Josh Green’s defense leaves a lot to be desired. Why is he giving up a wide open lane to Evan Fournier of all people? He does this multiple times a game. Against better teams, the straight line drives he gives up routinely get punished. His closeouts and perimeter defense need to be a lot better.

16 comments

1. Why are you singling out Josh though? A lot of our guys have become traffic cones on defense lately that’s why we’ve been ranked last in defense since the break.

2. That’s our defensive scheme. We open up the lane to keep them off the 3pt line and run them into help defense. It doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked even with better big men. It sure AF ain’t working with Maxi playing out of position at the 5. However this is what our players are told to do. 

   This is a coaching issue, not a player issue.

3. Yeah pro tip, if you see someone do something over and over again then it’s probably a part of the scheme.

   Kidd I guess is okay with giving this up for some reason

4. I fully support this thread

5. I’ve seen a lot of our players defend this way and it looks intentional. I would guess it’s part of the scheme and the thinking is to force the ball handler into help defense.

6. You can fault coaching or player development sure but we don’t have a floor general defensive minded junkyard dog type on the roster. A player like that fixes these issues in real time every unit should have a guy fully focused on defensive scheme and calling the shots.

7. “Josh can’t navigate screens” has become the mantra-of-the-month for the Green-hating armchair coaches on this sub.

   Here’s the deal: If Josh were screwing up possession after possession and game after game, the coaching staff would make it a priority to work with him and change his screen navigation technique, failing which they would drastically limit his floor time. The fact that this hasn’t happened, that they continue to play him despite his “bad D,” strongly suggests that Josh is doing precisely what the coaching staff has told him to do.

   Until I see evidence to the contrary, I’ll second other posters on this thread : It’s the scheme, baby.

8. Fournier is primarily a 3 point shooter

9. This is Kidds defensive scheme. This happens every game for a reason and not just with Josh

10. lol, this is a successful possession. Keep a three point shooter off the line and make him shoot a shitty floater into help D. This sub sometimes… Defense isn’t just one on one lock up your guy 100% of the time.

11. Josh green sucks lol idk why this sub has a this fascination over him

12. He needs to close out the inside lane and force them to take the outside so he has better help. But he never does it.

13. Just a thought, but Hardaway moves into the paint and I think Kleber is supposed to be on the opposite block, therefore cutting off the lane to the paint. Seems like a scheme Kidd drew up and either was poorly designed or the guys didn’t do it right

14. Yeah he is overrated on that end.

15. It’s always hard to know who made a mistake on defense, unless you know the schemes. Unless it’s someone just not trying or losing focus (like Luka sometimes does), it’s difficult to know who made the mistake.

    We can’t really know if Josh was told to do this or if he just made a mistake. Same with overhelping all the time. Same with leaving some players open on a 3pt line…..

16. He’s pretty clearly sticking to one side of the shooter to encourage him to drive a certain way. I mean, you could do a full breakdown of his defensive possessions to look at this stuff more in depth but on this play it’s pretty clear that the objective is to get the ball handler to act the way he did. Josh is sticking to his side to limit his options and trusting the C to step in and contest the shot, Exum seems to be making sure that THJ contests 13 the moment the drive starts as he slides down to 23, leaving the guy furthest from the ball the most open.