Quote Originally Posted by Kedsy View Post
The truth is teams with good defensive players play good defense.

Have definitely come around to this more and more, especially after last year. So much of the narrative that Duke is a defensive mess in the one-and-done era comes from just how much of a defensive wreck the 2014 Parker-Hood team was, but, as much as I love those guys, defense was not going to be a strength for them had they stayed through their senior years either, and they have been known as substandard defensive players in the NBA as well. 2013 had a spike in talented upperclassmen relative to the past decade at Duke, and they ultimately were helpless to stop Louisville's penetration in the Elite 8. Another bad defensive team, 2012, is known as a one-and-done team for the narrative because Rivers was such a key player on offense, but the rest of the rotation was basically upperclassmen, so the deficiency doesn't really seem like a one and done issue. Freshmen dominated 2015 finished strong on D as a team even though most of the players haven't been known as defensive stalwarts individually in their careers.

This isn't a completely black-and-white thing - some level of learning curve should be expected, especially for team defense - but a team with freshmen Shelden Williams, Tre Jones, Justise Winslow, Zion, etc. is probably going to be better defensively than a team with upperclassmen Greg Paulus, Jabari Parker, Luke Kennard, etc. (fortunately it's hard to find too many examples of poor defending Duke upperclassmen because historically most Duke players have been good defenders anyway).