Thursday, March 24, 2011

Off Day(s) Puzzler

Do the Atlanta Hawks struggle because they aren't assignment-sound or do the Atlanta Hawks struggle because they aren't assigned well?


Bronn said...

Both, and one feeds the other. Hard to listen to a coach when he's laying out his defensive assignments, and you have long stretches where Jamal Crawford is asked to guard guys like Raymond Felton and Derrick Rose, who will repeatedly go past him. Then Larry Drew will see guys inside trying harder to show harder on screens, resulting in the interior defense being shredded, so he does something like remove Marvin Williams to put in Zaza Pachulia and add some size around the basket.

Ronald said...

I guess this is another way of asking: is it the players or the coach? I'm going with the coach. It isn't Jeff Teague's fault he gets a DNP-CD while Jamal Crawford plays the entire fourth quarter of games while failing to defend anybody successfully, taking too many long jumpers, and missing most of them.

Matt DeFore said...

I may have uncovered the overall plan for defensive assignments. Against the Bulls, I actually heard Jason Collins tell Josh Smith, "guard whoever guards you" while waiting for a Bulls free throw. Taj Gibson actually laughted at this comment. What is this a pick up game?