AROUND THE NBA THREAD. Sept 2021 edition

okay then What about okc? What about Boston and the other teams he's been on.
Id buy that if he was only a Blazer the last 7 years.

 

Him getting absolutely trashed by Millsap/Jokic was the issue though; one on one. CJ getting smacked by Austin is a different issue, and not why Kanter got benched imo. It was because Jokic was giving him ALL THE BUSINESS.

So much so that they started using MELO to guard Jokic in the post.

You can’t tell me that’s about ball pressure.

The guards definitely have issues but Kanter is an absolute zero on defense.

Using another football reference, it would be like Kanter is a cornerback defending a WR and he gets smoked all the time. Then comes to the huddle and says “where the fuck is the pass rush?”

even with an otherworldly pass rush, you still would’ve given up a touchdown cuz ur a bum bro, that’s Kanter

 

Like i said he’s a bad defender. We compounded the situation by having more bad defense in front of him.

 

I'm curious, so I'm going to check how Portland's defense performed in 2018-19 after Nurkic went down and Kanter took over the starting role

first, defensive ratings in the regular season games:

108.8
97.2
99.4
122.1 (game Portland won by 10)
92.3
128.7 (Denver at Denver)
109.0 (Denver at Portland)
103.3
134.5 (that was the Kings game when the starters didn't play)

keeping in mind the Blazers had a 116.0 defensive rating last season, those individual game ratings look pretty good.

so, how about defensive ratings that year in the playoffs?

against OKC 105.6
against Denver 115.1
against Warriors 116.1

all that with Kanter starting

and this season, with Kanter averaging 11 points including a DNP-CD, Portland's rating against Denver was 123.4. In other words, Portland absolutely sucked at defense and it wasn't Kanter's fault
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so yeah, I'd agree with Calvin Natt that people are exaggerating how bad Kanter is on defense. Portland performed a hell of a lot better on defense according to those numbers with Kanter as the starting C and a roster that was much better at defense. The reason Kanter may have been "unplayable" against the Nuggets this season is that Portland had defensive sieves all over the floor in Dame, CJ, Powell (yes, him too), Melo, and Simons

 

Might say something about the Harkless/Aminu duo?

 

and Zach Collins which is something the team did not have since until (hopefully) Nance arrived, pretty much. Zach Collins defense won the Blazers that Denver series to make the WCF.

 

Ah Yes!
Zach "Give em the Boot" Collins.

 

yes....and having defenders like Turner, Zach, Curry, and Hood coming off the bench instead of sieves like Melo and Simons

also might point to the issues of having a 6'3 forward

 

Rodney Hood hit several big three's in that series too

 

100% agree, you nailed it.

 

My point is you don’t compound 0. 0 is 0 no matter how you look at it.
Tony Allen could be in front of him and it wouldn’t make a difference in what happened.

Tony Allen and Marcus smart guarding Denver backcourt isn’t stopping them from throwing the ball into Jokic and absolutely cooking Kanter, again.

You’re giving Kanter a cop out. “Only if we had better defense in front of him…”

No. He could be surrounded by all NBA defensive players and he would still get his ass benched. He’s terrible.

It’s not like he got benched cuz our guards kept getting beat and he was slow rotating over. He was straight up getting dog walked one on one by pretty much every player he matched up against.

 

Except he just proved with numbers that with better defenders around him he was not nearly as bad and he even played well against Jokic with a bad shoulder he could barely lift above his head?

 

Maybe somebody should start a thread about him.

 

That’s a lot of words son……… is his replacement better?

 

He can hit 3's from the corner. But rather have Hartenstein or Ennis.

 

How does that make any logical sense. The number of direct drives to the basket with Tony Allen vs Cj/dame drops. The number of times CJ and Dame lose their man so Kanter steps over to help lowers. The amount of times Kanter would have to help Tony Allen vs our guards would drop. Everything is compounded by having shitty defense around the perimeter. Fact. It doesn’t mean Kanter is good at defense. But we did absolutely zilch to help or cover that up. No good defense has bad ball pressure. It doesn’t exist. So we had that, plus Kanter. Kanter went from a really bad defender to totally useless.

 

I'll jump right on that!

You don't want to jump on my sister. I'm telling ya.

 

Sounds like an Olshey guy

 

Olshey did go after him before.