Other than Curry, who was considered a star when Kerr took over? Klay and Draymond might be considered star players now (well, maybe not Draymond) but they certainly weren't when Jackson was the coach.
So you 100% agreed with everything I posted that you replied to, but decided to argue anyway. Cool, you do you. Sure, buddy. First time I've run into a "Golden State Warriors internet tough guy."
Thats why I put a slash/good players/star players because Curry, and Klay was on the verge. Klay still was elite shooter, scoring 18 a game, and playing great D. Again, they won 51 the year before. Not a juggernaut, never said they were. David Lee was an all star in 2012-2013, and scoring 18 a game as well.
David Lee was an All Star and Kerr benched the guy even when he got back. Stotts would just gift him back the starting spot and sent Draymond back to the bench because "that is how it should be and you cannot lose your place due to injury".
I honestly don't know enough about Becky Hammon's philosophy. As long as we're not hiring her as a marketing/media stunt, I'm open to it!
Yeah... I just know she's respected around the league and Pop seems to trust her. Beyond that I don't personally know much about her.
We have enough offense talent, we could still have a top 5 offense, i think our offense would be even better without Stotts because his offense is massivly overrated. The defense cant get any much worse
Yes new set eyes would ideal someone that hasn't been in this organization has a coach. But then I really think then split Dame and CJ up it's not they both not good players but need to balance the roster out and plus you need to balance the salary out. So you some flexibility to attempt to bring in decent players. I don't Dame leaving so I think at least what they could get for CJ. I do think Stotts will be gone and I think will be play-in team and anything can happen then due the teams that is 7-10 we could loose any of them.
the last time our defense was decent, he was in charge of it. His hire could possibly even inspire Dame while also bringing in a guy who would be a good transition from Terry.
nah... listen to it. He didn't open with it, just was an off hand comment to a pointed question. It wasn't like Brian Windhorst who says shit without actually saying it but hints at controversial stuff to bring in views.
makes a lot of ass-covering sense for Olshey because now he can leak something like "Stotts is still the coach only because of Dame". That is certainly the narrative a lot of people believe and I never said the conversation didn't happen
The last time we had a decent defense we had a healthy Nurk all year and no substantial negative defenders outside of Dame in the rotation. Minny's D sucks too and plays KAT in mainly a deep drop.
you're forgetting about CJ in 2018-19, Portland's defense was ranked 16th. So, at the top of the bottom half of the league. As close to median as they could get. That year, Dame had a better defensive rating, defensive win shares, and defensive box +/- than CJ. Portland's defense was 4.4 points better when Dame was on the floor than off. It was only 0.4 points better when CJ was on the floor than off. Obviously, there were rotation dynamics at work, but the bench that year had much better defenders than Melo, Kanter, and Simons
Mitch Lawrence was on 620 The Game and said something to the effect that if Portland doesn't at least get out of the first round, he thinks Stotts is gone. Talked about how poorly the new defensive players have been integrated and their remedial offense. Will try to catch the podcast later.
Yup. I think both were close in 18-19 as slight to modest negatives. Large part of the on off difference was Dame+Nurk w/o CJ minutes (replaced by a better defender in Turner and arguably Curry). Feel like CJ has stayed roughly there since whereas Dame has really fallen off the last couple years. Hoping a large part of that is health and having to carry the scoring and playmaking load without CJ and Nurk rather then natural age regression. Agree on the bench. Add in Nurk and Zach not being healthy and I'm not too shocked we are as bad as we are defensively. Once we decided to bring Kanter, Melo and Hood back and it was also clear that Ant was still going to play a pretty good chunk of minutes...my reasonable outcome was slightly below average defensively. And that was assuming Nurk healthy and Zach back at some point. Last couple points I'll make about the defense. I think Nas has been pretty bad defensively despite the effort and on ball flashes. His footwork is still a mess and doesn't have the quickest feet to begin with. IQ and feel defensively are still really low imo as well. Giles is not the answer at center either. He might be a bit better showing high on side ball screens than Kanter, but Kanter has looked better in a drop than Giles and I'd argue is almost as slow recovering out of traps and when he's beat or out of position. Not as many places to hide Dame in today's NBA either even from 3 years ago with most teams valuing shooting and skill at the wing spots over defense only guys that get ignored in the playoffs. So while it's cool to have guys like DJJ on the team to throw on a guard, I'm not sure on the whole it really helps the team, at least vs the good teams. I'd argue it hurts. Yeah Dame is not good on the ball, but I think his team defense is even more damaging.
They had Iggy, Barbosa, Bogut, Lee along with the three amigos. Hell Bogut was second team all defense and Iggy was a lock down defender too. That team was a good mix of young and vets but just about any coach could have stepped in and done well and won the whole thing. If Kerr had gone to the Knicks to work for Phil and turned them into contenders a a couple years then he earned his stripes! Players when championships some coaches are fortunate enough to have multiple super stars or stars happening.
the most interesting thing to me about Portland's defensive ratings, year to year, is 2017-18 to 2018-19 in 2017-18 the Blazers ranked 8th in the league in defense. The following year they fell to 16th. Nurkic was relatively healthy those two years; so was Zach. The roster and rotation only had one significant change...Ed Davis was healthy in 2017-18. After that season, Olshey decided Davis wasn't valuable enough to pay 4.5M a year. He was a very underrated defender. He wasn't a great rim protector but he had paint presence. Portland hasn't been the same defensively since he was let go
End of the rotation in 18-19 was clearly worse imo (500 minutes of Stauskas among other things). Also think Shabazz and Pat were a little bit better defensively than Seth and Jake. 18-19 was the better team overall though. Too much Zach + Meyers too. 71st percentile defensively with Zach at Center w/o Meyers and a positive overall. 96th percentile on D if you take Nik off over nearly 700 possessions and a +8.4 / 100 poss. overall (72nd percentile) Compare that to Zach + Meyers w/o Nik (546 possessions: 7th percentile defensively / -0.8pts overall)....not sure why they gave up on Zach at Center so early.
