DAMIAN LILLARD is an absolute train wreck defensively (youtube.com) This is hard to watch as a big fan of Dame, but it was too funny to not share.
Honestly if you watch this (and there were hundreds of these in PDX too) then watch Jrue it's hard to not at least wonder if the Bucks would be better swapping those two. Not to mention the Bucks now have this juggernaut they have to beat WITH Jrue. As pessimistic as I am about the Blazers current roster, super glad we got the trade haul we did when we did.
The Funniest part to me is you could also make a 5 minute you tube video of really solid defensive plays he has made this year.
What's hilarious is that we have all seen Dame and CJ with that garbage defense on corner threes. This is the Dame we have seen for over a decade. Not sure why these guys are acting like this hasn't been Dame for his whole career. This is Dame.
Dame is bad at defense....but great at offense; great enough to offset his defense in a major way. BPM is a pretty solid scale for gauging offense/defense offsets there has been chatter about Jrue Holiday and his great defense in this thread. So, how do BPM and other gauges weight the career comparison between Dame & Jrue? offensive BPM: Dame +5.5....Jrue +1.5 defensive BPM: Dame -0.9....Jrue +0.1 Net BPM: Dame +4.7....Jrue +1.7 Winshares/48: Dame .174....Jrue .103 Winshares: Dame 110.8....Jrue 69.4 VORP: Dame 51.3....Jrue 29.8 obviously, winshares and VORP are cumulative stats; the more games played adds to the marks. Jrue has played about 130 more games than Dame. And I'd think it's fair to say that Jrue has had a massive advantage in the type of defenders he has played with so yeah, Dame is bad at defense; so was Nash; so is Curry. This is a Dame thread and there appears to be a lot of animus against Dame from some posters here so I accept there will be people shitting on him for his defense ST was talking earlier about what it would have looked like pairing Jrue with CJ or Ant. What it would have looked like is not nearly as good as if Dame had been paired with Jrue...like Curry has been welded to Klay, Draymond, Iggy, Durant
Well, there's one thing to consider. Dame has been the primary focal point of the offense for most of his career. That was never Jrue's role. Dame played on a number of mediocre teams where he was pretty much it on offense. Jrue won a ring with Milwaukee. Dame isn't really showing that he can fit in on a championship team. He was just a different player back on those LMA teams.
but that's my point, don't you see? I'm talking value, and in the NBA with it's 3 point line and it's rules, the positive value of his offense is much greater than the negative value of his defense. Dame has been the focal point of the offenses because he has top-10 offensive talent; he earned that usage rate. It wasn't just circumstance
Yes, but I think what he has shown this year is that he's still only really effective when he's the first option. When Giannis isn't there, he reverts back to old Dame and he looks great. Maybe it's how the Bucks are using him. I don't know. I haven't watched much Milwaukee games this season. I'm just saying that there's something to be said for a player that can still produce within a system. I'm not really seeing that with Dame. Maybe he's sulking. Maybe it's all the stuff happening off the court.
Rhetorical question... Can you break down those stats by regular season vs playoffs, and just as importantly for regular season, games against say top-4 seeds vs lower seeds and non-playoff teams? The latter being to get a sense how how Dame and Jrue's BPMs impact more meaningful games. My sense is, offensive BPM is more important in games that don't matter, and defensive BPM more so in games that do. So, a simple averaging of the two misses the true importance.
Assuming that's Net BPM, that's a lot closer, going from a 2.8:1 ratio to 1.5:1 ratio. That supports two things that I suspected: 1) playoffs favor the defensive side of the statistic, and 2) defense is being very underrated still by looking at Net as just summation rather than some sort of weighted scale.
I'd say it's well understood that defense is better and a higher priority in the playoffs. Teams can construct game plans for one opponent in a series my point was that crapping on Dame for his defense tends to ignore the reality his offensive strengths far outweigh his defensive weaknesses. Dame has been a top-10 player in the NBA because of his offense. Holiday has never been top-10 because of his defense
Depends what you mean by "value"... Does Dame quickly raise a bad team to above average but then his effectiveness is capped since he can't as easily fit into an elite contender? While Jrue doesn't elevate a bad team near as much - he can be a key to elevate a good team to greatness. If Jrue elevates more teams to a championship isn't that ultimately more valuable?
Thanks for sharing....that guy's ranting was pretty funny.....and it's not like he was wrong. Dame has never been a very good perimeter defender, but some of that stuff is pretty egregious.
Exactly. That's why playoff and big regular season game success is a far more significant measuring stick, IMO.
Let’s see how this plays out in the postseason. Never seen Dame with this good a roster while not hurt. The only time he has had this much talent around him was the Olympics and he was obviously injured during that time.
