Only time I noticed his defence being decent is in the early playoff rounds of his finals run before he got banged up. He was staying in front of his defender and pissed when his teammates helped too much leaving their guys open.

Basically, if you’re not 99 overall in everything (in NBA 2K terms) and you don’t play all 82 games at 100%, you’re getting dissed.

Tbf Jokic defense as a center is an actual huge issue in the playoffs when teams game plan around it. And it doesn’t get mentioned enough.

He’s been putting much more effort into his defense and we’ll see if he can continue to do so for the season. It’s going to be hard because he’s not getting any rest due to no bench at all. Nephews will laugh seeing him fall guarding Steph but everyone else are happy he did great and more importantly, seeing his fire to stop him.

Giannis was the best defender in the league averaging 30 and people still called him just a run n dunk guy, it’s crazy lol

I remember Giannis and the FT slander.

Not even average he’s trash on defense bro…

“Great” players are great at both ends of the court.

But Luka played good defense last night!

Are you really expecting him to repeat that every game? :-)

I also think his usage rate hurts him defensively, both because he doesn’t have the energy to commit to giving full effort on defense a lot of the time, and because he tends to wear down by the end of the season and be dealing with nagging injuries.

But I have seen Luka play pretty solid defense when he’s healthy and locked in. His length and strength are both assets.

This narrative is a great example of why defensive metrics are horrible.

His advanced defensive stats looks good because of his rebounding. Those defensive stats value rebounding a lot.

That’s it. That’s the only reason why his “defensive metrics” looks good. Same with Jokic. His defensive metrics will tell you he is a top 10 defensive player in the league but we all know that’s bs. It’s because of his defensive rebounds

Luka has never metrically been a bad defender

That’s because he gambles for steals and skips out on rotations to hang around the paint hunting cheap rebounds.

Luka has never metrically been a bad defender

he absolutely has.

Luka has never metrically been a bad defender.

Only if the only “defensive metric” you look at is steals. His problem has never been his on-ball defense, which isn’t great but its plenty passable. The problem has always been that on 80% of possessions he stands around the paint as if he were protecting the rim, except he’s not protecting the rim, he’s just leaving his man mostly unmarked so he can snag extra rebounds. Which means the rest of the defense has to play almost 5 on 4 guarding the perimeter. That means its real easy to get his team in rotation, which creates lots of openings and tires the defense out. That’s something that doesn’t show up on nba-reference, but its apparent if you pay attention throughout the game and don’t just watch the ball or the highlights.

In defense of his complaints. He clearly likes the European style of refereeing better. He hasn’t played in the EuroLeague for years, but he does play for his national team, so he goes from 1 type of ref to another and it makes him mad, so he argues the call. He’s been better about it recently; he was much much worse about it on the Mavs.

Sometimes trying isn’t enough

Really, the Raptors game last night he was complaining all night to the refs.

Stats (drtg/ortg) show that Mavs didn’t lose because of bad defense, but because of offense. And that Luka was net positive team defender in that series (drtg on/off).

They had to bring up a made up stat (% blow by), that never gets mentioned, except in that series with Luka. For a reason. It tells nothing about the defense. This finals Wemby had a similar blow-by rate, but we didn’t hear about it.

Yeah it’s his job as a talking head and it is true, but it still icks me that he’s basically saying a big part of Luka’s defensive struggles is his body weight, while looking like THAT.

That fucking bum openly said how he can’t stand to watch an NBA player and he’s a fucking voter? Another bum ass voter said Jokic (not picking on him) deserves the MVP while actively not watching OKC games last season.

I can’t stand these media people at all omg

I would thank Windhorst for that. The criticism is clearly part of what has been motivating him.

Windy wasn’t wrong about the complaining

First and last time I’ve ever heard any meaningful mention of “blow by percentage”

Agree with the effort thing. Think he can be decent at moving his feet compared to jokic but he needs other players to take some of the workload off him on offense. Reaves is struggling with some more ball pressure causing his recent uptick in TOs, but should figure it out. I expected these other guards to be better offensively.

If (strategically) half-assing a few defensive possessions allows the likes of Harden, Steph, or Luka to stay on the court for several additional offensive possessions, that seems like a worthy tradeoff to make. Of course, the pundit discourse completely ignores that tradeoff.

I wonder if the half-effort thing is far more acceptable to Europeans because it’s an essential tactic in soccer that attackers just try to funnel the action into certain directions.

better to have a bad point guard defender than a bad centre. centres are usually the last line of defence so if they’re bad you’re giving up wide open layups. at least with a guard it’s a jump shot you’re giving up (not as guaranteed as a layup) or you funnel the attacker into the help defence

Yeah it’s very similar except positionally I’d much rather have Luka since he doesn’t have to protect the rim

The thing is Luka already gets targeted during the season in an effort to reduce his offensive output.

Well hopefully we get to see luka in the playoffs this year!

I know it’s become kind of a go-to (“wait til the playoffs”) but it’s an entirely different game and quite… illuminating and purifying when it comes to what is what.

Game 39 on a Tuesday Charlotte when everyone is going back and forth hoisting 3’s is much different than a gotta-have-it in the 4th quarter when team’s will deploy anything and everything including the kitchen sink to figure out the best way to get a bucket

That didn’t stop his teams getting to Finals once and WCF once (same amount as Giannis or Jokic). And in all the series that Mavs won, Dallas were betting underdogs too.

Sometimes guys that are decent defensively get targeted because they’re they smallest guy on the floor .

He also has one of the most important defensive qualities for this Lakers roster - rebounding. Unfortunately, he’s the 2nd best rebounder on the team and that might be our downfall this year.

Dude has never been a bad defender

Lol This is part of why people think he’s a bad defender. So many of his fans can’t just admit he was a bad on the ball defender.

He HAS been much better this year though. Despite the Curry highlight. And actually getting crossed is a sign of moving your feet well.

But let’s keep things in perspective: He’s not AS bad as people say. But he was bad. That’s okay. Like you said he’s not out there for that.

He’s a good defender, above average. Just needs to be consistent and not only perform when he gets flack for being a cone .

They asked if he’d rather win mvp or dpoy and it was a joke and luka laughed about it and said both

Seems like a lot of pressure to perform, ngl.

ScarJos like 40 my fellow millenial brother. Still hot asf tho