We won’t see a 90s Knicks/80s Pistons style of defensive play again anytime soon since the whole roster would have three fouls halfway through the first quarter should anyone even attempt that style again.

I wish the league would find some middle ground — maybe by actually calling the carrying violations for what they are — in order to take some of the advantages away from the PG position.

As for our defense…I’m with Bill Bridges in that it’d be nice if we could mix it up some, but I doubt that we’ll actually try it. Reason being is that I think the coaches see us as a non-instinctive defensive team. And since that’s the case, I think the staff has instituted an *aggressive/dictating to the offense* style defense that is also very simple for the players to execute on a possesion to possesion basis. I liken it to the defensive version of “paint by numbers”. When you paint by numbers, you may not get a masterpiece, but you will get something that could concievably hang on your wall and call art. So in that regard, our defense may never be the phalynx of the Celtics, but it’s not designed to be *that*. It’s designed to put our players in position to be successful and give them defined assignments that they can rely on for every possesion.

As for the debate about Farmar and Fisher, and the defense of our wing players…we must do better. In the early part of our season we saw Radman execute the role of what our wings are supposed to do superbly. The problem is that now, our guys are not doing what they’re supposed to be doing. When executed properly, we must shade the ball handler to contain them and force them to postions on the court where the help is established and where we can eventually trap the ball handler. Right now all of our wing defenders (Kobe included) are gambling a little too much when defending the ball, and rather than shade the ball handler are trying (unsuccessfuly) to stay in front of him. It’s not working. Farmar and Fisher (and Kobe and even Ariza at times) are getting beat off the dribble completely and leaving our rotating big to play a small player one on one. Guess what?…that doesn’t work. First of all our bigs are not going to effectively defend ball handling wings 10 ft. away from the basket, nor are they going to deter shots at the rim effectively when they are foul conscious and the ball handler can attack full speed.

So, while I think we could switch it up, I also think that we’re still in the top 5 of defensive efficiency. Now you could say that we’re only in the top 5 because of our strong execution in the first couple weeks of the season. To that, I say: Then start executing the plan like you did in the first part of the season. Is it that simple….no, but we can do better, so lets get to it.

Tyronn Lue? Huh? He was overrated. He had what, a quarter’s worth of good defense against AI, and then people thought he was good. Some fool of a GM then paid him too much. Why stop there?

I’m gonna puke now.

And this goes back to an oft-made point — NOBODY can stop Nash/CP3/Rondo by themselves. With the no-touch rules on the perimeter now, you need team defense to make that work. There is no player who is a magic bullet.

And, count me in the group that would hope the Celtics would take on Marbury. He would chaff having to play behind Rondo. It would all come apart in the playoffs.

My point was that we are going to have our hands full with just Rondo, if they add Marbury, then we are really in trouble because Farmar can’t guard a light post.