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BonesJones said:
Dames numbers are the worst in his career due to an early season slump and our offense hasn't fallen off? Impressive. Imagine if he was his normal self all year.
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Do you also think Dame's injury is the reason we've continued to be a poor defensive team? How much better do you expect our defensive ranking to be by seasons end?
 
Buffalo Custard said:
Absolutely. Who could have predicted Dame would be this mediocre? He was supposed to be our one constant.
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On the brighter side, the past 6 games Dame’s offensive efficiency has approached normal for him. Still down but almost. But he also had two really high FTA games in that stretch which might not be repeatable. Also those 6 games are kind of cherry picked.

All in all I’m optimistic that Dame will return to form or close to form for the rest of the season. But I do have some fear that this could be in part the beginning of a steep decline. Dame does operate on thin margins which make his game a bit fragile compared to someone like Chris Paul who gains an advantage in more fundamentally sound ways that are less susceptible to Father Time.
 
SlyPokerDog said:
At this rate, in 14 years we'll have the number 1 defense!
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Hahaha.... Depends on how much of it is a simple scheme fix vs our roster. If it's the roster, how much roster flexibility do we have in terms of players who have desirable contracts.
 
Blazers offense is almost as good as the Warriors.
Blazers defense is 12 points per 100 worse than the Warriors.
If we could just defend like the Warriors we'd be them. LOL.

How is the Warriors defense so much better?

Not much any of these:
- We defend shots at the rim almost as well.
- We defend mid-range shots almost as well.
- We defensive rebound a bit better than them.
- We foul less than they do.

It's really just three things:
1. Warriors defend the 3 point line way better (39% vs 32%) = 7 points per game.
2. Warriors force more turnovers 16.4 vs 14.0 = 2 points per game.
3. Blazers allow more shots at the rim - 32% vs 21% = 3 points per game.

So the problem is exactly what we already knew and really not much of anything else. We get beat off the dribble resulting in more shots at the rim and scrambling to help resulting in more open three's.

Can anything be done? Is it really just personnel or do they do something different???

Defense is so underrated.
 
being 4th in offensive rating and 28th in defensive rating according to Casey Holdahl puts us at 16th in the league for net rating.....that's a 500 team and until they show they can close games and create runs, get stops....that won't be changing soon. I'm firmly in the camp that a coaching change wasn't solving our problem but I do think Chauncey will grow into a great coach...he's just figuring it out and we get to watch him do that.
 
riverman said:
being 4th in offensive rating and 28th in defensive rating according to Casey Holdahl puts us at 16th in the league for net rating.....that's a 500 team and until they show they can close games and create runs, get stops....that won't be changing soon. I'm firmly in the camp that a coaching change wasn't solving our problem but I do think Chauncey will grow into a great coach...he's just figuring it out and we get to watch him do that.
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I take all those offensive and defensive ratings with a massive grain of salt. If we hadn't faced so many injured teams, we could look a lot worse ratings-wise.

Especially defensive ratings. The sad thing is if all the guys I listed above were healthy when we faced their teams, we could've been blown out several times. In which case our defensive ratings might be just as bad as last year in spite of no longer having Melo and Kanter. Yeesh.
 
bobf said:
Depends mostly on Dame. If Dame had played at his normal level we’d be 12-8 or 13-7 by now, on pace for 48 to 53 wins. If Dame plays the rest of the year like the first 20 games then yeah we’re in deep trouble, struggling to be a 0.500 team.
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generically, that's probably true

if you go by winshares: Dame had 10.4 winshares in 67 games last season. So he'd currently have about 3 winshares in the 19 games he's played so far, assuming last season's rate. But he does have 1.6 winshares already so him playing normal would only add 1.4 wins, according to winshares

obviously wins and winshares aren't exactly the same, but that's why I said 'generic'. Because when you look at the individual games, Portland has been so bad on the road, I only see one game, at Cleveland, where normal Dame might have made the difference. I think only the Sacramento (opener) and Cleveland games could be put in the 'probably-win-if-Dame-is-normal' category. Of course, 49 wins is better than 41
 
mook said:
Our 5 starters have missed 3 games combined out of a possible 100 starts. Even with Dame's injury, that's way healthier than a lot of the teams we've played against.

We beat Denver without Jokic, Porter or Murray.
We beat Philly without Embiid.
We beat Chicago without Vucevic.
We beat the 1-11 Rockets.
We beat the Lakers without LeBron or AD (for all but 7 minutes).
We beat very mediocre Raptors, Grizzlies and Pacers teams, all on our home court.
We beat the Clippers without Kawaii.

Really, the only win we can be truly proud of is the second game of the season where we took it to a healthy Suns and won by 30+ points at home. Well, the Chicago one was pretty good too, but again another home game.

Sure, if Dame were 100% we may have 3 or 4 more wins. But you could just as easily say if Jokic, Embiid, Vucekvic, Kawaii, AD and LeBron were healthy we could have at least 4 more losses, and be 6-14.

It feels like a treadmill team right now. At best.
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You know I was just going to say that it seems like we’ve played a TON of teams while they were missing key players.
 
Tince said:
Do you also think Dame's injury is the reason we've continued to be a poor defensive team? How much better do you expect our defensive ranking to be by seasons end?
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Moreso a tough schedule plus growing pains trying to learn a new defense. I expect us to be 15th to 20th.

People will downplay certain teams because of who they were missing as if those teams weren't still playing solid to good basketball without them. We have one of the easiest schedules in the league after tonight.
 
wizenheimer said:
generically, that's probably true

if you go by winshares: Dame had 10.4 winshares in 67 games last season. So he'd currently have about 3 winshares in the 19 games he's played so far, assuming last season's rate. But he does have 1.6 winshares already so him playing normal would only add 1.4 wins, according to winshares

obviously wins and winshares aren't exactly the same, but that's why I said 'generic'. Because when you look at the individual games, Portland has been so bad on the road, I only see one game, at Cleveland, where normal Dame might have made the difference. I think only the Sacramento (opener) and Cleveland games could be put in the 'probably-win-if-Dame-is-normal' category. Of course, 49 wins is better than 41
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You and a few others are really good at the statistical point of the game for sure. To me it's absolutely astounding how you guys come up with most of this stuff. It's really entertaining to read. Sometimes however it becomes hard to wrap my head around all the But, If, Were to's, therefore's and to this points.
Keep up the good work. It certainly won't be me doing it.
 
wizenheimer said:
generically, that's probably true

if you go by winshares: Dame had 10.4 winshares in 67 games last season. So he'd currently have about 3 winshares in the 19 games he's played so far, assuming last season's rate. But he does have 1.6 winshares already so him playing normal would only add 1.4 wins, according to winshares

obviously wins and winshares aren't exactly the same, but that's why I said 'generic'. Because when you look at the individual games, Portland has been so bad on the road, I only see one game, at Cleveland, where normal Dame might have made the difference. I think only the Sacramento (opener) and Cleveland games could be put in the 'probably-win-if-Dame-is-normal' category. Of course, 49 wins is better than 41
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I wouldn't use Win Shares. I don't remember where, but I've read that Win Shares and PER and near the bottom of the barrel of advance stats when it comes to predictive power. Also it doesn't pass the sanity test. For example, according to Win Shares 2020-21 Dame was only 2.9 wins better than Kanter.

BPM is a better advanced stat and we know it's units are point differential per 48 above an average player. Dame's BPM has averaged +6.75 for the past 4 years. He averages about 2/3 of 48 min/g so 6.75 x 2/3 = +4.5 points per game. At +2.5 wins per point (historically reliable) Dame adds +11 wins per season. With Dame at exactly 0.0 BPM this year he has cost us 11 / 4 = 2.8 wins compared to his normal contribution.

A simpler and more direct way to calculate it is to take Dames normal TS% and apply it to games this season to see how many points he "should" have scored each game vs what he did score. Doing that Dame is -75 points behind himself. Blazers should have a +4.35 point differential and these game results would have changed:

We win Game 1 vs Sacremento by 10 instead of losing by 3.
We win Game 8 vs Cleveland by 8 instead of losing by 3.
We tie Game 6 vs Charlotte instead of losing by 12.
So +2.5 wins.
 
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bobf said:
I wouldn't use Win Shares. I don't remember where, but I've read that Win Shares and PER and near the bottom of the barrel of advance stats when it comes to predictive power. Also it doesn't pass the sanity test. For example, according to Win Shares 2020-21 Dame was only 2.9 wins better than Kanter last year.

BPM is a better advanced stat and we know it's units are point differential per 48 above an average player. Dame's BPM has averaged +6.75 for the past 4 years. He averages about 2/3 of 48 min/g so 6.75 x 2/3 = +4.5 points per game. At +2.5 wins per point (historically reliable) Dame adds +11 wins per season. With Dame at exactly 0.0 BPM this year he has cost us 11 / 4 = 2.8 wins.

A simpler and more direct way to calculate it is to take Dames normal TS% and apply it to games this season to see how many points he "should" have scored each game vs what he did score. Doing that Dame is -75 points behind himself. Blazers should have a +4.35 point differential and these game results would have changed:

We win Game 1 vs Sacremento by 10 instead of losing by 3.
We win Game 8 vs Cleveland by 8 instead of losing by 3.
We tie Game 6 vs Charlotte instead of losing by 12.
So +2.5 wins.
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What is your profession in real life lol
 
THE HCP said:
Would you say we look like a 41-41 team by seasons end?
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I think we will end up anywhere from 6th-9th in the western conference standings. Doubtful we get past the first round. Another wasted year of Dames prime.
 
bobf said:
Is that a rhetorical question? I'm a software developer so I probably can't tell. :)
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Haha I had a feeling. I am a software developer as well, and I thought you might either be a software developer or data scientist.
 
BonesJones said:
Just gotta figure out how to do 80% of what they do at home on the road.
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Nope. They currently do 90% of what they do at home on the road both in offensive rating and defensive rating, even if you multiply these, it comes to 81% - which is more than the 80 you request of them.

They need to 95% of what they do on offense and on defense to split their road games - which is what you want a good team to do.

The 80% would have worked if they were a lot more dominant in net-ratings at home. They are not.
 
andalusian said:
Nope. They currently do 90% of what they do at home on the road both in offensive rating and defensive rating, even if you multiply these, it comes to 81% - which is more than the 80 you request of them.

They need to 95% of what they do on offense and on defense to split their road games - which is what you want a good team to do.

The 80% would have worked if they were a lot more dominant in net-ratings at home. They are not.
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I think that 80% figure was pulled out of thin air just to make a point but yet again i am shocked at some of the stats you guys come up with. Great job because it not only makes sense it is undoubtedly true.
 
Fairly-Hard said:
I think that 80% figure was pulled out of thin air just to make a point but yet again i am shocked at some of the stats you guys come up with. Great job because it not only makes sense it is undoubtedly true.
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I am sure it was - it just felt very wrong to me - so I actually looked it up.

But then, I am a NERD as well - and I am working with numbers a lot - so it just tingled my spidey sense ...
 
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