And Gobert can’t do it if his man can shoot a three and he struggles to reliably punish the mismatch. So we’d be in that hole anyway. We’ve seen it. I’ll take the chance that doing something is better than not.
I don’t think the problem is the guy hitting the three inasmuch as Quin won’t let him commit to guarding him, and the subsequent challenge of poor perimeter defenders left without Rudy there when mentally their whole strategy is to funnel to him.
Here’s the way I see the problem with small ball:
1. Teams going small puts Rudy in an impossible position.
2. That impossible position exists only because our perimeter defense can’t do an average job.
3. Rudy can’t punish them on offense (and/or Quin hasn’t found any way to punish this [I’m in the latter camp, FYI]), so a team doesn’t sacrifice much to run 5-out.
Countering by going small does not address any of the issues above. If it does improve things, it’s only because the 5 is allowed to stick to the perimeter guy and/or the other guys are having to step up, knowing Rudy’s not there to back them up. In any case, small ball is either worse or better defensively. If it’s worse, it highlights the fact that Rudy isn’t the problem. If it’s better, it’s because of aforementioned defensive adjustment, indicting Quin’s defensive strategy with Rudy on the floor as the problem, and not Rudy. Change that defensive scheme and Rudy at the 5 defensively is better than any small ball 5 option.
Then there’s the counter that “you play small ball for offense and not defense” and we neglect the fact that the reason we lost that series was the defensive scheme above, and not offense.