Los Angeles Clippers: 5 goals for Milos Teodosic in 2017-18

3. Improve defensively

Milos Teodosic is an offensive wizard. He’s obviously an amazing distributor, but he can also score in numerous ways. However, while he is one of the planet’s top playmakers, he has his share of struggles on the defensive end.

According to RealGM, Teodosic finished 2016-17 with 6.69 total win shares in 50 games. Only 0.72 of them were attributed to his defense. The contrast is reiterated in his per-possession production. Teodosic had an amazing 121.4 offensive rating in 2016-17. However, the mesmerizing number overshadows his 110.6 defensive rating on the year.

Nick “Coach Nick” Hauselman of BBALLBREAKDOWN released a video in July highlighting Teodosic’s pros and cons. In the video, he prescribed that Teodosic’s defensive issues may stem from his defensive stance.

Specifically, he points out that Teodosic leans forward too much, or “gets his nose in front of his toes.” That stance negatively affects his lateral quickness. Hauselman adds that this issue could be hard to change since he’s been defending this way for so long. Luckily for the Clippers, getting past Teodosic leads directly to DeAndre Jordan waiting in the paint.

To be fair, Teodosic isn’t being brought in for his defense. Instead, that will likely fall on Patrick Beverley. Beverley was acquired from the Houston Rockets via the big Chris Paul trade back in June. He also happened to be Teodosic’s teammate during the 2009-10 season when they both played for Olympiacos.

Beverley is one of the league’s best on-ball defenders, accumulating 2.4 defensive win shares last season. Therefore, Doc Rivers will likely call on him when a star point guard needs to be locked down.

If Teodosic doesn’t want to lose out on minutes because he is a liability on one side of the floor, he will need to improve his on-ball defense.