Great point; this might make steals even more important; you can't really body up to a shooter who can go around you, unless you can also make them lose the ball on the dribble. Crabbe is very effective at this; we've seen several times where the opponent will iso their main guard at the top of the key, and Crabbe will switch onto him. His long arms mean he can be far enough away that the opponent keeps his dribble while he tries to figure out a way around him. It's then that Crabbe times his jab, gets a steal, and a fast break dunk.
The reason we're better defensively is because LMA isn't on the team anymore. Seriously. We now have 5 guys on the floor who are all willing to play defense and rotate to cover their teammates backs. Basically, as people have already mentioned: hustle and effort. Playing 5 guys who aren't individually great, but who play hard and together, will always be better than playing 5 good individual defenders who play individually. And if you've got one guy (LMA) who refuses to rotate your defense will be easy to break.
Haha is this a joke? He's now a key piece on one of the best defenses of all time. We're not better defensively either; last years team had a much higher defensive rating even with injuries and a bad bench. The starting unit was exceptional.
Regardless of what LMA is doing this year, last year - and in fact, throughout his entire Blazers career - he never rotated on defense. The only time he'd pick up one of his teammate's assignments was on a switch on the perimeter. If someone was coming towards the hoop he'd stick to his man like glue while watching the opponent lay the ball in. That's the very definition of "weak link", and due entirely to either lack of effort or unwillingness. Also, I think this thread was about our recent defense, not the entire season's defense. Without looking at stats, I think our recent defense has been way better than anything I've seen in the last 5+ seasons.
The effort put forth by our guys has allowed us to finally graduate from "push through the pick" to "situationally slip and switch". Smarter defensive minds, more effort, better decision making, more TEAM defense and less INDIVIDUAL defense.
Good defense is a active defense and right now we are very active. That why we are getting steals plus Dame and CJ are getting better on defense. Right now we got 9 players playing great team defense. Look at this Harkless comes in for Von there no let down on defense, Henderson come for CJ defense get better same for Davis and Crabbe coming off the bench there no let down on defense. Most teams NBA team cannot say that in this league.
Last year's team allowed a lower FG%, a lower 3P%, and fewer 3PA than this year's team has. However, I think the OP was referencing the way the defense has improved from what we saw early in the season. Since Christmas, we've actually only allowed 47% shooting from 2, as compared to 49% last year, have only allowed 23.5 3PA/game (last year was 27), and have allowed 101 ppg, while we allowed 102.8 last year. We're even being more judicious with our fouls, sending more people to the line (26 FTA/g), but opponents are only converting at just over 70%. So as compared to last year, we actually are better over the span of our past 25 games.
