The dude is like the least athletic NBA superstar of all time. Not really much of a surprise lol. He’s always been maybe average at his very best. Combine that with potential lack of effort and motivation, his massive responsibility on the offensive end and that he’s getting older, you get what’s happening now.

He’s never been a good defender. He has quick hands that help him get strips, but otherwise he’s avoiding contact. He’s giving up an uncontested layup after he swipes at the defender 100% of the time. He will not put his body between a player with momentum and the basket. To be fair, though, how often does doing so result in a missed layup? Probably about as often as his swipe is successful. He’s also rarely hurt and avoiding unnecessary contact definitely helps with that

It’s effort. I’d imagine some of it is intentional due to the amount he gets asked to do on the offensive end, but still

Wait…when was he a good defender?

Nah he was very good against OKC and very good at the end vs Pelicans.

Dude just doesn’t try on defense most of the time. I assume it’s a scheme thing cause Jokic is at his best when up to the ball handler double teaming because of his length and great arms, but for the most part they put him in drop probably to preserve his stamina.

The part that’s inexcusable is how many times the team will be scampering to the shooter and the opponent passes, then passes again, then it finds it’s way to the guy closest to Jokic and he doesn’t bother to run to give a contest. Infuriates me these past 3 years.

Ngl between Diallo and Brazile, there’s a chance we actually successfully Moneyballed the issue and replaced him in the aggregate. I’m cautiously optimistic but it’s reliant on health and only time will tell there

I think Watson was healthy enough to play, but 100%, but sat out to protect his next contract. Don’t think he was really wanted back in the locker room.

I might take you seriously if you had a real flair

Yeah I’ve just settled on enjoying Jokic while he’s on my team in his prime

Championship is out the window

Honestly I thought we’d never win one so I’m happy for now

It’s the parity era anyway. OKC, Boston, and the Bucks seemed primed to win another just like Denver. I think OKC is probably the only team in that group that hasn’t made many obvious missteps in their roster building but it’s harder now to win a title than ever before from that perspective. We’ll see with OKC in the future since they still have a lot of flexibility with picks but the money tied up in their big 3 is prohibitive to say the least.

only 1 team wins out of 30 every year so if your expectations are championship or bust, you’re likely to be disappointed.

It me, the person at game 5

What happened to Gordon? Did he just have a bad game or something? Traditionally he torches the warriors. He seemed half asleep last night and I can’t recall him having a significant defensive impact.

Yeah everything he’s said and the way he’s acted up to this point in time suggest he’s just a one-team guy, I think even if he is incredibly frustrated he’ll just deal with those circumstances or choose to retire. Probably ends up in the top 15 which is where I think he is around atm.

Gordon’s defense literally was what turned them into a championship team. They also successfully made use of big wings like MPJ to help cover Jokic cause he doesn’t really use his size to rim protect. They’re now practically rebuilding the entire wing rotation and Gordon’s health is never not in question. It would take ridiculous numbers from Jokic and consistency from Murray to even make the playoffs now.

I’m a big fan of Thinking Basketball but they really need to calm down with the Jokic glazing. Ben Taylor was making excuses for Jokic’s playoff woes by saying the T-Wolves (missing 6 rotation players) presented a “unique matchup problem”. His advanced stats also consistently drop in the playoffs.

The problem is that people like you can only think of defense as a binary “good” or “bad” when it’s so much more nuanced than that. People seem to understand this concept easier on offense, for example a good shooter is still valuable on offense even if he can’t do anything else, but a lot of people honestly don’t even know wtf they’re watching on defense.

Jokic has some legitimate strengths on defense but he also has exploitable weaknesses. He has and can still be a part of a good defense, but it will always depend on the overall skillsets and schemes the team has. Right now the biggest thing we’re lacking is a good screen navigator. KCP was one of the best I’ve ever seen at that, and no one has been able to come even close since. Also our players are still getting used to the new scheme in general. Maybe it will look better once they’re more comfortable with it, but we’ll see. I’ll be skeptical until we get a good perimeter defender who can slice through screens

Over the years I have heard people say Jokic is actually one of the best defenders because advanced stats say so, a Ringer guy had an article like that. It’s like I love Jokic as a player, he is fantastic and his slump is irrelevant but come on man

Yeah some of these people never played ball. You can put all your effort into guarding someone but if he’s simply quicker than you and can blow by you it breaks the whole defense. That’s not effort that’s just being a bad defender. You can’t teach 30 year olds lateral quickness.

what happened to edwards tf?

I’d love to be proven wrong, but the Wolves without Edwards is still top 5 in the west, OKC even with J-Dub and Wallace out has arguably the deepest bench with a back to back MVP leading the way. The Spurs, New look Lakers, Rockets with an actual ball handler outside of KD let alone the bloodbath of the East has me convinced that the window has been slammed shut unless roster changes happen or the nuggets magically pull off top% offense for every playoff game.

It’s fair to say with our current roster the window is pretty shut

do teams end their season after 4 losses in the 2 months of November and December?

Denver doesn’t need to build for the regular season. When people say “window’s closed,” they’re talking about the post season

Hey man we’re 4 games into the season I think we’ve been cleared to wildly make pronouncements about who will never ever win a championship again.

Sure. There was that 12-18 month period that started with the Murray contract where every decision the front office made was questionable and has come to bite the team right now.

Nope, was the Braun contract and partially of the Murray contract. Probably both. We’re paying these guys Dame+McCollum kind of money and getting little of the benefit.

Not really.  It was not retooling correctly after their championship.  Malone also didnt help when he was feuding with Booth.

They made the assumption that they could save money by not aiming to trade for better defenders by paying Braun, Nnaji and also not considering trading either MPJ or Murray earlier.  And of course, relying on Jokic’s offense solely.

Malone is luckier than doc Rivers and worse than him

Firing shitcoach Malone was the best thing the shit franchise did. Too bad they didn’t fire his shit assistants. Malone is trash. The league knows it too. “Title winning” coach can’t find work. Not even as an assistant.

When you fail to read the rest of the comment and totally misunderstand the whole thing.

lol no he doesn’t. Jokic is an introverted family guy who hates the media and stardom. That’s like the antithesis of Los Angeles.

Jokics triple doubles lost all value To Me after the Wolves back ups cooked em In playoffs. Just go at emm

I understood that reference

I came here for this reference. Thank you

CB is a plus defender against slashers and guys like Shai but he is absolute balls against off-ball movement guys like Curry. Diallo would have been a huge asset last night comparatively.The Nuggets defensive scheme is limited due to the abilities of the players but against GSW it’s absolutely awful. The biggest issue is Jokic not rotating which leaves other guys scrambling and giving up open threes. Either the Nuggs need to identify a different rotation pattern, need to identify and rotate sooner, or simply need to do a better job of staying stuck on the ball handler without requiring additional help.It’s nothing new for these Nuggets though. What is new is their offensive struggle. I don’t know if other teams are getting better at defending the actions or if the Nuggets aren’t even getting into their actions but the offense looks discombobulated. Giving up 120 isn’t an issue when you’re scoring 125, but it definitely is when you struggle just to score 100.

Yea exactly… 3 games people!!

Against the Warriors he was one of the only guys hustling on defence. It’s like everyone else was stuck in mud.

But yeah, it’s Reddit. People don’t watch the games here lol.

Aaron Gordon was a good defender. He is over 30 and has had injuries.

They rallied after their best player went down and won games with grittiness and toughness.

Watch the starters play defence when Jokic is simply on the bench. Completely different vibe to that January stretch.

Conveniently omitted that with this current flopfest and pushoffs it is very easy to collect the fouls when defending. And off Jokic goes to the bench and that’s it for the team.

There isn’t a single plus defender on the roster. Yes C is important but the Knicks just won a chip with a below average rim protector at C on the strength of their defense. You can’t just hand waive the team’s defensive problems on Jokic when everyone is either too old to move on defense or lacks the defensive talent.

If youre talking about Watson his defense was always severely overhyped and Brazile already looks like he grasps team defense more than Watson ever did while being lengthier and a better athlete than Watson.

Kawhi Leonard?!

AG is definitely not a plus defender on the perimeter given his age and injury history at this point. Braun is also not a plus defender.

AG is so slow now. It’s sad to watch. He doesn’t have the lateral quickness to keep up with anyone anymore, since those hammy injuries. Maybe it will come back.

Braun’s defense isn’t great. AG is good, but is slower than he was.

Center is the most important defensive position on the court

But he’s first on 1st on VORPCUM

No the argument was advanced stats said he was one of the best defenders in the league

Good rebounder but it’s easier for him to get rebounds (compared to other starter Cs) since he never contests shots, never drifts to the perimeter to defend and is always in a position to box out.

On defense, he was, by a significant margin.

He’s no longer active

Malone might have something to say about that

This shit caught me off guard lmfao

r/nba resisting the urge: