Quote:
Originally Posted by dirno2000
The reason given for his benching last night was that we wanted to match up differently with the Spurs. If Haywood can't play in a zone that's not a match up issue it's a personnel issue and he shouldn't be our back up center. I don't think that's the case though. I didn't think he struggled playing zone last year and don't think he has this year when his head's been in the game. He's long enough and smart enough to be a good help side defender, which is basically what the zone asks him to do. I also have a hard time believing that a player as raw as Ajinca has a better understanding of our zone concepts.
This was supposed to be an offensive move but, like I said, he's going to to get the respect of the defense just by being out there and on most nights he's not going to get enough shots to make teams pay for ignoring him anyway. Maybe later in the year when he starts showing up on scouting reports but not at this point.
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Going off of your point and gmc's point. What I meant to say in my original post is Wood is capable in both scenarios, man or zone, but he's better served as a man defender, manning up on Duncan and won't give you much of anything on offense. If that's the case, I would say let's see what we can do in a zone D and try to take what the Spurs D is giving with perimeter shots - that would mean a big is necessary who can hit an outside jumper. They might have sacrificed defense for offense but they held the Spurs below their season average in scoring...again.
So the trade-off might have actually worked if something shots go in. It's not just Ajinca, it's 2 free throws here and there and the obvious hole from Terry.
Sure, they could have made a different adjustment with the bigs. That would make sense for the suggestion of Cardinal and Marion as your bigs...but they went with Ajinca. They believed in Ajinca and still do, the shots just didn't go down.