Lost in the meltdown thread is this amazing little bit of information. Last year, the Blazers allowed 107.8 points per 100 possessions (good for 13th in the league). This year, so far, the Blazers are holding their opponents to 100.6 points per 100 possessions (Currently 10th in the league). Very small sample, and there are clearly issues with the defense yet - but this number, right here, is just amazing. Unfortunately, they are also nowhere near as good on offense - but since they were talking about defense being the cornerstone of their training camp - it is interesting. I am going to look at this data as the season progresses and we have a larger sample size, but so far - I am shocked how much better their defense is, despite the fact that they look confused like hell out there.
Well that depends on what your goals are. If your goals are for the team to be above average, that defense is fine. If your goal is to win a championship, then the facts are that the team that has won it all pretty much for all the years except the year Miami won it, has been the team with the best defense, or near it.
Well, I agree. The point being that for the Blazers to really contend - they need to work on their defense. So far, the numbers show that they have compared to last year. But there is still more work to be done. If this continues, I would be very encouraged.
The only differences lineup-wise have been more of Oden, and Webster instead of Batum (who just about everyone agrees is a pretty good defender). Oden and Przy, however, are only getting 41 mpg b/c of foul trouble. I submit that the more they're on the court, the better the defense will be. (Concurrently, the offense should be "more efficient" as well with one of the elite offensive rebounders on the floor at all times). Unfortunately, it seems as if a lack of good perimeter defense is a cause of the foul problems plaguing the bigs.
The thing I keep watching for with the team is a team that starts taking pride in getting stops. It's not there yet. When they get to the point where players take it personally when a team scores on them, then we will have arrived. Right now its a rare occasion when somebody gets upset about defensive play. Thats why the word that Greg was getting vocal in the last game is good news. The center needs to push the guards to defend better on the perimeter so he doesn't get in foul trouble. Let them know that he has their back if they lose their guy, but they need to put out that effort, and funnel their guy to help rather than let them run amok in the paint. A lot of the teams problems are not so much about the total defensive play. They are that the guards let too much interior penetration happen which gets our bigs into foul trouble, which takes them off the court.
The team as a whole may not have started, but Marty certainly has. He's playing with a lot of fire, and I think it'll be contagious...
If you want to base our defensive prowess against a Houston team with a lot of missing pieces and Oklahoma being 3 of the 4 games so far, then go ahead.
I think I clearly said that this is a small sample size and that I am going to continue looking at it. But, so far, based on offensive efficiency - Houston is 10th in the league and Denver is 2nd.
It's not just a small sample size though. Its a small sample size of 3/4 of the teams being bad. Its similar to me taking a presidential straw poll after the last election, questioning 4 peole exiting the polls, and 3 of them are from walking out of baptist church in Georgia and one from Oregon, and determing that is how the election is going to turn out.
Again, you ignore these team's offensive efficiency. 3 of the 4 games were against teams in the top-10 in offensive efficiency.
Hey and amazingly enough they got that efficiency against the Blazer defense. 2 of Houstons games have been against Portlands defense in order to get that stat line.
And yet the Blazers have improved a lot over last year in their defensive efficiency. You are arguing against yourself here. The facts are: 3 of our 4 games were against teams in the top-10 in offensive efficiency, and yet - our defensive efficiency has gone up rather significantly. We held Houston to 87 points in the 1st game. Honestly, we had 1 bad defensive game of these 4 - and that was the 2nd one against Houston. Other than that - we have pretty good 3 games defensively. We held Houston to a lot less than what they scored in all the other 3 games, we held Denver to 97 points (their other games were 114 and 133) and we held OKC to 74 points. This is encouraging.
Actually, although a ridiculously small sample size, it's probably a reasonable representation of the league (or as reasonable as you can get when you consider you've played one team twice). One pretty good 53+ win playoff team: Denver Two games against a team that probably wins 37-41 games this year: Houston One bad but rising 30 or so win team: Oklahoma Two road games, two at home.
What hasoos is saying is that one of the most offensively efficient teams in the league got that way by playing Portland twice. Perhaps Houston and Denver would look worse had they not played "Wide Open Three Pointer" Portland. Overall the defense is better because Oden has been a beast. But the perimeter defense is still garbage. They also seem to be fouling guys a ton. Not just Priz and Oden either. Everyone seems to be getting into at least a bit of foul trouble every game.
How would Denver look worse having NOT played us, when they had their worst game against us? Likewise with Houston, they had one good and one bad against us, so how would they ge ttop 10 that way?
This argument does not hold water. The Rockets averaged 99 points against us. They averaged 110.5 against the other teams they played. If anything, playing the Blazers twice has limited the Rockets to being only 10th in the league in efficiency. Not the other way around.
