In July 2018, as the season ended, Jabari Parker, then a Milwaukee Bucks player, launched into an American talk show: "They do not pay players to play defense. " A mentality that speaks volumes about the relationship that some players have with the defense in the NBA, while the two best teams, at this stage of the season, Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers, clash, on Thursday night December 19 to Friday, December 20. And words that make jump the players just paid for it. Like, among others, the French pivot Rudy Gobert, twice the best defender of the year. Questioned in March by The world, he was sorry:
"Someone who wants to win never says that. He says, "I am paid to give the best I have." And of course, if I am paid to shoot for three points, it is because it is my strength. But if I think I'm just going to shoot at three points and not try to defend, in general it's already badly crossed. I don’t think it was the best, smartest statement, but there are players like that. "
This summer again, during a training match, the back of the Phoenix Suns Devin Booker stops playing because the opposing team takes a two on him. Arguing that he wanted to work on his attacking game, an excellent initiative in itself, the 23-year-old was exasperated and put the ball down. The defensive aspect is neglected and inevitably resurfaces thereafter. Thus, on October 30, the Washington Wizards, club of the American capital, received the Texans of the Houston Rockets. The latter won 159-158, the largest total number of points scored without overtime in NBA history.
A rare offensive performance but which, in the regular season, tends to multiply. This period from October to April is only the appetizer before the start of the playoffs. For some teams, the stakes are lower during this first part of the championship which is sometimes quite long and defense is not always the order of the evening.
Evolution of play style
"Today, nobody is defending anymore! It’s third on the list, after shooter and scorer. That's all that matters now ", exclaimed former player Shawn Marion a year ago. Many old glories are sorry for the lack of defensive involvement of current players. A slightly caricatured way of seeing the thing and putting everyone in the same basket but a bit of truth all the same. "Overall, it is more a game of recovery, 3-point risk taking and rebounding than defensive control and defensive objective", explains Jacques Monclar, NBA consultant on BeIN Sports. More than a drop in the will to defend, it is rather a new style of play that has won the league over the years. Some have understood this, to the point of acting as if there was only one side on a field.
In an evolving sport, players, coaches and owners are constantly trying to find solutions to improve themselves. Whether in attack or in defense. At the moment, attacks take precedence over defenses, as defenses took precedence over attacks in the 1990s. Jacques Monclar provides:
"There is still a lot more strategy than what we are trying to caricature. This is another thing. There is a lot of talent and it is difficult to control in defense as the players can appropriate the game. (…) Nowadays, they want to win differently so they play on offense, on intention. "
This is why the Golden State Warriors and their trainer, Steve Kerr, helped popularize a new style that has spread in the modern NBA: "Small ball ". This strategy consists in using mobile players, and therefore most often smaller ones, to favor the fast attack game and to make differences against slow players (often pivots). And in defense, no longer have these slow players who are targeted by the enemy's attack.
The defenses are trying to adapt
A change, an evolution in the practice of basketball across the Atlantic which raises another aspect. Defense is less effective because it is more complicated to set up. "It's much more difficult to defend these days, said Warriors coach Steve Kerr. Everyone has shooters at all positions. There is much more ground to cover. Defense is tougher today than it has ever been in the history of the sport. " A general finding that resonates with current players and in particular P. J. Tucker, Houston's defensive pillar and drafted in the NBA in 2006. “There are so many different pieces to fit into an even bigger puzzle. It’s even hard to talk about it because there’s a lot of it. ”, he said to The Ringer.
Some franchises are trying to find solutions, with players able to defend several positions. "There are starting to be variations, observes Jacques Monclar. There is work being done with teams like Toronto, Miami, Boston who are trying to put in place a defensive game plan. " We must also highlight the hellish pace in the NBA. It's hard to show the same defensive focus in 82 games when playing every other night. And inevitably, from time to time, the counters go crazy.
Maxime Pimont
