Nick KrugKansas basketball coach Bill Self has not been shy about his criticism of his team’s post defense throughout the nonconference portion of KU’s 2018-19 season.
What once was thought to be a strength of this Kansas team — an abundance of big bodies in the front court — has disappeared and left the fifth-ranked Jayhawks a little lighter than they expected to be in the post.
With sophomore forward Silvio De Sousa still awaiting word from the NCAA about his eligibility and junior center Udoka Azubuike dealing with an ankle injury for the past five games, the Jayhawks have been forced to rely on Dedric Lawson, Mitch Lightfoot and the slow-developing David McCormack to handle the minutes inside during the past couple of weeks.
While that has inspired Self to play small at times, inserting Marcus Garrett into the starting lineup at the 4 and moving Lawson to the 5 with Azubuike out, both the smaller lineup and the inconsistent defense by KU’s big men at the rim has created problems for the Jayhawks that have been tough to solve.
While most of the recent issues have shown up in the paint, the Jayhawks also struggled to defend sharp-shooting forwards from behind the 3-point arc in the season’s early going.
Nick KrugWhile Garrett’s versatility helped solve the big man woes on the perimeter, a recent visit from one of KU’s better recent post players helped address the issues inside.
Back in Lawrence for two weeks after playing stints in Japan and Russia, former KU center Landen Lucas recently spent some time talking with KU’s big men about the finer points of post defense.
“It kind of came up when I was talking to coach and we were comparing this team to my freshman year’s team, with Joel (Embiid) and Andrew (Wiggins) and all of them,” Lucas recalled in a conversation with the Journal-World. “The talent was off the charts, but there was just something that was missing, and that was having players on the team that had been through a lot and having a lot of them.”
Lucas was a redshirt freshman that season and he played just 107 minutes in 22 games. That allowed him to spend most of his time with the red team in practice and that, he said, forced him to figure out how to defend in the post sooner rather than later.
“It was just something that I realized had to be done and that kind of came over time,” Lucas said. “I don’t remember specifically getting busted. Joel tried a few times, but even (against) him, it was good. I think going against him my freshman year, when I was redshirting, I had so much time to play on the red team and just play defense all practice. That really gave me an opportunity to go out there and just try different things, see what works and what doesn’t. You can ask him. I think I got the better of that matchup more than he did. But he was still developing, so I don’t know.”
While Embiid has morphed into one of the biggest stars and loudest talents in the NBA since then, Lucas, in his own right, has seen his game develop at a similar rate.
Sure, the ceiling was not as high as the sky’s-the-limit reach of Embiid, but Lucas’ ability to defend played a huge role in helping the Jayhawks reach back-to-back Elite Eights his junior and senior seasons and in allowing him to get paid to play after he left Kansas.
So what kinds of tips did Lucas offer to Lightfoot, Lawson, McCormack and crew while he was back in town earlier this month?
“Really, all it is is just thinking ahead of time,” Lucas said. “If you can just be one step ahead of what the offense will think, it’ll make everything a lot easier.”
Put even more simply, Lucas said he took the things he tried to do on offense — getting deep position, using proper angles, catching the ball in good scoring position, etc. — and tried to take them away from the players he defended.
Focusing on little things most players might not even think of was the way he described it.
“I talked about small things, meeting them in transition above the key and veering them outside. If there are any plays where they’re coming across the lane, just being there early,” Lucas began. “Really, what I tried to do was use positioning and my mind more than anything. I quickly figured out that I wouldn’t be able to just use my athletic ability to defend at that level, so it ended up making me rethink the way I did things and benefited me in the long run.”
Lucas acknowledged that early defensive effort did not always eliminate the problem. And he shared some tips with this year’s bigs about what to do when an opponent does catch the ball in good scoring position.
“At that point, it was just about using the advantages that the refs give you, using your forearm to absorb some of the blows, things like that,” Lucas said. “You’ll see a lot of times guys’ wall-ups aren’t the best. They go with one hand or don’t really take advantage of the guy no longer having a dribble or sometimes being off balance.”
Lucas said his interaction with Dedric Lawson, who plays and moves at the close to the same style and pace that Lucas did during his days as a Jayhawk was particularly productive.
“Dedric and I talked a lot about it because he and I are the same athletically,” Lucas said. “The team this year, their bigs are so athletic, that if they can implement some of those little tips and combine them with the ability to do what they do and their athleticism, it’d be really hard to score on them.”
As for Lucas’ current pro status, he continued to workout while in Lawrence — he also spent a ton of time working with young people through his foundation — and is exploring overseas options with his agent for the coming year.
He returned to his hometown of Portland just before Christmas and is eagerly awaiting news of where his next contract will take him.
Lucas admitted that he’d like to wind up somewhere warm this time around because Russia was a little on the cold side, but added that he’s just happy to still be playing.
“We talked about the possibility of going to the G League,” Lucas said of the NBA’s developmental circuit. “But, right now, I’m enjoying my time overseas and that’s probably going to be the decision we make to finish off this year. It’s going to be Europe. I did the Japan thing and it was great. It was great money and a good way to start my career off financially. Europe offers a little more opportunity
