David Lee Carries The Fire

I agree, D. Lee is one of the leaders on this squad, and he always seems to be bringing the energy. Unfortunately, I wish simply energy was enough for good defense, but thats not the case and D. Lee still kinda sucks at playing defense and for a guy that gets a lot of rebounds is surprisingly beat a lot in box outs.

But I love how he plays and how he is not afraid to take shots and bang around inside. I think his energy really shows and the rest of the guys feed off of it when the Warriors are making a run fueled by Lee. I think Ellis could do more in showing his energy, but he’s often in his own head and psyching himself up, which I have no problem with – not every guy is gonna be ra-ra loud and outspoken.

And yeah, I think Nate definitely brings this ‘intangible’ factor that lights up the bench. That really goes a long way in them coming in and playing well when the team needs a pickup I believe, because there’s constantly a positive ‘LETS GET THIS, FELLAS!!’ vibe goin around. You need fiery guys to give the team an identity, and the Warriors have it with Nate and Lee

Seems to me he is playing better defense than in the past – he’ll never be an all world defender (or even close), but it seems like alot of teams with more talented front lines are not putting up monster numbers on him like in the past. One way of looking at it is this: If he can keep other PFs around their average, then he deserves to be considered an average
defender. Looking quickly at the last few games:
Griffin: 21 and 9 (he averages 21 and 11)
Gasol: 17 and 13 (he averages 15 and 10) – they play two centers
Ibaka: 9 and 7 (he averages 8 and 7.5)

Not great, but not god awful either. When you consider that he often has to also defend the other team’s center and gets little to no hope from his SF on help defense – saying Lee is about average as a defender seems accurate.
I am a big Lee fan, but my concern with him, and this contradicts the main point of this post, is that for all his fire he doesn’t demand the ball at the end of the game and this is why for all his good stats he continues to be unable to translate his good numbers to team wins. Hopefully he will grow in this sense. I remember feeling the same way about Dirk early in his career, Lee is no Dirk, but I think he can still improve in this regard.

But he can’t or no one on the Warriors can get in some 1 else’s face. Those players are rare and hard to find.

Lee’s good- he can score some, rebound, pass and he’s a great teammate. Forget defense, the bigger problem is that he cannot carry a team. You look at his stats and they look great. You watch him play and he impresses you with his court awareness. But in the big picture, he picks up scrap rebounds, he doesn’t have a low post game, and he relies on spreading the court to get points. So he’s not someone you dump the ball into when you need a score at the end of the game.

An NBA GM should know better. It’s embarrassing.

He sure has lost a lot of games in his career.

David Lee complains too much. I think he is the softest player on our team.