anyone think we can keep it up? maybe nate finally got the team to understand his defense, like team USA did. i hope we stay playing aggressive like this on defense, it would make us a for sure playoff team IMO.
Well ... I guess we'll see what happens against a team not named the Wizards, but I like the fact that Brandon is taking it upon himself to lead by example, which will hopefully get people playing a more committed brand of D. Frankly I think the biggest problem has been Nate getting these guys to buy into the scheme and trust that if they give it the level of effort he's asking for that success will flow from it; it's like they have been getting caught half-way between fully committing to the paint and running out on shooters so the end result has been a bad blend of getting killed in the paint and killed by perimeter shots. One would hope they Wizard game would illustrate just how many easy transition buckets lead from defensive rebounding and pressuring guys on the perimeter as well as packing the lane, rather than having to grind in half-court sets all the time.
The Wizards played worse in that game than any team I've seen this season. Hopefully there really is a better defensive effort, but we won't really know until we play Utah on Saturday.
okay so would you say they didnt play good defense last night? and you guys seem to forget the cleveland game. we made them a jump shooting team
It was OK, but the Wizards played some of the worst basketball I have ever seen all season. At least half of those turnovers were unforced and their players seemed more content on playing 1 v 5 basketball rather than 5 v 5 basketball. Yet in the end, they still managed to shoot a good percentage. Blazers gave them a lot of free shots at the end, but allowing 48% shooting from one of the worst teams in the league is concerning no matter what. As for the Cleveland game, we made them shoot jumpers, but we didn't contest any of them. It was wide open threes all night. Our defense is just poor.
