Darius Acuff Jr. Breaks Down His Defensive Mindset With Draymond Green

Do you see yourself as a guy that's coming in like, no, I wanna guard my position? How do you look at it?

Yeah, that's how I always been. You can ask any of my coaches in college, no matter how much my defense, mistakes that I made every night, if they tried to put me on a 2 or a 3, I'm like, man, I'm not guarding no 3. I play the point, man. I'm guarding the point guard, man. Especially if it's like a matchup. If I'm not guarding you, you not guarding me, it ain't, you know what I'm saying? Ain't no matchup. We just hooping out here. So I'm definitely one of the guys, I like to guard my matchup for sure, 'cause I don't want nobody to get off more than me.

You come into the league, like, show that you wanna defend. Because when I see these guys come into the league and they don't wanna guard their position, they're running from a matchup, the only thing people do is pick on you more, right? Like, if you come into the league as a guy and they figure out like, "Oh man, he don't wanna guard," it just puts you in a worse position because now every action that they run down the court, Going to you. It's at you. Find that coach that's the defensive coordinator. Lock in with that coach because I'm gonna tell you this, if you can learn the tendencies of players and the tendencies of teams, that right there alone is gonna help you on the defensive end.