Jimmer on ESPN.com

I love that a picture of Jimmer has been on the ESPN home page all day long. The video link had some very complimentary comments from Jay Bilas as well. http://espn.go.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Jimmermania continues for at least one more week!

I saw Jimmer's picture this morning. Can't help it - I felt a whole lotta pride for the Cougs - getting some National love!! Jimmer looked good.

Jimmer was also on NBA.COM, although the analysis was not very complimentary from some hotshot scout who thinks he can't play D.



burning question: If Nash, Dwill and the other pgs out there don't have to play D, why does Jimmer?



answer: the NBA is a scorers league, if you can score at will, you get minutes. David Stern has ensured that the NBA is a defenseless game in the pursuit of a fast, high scoring game.

That's exactly why they can take 15 steps without dribbling without a call. A pivot foot is an optional recommendation only.

declocoug wrote:
Jimmer was also on NBA.COM, although the analysis was not very complimentary from some hotshot scout who thinks he can't play D.



burning question: If Nash, Dwill and the other pgs out there don't have to play D, why does Jimmer?



answer: the NBA is a scorers league, if you can score at will, you get minutes. David Stern has ensured that the NBA is a defenseless game in the pursuit of a fast, high scoring game.

My favorite NBA scout's take on Jimmer was this: "Dave Rose should get Coach of the Year for his ability to hide Jimmer defensively."



Yes, Jimmer doesn't exert a lot of effort on defense, but teams will still be willing to take a shot on him at the end of the lottery or in the high 20s.

It's easy to forget now, but Jimmer's freshman year, lots of us thought he would end up as one of our best defenders, and his defensive effort continued to decline as he shouldered more and more of the offensive burden.



No one in the NBA is going to ask him to exert himself offensively the way he has this year, and there's no reason not to believe he can't/won't put the energy he saves on the offensive end into his defense.

this is a criticism I haven't really understood from the beginning..



First, if you were coach Rose, would you want Jimmer to D up on guys? You'd have to be a fool to use him like that. If you watch closely, when Jimmer has a chance to play help defense with his hands (eg swipe at ball) he backs off. That's not a lack of defensive ability.. It's clear he's been told to back off on D, not because he can't play D but because BYU would be screwed if he fouled out and you know teams would target him for that reason. He has to be protected on D. This is silly.



Second, like others have said, they don't play D in the NBA so what's the problem?

When was the last time Jimmer was out scored by the player (or players for that matter) that he was assigned to defend? Anyone have Jimmer's +/- calculated?



Rose is on record stating that Jimmer can defend, but is asked not to. How can you penalize The Jimmer by saying he can't, when he is only playing as his coach requests?



He has pretty good defensive #'s for someone who doesn't play defense.



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NCPUMA wrote:
this is a criticism I haven't really understood from the beginning..



First, if you were coach Rose, would you want Jimmer to D up on guys? You'd have to be a fool to use him like that. If you watch closely, when Jimmer has a chance to play help defense with his hands (eg swipe at ball) he backs off. That's not a lack of defensive ability.. It's clear he's been told to back off on D, not because he can't play D but because BYU would be screwed if he fouled out and you know teams would target him for that reason. He has to be protected on D. This is silly.



Second, like others have said, they don't play D in the NBA so what's the problem?

This is my understanding as well. What do you guys think would happen if Jimmer got into foul trouble and was forced to sit for 8 minutes in the 1st half of any of these games? There's a great chance we'd be screwed. So it has very little to do with his ability and a lot more to do with the fact we need him on the court every minute. If Lloyd were on this team I promise you he would not be playing defense the way he does. As it is there is zero making up for a missing Jimmer and, thus, the team cannot afford his fouls.

Jimmer, even though he isn't asked to play defense, has over 150 steals in his career. Literally like 1 steal less per game than Jackson over about the same amount of games (Jacksons rate of 2.8 spg this year is an insane rate, Jimmer has a respectable 1.3), and averages over 3 rebounds per game this year (better in both steals and rebounds than DJ Gay). All this while being asked to only try on offense.



Fredette can play D, he just doesn't have to. But watch him at the end of close games. He D's up his man pretty well.



One of the failures of this years team was finding a suitable backup for Fredette after Lloyd was asked to leave the team (which they had toward the end of the season when they started bringing Collinsworth off the bench, but that had to change with two games left in the regular season). I know it was probably late in the recruiting game to get someone and maybe Winder kind of disappointed in the pre-season, but if Jimmer could get a good 3 minutes on the bench around media timeouts, he'd probably be even better.