So I watched portions of both the first games and a maybe half of last night's game, but the one thing that started sticking out almost immediately was how much more active we were with our hands, pushing for turnovers, and getting hands in passing lanes. It was pretty impressive. There have been a couple comments regarding it, which I think someone on the broadcast last night quoted Snyder as trying to play the passing lanes more. It's interesting because the past two years we've been pretty abysmal with forcing turnovers. We had 11 steals in the San Antonio game, 8 in the Dallas game, and 13 last night. To put this in perspective, last year our highest steal total was 12, and the year before it was also 12. Last year we averaged 6.6 steals per game, trailing only Dallas for worst in the league at 6.3. The year before we were dead last with 6.1.
I believe this is significant because it signals a change in underlying philosophy. We had attempted to make Rudy the one-man defense and willfully push people into going at him, leaving the other defenders with limited responsibility other than to lead them to Rudy. That's obviously exploitable (though not easily). This allows some of the pressure to be off Rudy and using Rudy as a reinforcement. I think this will find more success and be less exploitable. It's obviously preseason and you'd expect some of this effort to wane, but the fact that Quin appears to have developed some different thoughts here is pretty promising. If we are even average at forcing turnovers, this will be huge and it will be harder for the offense to plan around our defense if we're more disruptive. Having a luxury like Rudy gives you much more flexibility in being disruptive. If our guys suck at staying in front of their men, then let's at least take advantage of those passing lanes, which we appear to be doing well so far.
I believe this is significant because it signals a change in underlying philosophy. We had attempted to make Rudy the one-man defense and willfully push people into going at him, leaving the other defenders with limited responsibility other than to lead them to Rudy. That's obviously exploitable (though not easily). This allows some of the pressure to be off Rudy and using Rudy as a reinforcement. I think this will find more success and be less exploitable. It's obviously preseason and you'd expect some of this effort to wane, but the fact that Quin appears to have developed some different thoughts here is pretty promising. If we are even average at forcing turnovers, this will be huge and it will be harder for the offense to plan around our defense if we're more disruptive. Having a luxury like Rudy gives you much more flexibility in being disruptive. If our guys suck at staying in front of their men, then let's at least take advantage of those passing lanes, which we appear to be doing well so far.