I think your wrong. I know it seems like I’m ragging on Lathan but there are just so many easy baskets that don’t happen with Cliff in there instead. Nobody is perfect. Cliff isn’t going to make every play either but we literally could stop nobody ever. It’s not even so much the defense but the addition opportunities Dylan and Ace would’ve had for run outs if we got the ball in ways that weren’t side outs.
There’s a lot of things we typically do on defense that we couldn’t due to the lack of rim protection. Cliff allowed us to play aggressive on the perimeter and put pressure on the ball because we had him there if guys got beat on the perimeter.
We also had a whole lot of trouble handling ball screens this year. Cliff was really good at hedging and recovering because of his elite athleticism.
I think Lathan would have been a nice change of pace big who provided some scoring when Cliff was on the bench, but the biggest reason our defense fell off of a cliff this year was not having an elite rim protector like we did the last 5 years with Cliff and Myles.