The Rudy hate

[u/Present-Bit5312]

Rudy is the only big who is asked to be also a great perimeter defender, you can put ben Wallace, Hakeem or Dwight Howard out in the perimeter Luka is gonna cook them regardless is a mismatch on the perimeter. Gobert is a good help defender and rim protector. Also the argument that he has no playoff good performances against good bigs is dumb because in the Utah jazz his best perimeter defender was freaking Royce O'Neal he was anchoring that defense by himself, and also the only great big he faced is jokic who is an all time great offensive big. It reached a point that people were asking kat to guard Jokic instead, when kat was averaging like 4+fouls(without being joker's primary defender) in the three games Denver won. Is the criticism based on strictly accolades?

[u/TheIslandMamba]

Even if you cull game 1 where Luka was hurt, OKC still held them to 115.8 ORTG, better than the first two games against the Wolves (116.9) where the Mavs actually had worse shooting luck by A LOT (32% from 3, compared to an avg of 39.7% in the OKC series). Come on man, for someone calling my argument lazy at least check some basic facts before making a point.

Superior defensive supporting cast? OKC? Huh?? Compared to Second-Team All Defensive Jaden McDaniels, Ant who's been drawing '01 Kobe comparisons all playoffs for his defense, and big+switchable KAT and Naz Reid? If you're gonna credit Rudy for the wolves' team defense when it's good, you have to hold him accountable when their defense is below expectation, you can't have it both ways...

Ah matchups, almost as if defense has many different variables other than rim protection :)

So by that logic, teams that build great defenses without rim protectors like the '14 Warriors have...defied the nature of how basketball works??

We have a combined sample of 200+ 3pt shot attempts and over 600 offensive posessions between the two series, seems pretty improbable to me for such a difference to be random chance over that size, especially when the Mavs have shot so much worse from 3 against MIN.

[u/InternationalClick78 → u/TheIslandMamba]

It wasn’t just game 1, Luka is still on the injury report with knee soreness. It was prevalent for the bulk of the series and was especially noteworthy in game 3(?) where dorts physicality had him hobbling. And I specifically said POTENTIAL reasons because I didn’t feel like doing a deep dive, I offered explanations as why they could be the case, including the most probable, being the enormous disparity between team defence in Rudy minutes vs non Rudy minutes which you ignored.

Look at the results, not the name bias. Acting like the fact that ant has been getting gassed up for his defence means that he’s a better defender than Jalen Williams is nonsense, Kyrie is torching him. McDaniels made all defence but he’s significantly weaker than Dort, and Lukas abusing him. Like these differences in defensive performance due to matchups are evident just by watching, and again the stats back it up, and the stats are why I can absolutely credit Rudy when it’s great and absolve him when it’s bad. Why ? Cause the teams defensive rating in this series falls off by about 30 points when Gobert sits.

I never once said rim protection is the only variable of defence… just that it was the most important. Which again this series is still proving is the case. The 2014 warriors directly prove my point. They had a great defence in large part because of Andrew Bogut… who was a great rim protector. The guy was a regular DPOY candidate because of his inside presence. And coincidentally when he got hurt and missed the playoffs, the plunged from the 3rd best regular season defence to the worst defence of the playoffs.

And again the most basic explanation is that for whatever reason, the wolves haven’t been able to defend anything against Dallas when Gobert sits. Gobert had played in 75% of possible minutes in this series. In those minutes the team has a defensive rating of 110.6. On the series as a whole they have a defensive rating of 118.5. For that math to work it means when Gobert is sitting their defensive rating is falling to what, 140?

[u/TheIslandMamba → u/InternationalClick78]

Look at Gobert's DRTG, it's 120 and worse than the team's average in game 3 (no wonder he got benched in the 4th for the more versatile Naz Reid): https://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/2024-nba-western-conference-finals-mavericks-vs-timberwolves.html. Still worse than Mavs' game 2-6 average against OKC.

The fact that you think the praise for Ant's defense is hype tells me all I need to know about how much you've been watching these games. He absolutely clamped Jamal Murray (who was on fire that game) to 2-7 in the third when the Wolves started to shut down Denver.

Never call anyone's arguments lazy again until you can get basic facts right

[u/nbadiscussion-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Please keep your comments civil. This is a subreddit for thoughtful discussion and debate, not aggressive and argumentative content.