this pathetic defensive effort proves 1 thing:

I know its been talked about before but looking at this defense it proves that we must trade pau for a weak side defensive helper/shot blocker. sad to say but pau is the sacrificial lamb in this situation. metta and D12 right now are our only good defenders. I would do anything i could to trade pau for josh smith. we don't need offense we need defensive presence and Josh smith is a weak side defender that would work with D12. no defensive pg's out there to make a difference and that type of player is the only answer because we are always gonna get beat of the dribble and the only hope for this defense is better at the rim defense to help D12 when he deals with the constant penetrator.

revgen wrote:This might not be a popular answer, but the major reason why our defense stinks is because we're an old team, especially on the perimeter.

And the few young perimeter players that we have who have the speed to help and recover on D (Meeks, Morris, Ebanks) cannot be counted on to make plays on the offensive end. They can make some open shots and sometimes finish shots, but they aren't playmakers.

We need to bring in 1 or 2 young perimeter players who can contribute defensively while providing consistent playmaking/shooting on the offensive end.

there are no good or difference making perimeter defenders available via trade. dwight needs weak side help when he rotates on penetration. we need a 2nd shot blocker who is athletic like D12. josh smith is the answer but we can't get him now without a miracle.
before people here start saying how inferior smith is to pau on offense read this:

The NBA announced on Monday that Atlanta Hawks forward Josh Smith and Los Angeles Clippers forward Blake Griffin are the Eastern and Western Conference Players of the Week, respectively, for games played Monday, Dec. 3, through Sunday, Dec. 9.

In helping the Hawks go 3-0 on the week, Smith ranked fifth in the Eastern Conference in scoring (21.0 ppg) and rebounding (12.0 rpg), and tied for sixth in steals (2.00 spg). Smith grabbed a season-high 15 boards in a 104-95 win vs. Washington on Dec. 7, and followed that up the following night with a season-high three steals in a 93-83 triumph at Memphis.

I agree with the OP's concept -- trade Gasol for Pieces (as I repeated a few times in the roster improvement thread).

But Smith?? He is not available, in my mind. Atlanta is playing well and he is a key to that. I doubt he is on the block for a has-been like Gasol.

I still think that turning Minny pieces and 2nd round pick into Barea, Mathews, Ariza, and D. Williams is the way to go. Three solid wing defenders with tremendous playoff experience, can hit big shots, can finish in the paint, can run the floor to flourish in MDA's system and get back on D. Four guys who can sub in for Nash, Kobe, Artest, and Jamison perfectly. Losing Gasol, Duhon (maybe), Ebanks (likely), and Meeks (likel) is well worth that.

NYK aren't exactly spring chickens and Melo has never been known for his D and yet they play passable D. Felton another non defender with a 40yr old Kidd at the perimiter with Melo at the 4, so NO its not age, its not bad defenders, just bad efforts and maybe scheme.

revgen wrote:

khmrP wrote:NYK aren't exactly spring chickens and Melo has never been known for his D and yet they play passable D. Felton another non defender with a 40yr old Kidd at the perimiter with Melo at the 4, so NO its not age, its not bad defenders, just bad efforts and maybe scheme.

The Knicks have a defensive team identity. We have defenders like Dwight, Hill, Metta, etc, but we don't have a team identity when it comes to the defensive end. That's why Melo is investing on the defensive end this season more than he's done in the past. We don't have that identity right now.

what is their identity?

khmrP wrote:NYK aren't exactly spring chickens and Melo has never been known for his D and yet they play passable D. Felton another non defender with a 40yr old Kidd at the perimiter with Melo at the 4, so NO its not age, its not bad defenders, just bad efforts and maybe scheme.

great points!!! our guys are soft. ebanks sinks, duhon stinks, blake stinks even though he isn't playing. we have no toughness on the perimeter. I just don't see away to correct that unless we get a josh smith who can help with at the rim defense with dwight. jordan hill i not a shot blocker as some one stated. he is a hustle rebounder i repeat not a shot blocker. i also agree with the idea of getting delonte signed and we may be able to become an adequate defensive team.

revgen wrote:

khmrP wrote:

revgen wrote:

khmrP wrote:NYK aren't exactly spring chickens and Melo has never been known for his D and yet they play passable D. Felton another non defender with a 40yr old Kidd at the perimiter with Melo at the 4, so NO its not age, its not bad defenders, just bad efforts and maybe scheme.

The Knicks have a defensive team identity. We have defenders like Dwight, Hill, Metta, etc, but we don't have a team identity when it comes to the defensive end. That's why Melo is investing on the defensive end this season more than he's done in the past. We don't have that identity right now.

what is their identity?

Right now, our identity is "wait for Nash".

you didn't even answer my question....NYK has the same type of personnel as we do, the difference is effort, our players lacks it. That team is build almost exactly like ours and the way they play offensively isn't much different, Melo for all those years people were calling him out for his D has now been getting praises for it and Chanlder cause the same amount of problems in the middle and on PnR as Howard can/does, the difference here is NY helps the helpers unlike this team and this has always been a problem even during Phil tenure here.

hollywood swinger wrote:

khmrP wrote:NYK aren't exactly spring chickens and Melo has never been known for his D and yet they play passable D. Felton another non defender with a 40yr old Kidd at the perimiter with Melo at the 4, so NO its not age, its not bad defenders, just bad efforts and maybe scheme.

great points!!! our guys are soft. ebanks sinks, duhon stinks, blake stinks even though he isn't playing. we have no toughness on the perimeter. I just don't see away to correct that unless we get a josh smith who can help with at the rim defense with dwight. jordan hill i not a shot blocker as some one stated. he is a hustle rebounder i repeat not a shot blocker. i also agree with the idea of getting delonte signed and we may be able to become an adequate defensive team.

NYK has 1 shot blocker in Chandler, same as we do in Howard, like I said the difference between them and us is effort, they try....we dont.

revgen wrote:Hill is a shotblocker. He is blocking 0.9 shots in 15 mpg. That's 2.0 blocks a game per 36 minutes. And he's way more cost-effective than picking up Smith.

Ebanks isn't soft on defense. He's not great either, but he has the size, length, and speed and does an adequate job utilizing these attributes.

ebanks sucks

There are some bad habits that carried over from years past with this squad on their defense: collapsing the paint unnecessarily, EVERYONE crashing the boards, gambling, roaming, funneling guys to Howard, and of course pick and roll defense which the Lakers seems to be cursed with.

Where is the defensive coordinator that D'Antoni promised to hire?

Phil and D'Antoni both have the flaw that they both say that defense is just about effort. To some degree that's true, when you have professional-minded defensive specialists, like Phil's Bull teams, along with MJ who would literally kill you if missed an assignment.

Outside of Dwight and Metta, no one hustles on defense consistently, and two out of five can't cover everyone else. Kobe isn't bad, but he saves himself for offense and for being the primary pg out there, so he gets a semi-pass. Jamison's never been a good defender, nor has Pau, nor Duhon.

If you're not going to practice defense, so that it becomes a priority in their little heads, then you must fill the roster with defensive-minded players, who will bring it consistently like Dwight and Metta. And Kobe will need to spend most of his energy on defense when Nash comes back, to compensate for the weak link. We'll see if Kob is willing to sacrifice for the team at that level. Dwight is, so Kob should too.

What really got me mad during the Utah loss was that every Utah player was dripping with sweat, working their butts off. And every Laker had barely broken a sweat all game. Why are our guys so complacent?

All I can say is that I've never seen Kobe play worse D in his career than he has this year.

revgen wrote:I don't have a problem with funneling to Howard. I don't have a problem with gambling either. The problem I'm seeing is that nobody is on the same page defensively.

If the gameplan is to gamble on defense, then everybody should know what the plan is and do it together. The Warriors teams in the mid-00's gambled all the time under Don Nelson. It was an awful philosophy, but they embraced the philosophy and did it together as a team. Even managed to get lucky and beat the Mavs in 2007 doing it.

I'm not sure exactly what our defensive philosophy is at all. Just pick something. Anything.

Completely agree with you. But just want to add something extra that I really believe with this team. I think the fact that there is no defensive identity is partially due to the fact that we really have no offensive identity either. Can you really say we're a typical run and gun D'antoni style offensive team? We don't play like it. Sure, we score like it, but this group looks nothing like the old Suns or the Knicks. We're WAY slower. And we still dump the ball in to Howard on the block and clear out as if he was Bynum or Shaq. I'm just not seeing any kind of consistent effort at establishing an identity to this team on the offensive end and I think that clumsy awkward feeling we all get watching them play translates to the defensive end.

I thought something Howard said in his post-game really emphasized this. He said something to the effect of "going inside" as a philosophy and I found that interesting because then you've got Kobe saying they're working on being a PnR team. Really guys? Because we rarely really go inside and I don't see a whole lot of PnR either. I see a lot of iso plays and not a lot of ball movement. I also see a lot of 3 point attempts that aren't taken in any sort of rhythm or flow.

If this team were a defensive minded team, then I think that their defense would fuel their offense. But their not a defensive minded team at all and that's why it didn't work under Brown. They are motivated by offense and if the offense is stagnant and the ball isn't moving then it will translate over on to the defensive side of the game.

So I agree with you about identity, but I think that comes from having no identity offensively. We have absolutely nothing to hang our hats on and say THIS is what we do and do well. And that's why we are so inconsistent because sometimes things just come together but without a "crutch" to rely on per se, it's very difficult to keep it going on both ends of the court.

Would love Josh + Morrow. Dwight's 2 best friends in the league & both athletic/quick guys who would help us get back on defense. Once Nash is back I think we have enough scoring.. We can afford to downgrade on offense for the better fit.

lakersin4 wrote:Would love Josh + Morrow. Dwight's 2 best friends in the league & both athletic/quick guys who would help us get back on defense. Once Nash is back I think we have enough scoring.. We can afford to downgrade on offense for the better fit.

You can't use Morrow & Defense in the same sentence