af what a great guy
I wonder how much this discourse is from european fans. I’d imagine there’s largely similar thoughts in american and european fans, with a bias against nba defense. But his points seem aimed at how europeans play in the nba vs eurobasket and euroleague.
Anybody know if this is a particularly strong fan narrative/view in european social media?
I think they obviously play defense but you can see still see the huge difference between regular games and playoffs games .but I guess it’s impossible to keep that intensity for all the seasons . I love watching the playoffs, I could watch 3 games in a row , but regular season it’s much different, sometimes it’s look some teams just spam 3s .
He plays defence, he’s just not as good at it as many players in the same position.
This is a good take. Definitely limited on defense, but out there contributing to the best of his ability most of the time.
Jokic gets every centers best effort and most physical play. But he’s right about all of this.
Didn’t Luka himself say it’s easier to score in nba? I can’t remember the context of him saying that, but i love Jokers take here
Don’t show this to the Old Heads!
I think people are somehow still missing the point. Hes saying if you think nobody is playing defense in the NBA then nobody anywhere is.
Theres a weird euro-circle jerk that does need to be called out sometimes. The NBA is defacto the best league by a long shot. These other leagues aren’t fundamentally or defensively better. They have lower scores because of certain rule differences (10 minute quarters being a big one).
Playing defense in the NBA is so difficult, when you have everyone shooting 3-pointers! I love watching Wemby play, but I have never seen a big man playing most of his game 30 feet out. I see people headed for a layup, pass the ball to the corner player for a 3 instead. How do you defend this type game. And, there are fights every night now, so some of them are trying to play defense!
This guy knows ball
90s fans and even the oldheads like TNT (ESPN Now) cant even understand the modern PnR and spacing.
Even Candice lectured Shaq one time and it got akward with Wade as well.
This one is for the people that still think he doesn’t care about basketball. It’s always been clear that he just didn’t like to answer dumb questions
True, players are more skilled now than ever before that’s why it’s harder to play defense than ever before.
It’s nice to see he’s just as bumbling and inarticulate in other languages, too.
Did he say banana when referring to Nurkic blocks?
So is block called ‘banana’?
I thought he didn’t like basketball?
Most impassioned I’ve ever seen him speak
Pretty sure they are referring to you Nic.
1st glance thought the thumbnail was Luka. It would be so dope if Luka and Jokic had a sit down interview together.
Is there a legit defense for 3s? The spacing is insane in the game these days. I think the game is just tilted towards offense and obviously this helps the entertainment value.
I think it’s easy to sit on your couch and watch a few HLs on your phone from a broadcast angle and claim “no defense”.
If you’ve ever been to a game and sit close… like sit courtside, sit where you can FEEL the game… you would never say they “dont play defense”. The game is SO FAST, everyone is so talented, so big.
If you enjoy basketball and not a era its clear as day the players today are so much more skilled from top to bottom and the shooting skill is insane. You play lazy defense today you get 130+ put on you.
People also cant seem to simply like something without putting down something else
My takeaway, block is banana in Serbian?
Games are fast paced now and majority if not most are also taller, faster and stronger thus people are saying not much defense.
80s and 90s guys resort to hard fouls mostly because they’re slow and defense. Lol
Not much spacing and mostly are within inside the paint.