The Blazers brought in Evan Turner for his defense as well as his ball handling skills. I looked into Turner’s defensive statistics for last season at 82games.com. For defense, I compared him to All-NBA Defensive Team wing players, as well as recent and incumbent Blazer wings. The bottom line is that he is an excellent wing defender comparing favorably to the league’s best, and that he is a better wing defender than Blazer fans have seen in many years. This list includes the 2016 All-NBA Defensive Team wings. It also includes Batum and Matthews from 2015, their last years as Blazers, since Blazer fans are familiar with them and they are considered good defenders. In addition, it includes the three small forwards from last year’s Blazers that played the most minutes. I include Turner’s stats both as a SF, the position he will play for Portland, and as a SG. For the other players, I included only the position at which they spent the most minutes. The data come from “Opponent Counterpart 48 Minute Production.” I included the opponent counterpart PER and opponent counterpart effective field goal percent. These can be thought of as defended player PER and defended player eFG%, respectively. I am not quite sure how the PER data is computed, but at least it is done consistently for all players. Player / PER / eFG% Turner - SF / 11.4 / .471 Turner - SG / 13.3 / .481 Avery Bradley - SG / 13.6 / .488 Kawhi Leonard - SF / 12.7 / .464 Tony Allen - SG / 17.9 / .523 Jimmy Butler - SG / 12.3 / .449 Paul George - SF / 13.6 / .476 Batum 2015 - SF / 13.3 / .504 Matthews 2015 - SG / 13.5 / .467 Aminu - SF / 13.5 / .491 Harkless - SF / 14.2 / .501 Crabbe - SF / 12.2 / .485 The results present Turner as a defender on par with the All-NBA Defensive wings. The players he defended as a SF had the lowest PER (11.4) on the list. This defended player PER is lower than Kawhi Leonard, Defensive Player of the Year, and the defended player eFG% is quite close to that of Leonard and George. In comparison to Blazer wings, as a small forward he is notably better than Batum and three of last year’s small forwards (Crabbe is most outstanding among the three, which with his high catch and shoot shooting percentage is probably why we matched him). As a shooting guard, he was on par with 2015 Matthews in terms of defended player PER, but slightly behind in defended player eFG%. The bottom line is that Evan Turner is probably the best wing defender the Blazers have had in recent history, that he will improve the Blazers defense, and that he should be on the watch list for the All-NBA Defensive Team.
I believe with Turner and Aminu and Ezeli on the front line your going see improvement on defense hold bunch.
Well I don't know if this has anything to do with it or not but I wouldn't have him guarding SGs personally. I would keep him on SFs. But age maybe creeping up on him because he used to be able to guard SGs well.
I think this also, along with always drawing the other teams best scorer. Some on this list just guard their position......which is great, but I have seen Allen, guard whoever the other teams best player is constantly
To be fair, I didn't watch many Grizz games last year, but the drop off must have been pretty stark. He was great in 14-15
When age is a factor, the drop off can be massive. Tim Duncan went from a solid starter 2014-2015 to really just a bench role player in 2015-2016. Duncan 2014-2015 - 14 ppg, 9 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 blocks in 77 games played and 29 minutes per game. He shot 51% from the field and he had a 22.6 PER Duncan 2015-2016 - 8.6 ppg, 7.3 rebounds, 2.7 assists, 1.3 blocks in 61 games and 25 minutes played. He shot 49% from the field and had a 17 PER He was still productive last year, but that's a massive dropoff between one season to the next, and by the time the playoffs rolled around he was definitely not the same player.
Nope. There were reports of injuries that were finally catching up to him. His numbers at the end of the year were significantly worse. Check out the game log from last season. The good games were few and far between. http://espn.go.com/nba/player/gamelog/_/id/215/tim-duncan
Excellent post @Blaz06Draft I didn't realize just how good Turner is on D. Of course, ones numbers aren't in a vacuum and could be greatly affected by pace, by team defensive schemes or by how the coach uses you. But regardless, ET is obviously a HellBeast wing defender.
I think he is a solid and intelligent defender. But don't expect a lock down defender. That he is not. Regardless we had to make a move to find a wing who could help defend Klay. He ate us alive last year. For the same reason I hope we sign Harkless and don't trade Aminu. We need those type of players who are versatile on D. Aminu could be attractive to other teams in a trade, so I can see including him for the right long term piece, but I do like him on the team.
Good post. During, and leading up to, the free agency period, I was constantly harping that we need to add two-way players to our line up to take the next step toward being contenders. That's why Horford, Millsap, Paul George and Jimmy Butler were all high on my wish list. I realize Millsap, George and Butler weren't free agents, but was hoping they would become available in trades if their teams lost other free agents and decided to blow it up and rebuild. In any case, because he's not a prolific scorer, I overlooked Turner. I'm glad Neil didn't. No, he doesn't score as much as the others on my list, but he isn't an offensive zero, either. Given our lack of front court scoring, we needed to find a way to shore up our perimeter defense without adding a defensive specialist to our starting line up. You can't win in today's NBA playing 2-on-5 on offense. Adding a non-scorer to our starting line up would have made it even easier for teams to focus on shutting down Dame and C.J. Neil found a way to improve our perimeter defense without completely sacrificing offense. As you showed in your other thread, Turner's ball handling and distribution skills will allow Dame and C.J. to play off the ball more and get more higher percentage catch and shoot opportunities. Also, with his ability to penetrate and finish in the paint, opposing defenses can't ignore Turner as a scoring threat. His ability to collapse opposing defenses, and then find the open shooters will further help Dame and C.J. and especially Aminu and Crabbe get more open looks. I'd still love to see a consolidation trade at some point for a Paul Millsap or Paul George type player, but for now, I'm satisfied that Neil has addressed a glaring need on one end (perimeter defense), without making us weaker on the other end. In fact, Turner makes us better on both ends, and that's exactly what we needed. Neil also added some much needed bulk and rim protection down low with Ezeli. Some I'm fine, in most cases, with Aminu playing the stretch 4 in our starting line up. In today's NBA, there aren't that many dominant, low post power forwards. There is no Karl Malone. Duncan has retired and Garnett is a Kamanesque mentor on the bench for MIN. Aminu did a great job defensing Blake Griffin in the playoffs (but that may been due to Griffins nagging injury flaring up), but would struggle against a guy like Aldridge. So, hopefully, Ed Davis puts on that extra 15 pounds this summer like he promised. I'd also love to see Meyers get under Aldridge's skin the way he does with Cousins and Gasol. In any case, Neil improved our perimeter defense and added some bulk down low. We didn't get a big name superstar, or even a 2-way all star like Horford, Millsap, George or Butler, but we did get better and added flexibility and versatility. The West is going to be a dog fight, but I think we will be in the chase for HCA and are also well positioned for a future consolidation trade if the opportunity arises. BNM
Great post. There's a reason Boston adjusted for him to guard LeBron most of the time in their playoff series last season, and he did well at it.
Yeah, but it was readily available, and calculated the same for all players. I couldn't find the defensive tracking stats.
Buck was 29 when he was traded to Portland. I think this is about the age where we could get lucky and grab someone who could help. Someone who has been with the same team for 8 years (Like Buck was with NJ) and whose team is looking to go young..... Millsap is a little older than I would like (31) but I can see some similarities.
