Well, Wemby may not be a bust I hear.

I heard the same thing said about RJ Barrett today too.

to understand paul’s defense you have to think of him like a boxer. he had incredibly quick, strong, but most importantly accurate hands. this is no small thing.

I’ll pay for the speed bag. 🙂

I can’t see why Brunson can’t become a better defender. He should watch CP3 game film from when he was young and see how he dealt with being undersized and a not one of those super quick athletes.

when he watches what he will see is that cp3 had an elite strength that is alas a roughly permanent weakness for jalen. to understand paul’s defense you have to think of him like a boxer. he had incredibly quick, strong, but most importantly accurate hands. this is no small thing.

when strongish players would try to blow by cp3 using a combination of speed and power, you’d see people talk about cp3’s footwork, his strength and his iq/motor. these are things. but the biggest thing was that he had two weapons that could lock onto ball at full speed quickly and precisely. this changes everything when you’re guarding the live dribble. it makes all the difference. without that threat, drivers can take risks, they can make mistakes and still win, they can make you small again.

unfortunately jalen has far slower hands and his swipes whiff rate is high. chris paul was sugar ray leonard, kyle lowry was nowhere near but maybe maidana and jalen is logan paul. one of the reasons he resorts to drawing charges like lowry is probably bc he gets that even though he has the brains and the motor, he is still going to be a target bc he is not enough of a threat. and no amount of watching chris paul is going to get him there.

pertinently this is also one of rj’s defensive weaknesses. defense of course is complicated and not about one thing. we once had a star forward with golden glove defensive jab talent, but he often used that as an excuse to waylay the rest of his body. it’s not usually one thing. but in this comparison it mostly is.

EB, if you like Matt Berry and haven’t seen ‘Toast of London’ or its sequel, ‘Toast of Tinseltown’, I demand you drop what you’re doing and go check it out now.

I’ll definitely check it out, thanks for the rec. Wish I hadn’t dropped my laptop on the way to watch it tho… 🙂

Jon Abbey, is that you? I guess you survived the bleach drinking incident? Did it cure your Covid?

also; how many games into the season will it take before we realize a certain player is pretty below average and has a low bb iq, before he strings together a series of games that makes us reconsider, then strings together another series of games that makes us reconsider our reconsidering? I mean history kind of repeats on this.