When that Lamar Hurd Chauncey interview dropped, I thought it was a hint that he was gunna stay for the last year of his contract but I never expected he was gunna be extended
Part of what annoys the shit outa me about the Conductor are his comments about him team meeting telling players that it didn’t matter about anything else, if they didn’t play defense they would play. Now, on the surface, I love that. However, the only one he followed through with that threat was Sharpe. Simons continued to be a shitty defender, and his minutes increased.
You can't bench a player that is shitty at defense no matter how hard they try when you need offense.
Eyeballs. Pretty much everyone has acknowledged this and this is coming from an Ant hater. You're saying there was no difference between this season and last defensively?
He’s basically been given shit rosters and said “here let’s suck” Popovich would most likely been just as bad. But that’s the job when you’re playing for lottery balls.
Hot Take: Billups could've coached last year's Celtics to the championship. He would've led this year's Thunder to best record also.
first off...no, I disagree, "pretty much everyone" has not acknowledged it. I think a lot of people have judged Ant's defense this season as being as poor as it's been in previous seasons. That's a big reason why Chauncey benching Sharpe for bad defense brought so much criticism * Simons began starting in 2021-22. That season he was dead last on the team in defensive rating at 4.1 points worse than the team's defensive rating. He was also last among Blazer rotation players in DBPM * in 2022-23, Simons was dead last in def rating among rotation players with a mark 4.2 points worse than the team. And he was last among rotation players in DBPM * in 2023-24, Simons was dead last among rotation players with a def rating 3.5 points worse than the team. And also dead last in DBPM * this season, Simons was again dead last among rotation players in def rating with a mark 4.3 worse than the team. In other words, relative to the team's def rating, this season was the worst defensive performance of his starting career. And again, his DBPM was worst on the team now granted, defensive metrics can be noisy. They can skew one way or the other depending on rotations. That's not so much the case with starters though. But when you have a 4 season, 235 game sample consistently showing the same thing, over and over, it's pretty persuasive. that's why I asked how anybody could tell that Simons was trying harder on defense. Certainly can't tell by results.
@wizenheimer what part of him trying harder on defense but not actually being measurabley better do you not understand?
