Being a target of the defense
Today, TrueHoop’s Henry Abbott and David Thorpe did not discuss Will Smith and Chris Rock. Instead, they discuss:
The Miami Heat have lost four in a row and have been ineffective on defense, where Tyler Herro and Duncan Robinson are common targets. Does being targeted on defense mean you’re a bad defender?
Kevin Durant played the entire second half on the second night of a back-to-back. Who is in charge of delivering the Nets to April ready to contend?
The Lakers blew a game against the Pelicans, their likely play-in opponent. Seeing Brandon Ingram play has David wondering what could have been.
The NCAA tournament produces a certain kind of magic—everyone rooted for St. Peter’s!—that the NBA isn’t designed to produce.
RECENT BRING IT IN EPISODES:
March 25, 2022 Vax mandates, #HeatCulture, Max Thorpe
March 18, 2022 NBA Scoring Barrage
March 14, 2022 Save a timeout
March 11, 2022 Let's not overreact...
March 7, 2022 Sportwashing and the NBA
Being a target of the defense
I think you guys mentioned but did not expand on what to me is one of the most clear-cut explanations for Herro/Robinson being picked on: regardless of their merits as defenders relative to the rest of the league, they're almost always the weakest defender on their team when they play, making them a natural target.
Hunting mismatches and iso-ball might be ineffective means of generating offense in a narrow sense, but it also can (it seems ) have meaningful and useful knock-on effects for teams - sowing dissention in the other team (as we might be seeing with the Heat), hurting the confidence of the player being targeted, tiring him out, or even getting his coach to remove him from the game and thus making the other team's offense less potent.
I don't doubt that race is a part of this, but I also think Coach Thorpe is right in general in that teams (and players) at the NBA level are generally not in the business of making their team worse just to pursue stereotypical ideas of who is good and bad at what.