In 1,316 non-garbage time possessions with Nurk on the floor... 108.9 defensive rating (82nd percentile / 3.8 points above league avg.) Not a ton of opponent shooting luck involved either (35th percentile mid range / 46th from 3) Fouling more with Nurk vs Kanter, but forcing more turnovers (86th percentile vs 12th) and defense rebounding at a better rate (86th vs 71st) *with Cov ON for both Shot mix defensively is similar but doing a much better job defending the rim (74th percentile w/Nurk ON / 37th OFF)
According to this, despite being 5-10 in the last 15, we are still on the "good teams" side of the line. So we've actually gotten better, even though our record doesn't reflect it. I believe it - we were winning games we deserved to lose before, and we lost a few games we deserved to win in the last 15 games.
Portland was a -0.4 before those two last blowouts, so they are getting a lot of bump out of just those two games. They are still +3 wins above their expected record based upon their net
Stotts mentioned in his post game interview that someone had pointed out that statistically, we've been a top half of the league defense with Nurk on the floor this year. Can anyone confirm if that stat is true?
with nurk on the floor i dont know, im not that good with statistics but since nurk returned (two games before april), blazers have 22nd ranked defense, but in the last three games (3-0), blazers have 7th ranked defense and in the last five games (3-2), blazers have 11th ranked defense obviously, in the last three games blazers are playing with effort defensively, so nurk finally got some help and therefore our defense looks much better and reminds me when we had top 10 defense with amimu and harkless, so as good as nurk is defensively, if the team doesnt put an effort in order to help him, it wont change anything... keep playing like these past three games and nurks defense will be a game changer
sTaRt KanTeR I swear nothing triggers my ass more than when I hear Nurk slander. One of the most underrated bigs in the game and completely underpaid. Along with Dame, the only foundational piece on the roster imo.
