Matt Moor at NBA Fanhouse: "Kevin Durant's Star Continues to Shine Light on Blazers"

[KingSpeed]

Re: Matt Moor at NBA Fanhouse: "Kevin Durant's Star Continues to Shine Light on Blaze

When you constantly have to foul like Oden does, then there's something wrong with your defensive skills. You can't talk about how GREAT Oden is when he's on the court when obviously he's not a good enough player to know how to defend without fouling. And those fouls happen ON THE COURT.

 

[espn_hall_of_famer]

Re: Matt Moor at NBA Fanhouse: "Kevin Durant's Star Continues to Shine Light on Blaze

When you constantly have to foul like Oden does, then there's something wrong with your defensive skills. You can't talk about how GREAT Oden is when he's on the court when obviously he's not a good enough player to know how to defend without fouling. And those fouls happen ON THE COURT.

The key part you got right is "there's something wrong with your defense". I'd have to find a site that tracks it, but very few of Oden's fouls came against opposing centers. The primary issue was lack of perimeter defenders when Oden was on the floor in 09/10.

Now that said, he did struggle somewhat with fouls in 08/09 where he was having a hard time learning to keep his hands straight up instead of reaching into the shooter. But that was also because he wasn't 100% on his knee and was compensating somewhat and just needed to work that out.

We didn't see that much at all in 09/10 and he really seemed to improve on his one-on-one matchups. But Batum was injured and we slid Roy over to SF and he was continually overmatched. We had Rudy out there at SG and he can't defend a stump. Blake was starting a lot of those games at PG early last year and he couldn't defend much better either. So perimeter players were continually getting into the paint and Oden was having to bail out a lay in and foul them.

We'll see how this season looks now that he's 100% and now that we have Batum back (not to mention Matthews sitting in the wings behind Roy and Camby behind Aldridge, should add to the level of guys Oden has to bail out while he's on the floor in 10/11).

 

[Denny Crane]

Re: Matt Moor at NBA Fanhouse: "Kevin Durant's Star Continues to Shine Light on Blaze

Finally, I have no idea whether HCP's number (90%) is based on actual video evaluation, but he drew double-teams a lot when he had the ball. Significantly more than 50% of the time, IMO.

There's a 40% chance you're both wrong.