Our Defense sucks right now!…Let’s talk about it!

[ATLHawks3]

44 minutes ago, mrhonline said:

I find Cam's reputation as a good defender to be fascinating. I don't see it.

He's been gambling a lot more this year compared to the 2 years prior.

[macdaddy]

46 minutes ago, mrhonline said:

I find Cam's reputation as a good defender to be fascinating. I don't see it.

All I can say is if Cam plays last night i highly doubt Simons hit's 8 threes (or whatever) which means we probably win the game. 

[TheNorthCydeRises]

2 hours ago, Sothron said:

We switch way too much. If guys would hold to their man and either keep them in front of them OR work through a screen we wouldn't be blaming poor Capela for everything. News flash: Capela is not Defense Jesus. He can't save you. You need to save yourself. It is beyond unfair to expect Capela or Hunter when he's healthy to somehow hold up five guys on defense. 

 

 

We now need a fan gif of Capela as Defensive Jesus.  The Nets did it for Joe Johnson when KG called him Joe Jesus.

 

[mrhonline]

35 minutes ago, macdaddy said:

All I can say is if Cam plays last night i highly doubt Simons hit's 8 threes (or whatever) which means we probably win the game. 

I definitely think spot-up is what he defends best because of his length, so you're not wrong about Simons.

But Cam's awareness (e.g., backdoor cuts) is not great to me. Inside the perimeter he struggles also.

[Atlantaholic]

50 minutes ago, ATLHawks3 said:

He's been gambling a lot more this year compared to the 2 years prior.

He was really quite excellent (for a rookie) his first season. Hasn't really developed on that end how we hoped though.

[Gray Mule]

Was Portland's offense great?  Yes!  Was Atlanta's defense terrible?  Yes!

These things together = Hawks loss.

Was our defense bad because their offense was so great or was their offense so great because of our defense?  Either way we slice it, home team won.  

Next stop.  Kings and Haliburton.  These cats can score too.  Perhaps, maybe, hopefully Hawk defense will be better next game.  We can hope.  

[JayBirdHawk]

4 hours ago, mrhonline said:

I find Cam's reputation as a good defender to be fascinating. I don't see it.

When Cam plays disciplined defense, he can be really good.  He has become too much of a gambler looking for steals and deflections and the expense of the team and he's become lazy fighting through screens.  He is so long so he can easily disrupt passing lanes and close out on shooters with his speed. 

[Spud2nique]

Cam and Hunter get hurt a lot too. I love them to death when they play, and when Cam plays engaged, but dang, when we drafted them I thought Hunter would be a guy that would miss like 5-10 games a year. 

[JayBirdHawk]

2 minutes ago, Spud2nique said:

Cam and Hunter get hurt a lot too. I love them to death when they play, and when Cam plays engaged, but dang, when we drafted them I thought Hunter would be a guy that would miss like 5-10 games a year. 

Thought he'd be an iron man.

[Spud2nique]

11 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

Thought he'd be an iron man.

His body screamed it too. He has that old school hard muscle, man, wish he could get right for a long stretch.

[NBASupes]

27 minutes ago, Spud2nique said:

Cam and Hunter get hurt a lot too. I love them to death when they play, and when Cam plays engaged, but dang, when we drafted them I thought Hunter would be a guy that would miss like 5-10 games a year. 

I can understand why Cam gets hurt, he's not fully developed yet but Hunter, man, i just think like Steph when he was younger, just misfortune 

[Spud2nique]

I just don’t get it. Trae is frustrated, yet we are injured and that’s a direct indication to our struggles and record, having said that, Trae is a superstar right now, I can feel the frustration. Been saying for year’s I want us to have a defense identity with Trae spearheading the offensive attack like the late 80’s Pistons. 
 

Right now, we have no identity and just try to outscore teams and other teams aren’t really putting up with it. We need to “get tougher” and the next man up mentality.

loss

"It's frustrating. It's not fun," Young said, per Chris Kirschner of The Athletic. "Being one of the best offensive teams in the league is a really good thing, but when you're letting teams score as much as you, it's not good for your team. We got to figure it out. We have time to figure it out. We have to do it. We have to keep the offense the way it's been going. We have to get more stops."

[NBASupes]

1 hour ago, Spud2nique said:

I just don’t get it. Trae is frustrated, yet we are injured and that’s a direct indication to our struggles and record, having said that, Trae is a superstar right now, I can feel the frustration. Been saying for year’s I want us to have a defense identity with Trae spearheading the offensive attack like the late 80’s Pistons. 
 

Right now, we have no identity and just try to outscore teams and other teams aren’t really putting up with it. We need to “get tougher” and the next man up mentality.

loss

"It's frustrating. It's not fun," Young said, per Chris Kirschner of The Athletic. "Being one of the best offensive teams in the league is a really good thing, but when you're letting teams score as much as you, it's not good for your team. We got to figure it out. We have time to figure it out. We have to do it. We have to keep the offense the way it's been going. We have to get more stops."

Zeke really had so much defensive BBIQ like CP3. Whereas Trae don't put that type of energy into defense unless it's the playoffs or the first 3 games of the RS

[bleachkit]

3 hours ago, JayBirdHawk said:

Thought he'd be an iron man.

 Trae, Jon and Kev are the Iron men.  

[JayBirdHawk]

8 minutes ago, bleachkit said:

 Trae, Jon and Kev are the Iron men.  

Kev's 2nd year was full of injuries though. Had a bounce back year last year.

[Spud2nique]

40 minutes ago, NBASupes said:

Zeke really had so much defensive BBIQ like CP3. Whereas Trae don't put that type of energy into defense unless it's the playoffs or the first 3 games of the RS

Ya not directly a skills set attribute correlation per say but rather a smaller statue giant like Zeke who demanded attention, at the time in that era Zeke was the best lil man in the game as Trae is today imo.

29 minutes ago, bleachkit said:

 Trae, Jon and Kev are the Iron men.  

How bout just Trae.

[Watchman]

On 11/11/2021 at 4:34 PM, terrell said:

Maybe we should mix in some zone And stop trying to chase players all over the place, across screens etc? Because it's not working..This would also keep Clint under the basket more....

Correct me if I am mistaken, but wouldn't playing a zone defense help cover over some of Trae's weaknesses?

[Diesel]

29 minutes ago, Watchman said:

Correct me if I am mistaken, but wouldn't playing a zone defense help cover over some of Trae's weaknesses?

Well, you make Trae stationary.   Most NBA Teams know how to break a zone with ball movement.   But it would effectively keep him from being posted up.   We played one with the 10 dayers. 

[JayBirdHawk]

Interesting.

Quote

Before the Portland game, Huerter was asked what he thinks has been the biggest issue defensively for the Hawks.

“I think a lot of it is mindset,” he said. “It’s us simply trying to outscore teams. We’re so dominant on one end of the court that we sometimes take for granted the other end of the court. We don’t have the same level of urgency as we did last year sometimes. It’s still the same group of guys, so we can figure it out. I just think we have to have more urgency and more pride on that end. Us winning games 120-115 instead of 120-95 is something we have to take pride in so we don’t make it so hard on ourselves.

“We have a lot of really good offensive players on this team and a lot of guys who want to be good offensive players. Sometimes, your first conversation isn’t about how can you be good defensively, it’s how can we continue to be dominant offensively. Nate, from the day he came in here, said he was only going to play guys who play two sides of the ball. It’s something he’s always preached. As players, we have to take better pride on that end of the court for him.”

It’s been a frustrating start for the Hawks (17-20) after they advanced to the Eastern Conference finals last season. They find themselves in 12th place in the conference and outside the picture for the play-in tournament.

Clint Capela said Wednesday morning that he felt like the team needed to play with more heart, a message he shared with teammates inside the locker room after the loss to the Blazers. There’s still plenty of time to move in the right direction, and panic hasn’t set in yet. The motto of last season’s team was “Believe.” Huerter thinks that word still applies, but he knows they need to show it on the floor instead of just talking about it.

“I think the expectations going into this year and wanting to live up to them and feeling like we could and trying to find a way to get there, we, in a lot of ways, have now found ourselves in a similar situation to last year,” Huerter said. “That’s definitely frustrating. Some of it is out of our control, and some of it is us doing it to ourselves.

“I think we’re a team that is still very capable. We’re trying to mix in guys who were out last year. We have a lot of our core guys and main group who helped us win a lot of big games last year. I think we’re a team that can be even better than we were last year. I think we need to get to that point. We’re very capable, and I think this team has a lot of belief because of how dominant we were last year, even against teams that were considered the best teams in the league. We have a team that is built of mostly the same guys from last season. Nobody thinks we’ve played well up to this point. It would be different if we were playing well and we just weren’t winning games. John (Collins) said a couple of weeks ago, it’s how we’re losing. We’re not getting beat. We’re giving away games. It’s stuff that is changeable. Everybody here knows we can change this. I still think there’s a lot of belief.”

Inside Kevin Huerter’s ‘toughest moment’ in his NBA career and the needed performance that followed – The Athletic

[JayBirdHawk]

So....uummmm....what the heck happened here. I know he hasn't been effective but this? Very surprising. Can someone explain this?