June 26, 2007

In NBA draft, defense isn't enough
Although it is widely said to win championships, players need more to be selected by the pros.
By David Aldridge
Inquirer Staff Writer

By most accounts, Maryland's D.J. Strawberry is one of the nation's top defensive guards, who excelled in one of the country's best conferences.

Lanky and lean at 6-foot-5, he covers the court, has excellent footwork and anticipation, and has the length to get into passing lanes. His heroes are Bruce Bowen and Raja Bell. He could step onto an NBA court today and hold his own on defense.

"That's what I pride myself on, making it hard on other people like Kobe Bryant in the league," Strawberry said last week. "I want to get my chance for making their nights as long as possible. And I think I can do that in this league."

So why is it uncertain whether the senior will be taken at all in Thursday's NBA draft?

Strawberry's predicament is unique among soon-to-be professional athletes. In the NFL, teams draft cornerbacks who can cover man-to-man and linebackers who can rush the passer in the first round. Baseball teams routinely draft pitchers with 93-m.p.h. fastballs, and catchers and outfielders with rifle arms, while they're still high schoolers. A "true defenseman" or hotshot goaltender is almost always taken early in the NHL draft.

But in the NBA - which, like the other leagues, professes that the team with the best defense almost always wins the championship - players with a defense-first pedigree are almost always ignored on draft night. More often than not, the player whose calling card is defense bounces around until he finds a good fit with an NBA squad, usually years after he comes out of college.

Of course, the NBA game requires players to constantly shift from offense to defense, so a one-dimensional player at either end will face scrutiny. But hockey has the same end-to-end action, and great defensive players in baseball still have to bat. Yet those sports have no problem taking defense-first players early.

Some think the answer is as simple as the nearest television set.

"You never see any highlights on defense," said Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan. "Maybe a guy who is a great shot blocker. But you never see a guy getting over and getting his body in front of a guy, and stopping a guy. You never see that on the highlights.

"And I always say this: How many people, when their kids are growing up, give their kid a basketball and tell him to go out in the backyard and work on his defense? It doesn't happen. They tell him to shoot it."

Others say it's difficult to draft a defensive-oriented player when you can measure things like point averages and shooting percentages more easily - and can sell that better to fans.

"Defense is such an intangible thing," said Milwaukee Bucks general manager Larry Harris, whose team is picking sixth in Thursday's draft.

"It's very difficult as a GM or a player personnel director to say, 'Yeah, at 12, we're going to take this guy who really guarded players in his conference really well,' " Harris said.

"The guys who become really good defenders, like Bruce Bowen . . . those guys are kind of self-made," he said. "They kind of make themselves into NBA defenders. If [Greg] Oden were 6-6, he wouldn't be the first pick."

Ben Wallace, the four-time NBA defensive player of the year, went undrafted out of Virginia Union of Division II in 1996 and was signed by Washington afterward, more or less, as training-camp fodder. (That was after Wallace declined the Boston Celtics' invitation to join their camp . . . as a guard.)

And Bowen, today considered the league's premier perimeter defender, didn't get a sniff coming out of Cal State-Fullerton in 1993.

Bowen beat the back bushes of professional basketball for three years, then went from Miami to Boston to Philadelphia to Chicago and back to Miami over four NBA seasons.

Finally, in 2001, he hooked on with San Antonio, where his increased ability to make three-pointers has helped keep him on the court long enough to play his suffocating brand of defense at the other end.

"Sometimes, it's a numbers game," Bowen said during the NBA Finals. "That's happened to a lot of guys in this league. We understand that that's a business side that no one can ever prepare you for in college. But it happens."

Even a team as defense-oriented as the Spurs has gone for offense in recent drafts, taking guards Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker and Beno Udrih since 1999.

"I think most of us are probably geared toward talent," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. "I know that's a simplistic word, but talent overrides everything else, and I think most people would be paranoid about drafting someone who was just a defender, as opposed to someone who exhibited talent, as we usually describe it."

But the good teams, like the Spurs, nonetheless find ways to keep role players like Bowen on their roster, year after year, while they improve their offense enough to earn more minutes.

Strawberry - the son of ex-major-leaguer Darryl Strawberry - has been told the same thing: You can get on the floor with your defense, but you'll stay on the floor when you improve your offense.

He has to improve his ballhandling, his decision-making and his shooting as a point guard if he's going to stick somewhere.

But even he had a problem watching Cleveland and San Antonio slug through the Finals in a series devoid of much excitement.

"I like LeBron," he said of LeBron James. "I like watching LeBron go for 48 some nights. You've got to give Bruce Bowen a lot of credit, and the Spurs a lot of credit. It was still a good Finals to watch, but I have to have some more scoring."