Slap the Floor
Legend
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2014
- Messages
- 10,289
Yep. People constantly overrate Patrick Beverly-style on-ball defense. Personally, I think Cam Reddish and Jayson Tatum were both more fundamentally sound defenders while at Duke. But I doubt you could find many people in the fanbase or the media who would agree.Being an active defender that gets a good deal of steals is the only thing that matters when 99% of people evaluate defensive value.
In Duke's defensive system it's hard to fairly compare Reddish and Tatum to what Tre Jones is doing. Jones is guarding the ball 94 feet and is spearheading the defensive attack. In the half-court he's being asked to dog the ball without much help defense behind him. Reddish was a great defender at Duke, but he's not carrying the same responsibilities as Jones is, and he's not being asked to do as much.
Jones is a fantastic defender and is one of the best Duke has had at PG in a long time. I think the defensive mishaps which are primarily a result of scheme cloud people's judgement on him. There's other elements to it too, such as we are getting later in the season he's probably wearing down because of the incredible workload required of him on both ends of the floor. The scheme leaves him out to dry a lot of the time. Guarding the basketball 1v1 is the absolute hardest thing to do defensively and he's asked to pressure it the full length of the floor for essentially 40 minutes every game, and he does so with a lack of help on the back-side.
The scheme helps him generate more steals, but it's also the root of people's frustrations in his defense because when you visualize him being blown by, I don't think in that moment it registers for most people how difficult his job is defensively. For the most part he does a great job pressuring the ball and doing what is asked of him with in Duke's defensive system.
If you put him in UVA's defensive system, he would be an absolute monster defensively and never/rarely get blown by because the scheme is different.