I found an interesting thing looking at the Blazers opponents FG% by shot range. If you rank the Blazers against other teams, by the FG% they give up, they improve in ranking the further away from the basket you get. http://stats.nba.com/leagueTeamOppShots.html?pageNo=1&rowsPerPage=30 We're 7th worst in the league at shots 5 ft and under (61%), and #2 in the league at 3pt defense (27.1%). So it seems we're good at perimeter defense, but what is causing our struggles inside? It's interesting to see that two teams that give up a higher percentage than us inside are the Clippers and Pistons, both of whom have centers that are supposed to be good defensively. Some teams that give up a low percentage don't have good defensive centers, like the Nets, Warriors, Spurs, Bobcats...
Look at Stotts' philosophy. The three point shot. Stotts values the three point shot, thinks its an efficient way to score, and the team is now built for that. It stands to reason that, regardless of how good our interior defenders may be, the team's defensive focus would also be on stopping the three point shot, and that is going to come at the expense of overall interior defense. No one can stop NBA players, you can only hope to contain them. At any level, you want to take away the one thing a player does best, and make him do something else. Since Stotts seems to think you live and die by the three, it stands to reason he would want to cut off the other team's three-ball to improve our chances.
I think our inside extra bad because we play the three so hard. But we already know we're weak on the interior. So maybe go for something great and something bad, rather than something okay and okay.
Another thing to consider is shot attempts. While DET might give up a worse percentage than us, they are allowing teams to shoot fewer point-blank shots - and that's also part of defense (LAC is bad in both regards). What stands out to me is that DET's OppFG% in the 5-9' range is ranked 5th best - those shots are more likely to be ones that are closed-out on by Drummond/Monroe/Smith, whereas the <5' range are often undefended either because of fast-breaks or a missed assignment. Thanks for that link - I like the ranges that they use. To this point I've just used hoopdata, which breaks it out differently (Rim, 3-9', etc). I think your link might be a better source for looking at interior defense. I'll be interested to see how things shake out over the course of the season - right now their's some goofy looking standings depending on what you're sorting by.
ive noticed that we do close out well on shooters which can make you vulnerable to getting beat. Stotts philosophy must be something to do with that. the only thing that bothers me about this whole we suck at interior defense is that with the eye test we really don't seem that bad. we look greatly improved from last year
Mike and Mike said the blazers strategy this year has been to keep teams out of the paint but give them the mid range jump shot instead. Stotts has us shooting a lot of 3s, because that's the strength of our team, but why would he employ that strategy against inside oriented teams? Seems that we can't stop teams from scoring inside even when we want to. But who is playing terrible defense?
Well, based on that we're doing a poor job. Here's how our OppFGA breaks down by distance: <5' = 41% 5-9' = 14% 10-14' = 7% 15-19' = 17% 3-point = 20% I also looked at where our shots are coming from: <5' = 30% 5-9' = 11% 10-14' = 9% 15-19' = 25% 3-point = 26% So while we are taking a fair amount of our shots from 3-point range, as desired by Stotts, we're also taking a lot of those low-percentage mid-range shots that we're trying (but failing) to make other teams take.
