Nurkic, Collins, Hood, Ariza and Trent earning a more prominent role next year should improve our defense as well as make us a much deeper team.
bring em all back and let them gel. great mix of vers, defenders, shooters, wing men. I really like our squad when 100% healthy
I question our defense on the last play. They only needed two to win, and a three has less chance of going in than a two. Why would we want to risk going one on one against a really hot player? There must have one guy out there who was not a great shooter that we could have left to double team LeVert. Hell, I think LeVert would have been so surprised that we double teamed him that he might have thrown a bad pass out of it. There was just as good a chance that that ball went in the hoop as if it didn't ; so we basically took a chance on a coin flip.
And if we doubled and he finds the open man for a bucket how would you have liked that as Lavert is also a good passer. Also, like Hassan says, they got shooters. As it was, McCollum played good d and forced him into a tough shot. Hard to complain about the results.
I agree that those guy healthy should improve (not sure if Hood will ever get back to 100%). Still, having Dame and CJ as the first line of defense is always going to create some sort of liability.
Interesting stat when you win 75% of your games during the same stretch. Do you have the legs when it is needed most if you play tough D all game? The Blazers can be down 9 points with 6 minutes left and I still feel we are in the game. Granted you want two-way players at every position, but I would be happy if we just had one "stopper" on the team (who can shoot) and 4 additional shooters. The NBA is all about the last few minutes. Shooters win games....but you need multiple ones on the court. We just need to play D in the last 6 minutes, but the lack of depth at the wings hurts.
Your right it is becoming a downer site but they don't wait after the game they do it the whole game. They go after certain players really hard.
I think that's way that Stotts thinks about it also; that's the only way it could look like his mistake, and he doesn't risk that.
Sidenote: Why was Nurk still in there while he was clearly gassed? I think Hassan would have prevented at least three of those offensive rebounds that Nurk lost to Allen. And it just looked like Nurk was too tired to box him out.
Yeah, it's why I avoid game threads during the game. I couldn't imagine being in a house or somewhere watching the game with some of these posters as it's the same shit every game and then after a huge win they still keep whining about the coach and certain players. They do not represent what people say are some of the greatest fans.
Over all our defense was not strong (a lot due to injuries) but this team had a way to get themselves up and get important stops down the stretch when needed.
Maybe if you came at him late. I wouldn't want to compromise my defense early in the shot clock because once your defense is scrambling there's a good chance they get two shots instead of one. I don't know why he shot so late either - he gave them no chance for a put back.
Morant is one of the few high-profile ball handlers that struggles against drop-scheme. I'd go into tomorrow it against them since their secondary pick n roll creator (Kyle Anderson) isnt a shooter either (I'd just go under the pick on him though to be honest. If Morant figures it out and starts playing against it, we'd need to adjust, but we wont. So hopefully he doesnt figure it out am even though he'll have all game to do so.
It's no where near as black and white as you're making it out to be in regards to individual player defense, and you're vastly oversimplifying how that plays out as a collective.
Yeah, but look at the huge leap our defense made when we acquired Nurk. I believe we were a top 10 defensive team and that was with Lillard and McCollum.
that needs a closer look though in 2016-17, when the Blazers had Nurk for those 20 games, they were 24th in DRating in 2017-18, when Portland had 79 games of Nurkic, they were 8th BUT, in 2018, when Portland had 72 games of Nurkic, they fell back down to 16th; bottom half of the league so, when you look at what was different about 2017-18, it becomes pretty clear that the key was having Nurkic AND Ed Davis for most of the season. It wasn't just Nurkic. Everything else was close to the same: Aminu, Harkless, Zach....Dame & CJ. It was the combo of Nurkic and Davis. Having about 78 games of those two was much better defensively than having 75 games of Nurkic and Collins but that makes pretty obvious sense. Having 48 minutes of a fundamentally sound paint defense and rim protection is better than having 30 minutes