Quincy Pondexter is up to 39.1% from 3

when qpon was a rookie dell used him to steal Vasquez from the grizz, who turned out to be exactly what the team needed at the time

this year dell used rivers to steal qpon from the grizz who turned out to be exactly what the team needed at the time

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He's exactly what we needed at the 3

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He's exactly what we need at the back up 3. He's a little small and allows dribble penetration too easily at times for me to want him as a 35 MPG starter.

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It makes the comment from HP about Aminu even more ridiculous.

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He had his reasons. 1) Matt Moore said every time he's said something complimentary about Aminu Pelican fans would tell him he was trash. 2) Pels fans are obsessed with the short comings of our top 10 offense and completely oblivious to our bottom 5 defense.

The team is certainly improved with Pondexter getting minutes that Salmons and Babbit used to get (with Babbitt now getting more stretch 4 minutes), but as I pointed out above, there are some serious holes in QPon's defensive ability that I'm not sure he can over come. While I hope we get a more balanced player than Aminu, we do need to add someone with better size and defensive ability at SF than Pondexter.

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we do need to add someone with better size and defensive ability at SF than Pondexter.

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Yeah, definitely. Love what Pondexter/Cole bring, but they aren't 30 MPG guys.

There are a few guys we can target this offseason. Jae Crowder (MLE), DeMarre Carrol (MLE?), Wilson Chandler (trade), Batum (trade), possibly Dudley. I'm sure I'm missing some quality guys, but the point is there are options this summer to upgrade. Keep QPon for depth, energy, leadership.

Aminu wasn't that good defensively, and he could never play with Tyreke because you can't play two guard/wing players who can't shoot at the same time.

Dante can dribble a ball and shoot it some, though

thankyou austin rivers

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2) Pels fans are obsessed with the short comings of our top 10 offense and completely oblivious to our bottom 5 defense.

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This can't be reiterated enough. I'm not saying there shouldn't be discussion on the offense, but 90% of this boards personnel discussion revolves around our top 10 offense. Rarely, people will opine a couple of ill-informed comments about the defense.

We aren't gonna get a title contender with our D anywhere close to where it is now.

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Defense has more to do with scheme than talent.

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link?

Not trying to be an a-hole, just really don't know if that is true. Yes, it has a lot to do with scheme, but so does offense. In this era of advanced stats and metrics, I've personally readjusted my view on basketball and now don't see a player as much as just their offensive skill and athleticism plus how much they hustle on defense.

Stuff like having great length on defense is so important, especially in today's game. Having a Paul George or Kawhi Leonard to defend the other team's star wing is every bit as valuable as a stud scorer.

I certainly see why Pelicans fans would give up and just chalk it up to scheme because of the seeming talent we've had at defense(Jrue, Aminu, AD, Asik) with poor results. I definitely think Monty isn't a good schemer. But a lot of it is giving up before putting it together at the same time. Sometimes it simply is the sum of the parts. See Milwaukee predictably having the 2nd best defense. A team with 2013 Jrue, Aminu, 2014 AD, and 2012 Asik all playing healthy at those levels would be a top defensive unit in the league IMO.

Its like we've always had 2 good defenders, 2 bad ones, and a mediocre one playing plus a terrible bench of defenders. AD is only just now getting good at defense. Plus we add Asik. But we lose Aminu and Jrue. When we had Aminu and Jrue playing elite, we were running Ryno and our SG were ATROCIOUS defenders plus AD was only average.

But there is a tendency to throw up your hands and say "its gotta be scheme!" I think a lot more of it is having a lot of bad and average defenders on the court the last couple of years.

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Thats not a linkable assertion haha

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yeh, my point is it was total conjecture. Although it certainly could be linked.

Find the correlation between certain players vs the correlation between certain coaches. If theres a stronger correlation between players(playing under multiple coaches and systems) and good/bad D then their is between coaches(coaching with turnover of players) and good/bad D, it would point to talent rather than scheme. And vice versa.