There is no "in the middle of a discussion here" it's a forum msg board...we post and react to posts..you don't need to value my examples.....choices...you may have a discussion template that you need to keep on track....I don't....
Nets have the #1 offense in league right now and many say they are the fav to win it all. However, their D is almost as bad as ours so if they end up in the finals for the EC against the best defensive team in the league Utah, who wins?
I'd take the Nets pretty easily, both teams healthy. Nets don't beat you by getting to the rim which limits Gobert's defensive value. Great pull up shooters to force him to guard further out in ball screens. They can also put out some pretty switchable lineups defensively to help neutralize Utah's heavy pick and roll / drive and kick offense.
again fine.....but then I really have no clue what it is you're saying try this: there is a correlation that shows NBA champions almost always have a top-10 defense. Agree or disagree?
just saw this and it's pretty interesting. Thanks HJ. So, 40 teams made the conference finals and only 4 of the 40 had defenses ranked in the bottom half of the league. Portland and the Cavs 3 times. And the Cavs played in 4 straight finals, losing 3 when their defenses were ranked 29th, 21st, and 18th. The single time they won the title is when they had a top-10 defense when 35 out of 40 conference finals teams have better than average defense, there appears to be a correlation, especially considering that 4 of the 5 teams with below average defenses was one single team, the Cavs. And the other team got swept and, 9 out of 10 champions had a top-10 defense, and 6 of those 9 had a top-5 defense
Notice how I rarely respond to your thoughts on him and when I do, it's usually respectful. So it wasnt about you. Using Dame, who would be loyal to any coach who'd been there at the start of his career is one of the arguments I'm not fond of. Dame didnt like trading Plumlee for Nurkic and a pick, but it was obviously the right move. A lot (not all) pro-Stotts people argue in bad faith, move the goalposts, and deflect the conversation towards something else when they cant come up with a good response. That's the shit that annoys people. I respect the people that I can have a genuine conversation with. And you should take a look at every big platform/media member out there. Almost all of them will personally insult you if you're not a Stotts fan. So if you have a problem with what you say you do, that should bother you too.
See here's the thing. If you get new personnel it makes your "look" on defense different even if you don't change the scheme cause Nurk is going to protect the rim better than Plumlee who would've been elite at trapping picks in a more aggressive defense. Sometimes it helps to have new personnel, sometimes it doesn't or gets worse but teams have access to every single play or defensive possession you've done in recent years. You HAVE to throw different looks now or you'll get exposed. It's why Budenholzer isn't a good coach anymore. It's why Stotts isn't a good coach anymore either. They think because something worked in the past it will always work. I read an interview with George Karl last year who actually said he'd rather lose in the playoffs because his system didn't work than change it at all and win. Stotts is a Karl disciple. Those kinds of coaches are becoming dinosaurs, IMO. It's obvious in the NFL and soon will be in the NBA too.
To Bud's credit, the Bucks have been trying some new things defensively. Still drop with Brook and Giannis as their base, but are more apt to get agressive if the ball handler is hurting them or switch if they are getting beat by the pick and pop 3. Switching a lot more guard to guard actions too which has been nearly an automatic for most teams for years, but Bud had been reluctant to do. Hasn't always looked great, and their personnel defensively off the bench has taken a big step back which I think are the main reasons they haven't been as good statistically on that end. It'll be interesting how that'll help come playoff time. Less Giannis 5 out at the top of the key in the half court too offensively. More Khris and Jrue late and have messed around with putting their guards in the dunker spot to force players to protect the rim that don't usually do. I think we've seen the same with Terry, albeit to a lesser extent. He's gotten more aggressive with Kanter at times in pnr. Has been more willing to help off the ball in their drop or get into rotation if they have the big play higher in the drop or trap / hedge. Has been more conservative lately minus some late game stuff or against teams with a high usage ball handler and not a bunch of shooting on the floor (Luka this year, Harden in the past). Hard to say how much that is protecting Kanter due to his weaknesses and the fact that he's the only big (energy and foul concerns) or that Terry didn't like the barrage of threes we were giving up early in the year, including close to the highest rate of corner threes in the league. We will know more once Nurk is back.
yeah, corner three's are the bane of the Stotts defense (worst on top): that factor, by itself, will keep Portland at the low end of defense if it's not corrected what is even crazier, is that last season, Portland was better. Their opponent corner 3 percentage has dropped from .405 to .450. That's at the same time as their rate of allowed corner three's has jumped from .214 to .252
Hasn't always been like this though Per Cleaning the Glass, top 2 in limiting corner threes 5 of the 7 seasons prior to 19-20 and never outside the top 10. This year I attribute that mainly to the off ball defensive tweaks and getting more agressive in pnr at times. Helped off the strongside more than we needed to at times early in the year and the backside rotations were not sharp either (they are slowly getting better) when we had the big defend higher in ball screens. 19-20 the defensive personnel took a step back, especially after the injuries. And in the bubble, we couldn't get away with playing Melo and Zach at the 3 and 4 alongside Nurk. Minus that group not playing together at all, it's just not nearly enough mobility on the floor.
Not true. I was solidly on team "fire Stotts now" and after reading a lot of posts in here I am now on the "fire Olshey at the end of the season and let the new GM deal with Stotts, unless we make some noise in the conference finals or further" team. So opinions can be swayed but they can't be suede.
It was actually the other people in the "fire Stotts now" crowd that convinced me to chill out about it. So I'm pretty sure you were actually right because I was more dissuaded than persuaded.
See, there you go. I knew you weren’t the first person in forum history to have their mind changed by someone else. One thing you won’t read here: wow. I’ve changed my mind. My opinion has changed due to your post(s)
Great post, very interesting! So did we change or defense this year which is causing us to give up more corner 3's? Teams are running offense looking for more corner 3's? Either way, the numbers look bad!
I appreciate that Torey.....and I don't argue in your youtube chats for the same reason.....you have, however, given likes to most every poster who's come at me with the "happy with mediocrity" attacks ...and trying to discuss why Stotts coaches the style he does doesn't get respected in this forum much at all...actually I listened to one of your podcasts after a good win a few weeks ago and thought it was excellent...and you actually credited Stotts with the win.....I came back for more and Eric was yelling at his mike about Stotts for not playing Nas to the point I had to take the volume on my speaker down to keep it from rattling....it was an anti Melo rant if I remember.....turns out...Nas was dealing with a sore knee and Stotts was being careful but....to the casual observer, that wasn't the narrative. I think also that the reliance on the phrase "injury excuse" could better be used as...."injury reality".....a team that's had it's core playing together develops chemistry...we've had 8 starting lineups in 34 games and held our own....I'd say this season is exceeding expectations given the circumstance of our team. Why that becomes a "homer excuse" is baffling to me.
Cleaning the glass is great. Having percentiles really puts things into context, especially since the game is changing so quickly each season. It's hard to even compare seasons from 2014-202 right now without considering a lot of context.
A lot of Thib’s “defense” is based on grinding out possessions on both ends of the court. It’s as close to early ‘90s ball as you can get these days and they are still only a .500 in an awful conference other than the top three teams. Their offensive efficiency is horrible.
