John Wall mentions Jose and Kyle

[MACK11]

I think he's saying that even though the media doesn't acknowledge all the PGs in the league, regardless of who you are playing on a particular night its going to be a tough matchup

[octothorp]

In some ways I think PF might be the toughest position to guard right now. Not because of the depth at the position, (it's certainly far from the deepest in the league right now, I'd put it right in the middle with PG and SF being deepest, C and SG thinnest), but because of the way the position is used. Starting with the stretch 4: at this point just about every team in the league has one guy who fits into the stretch big category, and even traditional PFs are adding some perimeter shooting to their offensive game. Yet defensive skillsets aren't changing nearly as quickly. Are there any PFs in the league who you can look at and say, "yeah, he's a great perimeter defender." Maybe, but only a couple, and only in relativity: "that guy doesn't look totally lost when he needs to defend on the perimeter" is about as much a compliment as you could make. When a PF gets pulled out to the perimeter and then embarrassed, you just shrug it off because it happens so often these days. It's just so far from the defensive skillsets that these guys have been developing through their careers. I don't think most PFs in the league would be particularly good at guarding themselves. Plus they need to contend with playing small ball against a particularly good generation of SFs. The entire smallball strategy is about exploiting PFs. Pick-and-rolling with a PF is largely about exploiting the opposing PF too.

PGs are guarding essentially the same skillsets and same styles of players that they've guarded since highschool, albeit at a much higher level. Some guys are pass-first, some guys are pure scorers, most are somewhere inbetween, but there are no skillsets or strategies forcing anyone to radically adapt their game. Offensive skills and defensive skills are more or less evenly matched. Granted, what Wall's saying here is true, at PG you never get a night off. For PFs, they will get a night off every now and then, thanks to the lack of depth at the position.

[The Great One]

Wall mentioned Jose because Jose schooled him in his rookie year!!

[Blacklash2k4]

Wall secretly wants to be a Raptors hehe

[psrs1]

I seems he is saying that no matter who you are guarding, you need to maintain mental focus because all the other PG's in the league are capable of going off on you. You can't afford take a night off, in terms of respecting what the opposing pppg is capable of.

Bang on.

[lilmamba_]

major props to Wall

[BallaBalla]

In some ways I think PF might be the toughest position to guard right now. Not because of the depth at the position, (it's certainly far from the deepest in the league right now, I'd put it right in the middle with PG and SF being deepest, C and SG thinnest), but because of the way the position is used. Starting with the stretch 4: at this point just about every team in the league has one guy who fits into the stretch big category, and even traditional PFs are adding some perimeter shooting to their offensive game. Yet defensive skillsets aren't changing nearly as quickly. Are there any PFs in the league who you can look at and say, "yeah, he's a great perimeter defender." Maybe, but only a couple, and only in relativity: "that guy doesn't look totally lost when he needs to defend on the perimeter" is about as much a compliment as you could make. When a PF gets pulled out to the perimeter and then embarrassed, you just shrug it off because it happens so often these days. It's just so far from the defensive skillsets that these guys have been developing through their careers. I don't think most PFs in the league would be particularly good at guarding themselves. Plus they need to contend with playing small ball against a particularly good generation of SFs. The entire smallball strategy is about exploiting PFs. Pick-and-rolling with a PF is largely about exploiting the opposing PF too.

PGs are guarding essentially the same skillsets and same styles of players that they've guarded since highschool, albeit at a much higher level. Some guys are pass-first, some guys are pure scorers, most are somewhere inbetween, but there are no skillsets or strategies forcing anyone to radically adapt their game. Offensive skills and defensive skills are more or less evenly matched. Granted, what Wall's saying here is true, at PG you never get a night off. For PFs, they will get a night off every now and then, thanks to the lack of depth at the position.

I think the point though is that it's a pick and roll oriented league now because this is the most effective way for the ball handler, namely the PG, to break down the defense. In other words, the effectiveness of a team in the pick and roll relies almost completely on the ball handler and not on the roller.

At the same time, although there are a lot more PF's that can shoot, not a lot of them can drive and create plays. The ones that can shoot, can barely post up, and vice versa. How many PF's are there that can pick and pop, and when they catch it, go to the basket and make a play? Probably not more than 5 (if you want to count bargs as one of them). So all we're really talking about is having your defensive PF come out a little farther from the basket and guarding a jump shot.

In the end, that's really what the league is about today: can the big guys on your team close out on a 3 and then get back into help positions if the ball is rotated, or how much are you sacrificing interior D in order to stop the 3-ball.

My point is, i don't think that what you are saying is specific to PF's, you're more describing the evolution of the league in general, and how coaches have had to adjust their strategies to having guys make sure that they can gaurd more than one position.