Miami Heat: P.J. Tucker On His Defense And Why It’s The Perfect Synopsis
The Miami Heat are built on (all together now class) hard work, defense, effort, and intensity. It’s just a fact.
Even when the offense isn’t going or the shots aren’t falling, you can always play with maximum effort and want to. Even when you can’t get the attempts to drop, you can move, cut, screen, and pass with purpose.
That’s just on offense though, as the principle definitely applies to the other side of the ball. In fact and when it comes to being a decent to great defender, it’s all about effort.
There are, of course, those tried and true defensive principles, such as watching an offensive player’s belt buckle, because it can’t “lie” about where they are going. That always applies.
However, there may be those with different or similar manners of accomplishing the task at hand, not surrendering good offense, which work as well. Regardless though and no matter which principles or philosophies you choose to apply to attack the task, it will always require a ton of effort to execute or be good at it.
The Miami Heat are built on the back of their defense and hard work. P.J. Tucker not only personifies that philosophy, but articulates it well too.
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That’s the core thing on defense. Where being offensively elite might require more skill than anything, being a defensive specialist is, mostly, based on one’s ability to give maximum effort all the time and never quit.
That brings us to the topic of this chat. As apart of an appearance on a frequent content mine here, J.J. Redick‘s very ownThe Old Man & The Three Podcast, the Miami Heat’s P.J. Tucker had this to say of his defense on Kevin Durant during last season’s playoffs when asked if he “gets discouraged”.
"No. Cause it’s like “ok, aw man, that was incredible, you made that. Now do it again. Now do it again.”Cause I’m not going to stop. I’m not going to stop. He’s like, “stop hacking me”, I’m like “I’m not going to stop”.Like, we got face to face. I’m not going anywhere… it’s that… tricking myself because he’s killing me. He’s got 50… he’s going to score 50!I’m telling my teammates, “he’s going to score 50. Y’all guard y’all man, he’s going to score”. But how many shots is it going to take him? How hard is he going to have to… I’m going to make him work harder than anybody… I’m going to work him.Because he’s going to score. I’m telling you, you have to trick yourself."
Well, you have to be able to do that and continue to give that same strong, tough, and intense effort time and time again on every single possession. That’s what P.J. Tucker does and that’s what the Miami Heat try to do, as individuals and as a whole.
They have four or five guys on the roster that can be considered upper-tier defenders and several in the elite of the elite category. With guys like that and the mentality illustrated by Tucker in the above, it’s no secret why they seem to be on to something special with this group.
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Hopefully, they can keep it all up. If this mentality is any indication though, they will.