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Message: [QUOTE="billsin01, post: 2374135, member: 837"] I'm not arguing against either of the main points in this post but I think the staff needs to start changing the narrative on this thing for three reasons: -- I defy anyone to watch an NBA game and tell me that the main component of a good defense is the one-on-one isolated matchups. It's literally like 15% of what teams do. It's a constant series of switches and the best defensive teams excel at scrambling and secondary/tertiary slides. Those are all principals of the zone and, well, any defense a team plays. Yes, the best defenders give teams problems in individual matchups and the defense is still obviously m2m, but I honestly find it absurd to suggest that playing man defense at Duke truly prepares a guy for defense in the nba. -- For a kid who's talented enough to go to the NBA, defense is effort. There are a million examples of this, college and pro. The one that pops into my head is kyrie irving. Terrible defender, then played really solid defense against an incredibly dangerous team in the 15-16 finals. Then he struggled again defensively all of last year, including the finals. Now he's in boston and he's been really solid defensively. Same player, a stretch of just over two seasons and he's been considered a good defender twice and a bad defender twice. I mean, you can only draw one conclusion. -- For the vast majority of real NBA prospects they're in college for a max of two years. Are we to believe those two years of zone -- played against the toughest conference in college basketball and routinely the most nba talent of any conference in america -- is going to undo whatever m2m skills they acquired in grade school/high school/aau? That's completely illogical. I don't know, I just think we have to stop letting others dictate this conversation and point to draft record and the style of defense played in the NBA and making the case that not only is the zone not a bad defense, it's something that could pay dividends at the next level. [/QUOTE]

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