Is Salmons a good defender?

[charity stripe]

After watching him for about 3 months, I'm still not sure how good he is. He usually stays in front of his man, has good anticipation, and he usually bodies up well. However, he is a bit slow on his feet and can get beat off the dribble. Also, he is not a good defensive rebounder and doesn't box out well.

Would you say that is accurate and how would you rate his overall defense? Average, slightly above average, good, very good, or great?

[dougthonus]

I don't really trust synergy's defensive numbers per se, because they don't count who you are defending and they only log probably 1/3rd or so of the possessions defensively. However, on those numbers, Gordon is statistically a better defender than Salmons by a fair margin (Salmons allows .93 points per possession while Gordon allows .869 points per possession). That gap on the offensive end would be good for about a 50% difference in NBA percentile, but they don't have measurements for defensive stats in percentile, so I'm not sure.

It also doesn't necessarily show who was supposed to be where in the scheme or who's fault a missed responsibility is.

[2ndcitydiehard]

I don't have DT's stats to fall back on but I can honestly say I was unimpressed with Salmons defense. He tried and generally seemed to always be where he was supposed to, so that's a plus. However, his lateral quickness would have me seriously concerned about his ability to guard SG's.... really just one more reason why I think Pax is best of trying to sell high on Salmons this off-season. If BG is gone next year Salmons should be a 6th man, not a starter.

[Dpauley23]

His laternal quickness wasn't good because had hamstring that hampered him

[2ndcitydiehard]

Dpauley23 wrote:

His laternal quickness wasn't good because had hamstring that hampered him

He had a hamstring injury before the groin injury? If that's the case it bring up a whole new set of concerns (aside from how big of an outlier this years stats were compared to the rest of his career) about the health of his legs and if the problems might be cronic.

[SouL EateR]

I think he did a decent job against Pierce considering the injury ,but im still curious to see what Tyrus could have done guarding Pierce with his length although he might have bit on his pump fakes to often..

[clonetrooper264]

I think Salmons is an ok defender. Slightly better than Ben due to his height. However his rebounding sucks...I think I get more rebounds in a game than he does, but I don't think that's fair argument. :P

That groin injury may have gotten to him in the playoffs though, so he may be better than he's shown.

[Rerisen]

I thought he was average overall. But to me he seemed... inconsistent I guess would be a better word. Sometimes slightly above average and sometimes below average. Maybe its an effort thing.

I know one thing, if Ray Allen had nailed multiple key isolation jumpers over Gordon (not off screens) the way Pierce did over Salmons in Game 5, we would never hear the end of how bad he was on d.

[Shakes]

Regardless of whether he's a good defender in a vacuum, given the Bulls biggest defensive weakness is defensive rebounding, you have to be worried about Salmons hurting us in that area.

Whether he can defend SGs is completely unknown too, since with Deng's injury he was playing SF full time (well not full time, he played PF more than SG though).

So pretty much the same as everyone else, at SF I worry about his rebounding, at SG I worry about his quickness.

[Newskoolbulls]

He gave way to much space to Paul Peirce in our first round series. He isnt bad but he is not lock down defender.

[TheStig]

I think he is a good defender, he slows down a lot of players and keeps them busy on the other end. The only issue I have is that he is a weak rebounder and him and BG have to be among the worst sg-sf rebounding pair.

[Hendu0520]

I think he is a good/solid defender. I agree with people who said that he is a bit inconsistent, it seems like he takes plays off. As far as his lateral movement, I don't think it was too bad, but like Shakes said we didn't see him guarding 2guards that much so I don't know. I think his length can make up for his lack of quickness and I thought he did well on Pierce when he forced him to the left. The problem in the one game was he tried to play him straight up and let him go right 3 times in a row.

Also I think he was just slow at getting to where he is at. His stats have pretty much improved every year and when he finally got a lot of burn he started getting better numbers. I think this is gonna be John Salmons, an 18ppg type guy. The rebounding is a problem but at the 2 it might not be as big of an issue.

[2ndcitydiehard]

Hendu0520 wrote:

Also I think he was just slow at getting to where he is at. His stats have pretty much improved every year and when he finally got a lot of burn he started getting better numbers. I think this is gonna be John Salmons, an 18ppg type guy. The rebounding is a problem but at the 2 it might not be as big of an issue.

Maybe he was slow getting there but trends show that guys with these sort of breakout years generally regress. He'd averaged over 25min a game 3 other times in his career, so you really believe that simply starting the game had him shooting 3s so much better? I just find that very hard to believe. Players don't just "find it" at his age very often and I'd be really surprised if you could find more than 1 or 2 examples where it happened.

Listen if he's going to come in here and play a Noc type role (backing up 2 positions providing some size and offensive punch off the bench) then it's great, especially for the price. But if he's your starting SG expected to pick up a hunk of BG's scoring slack then I think the Bulls and fans are in for a rude awakening.