The NBA is experiencing a radical shift in how the game is played and the league is experiencing an all-time high in scoring this season. Gregg Popovich has long been one of the best coaches in the game and he's always had teams that play tough, hard-nosed defense. But the San Antonio Spurs head coach believes it's harder than ever to play defense in the league today.

“It's a lot more difficult to play and pioneer defense right now,” said San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich to Brian Windhorst of ESPN. “Switching seems to be everybody's answer. But that is really player-dependent.”

The league is all about offense right now. The new style of pace-and-space combined with the league's new freedom of movement rules is making things close to impossible for defenses.

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Switching on everything is a common tactic employed to slow down high-powered offenses, but as Popovich points out, it's not something that every team can do well. In order to switch correctly, teams need the proper personnel. Without a group of quick, versatile defenders, it's hard to switch guards onto bigs and vice versa.

As a result, when teams without the right personnel rely on switching, opposing teams will hunt mismatches and punish guards in the post or bigs getting caught on the perimeter.

These things tend to work themselves out as time goes on. The best teams will adapt and others will follow suit. That being said, there doesn't look to be any quick fix on the horizon for NBA defenses.