Kyrie Irving

[akhan786]

Was he sick in the other games? I understand he was sick last night, but how much longer are we going to make excuses for him. He's an offensive savant but he has to know that winning big games a couple years down the road is ALL about defense and one of the first things they teach to young bball players is that the defense starts with the PG.

I'm hoping we aren't still whining about this in two or three years.

[Lottery God]

Was he sick in the other games? I understand he was sick last night, but how much longer are we going to make excuses for him. He's an offensive savant but he has to know that winning big games a couple years down the road is ALL about defense and one of the first things they teach to young bball players is that the defense starts with the PG.

I'm hoping we aren't still whining about this in two or three years.

Kyrie looks infinitely more conditioned this year even though he only gained five lbs, but he's still average at best in conditioning. Last season, he had the body of a 10-year-old girl: soft and mushy. If he wants to improve his game and be able to be aggressive the whole game, he needs to improve his conditioning to as elite of a level as his skills. He needs to finish getting his NBA body, which will probably involve gaining another 5-15 lbs (depending on how Scott wants him), and then he needs to work on energy systems: mad metabolic improvements in the efficiency ATP/PC, glycolysis, and oxidative phosphorylation. I wonder what Kyrie's VO2 MAX is. Kyrie doesn't even need crazy athleticism in order to be great on defense. He just needs effort, endurance, and smarts. I think he has the smarts for defense, but he just doesn't have the endurance to keep it up on both offense AND defense, which makes it look like he doesn't care.

[Lottery God]

With that rationale, you can argue that Gee doesn't have the endurance to keep it up on both defense AND offense. So we should excuse his sloppy offense because he works so hard on D?
If guys don't even try on D, I expect Scott to take them out and give them an earful. That includes Kyrie. You can cut him some slack, perhaps, but not too much.

I was not affirming the consequent that the same thing could apply to Gee like you made it out to be like I was saying that. That's a misrepresentation of my argument due to you making a sweeping generalization of a comment that I made that particularly applied to Kyrie and Kyrie only. Regardless of whether or not my diagnosis of Kyrie's performance issues are right or wrong, it's not rational to just take a person's diagnosis of a player (Kyrie) and say that it's illogical because it doesn't apply to another player (Gee). You can't just throw another player's name in my argument because of course not every diagnosis is going to fit every player; every player's issues are different. Gee is a different player with different problems.

Kyrie doesn't try significantly hard on defense, sure. I still believe that a lot of it has to do with conditioning. It could very well, however, be a lack of effort or ability to defend well and not a matter of conditioning. Those would be good points to argue against my own.

Gee, on the other hand, just doesn't have the skills in order to perform well on offense even if he is in great conditioning, which he is. Between his lack of ball-handling, decision-making, and good shooting ability, it's pretty obvious that learning the basic offensive skills of basketball are much more of a concern to Gee than it is to Kyrie. That's just one example of how they have different issues.

If you're going to refute me, refute me on the basis of Kyrie in relation to his own performance, not some other player's performance. Then I'll gladly have a discussion with you.

[Jack Brickman]

With that rationale, you can argue that Gee doesn't have the endurance to keep it up on both defense AND offense. So we should excuse his sloppy offense because he works so hard on D?
If guys don't even try on D, I expect Scott to take them out and give them an earful. That includes Kyrie. You can cut him some slack, perhaps, but not too much.

What annoys me is when Dion blows one offensive rotation and seemingly gets benched for ten minutes, yet Kyrie plays shitty defense for entire games with no consequences. I get that he's the best player on the team and a future NBA superstar, but come on! You gotta treat these guys the same.

[Tornicade]

Irving might as well have came tt he NBA from high schol. Scott understands his defensive game will take time to develop. its a big reason why scott is starting to put Irving on players who are slower so he can learn the fundamentals he is lacking.

Irving doesnt really miss his rotations at this point. he just gets beat. Waiters on the other hand is making mental mistakes and actually benefits from sitting and getting an oppurtunity to watch from courtside.

Also Scott is naturally going to be cnservative with waiters minutes since he is a rookie

[D-Wreck]

What annoys me is when Dion blows one offensive rotation and seemingly gets benched for ten minutes, yet Kyrie plays shitty defense for entire games with no consequences. I get that he's the best player on the team and a future NBA superstar, but come on! You gotta treat these guys the same.

Never gonna happen, doesn't matter who the coach is.

[Jack Brickman]

Never gonna happen, doesn't matter who the coach is.

Well, my point was that we can't expect Kyrie to improve on defense unless he actually sees some consequences.

[akhan786]

What I don't get is Kyrie was lauded for his defense in his 11 games at Duke. Coach K intentionally put Kyrie on some of the best guards in the country including Jacob Pullen (#3 Kansas St.) and Kalin Lucas (#2 MSU) and Kyrie shut them down. So he's shown that he can play defense.

[MRMsix6]

The biggest thing right now is that he needs to anticipate screens better. It's impossible to recover if you run straight into them and get wiped out of the play every time. I highly doubt this is a communication issue either.

I would assume he looked better in college because college guards are terrible compared (even the good ones are borderline d-leaguers) to NBA PGs, and PnRs aren't used nearly as much.

[Jon]

What annoys me is when Dion blows one offensive rotation and seemingly gets benched for ten minutes, yet Kyrie plays shitty defense for entire games with no consequences. I get that he's the best player on the team and a future NBA superstar, but come on! You gotta treat these guys the same.

As Sasha Pavlovic once said ... "His offense is his defense".

Scott is intentionally trying to set things up on D to compensate for Kyrie, but he can't plug holes everywhere.

[rabman_gold]

Can anyone really not see how hard it is to lead a team offensively and carry the load AND try to play above average D on a great player at the same time. He's a superstar and we need his impact for the offensive end. As a consequence, the lack of depth to help him out hurts and we are forced to put Gee on that point. The reason that Gee's case isn't the same is because he's great defensively but doesn't need to do all that much offensive, give or take catch and slash, catch and shoot, etc.

Once we get more pieces next year, we should be more ready. But we need to be patient. Kyrie's looking improved, but he's not there yet. He may never reach our expectations defensively.

[Nathan S]

Kyrie at age 20 just doesn't have the same stamina as the average NBA player, and this is reflected in his offense as well as his defense. Not only does he conserve his energy on defense, he also conserves his energy on offense for the first three quarters before coming out with guns blazing in the fourth. You can see him noticeably resting on offense during the second and third quarters in particular, when it seems like he takes only a half to a third as many shots as he does in the first and fourth quarters. The good news is that Kyrie still has a ton of upside here. If he does get his conditioning to an elite level, which he has the work ethic to do, he can control the game with his offense for all four quarters the way he currently does only in stretches, in addition to making strides as a defender.

[Jon]

You have a point perhaps, but that doesn't make it right.
Also, I wonder if Popovich and Sloan don't treat all their players the same in that regard.

Good question. Pops has always had great structure and guys seem to slap in to it, but his best player is Timmy and his defense is perhaps his biggest strength.

With Sloan, I can think of an example: Loozer - and I never got the impression he was able to turn Loozer in to anything other than a liability on defense. I don't think even Tibs has been able to fix him. At best Loozer's offense cancels his defense - so you plop someone like Noah next to him and let him try to deal with what Loozer can't - and when that breaks down you go to your bench.

[ice cream man]

I know his stat line is probably pretty good tonight. But he has picked up some EASY assists. He is playing one on one basketball, and is making WAY too many moves before he ultimately attacks. And oh, almost forgot, not a lick of defense from him again tonight.

Now when we had our run in the 1st quarter (I had to listen to the first 6 minutes on the radio), it seemed like Gee, Waiters, Thompson were involved. Now it's tied 83-83 but this one is not all on the bench by any means.

[theshad]

I know his stat line is probably pretty good tonight. But he has picked up some EASY assists. He is playing one on one basketball, and is making WAY too many moves before he ultimately attacks. And oh, almost forgot, not a lick of defense from him again tonight.

Now when we had our run in the 1st quarter (I had to listen to the first 6 minutes on the radio), it seemed like Gee, Waiters, Thompson were involved. Now it's tied 83-83 but this one is not all on the bench by any means.

There was one play that Kyrie literally didn't even pretend to be playing defense. Someone missed a shot and he just slowly walked over to the other side while the Suns made a shot.