Last year there was a constant media reference made, that Gordan Giricek didn’t play defense as well as Derek Fisher, thus Fish’s starting role and more minutes. I would argue this was not exactly the case, at least, from my point of view.

Fish was stronger, but way undersized for a 2. Most shooting guards shot over Fish with ease. Gira was taller and, I thought moved his feet much better, and was more intense on defense, than last year. His shooting was clearly superior to Fish. You watched one of Gira’s soft 3’s go up there and you just felt it was going in. With Fish sometimes you were pleasantly surprised, frequently disappointed, but he did hit some clutch shots.

A website, 82 Games has some interesting defensive statistics, which I’m not smart enough to determine their validity, but interesting nonetheless.

Player, Team, Pos, Def.+/-, Drtg, CounterPart, DCS Rating, Rank, Percentile

Kirilenko, Andrei uta SG/SF +2.1 103 11.7 39.1 20 94.2%
Boozer, Carlos uta PF +2.7 104 15.6 14.1 81 75.7%
Millsap, Paul uta PF -3.7 102 16.4 10.2 106 68.1%
Giricek, Gordan uta SG/SF -5.4 110 13.3 9.6 108 67.5%
Brewer, Ronnie uta SG/SF -0.9 107 14.5 2.3 143 56.8%
Collins, Jarron uta C -8.9 110 17.1 -1.0 164 50.5%
Fisher, Derek uta SG/SF -1.9 109 17.7 -1.6 167 49.5%
Williams, Deron uta PG +4.6 110 16.5 -10.2 208 37.1%
Harpring, Matt uta SG/SF +0.6 108 15.1 -10.8 212 35.9%
Okur, Mehmet uta C +10.1 108 18.5 -31.3 309 6.4%

Gira had a 9.6 DCS Rating, compared to Fish’s –1.6.

Obviously the Jazz got lit up frequently at the 2 spot, so neither could be considered a “stopper”, but Gira should not be labeled a liability either.

It will be interesting to see what happens at the 2 spot, for the Jazz, this year. Without Fish to soak up needed developmental minutes, hopefully we will see Almond, Brewer or Gira emerge as a solid two.