Podcast: Guys Who Should Play More
In this edition, Rob and I spend about twice as long as we thought we would talking about one topic: guys around the league who should play more. Both of us tend to focus on the same type of player - the promising young player stuck behind a below average veteran on a team going nowhere. But Rob especially has some wild cards to discuss. There's a little audio glitch about 25 minutes in but I think we stitched it together. Pod and downloadable file after the jump.
| ppp-woh_podcast_7_1-22-14.mp3 |
Based on listener suggestion, henceforth it will be known as the Make or Miss Podcast after my favorite pet NBA theory.
For those who can't get enough of me, I'll be doing a couple of game previews a week at RaptorsWatch, though my effort today looks a bit silly considering the time I spent on Dirk and he got the old DNP-old. I also have a piece on DeAndre Jordan's defensive improvement over the course of the season going up later in the week on ClipperBlog. When that goes up, I'll post something about the latest batch of Isolated Rim Protection numbers - I decided to runs stats for the whole league just to see what's what.
Mentioned on the podcast, and wanted to touch on it again, but Dean has a really nice look at Joel Embiid's potential as a defensive prospect given that we all know how talented a player he is offensively.
I don't completely agree with Dean in that I still think his defensive feel is well behind his offense. A quick example of what I'm talking about. This is one of Dean's examples of good defensive play by Embiid:
I don't completely agree with Dean in that I still think his defensive feel is well behind his offense. A quick example of what I'm talking about. This is one of Dean's examples of good defensive play by Embiid:
That's a pretty nice job to slide over and pick up after Andrew Wiggins gives up the blow-by. But there are signs for concern even in this play:
This wouldn't be anything to worry about if it was an isolated play, but in watching Embiid, he seems consistently to be too low on the floor and a little late in moving to contest. He's either not anticipating the dribble-drive or his defensive stance is a little too high to allow for quick side-to-side movement. Now, all of this is fixable with time and coaching, but fans of whatever team is drafting him will be disappointed if they are expecting a Hibbert-level defensive beast from day one.
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