Rotations doesn't mean switches and some good defensive teams do great job of not allowing switches.
Luka wasn't the tallest person on the Mavs and he shot 3 of 8 when he was guarded by Conley. During the regular season Forwards shot %46 and %34. His size doesn't help him, I don't think anyone is arguing that. We need someone tall and versatile alongside Mitchell to offset his weaknesses. That doesn't mean Conley is a bad defender or that he is a liability. He just isn't solving anything for this Jazz team.
Since the thread is about Chris Paul, my point is that the swap could be even more disastrous. Suns heavily tried to hide Chris Paul on defense by limiting the distance he covers, giving him the least problematic opponent and keeping him out of actions. Jazz didn't do that with Conley and can't afford to do that with Chris Paul.
Rotation does mean switch in basketball buddy
"Defensive rotation in basketball is when a team
switches defensive assignments in a single play."
All it takes is a quick google search. Not hard.
Good teams can deny switches. Sure. But to deny switches you have to be physical enough to navigate through the hard screens or stay in front of you man consistently with quick footwork. The Jazz can do neither.
Individual matchup stats can be extremely deceiving especially for a guy like Luka who's basically unguardable when he's having his way, but can miss some real freebies when he isn't in his best game shape.
Mikal Bridges is one of the league's best defenders and will make multiple nba all defense appearances, but guess what, Luka shot 18/31 against him in that Suns series.
DM has been pretty bad defensively I think there's no much argument against that. But Luka only shot 1/5 against him this season.
So does that make DM/Conley better defenders than Bridges?
I think you also need to look at the distance in which those shots were taken. Some of these shots were long balls that were difficult to make even without much pressure from the defender. I mean players probably shoot somewhere in the high 40s against Rudy while shooting worse % against most guards. But that's largely due to a lot of those shots attempted against Rudy being high % looks right around the rim, so you can't really take those numbers without putting them into context.
I mean even if your point stands (that Conley is a good individual defender), what good does it do? I bet Azubuike is a pretty legit individual defender in the post as well. But there's just no place for one dimensional defender in modern nba any more. You gotta be able to adapt to guarding more than just one positions. Unless you are some elite offensive player that would justify teams utilizing all of their resources to hide you on D. But they can do that for one player. They can't do it for two.
That's the problem with Conley in a nutshell. He's one dimensional defensively and isn't good enough offensively. CP3 is and that's why the it worked to a very large degree when the Suns hid him on D.
Even if we remove DM from the team right now and give Conley the full CP3 treatment, where would he take us?
