I'm well aware of the fact that the defense has continually sucked so far this season. That said, expecting improvement last night, without RoCo and with DJJ limping around on one leg, you were expecting a defensive masterpiece? The defense has been sporadic lately...a good half in the first half followed by a bad one against the Knicks, a horrible first half against the Hawks followed by an excellent one. Last night was just continuously bad. Personnel makes a difference. Just to be clear, if things don't get turned around on D this year, I have no problem changing Stotts out after the season for a more defensive-minded coach. If you want that to be successful, it's going to have to include some significant roster changes as well, which is why trying to do it mid-season isn't very likely to happen.
The answer isn't to remove Terry because that is not a possibility without removing the real problem who is Olshey. If Olshey is replaced by someone who is focused on turning the talent on this roster into the best team possible, of course that new GM fires Stotts and of course that new GM realizes that the Dame/CJ experiment has been a failure that has cost both guys (who are incredible offensive talents) years of their careers. If we fired Stotts and replaced him with a coach willing to encourage defense, offense and basketball in which the whole team was engaged the entire game and we cashed in CJ for the best value and fit possible, (possibly along with other moves that maximize Dame's potential) then this team could contend. I wish Oshey were capable of those things but he's just a far too loyal snake oil salesman.
Ya the personnel is shaky, but when teams like Memphis, Houston, Atlanta, and NY are top 10 in defense about a fourth of the way into the season -- with their respective rosters-- it should give people pause. We just had 6 days off and came out with no focus or attention to detail. This isn't new. I think Terry can't coach defense and doesn't hold his players accountable for mistakes. And mind you, these are FUNDAMENTAL errors that any HS coach worth a damn would call his players out for. Players seem to come to our team and forget just basic stuff, and there are no repercussions. I really question how much they really scout or prepare for opponents and tendencies. Mike Muscala shoots. That's all he does, yet we gave him 8 open shots from three last night. We let a team with ONE above average offensive player score 125 points. OKC's offensive rating jumped from last to third worst in one game against our system. You don't need all NBA defenders to get an average defensive team, provided you have a system to take advantage of their strengths. We don't. We don't adapt, we don't prepare, we don't hold players accountable. And none of this is new-- we've seen the same for 5 seasons of the Dame era. But, I'm squarely on the blame Terry mindset this season.
As a counter, when the team last had decent defensive personnel (Wes Matthew, Nic Batum, Robin Lopez with a reasonably engaged LaMarcus Aldridge), they had a top-ten defense. And that isn't juggernaut defensive personnel--that's three good/excellent defenders, one competent one and then a decent number of sieves (a young Lillard, Barton, Crabbe, McCollum and Affalo who has never been particularly good defensively). To me, that says that if you give Stotts at least the fundamental tools for a solid defense (a couple of good defensive wings, a good defensive center and one more okay defender) he can produce a strong defense.
Just as a sidebar, I've been watching a lot of OKC/San Antonio/Charlotte this year with a bunch of their players on my fantasy team (SGA, Keldon Johnson, Patty/ PJ Washington, etc). It's just astonishing to me how much more engaged players are on the defensive end than anyone on our squad. And none of these teams have players you'd call defensive stoppers. The Spurs have a bunch of second and third year players playing heavy minutes, yet are 8th in DRTG. Charlotte has a starting lineup of DeVonte Graham and Terry Rozier at guard, with no real long wings. Yet they are 13th. OKC has SGA, George Hill, and a ton of youth, yet they're 8 spots ahead of us in defensive rating.
The league has changed since 2015, and Terry still has not adapted. Did you watch our game against GS? We kept employing the same drop coverage he had Rolo do 6 yrs ago, and Steph dropped 62 on us. We didn't bother throwing a single double team at him. And as far as good defensive wings, a defensive center, we have those right now in our starting lineup, and have Trent coming off the bench. Sorry don't mean to be argumentative, but this really grates me.
I think Portland could probably scheme their way to a little better defense; like not consistently leaving corner-3's open as an example. But yeah, there's only so much a scheme can accomplish when the tools aren't there. Olshey has sucked at roster construction most off-seasons. He completely ignored defense and rebounding before the 2019-20 season and put together another shitty bench and poorly balanced roster. It looks like he over-corrected toward defense before this season, but again, there are holes in the roster. Portland is always going to gave problems on defense when Dame & CJ combine for over 70 minutes a game; then add in major minutes for Kanter & Melo....uh oh the biggest problem, IMO, is that there are no real 2-way players except for maybe Trent. Guys who can be consistent on offense while providing good defense at the other end. Too many one-dimensional players that leave one end of the floor at a disadvantage
Debate is good, no need to apologize for that. And the way the league has changed has reduced the value of Nurkic's defense--he would have been a great defensive asset in any era before this one, as a solid post defender and rim presence. However, he's not athletic and laterally mobile enough to handle perimeter players on switches, which limits how Stotts can play screen and rolls (which are, obviously, the basis for pretty much all offense today). Stotts gets pilloried for drop coverages that allow perimeter players to get free on screens, but what should he be doing? Having Nurkic aggressively show and then have to dance with an athletic 6'6'' wing? Stotts has a center who has to drop when involved in the pick-and-roll and guards who routinely die on screens (which is an effort thing, not something a coach can help them with)--so of course the defense gets killed by teams who have the shooting and play-making to efficiently run that kind of offense. Defenses can target players to isolate with screens--involving Lillard's man or McCollum's man in a screen and roll with Nurkic's man yields no good outcome, no matter what tactic you employ. That's essentially the "math" of the situation--it doesn't add up, no matter who the coach is, IMO.
I'm not asking for him to always show-- there are obviously matchups against whom that defense would be detrimental. Hell, Kanter should almost always drop, but Nurk did have some success in trapping unsuspecting guards at times. I'm asking for versatility, adaptability. For example, we played zone nearly every possession vs NY. It worked in the first half against them but they figured out the holes and we started making errors on the backline leading to open shots in the second half. Then what did we do vs OKC the next day? Played the EXACT SAME DEFENSE. SGA is a much more dynamic guard than anyone on NY and has an unstoppable first step. He got into the seams repeatedly last night and we did nothing to change that. But it goes deeper than just game to game coverage. It's Terry's choice of lineups (why did it take Nurk going down for him to realize he shouldn't play Kanter/Melo together? we had been pointing out the problems of that duo two weeks after the season started), the lack of in-game changes (how many times have we been burned the same way for entire games), or how he doesn't use players to their strengths (DJJ was amazing in zones last year, yet we only started applying it in the NY game this week), etc etc. It also really is embarrassing also when opposing announcers (Sean Elliot/ Dominique Wilkins/ Clyde, etc) openly laugh at our defensive coverage.
I'm not saying that the only other option is to always have Nurkic show. In fact, I think mixing things up is probably the only thing the Blazers can do. My point was that there isn't a tactic that turns bad defenders (and I mean that in context of what largely kills the Blazers--it's not post-ups, it's shooters) into a good defense. They don't have the roster for "versatility." They can mix up coverages from a group of bad choices, but smart offenses can probe and see what the Blazers are doing and break it, because there is no answer to good offense with bad defenders. Could a better coach improve the defense slightly at the margins? I'm sure that's possible. Could a better coach turn this defensive personnel into a top-15/top-10 defense? I think that's not possible. I think that at full strength, playing at maximum efficiency, they could muster a defense between 15 and 20. But they're not playing at full strength, so I don't think even the best defensive coach would get a lot more out of them. Maybe a little more.
After seeing what Thibs is doing in NY, or this guy in Indy who has unlocked Myles Turner, or even Pop hiding his worst players perfectly, I'll just disagree with you on this one. Also, I'm increasingly coming around to the idea that our consistently top offensive rating is in spite of Terry, not because of him.
Thibs didn't look so great in Minnesota, defensively. And Popovich may be doing a nice job of hiding his worst defensive players this year, but last year they were a shitshow defensively and they were below average the year before that, too. But I'm fine with agreeing to disagree. Unless you're talking about a coaching genius, I think coaches matter very little in comparison to the roster quality and make-up. And even coaching geniuses can look pretty bad with personnel that simply doesn't work, as noted above.
terry stotts has continuously led the blazers to the playoffs and even led them to the western conference finals, dame lillard who is a franchise player likes him and the same can be said about his teammates and then the injuries, he always have to deal with injuries to his players... im sure he would love to have his players healhty, like we all would, but he will always have that valid excuse i simply refuse to believe that we have so bad players on the defensive end and while theyre not great, they would do better if our coach would know how to use them properly... thats what coaches are for, to develop their players, teach them to be better players etc... if your team is getting killed from the 3-point line, its not cause your players are inept, but cause your defensive scheme is not good
This is how I think of Stotts: when you think of the talent that has come through Portland, accounting for injuries and all the rest, have the team results (regular season and playoffs) matched, over-performed or under-performed the overall caliber of that talent? And I'd say that at worst, it's matched. You could even argue it's over-performed as I don't think the Blazers were ever talented enough to be expected to reach the Western Conference Finals (aside from 2014-15, when injuries ruined their chances). But you could also argue they under-performed in at least one series (against the Pelicans), so I'd be fine with "matched." The overall talent level has generally been mediocre/okay and the team has generally been a playoff team, but not a contender. So that means (if you agree with that assessment) that he's one of the vast majority of coaches that is merely a steward--enough of a coach to make sure the talent performs to its caliber, but not so great a coach as to get his allotted talent to perform as more than a sum of its parts. I don't think the Blazers have been harmed by having Stotts as their coach and their next coach is statistically likely to also be one of the many stewards, but I think it's perfectly fine to ditch him in an attempt to find one of the rare coaches who proves to be more than that.
I've thought a lot about this recently, and I think it comes back to the game passing Terry by. Back in 2013-2015, the game was still open and uptempo but small ball hadn't become the dominant style of play quite yet. To me, the jump in overall style of play by the league came after the 2018-19 season. Traditional centers like Whiteside and Kanter became very difficult to play because teams were looking for that mismatch on the perimeter. The floor is now littered with players capable of consistently knocking down open shots. Pace and space has taken the league over and I just don't think Terry knows how to defend it. I know we were without Nurk against the Warriors in the WCF but does everyone remember Stotts implementing and sticking with the drop coverage on Steph and Klay in Game 1? The fact that strategy was even discussed showed me we needed a more modern defensive mind. We allow players to get hot and continue to allow them looks throughout the game (Curry's 62). We allow teams to operate their offense with no resistance, providing them with their desired mismatches (LAC game this year, PG + Kawhi worked easy switches onto our smaller guards). And we simply do not know how to rotate or closeout on defense, especially on the perimeter. There's just no communication on D. Either hire a true defensive coordinator or bring in an entirely new staff altogether.
That sounds like an argument against Olshey more than Stotts. Stotts didn't put Whiteside and Kanter on the roster--is Stotts supposed to just not play the half of his roster that's badly constructed for the modern game? This gets back to what I was saying before--the roster is poorly constructed to play a modern defense. It's impossible to say what Stotts would do defensively if he had an Anthony Davis type center (by which I mean a faster and more agile center, not an Anthony Davis caliber talent) rather than a Jusuf Nurkic type center. You mention him dropping Nurkic against Curry and Klay and yeah, that seems silly. But if he had Nurkic show, it would have been a colossal mismatch on the switch, which would also have looked ridiculous. You could hedge with Nurkic but A. that also takes a fair amount of mobility and B. it requires the screened defender fighting over it and Portland's guards die on the screen constantly. Could Stotts stand to mix up coverages more? Yeah, I think so. But any coverage he deploys in that situation is going to look bad because it all comes back to the same point: Portland simply doesn't have the personnel to run a modern defense well. That's not to say Stotts is a keeper of a coach, but if we misdiagnose everything to be Stotts' fault, we're overlooking other significant problems that are holding the team back. To me, the priority problem is Olshey and his (in)ability to construct a proper roster for this era. A better strategist at coach would be great, but feels like the luxury priority after a GM who can provide such a coach with the tools he needs to succeed.
