Polling GSoM: Who was the worst defender on the 2008-2009 Golden State Warriors?

On Gortat- Give me a break. For a supposed Top 5 center, a bench player like Gortat should not come in and dominate you in your house, especially when Dwight Howard is sitting out. It comes down to pride. Biedrins is a far superior athelete to Gortat- there’s no excuse. We’ve seen this before with the likes of Josh Boone last season and Andray Blatche this season. These are not unworldly players, yet they’ve dominated the Warriors.

A couple points.

1) You and I evaluate players differently. You see that Gortat is a bench player and figure that a highly paid starter should naturally dominate him. I look at Gortat’s production and figure that he’s a good player, and thus am not particularly bothered if he has success against another good player. We won’t agree on this point, but acknowledge that your perspective is not the only valid way to look at it.

2) I’m not sure what you mean by the fact that Biedrins is a “far superior athlete” to Gortat. Can he run faster? Yes. Is Gortat stronger and bulkier? Yes. Both traits have their advantages at the center position. Nothing about the physical skills of the two players tells me that Biedrins should naturally dominate Gortat ten times out of ten.

3) You claim that Gortat “dominated” Biedrins in Oracle. Gortat started in place of the injured Howard and had a successful game, scoring 16 points on 13 shots, grabbing thirteen rebounds and blocking three shots. Gortat was very good in that game. Biedrins was better. Biedrins scored 23 points on twelve shots, grabbed nine rebounds and blocked two shots, and he had only one foul to Gortat’s five. Gortat, playing against Biedrins, had the worst plus-minus in that game of any Orlando player. Biedrins outplayed Gortat. We didn’t lose that game because BIEDRINS LACKS PRIDE; we lost that game because Jamal and CJ let Jameer Nelson do literally anything he wanted on offense.

Josh Boone? Yeah, he had a big game in November, racking up 17 and 14 against us. Again, Biedrins was better. Biedrins scored six more points on four fewer shots, grabbed eleven rebounds of his own, and behind Biedrins, we won the game. Blatche? I have no excuse for Biedrins in that game; he and every other Warrior was completely horrible all around. But Blatche did a lot of his damage against Turiaf and Wright in that game, and he also did most of his damage from twelve feet and farther. He was not muscling Biedrins inside… he was killing him from distance.

Biedrins had a TERRIBLE season defensively. Is he a terrible defender? I think so. The past 2 seasons he has shown ZERO ability to man up against a legit 4 or 5. He doesn’t give these guys the slightest problem. Do you think for a second opposing teams fear Biedrins or plan around what he can do in the paint?

I don’t think they fear him, no. Biedrins is not a big-impact defender, and was worse than usual this year. But he gets a boatload of rebounds, blocks shots and grabs an impressive number of steals for a big man. Those are all very good things. Do they completely negate his struggles with the screen and roll? Of course not. But his struggles with the screen and roll don’t completely negate them, either.

His poor rotating D on the screen and rolls- a fundamental aspect of NBA basketball isn’t going to cut it.

Totally agree with this. Whether it was health issues, coaching mistakes or sheer apathy, he was far worse defending these than he’d been in previous years. That needs to change.

Biedrins poor defensive positioning isn’t going to cut it for a "franchise cornerstone". I agree the perimeter defense on this team is horrendous (I’ve been saying that for years), but those two aren’t products of his teammates. I’m not impressed by his weakside D and his inability to protect the rim from penetrating guards and wings, but I’d be willing to stomach it if his one-on-on D was at least adequate.

Here we disagree. I think his one-on-one D was adequate this season — no better than adequate, but adequate. That’s based both on the 50+ games I watched this year and the numbers. A number of nondescript big men did have big rebounding games against Biedrins — Josh Boone, Drew Gooden, Andray Blatche, Joakim Noah and others — but, lest we forget, we gave up more total rebounds last year than any team has in several years. And while there’s plenty of blame to go around for that, it strikes me that the guy who doesn’t deserve much blame is the one elite rebounder on the team (though Randolph looks to be joining Biedrins in that camp).

Did opposing centers score a lot on Biedrins? Not really. In Biedrins’ 62 games, he gave up 30 points to an opposing center five times: one game each from Yao, Pau, Duncan, Brad Miller and (oy) David Lee. Most of the time he gave up fewer than 20. In general, centers had roughly average offensive performances against Biedrins. I’d call that pretty much the definition of “adequate” one-on-one defense.

Did certain types of players have bigger success against Biedrins than others? Absolutely, but it’s not the ones you might think. It was the good shooters that Beans struggled against. Andray Blatche had two good games against him, based primarily on shooting jumpers; Okur did fairly well against him, and Bargnani even had a big game against Biedrins. On the other hand, Biedrins did pretty well against muscle guys… Shaq never went off on him, Howard played poorly in their one encounter, and bangers like Noah and Jermaine O’Neal were downright terrible against Biedrins.

Floor spacing is Biedrins’s problem, both in the sense that he’s bad at defending the screen & roll (his fault) and in the sense that his outsized defensive responsibilities require him to stay near the hoop to guard the rim and grab rebounds (not his fault). This is a genuine and big problem, one that Biedrins and the team need to solve if we’re going to get competitive again. But it is not the alpha and omega of defense. There are many other aspects to defending the center position well, and Biedrins rates excellently in most of them.

His defensive rebounding and overall rebounding with the Warriors the past 3 seasons have been excellent if not superior. No one’s saying they aren’t and no one’s understating the importance of rebounding on wins. BUT we’ve seen that before with Troy Murphy (who by the way finished with a far more impressive PT and Rebound total than Biedrins). Just like Murph, I fear a disturbing trend— Big Money → Mo Softness

I think we have dark visions of Troy Murphy in our heads when Biedrins struggles defensively, but I don’t think the downside here is nearly that big. For one thing, Biedrins is a far more active defender than Murphy, as he racks up many more blocks and steals. For another, Biedrins is a more reliably good rebounder than Murphy, whose numbers have gone up and down rather sharply over the years. Finally, Biedrins is the more efficient offensive player, even with Murphy’s new three-point stylings.

It’s true that, like Murphy, his defense isn’t his calling card, and that’s hard to square with most people’s visions of a good big man. But Biedrins is a better player than Murphy, and is more surely an asset than Murphy was.

Again Biedrins not the most horrific defender on a horrific defensive team, but his defensive intensity and IQ this past season was horrible.

I consider grabbing rebounds part of defensive IQ, so there’s no way I could call him “horrible” on that front. I’d use the word “disappointing”. In one of the most unenviable defensive positions in the league — doing all the rebounding and rim-guarding for a tiny, listlessly coached team — Biedrins struggled. I’d give him a C for defense for the year, and he needs to be better than that for us to succeed in the future. But it sucked to be Andris Biedrins on defense this year. Next year, with better health and Randolph (hopefully) beside him, I’d expect better results.