Originally posted by bdotling:
Originally posted by stanleyduke:
I'd rather have Jah than not, but when he is on the court, the defense clogs the lane which makes it really hard for our guards or Winslow to drive.
Me too! That's not really the point, maybe the tagline of the article is offputting so people don't read the rest of it. We need Okafor, absolutely he's a stud, but to your second part of the sentence, we can find ways to utilize him more efficiently for the team to perform to it's maximum potential.
It's fine as a discussion point, but your argument rests on a lot of flawed premises. For instance, a key assumption to this "better utility" argument is that somehow Okafor would be a better defender if he focused more on defense than offense. Now, maybe that's true on the margins, but I've watched him enough to know that most of his problems defensively relate to lack of awareness, lack of lateral agility, and typical conditioning issues for a freshman 6'11 270 pounder. While Okafor's offensive game is more akin to that of a sr., reality is that he's played defense like most freshman bigs would play defense if you asked them to play 30+ minutes. In fact, if you look around the country, of the bigs ranked around Okafor (Myles Turner, Cliff Alexander, Karl Anthony Towns) --- only he is being asked to play 30+ minutes. And that's even though Turner / Towns clearly have more talent on the defensive end. IMO, the only way to get better play from him on the defensive end is to radically reduce his minutes (like make him a 15 or 20 min. guy), tell him to not worry about fouls, and, even then, I don't think he would be great. I think people are dabbling in a bit of fantasy if they think Okafor's D would be great if we simply spent less time posting him up.
As for the offense, nobody denies that putting 4 shooters on the court and jacking up 3s can be a more efficient way to score if you're getting looks and hot from the perimeter -- as 3s are worth more than 2s. The problem is what happens when you're not hitting 3s, or when you need a higher percentage score? Historically, Duke's problem in the last decade of NCAA tourneys has been that its prolific, high-volume 3 pt. shooting teams have aggregated great offensive statistics all year --- and then go cold for a stretch of an NCAA tourney game and get knocked out. The real value of Okafor is on the nights where the shots are not falling and need easy baskets. See the close of the Va Tech game, for instance, where Okafor repeatedly pretty much scored or got to the line every time he got the ball.
If you go back to the Mercer game, by contrast, Duke actually held a 63-58 lead with a little less than 5 minutes to go. Then what happened? Two turnovers on forced drives into the lane and 3 straight missed 3s. By when we scored again 4 minutes later, we had already fallen behind 69-63 and the game was basically over. If you look at last year's team, statistically, it was arguably better this year's squad. In reality, however, it's not that close -- b/c this year's team is not prone to the type of long scoring droughts / volatility that plagued last year's team. The biggest difference is okafor.
To prove my point, just look at individual contests. Last year, Duke was held below 70 in 10 of 21 ACC contests -- and lost 3 of those games. This year's team? Duke has only been held below 70 in 2 of 15 ACC contests and won both of those below 70 pt. games (@Louisville, @UVA) --- i.e., we haven't lost any games b/c of our offense. In other words, while Duke's aggregate statistics last year were about the same as this year's team, the functional reality is that having a guy like Okafor in there is critical to bringing consistency in the offense.
This post was edited on 2/27 3:35 PM by aah555
