JR gets a legitimate pass for last years regular season, IMO. We saw in the finals that JR was still the only guy besides LBJ and Kyrie that could buy a bucket.
His defense in the playoffs last year was lousy. Does he get a pass for that too?
This year he started out abysmally(so did the whole team pretty much). But he’s also been really coming around the last couple of weeks, last night notwithstanding. A few days ago there was a stat that he was shooting almost 44% from 3 in his last 5-7 games.
His shooting is not my concern. I am concerned about his defense. Is he going to be the same guy defensively in the 2018 playoffs that he was in the 2016 playoffs?
As for the regular season defensive stats...they are always going to look worse than they should for this team because of the attitude we take towards the regular season.
If they were all young guys for whom age wasn't a factor...sure, it would be reasonable to assume that they can always be relied upon to turn it on and off each year.
The problem is that for older guys, the "regular season doesn't count" argument can conceal an
actual decline in physical ability. So when the playoffs come and you're expecting the magical transformation to "playoff defensive intensity", it doesn't happen as expected.
He’s also been dealing with extremely suboptimal back-Court partners all year. We jerked him around from starting to the bench and now back to starting again. He’s still trying to find his footing/groove and has been pretty good for most of the last 2-3 weeks.
You're basically making excuses for him, and
assuming that the underlying defensive ability will still be there in June, even though it's been a year and a half since we have actually seen him able to sustain that. You may be right, the excuses may all be valid, and the good defensive version of J.R. may show up in the playoffs.
But my point is - how do you
know that to be the case? How can you be so sure he's going to be able to give us the plus defensive presence on the perimeter that we need?
If you're remotely unbiased, you have to at least consider the
possibility that age is a factor. But right now, you're just waiving that away that possibility.