just rewatched the 4th quarter to look at some plays and realized how bad he was here. I know we all know he’s bad on defense but watching some of these clips in isolation will really make you realize it.
Bertans played ~5 minutes in a stretch at the start of the 4th against the Sixers. During this time they made 5 field goals. 4 of these were almost entirely a result of Bertans being out of position/forcing a miscommunication on the defensive end. I only looked at these 6 made field goals so it’s entirely possible he was having serious lapses on other plays that just led to free throws or happened to be misses but here are the 4 below.
First this one at the top of the 4th. Maxey has the ball at the top of the key with Dort on him. Bertans is on Covington. Covington sets a slip screen for Dort who chases around it easily and then pops out for a three. Bertans switches onto Maxey and shuffles backwards into the paint leaving Covington wide open. Maxey sees the crowd and knows there’s an open man and dishes to Covington who hits the 3 before Bertans can recover to properly contest despite Dort’s best effort to make up for it.
Reverse of the other play and likely the reason for this miscommunication. Covington sets a proper screen here (a fairly illegal one at that) and Bertans reacts late to the switch and just gets absolutely torched by Maxey.
This is the same play… AGAIN. Here Dort gets around the screen with some difficulty and Bertans doesn’t really do anything too wrong - he just has hips flipped to guard Maxey properly after the last play and takes too long to react to the switch as a result leaving Covington open again. To be entirely fair to Bertans based on this pattern this clearly was a play designed to create these defensive miscommunications - he just managed to make the wrong decision each time as if he’s guessing rather than reacting.
No idea what he’s doing here. Comes over to double Maxey and commit to it by jumping for the pass. Wiggins has to cover both Beverly and Reed and bites on the pump fake as a result while Bertans is scrambling to get back leading to an advantage and a kick out. Even with this happening and teammates rotating well, Bertans is just lost afterwards leaving his cover wide open over the other side.
Yeah was tough to watch. I may have called him an “effing traffic cone”.