I recently read an article written by someone much more intelligent than myself that went into depth about John Collins’ defensive shortcomings. The article was all well and good; it used both defensive metrics (such as Collins being 91st out of 92 eligible PF’s in DRPM or something like that) and video clips (none sourced from DownToBuck for some reason) to make its points. I think I might have even nodded while reading it at several points.
But then I was like, who cares about defense? I definitely don’t care about defense. If John Collins is a total trainwreck on that side of the ball, and all indications are that he is, I just don’t care. At all. DTB does not care about defense. My highlight videos don’t get better if the player plays defense, except in the case of a player who gets more blocks when they play more defense.
The article ended with an admission that you would have to put the right big man next to Collins if the Hawks want to make him a franchise cornerstone (which they should want to do because he is a certified beastloaf slathered in beastsauce). I’m like, that’s cool and all, but you could also stick a highly-prolific three-point shooter next to him at the five spot and try to outgun teams. That way you wouldn’t have to worry about Collins being unable to guard anything taller than a footstool and anything faster than a tortoise. Wouldn’t that be way more fun and awesome?