Well, you can’t play the top teams every night, just the first 6 games, when people went bonkers around here.
But when the complaints were started being fired around, hadn't we played a real tough schedule against some of the best teams? What are the chances a few teams that were rated higher defensively, had played an easy schedule? We may be a bad defensive team, but damn, at least give it 20 games or so.
Blazers 21st in DrtG, 7th in OrtG https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2021.html Not sure why the numbers don't match.
I thought this thread was about how bad the Blazers’ defense is. My point is that it makes zero sense to use league defensive stats after just a few games. Strength of schedule is a huge factor influencing those stats when one team has played mostly top teams and other teams have just played bottom dwellers. The Blazers now catching a few soft teams and some home court advantage just makes up for how difficult their early schedule was. Your point that the Blazers will play top teams in the playoffs is valid, and if they want a shot at making any noise, they are going to have to get close to a top ten defense by the end of the season. They’re doing better, but they have a long way to go.
The top teams. After our new guys have had months to get used to eachother. Should be fun to see how they do!
first thing, I think we all realize, or at least most of us do, that any numbers derived this early in a season shouldn't be used to form any broad conclusions about teams. Too much room in schedule differentials to keep out skew. And after a short off-season, and even shorter training camp, teams will probably take longer to find their footing than in a normal season. Of course, every team will have that disadvantage for the purpose of the regular season at least, a more telling number is net point/100 differential of offense and defense ratings. That has always been a little better as a predictive gauge for this season (last column): I'm a stat fan so I've watched this for years. By the end of a season, you can take this differential without knowing team records and pretty accurately estimate what their won/loss record is; usually within a couple of games. Probably by the mid-season break this year, this differential will more closely track winnig percentages I will say, Portland has been a team in the Stotts era that has generally over-performed that gauge by a couple of wins. *********************************************************** as for defensive rating, and I think it might have been mentioned in this thread, that rating seems to be a pretty essential ingredient for a championship. I went thru the last 20 champions, and IIRC, 18 of 20 champions were top-10 in defense, and of those, most were top-5. And one of the two teams not top-10 was 11th. One team was an outlier. my guess why defense is so important is that it can be the most consistent component of a team. In the 3 point era I'd say offense can be a lot more inconsistent than defense. So, on night when a team is shooting poorly, if they have good defense, they can still hold the scoreboard margin to a winnable 4th quarter *********************************************************** another differential that was predictive of championships, although not as consistently predictive as defense, was rebounding. That makes sense because if your offense is struggling on a night, winning the 2nd chance point battle can make up for it Portland is currently 4th in offensive rating, but they have consistently been toward the top in that category in the Dame/CJ era. But they have only played 2 teams in the top-10 of defense. 9 of 11 games have come against teams in the bottom 3rd of the league in defense. And nearly half, 5 games, have been against teams in the bottom 5 in other words, Portland's offense hasn't really been tested yet meanwhile, the Blazers are 24th in defensive rating, 24th in offensive rebounding rate, and 7th in defensive rebounding rate and a note about the defense: Portland has only played 2 teams in the top-10 of offense. And only 6 against the top half of the league. All that makes sense considering the Blazers have had the 29th hardest strength of schedule so far. Blazers did have that good win against the Lakers early. But their other 6 wins have come against teams with a combined record of 17-36, a 32% winning percentage. Hopefully they can keep fattening their record and build some momentum over the easy start to their season because it's going to get a lot more difficult at the end of this month
Blazers are 7-4 4th in ortg 24th in drtg Last season 3rd, 28th It's going to take a while to get the new defense implemented.
Last season ; rank 26th..........This season rank 26th Daja vu...but i feel like this twilight zone.....oh wait stotts still the coach. I have never hated a person in personal life ever. But after 9 years of stotts i truly truly hate him. When will we fire him? Give me bugs bunny give me anyone who is clueless as a coach at least new face. Stotts is a disgrace. The man i robbing a franchise and smiling the clown he is.
If you hate Stotts, then you have to hate Olshey equally or more. Olshey is the one person that could fire Stotts yet he hasn’t. Stotts is just doing what he’s paid to do, albeit not too well.
Well put. I've never understood how people can say a coach is responsible for the production of the players he's given, but don't think the GM is responsible for the failures/successes of the coach they have hired. I've stated before, I think Olshey knows the second he fires Stotts, his clock starts ticking if we don't become a contender fast.
I absolutely despise that fool also. The difference is i see stotts clueless face much more than olshey