I’ll be keeping track here. We currently have the 16th best defense since Nurk returned: https://www.nba.com/stats/teams/def...020-21&SeasonType=Regular Season&LastNGames=3
some context: * record of the three teams since Nurkic returned: 47-93 (.336 = 27.5 wins in a regular season) * offensive ranking of the three teams: 27, 13, 25....22nd average. And all three team were missing several players from injury or trade. For instance, look at what Orlando was 'missing': Orlando was missing 86 points, 34 rebounds, and 24 assists. Blazers better play good defense in that circumstance. it's also worth noting that the one time of the three when the Blazers played an above average offense in Toronto, they had a defensive rating of 118.1, which is worse than their season average
Doesn't include tonight's game (I don't think). Should get a big boost, winning by 23, and holding other team to 101 points. Thanks for doing this, it should be interesting.
Passes the eye test. Nurk and Powell seem to really solidify the D. I’m really interested to see when Zach returns in a month (hopefully).
like others have said, we should wait and see how the blazers play against good teams, cause magic, raptors and pistons are trash i want to see how this teams defense looks a month from now (when nurk plays bigger minutes and gets much needed playing time or so called game shape which is different from condition)
https://www.nba.com/stats/teams/def...gular Season&CF=OPP_PTS_PAINT*E*&LastNGames=3 that being said, heres another stat about opponent points in the paint pre-all star blazers were 28th, the last three games, blazers are 15th
https://www.nba.com/stats/teams/defense/?dir=-1&sort=DEF_RATING&Season=2020-21&SeasonType=Regular Season&CF=OPP_PTS_PAINT*E*&PlayerPosition=C&LastNGames=3 this is about opponent center points in the paint and its shows blazers were 23rd pre all-star and 12th for the last three games
EVERYTHING looks so much better since Nurk returned. Defense especially. Powell is a light years-better defender than Trent, so that really helps too. But it's so nice to have a center who can coordinate an offense. He's not nearly as creative as Jokic, but he just has this feel for the offense where guys on the perimeter just kind of dance with him. There's a choreography to it we were desperately missing.
Just keep it up. Yes you need more games. Looks decent so far. Hope it gets even better. Maybe they can move into the top 15 with a few more decent games.
in any team sport, coach is the most important thing and depending on how good or bad coach is, team can overachieve or underachive or be good or bad as expected first and foremost, coach needs to get his players to play with effort, then he needs to find a defensive scheme(s) that is compatible with the players he has, cause you cant ask your players to do something theyre not able to do and then you need to find the right rotations, make sure you always have a couple of defenders on the floor and certainly not a line-up of four non-defenders like cj mccollum, simons, carmelo and kanter terry stotts has nurk who is defensive anchor, covington, jones jr, little, powell, thats five players who can defend and its his fucking job to work his magic with them, find a defensive scheme(s) that suits them and then make sure he gets rest of his players who cant play defense (dame, cj mccollum, simons, carmelo, kanter) buy in and play with effort look at the knicks this season, its all tom thibodeau, theres literally no way they have so many good defenders to be ranked as 4th best defense in the nba and that means they are overachievers thanks to their coach and the same way, no-one can persuade me that the blazers cant do better than 29th ranked defense if the defense doesnt improve by the end of the season, terry stotts should be fired and the blazers should look to bring some defensive minded coach, some guy with ideas, someone who is not afraid to shake rotation, try new things, hold players accountable etc... wouldnt that be a sight
Yeah, the last 3 opponents weren't too good, but the team had played bad teams before (or teams missing multiple starters) and laid eggs. So it's an improvement. Still no where close to where they need to be though. But it's heading in the right direction. Need to show this over the rest of the season.
I think Stotts going have get out 1st round to safe his job. I think people above Olshey not happy with Stotts especially the defense side. Stotts does have 1more year on his contract. These next 3 or 4 games going tell me if we going stay out of them play in games where you don't want to be. We 3 game cushion with the spurs and dallas.
Don’t quote me on this, but I think the standard deviation of an NBA score against a given team is around 10 which would mean after 10 games a defensive rating will have a standard deviation of around 3 and after 25 games around 2 and after 100 games around 1 (you divide by the square root of N number of games). So after 10 games if Blazers have a D rating of say 114 you can only say with 95% confidence that their rating is between 108 and 120 (plus or minus two standard deviations). IOW 10 games ain’t gonna tell us shit with any high degree of confidence. You’re probably better off just looking at their defense. Still an interesting thread though. Please correct me if I messed up somewhere it’s been a while.
Not counting the playoffs last year, the last 95 games that Nurk has played, the team is 61-34, which over an 82 game schedule is about 52 wins, and over 72 games, it'd be about 46. (I think my totals are correct)
