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[QUOTE="billsin01, post: 5137937, member: 837"]
Yeah, it’s a stretch to blame that on Judah. JJ will be interesting to watch. Not claiming to be an expert here but it seemed to me that JJ moved his feet well and was generally in a decent position to defend.

However, he doesn’t seem to anticipate well and appears to be completely averse to any sort of gamble. So the result was him being in ok guarding position but allowing his man to get where he wanted to go. At this level, guys who get where they want to go finish more often than not.

He’s got to find a way to use his inherent strength, length and athleticism to make his opponent more uncomfortable. Some of this is anticipating a bit more, understanding where a man opponent wants to go and some of it is gambling more.

To be fair to JJ as well, we need to be more effective as a team doing this same thing. We were extremely simplistic defensively last year. At the beginning of the season we appeared to have no clue how to approach a simple high ball screen. In fairness to Red, some of this is probably unavoidable as you transition from zone to man, but even so, it was a bit jarring to see how poorly prepared we seemed to be.

Regardless of personnel, we have to be more sophisticated defensively this year. Putting any of these five guys on the floor and just hoping they shut down the other five guys in straight-up man is not a winning strategy.
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