Coatesvillain

How much was Jim O'Brien's scheme at fault for the team's defensive ineptitude, and just how much of it was because of the team's lack of capable defenders?

It's a question that can't be answered until at least the end of the preseason, but it's one you have to ponder as we look to Mo Cheeks first season as coach. If there's one thing we do know with the departure of O'Brien is the fact that rebounding will improve as the center won't always be fronting the post.

So what do you think? Will the Sixers defense improve? If so, how much better do you think the defense will be?

__________________
Who cares about a championship drought?:
My teams will never win a championship anyway, so why don't you discuss everything else at my forum? Good idea, right? Yeah, I thought so. It's called.. Booing Santa Claus. See you there.

BEEZ

I think it will improve tremendously with the hope that Dbert becomes a defensive force in the mold of Theo Ratliff from about 3 years ago. Also I think he will stress perimeter defense which last year outside of Iggy was atrocious. Put it this way with the talent the Sixers have it cant be any worse

__________________
I have no clue!

Dizmatic

I think having Sammy play more significant minutes this year will help the defense to improve. Iggy in his second year should be a better player. Webber is a liability but hopefully Dalembert presence will make up for some of it. The perimeter defense needs to improve. I think whether Korver starts on come off the bench will determine how much improved we can be on the defensive end.

jpk

O'Brien's defensive plan was one of the worst I've seen. It was sad how he'd blame the players and not his coaching whenever they had a horrible defensive outing. I can't remember how many times I heard "It's not the system that is giving up all these points, it's because the players are too slow!"

Give me a break. You have to design a system to work with the talent you have. And for God's sake, you have to defend man-to-man when someone on the other team has a hot hand.

Sixerfanforlife

Let's put it this way, our team was 2nd overall in steals.

But 16th in blocked shots.

Of course this could be due to the fact that Dalembert was 'fronting' the post almost 75 percent of the game.

But I blame it on the sheer lack of size, and I also blame it on the poor defensive plan of O'brien.

And Jpk, every team has a 'hot' hand. Just not one with a famous name, it just so happened that the player was only named 'Donyell Marshall' and not 'Ray Allen' that made a man with a poor brain capcity like O'brien's heavily confused.

With Maurice cheeks, we have a coach that understands that every team has a hot hand, and will assign the best defender available to cover that man.

Also with Maurice cheeks, the X's and O's will be signifcantly improved.

Is Maurice cheeks the best coach in X's and O's? No but he did learn from the best and that's a legitmate reason to give him a shot.

Is he an improvement from O'brien? Greatly which is why one must anticpate this year.

For this is the squad we shall have 2 years down the line.

This is the opening act, which is bound to be good.

If anything those on BasketballBoards.Net should only ask one question.

And that question is, 'will the ending be more significant then the beginning'.

And I will answer.

Only time can truly tell.

Bruno

Before we get o´brien one of the strong things o´brein had was not the D?So he arrived to the town with that and leave the town without that.
As offensive we had and have some power players but in the D we dont have that speacialist, guilty the coach but i thing guilty Billiy King as for me this team really need to have one pure D player for motivate the others and i dont see we are making any trades.

__________________

Sixerfanforlife

Iguodala?

*Name calling won't be tolerated, so don't anticipate getting away with it. --PhillyPhanatic

Oh I know how about Kyle Korver, whom in which had a nice defense if you weren't watching the 76ers' this year, I can udnerstand your in Portugal.

We're not making any trades? No **** sherlock Billy King doesn't know the difference between doing something and making a rumor.

O'brien helped us offensively?

Sure if you mean forcing Chris Webber among others to take more jump shots which mircalously fell down.

SixersFan

It'll improve. Just by not fronting the post with Sammy and CWebb having to flash out to the baseline should be more than enough to cut down on the open jumpers.

Plus I think Sammy will be able to block more shots in a traditional defense like Cheeks will run. He used Ratliff really well in Portland and I expect Sammy to be given much the same attention by Cheeks. I really think that this team is going to improve this year.

Coatesvillain

I think the biggest difference won't even be the front of the post, it's the absence of the obligatory double on the elbow. I mean under O'Brien you'd have Iguodala matched up on Ron Mercer, and then a guy would leave Vince Carter to help on Mercer. It was extremely frustrating.

Also the fact that te scheme won't be the same for every trip down the floor helps a lot, I don't understand what O'Brien thought the benefit of keeping the same defense was. In a league where they do so much film study, it just made the defense swiss cheese with the teams finding the same opening behind the three point line on the weakside.

__________________
Who cares about a championship drought?:
My teams will never win a championship anyway, so why don't you discuss everything else at my forum? Good idea, right? Yeah, I thought so. It's called.. Booing Santa Claus. See you there.

SixersFan

Good point/post.

Sixerfanforlife

An Obivious one I am afraid.

While it is true, that keeping the same game plan over and over won't work, you can make adjustments inbetween to alter the results.

An example of this would be game 4 of this year's past NBA finals.

San Antonio's Gregg Popovich had started Rasho Nestravich over Nazr Mohammed.

And unlike in game 3, where by the time the 1st quarter ended you might as well have turned off the tv, the spurs were leading!

Unfourtante for Gregg is that Brown Limited Duncan's touches the rest of the way and got Rasho in some unfamilar foul trouble that led to the 'rout'.

Our dear Pop still wanted to attack the post, and he never had any doubt an Althetic center was the key to attacking Big Ben wallace and putting him in foul trouble.

But in game 3, Nazr did not do this, perhaps Gregg thought Nazr was tired.

Or he was taken out of the game.

Thus he made adjustments Brown did not expect or at least not in the 1st half.

You can keep the same game plan, as long as you make minor tweaks along the way to perfect it.

That's what O'brien failed to do.