https://twitter.com/StephNoh/status/1722640590041461182?t=RI-57QRr95_-f4ux_Czlxg&s=19
Alex Caruso gave Kevin Durant hell last night. Deep dive on how he did it.
Turn sound on to hear why Caruso is a defensive savant.
Breakdown of Caruso’s performance defensively last night vs the Suns.
Caruso did play excellent defense. One thing that has been crazy since KD has been here though is how physical teams are allowed to get with him off-ball. There were some replays on turnovers last night that I couldn’t believe weren’t called, seems like the scouting report is just to be as physical as possible with him before he gets the entry pass because that does work, and over the course of the game the refs just kind of don’t want to call every grab or shove away from the ball that would be a fouls in a lot of situations. Not anything unique to Caruso, happens in a ton of our games.
Caruso absolutely plays insanely physical defence; Bulls game I was watching recently, I forget against who, the other team’s announcers were constantly saying “look at what the refs are letting Caruso get away with, good god this guy just kicks your ass.”
He’s not the only one, I’m sure Jrue, Marcus Smart, OG, Dillon Brooks, are right up into people if we look at the tape. Hell FVV spent the entire '19 Finals basically holding Steph Curry.
I can’t tell you whether this is a case of “well this is just the way it is in the NBA, a certain level of physicality is allowed on D” or that those guys all have a reputation as great defenders, so they get away with playing physical. Little bit of both?
Ya I’d love it if refs called this off-ball physicality more to protect star players. Ignore my flair.