Even though their defense in the paint has improved lately ("In the second quarter of the season, Portland led the league at defending the rim.") ; "Portland is basically dead last in defending the 3-point line. They’ve allowed opponents to shoot an astounding 40.1 percent from Above the Break, which works out to an EFG% of 60.2. That number is all the more damaging because opponents are taking so many shots from that area of the floor." http://www.blazersedge.com/2017/1/31/14450696/portland-trail-blazers-improved-defense
They defend fairly well against catch and shoot 3's but: "Compared to the rest of the league, the defense struggles to prevent shots coming off of screens or in the pick-and-roll. Both of these play types can often lead to 3-pointers above the break and opponents are scoring relatively efficiently in these situations."
So, this begs the question... If we're 10th in the league (8th last season) in isolation defense and 27th (29th last season) in guarding the ball handler in the pick and roll situations is it REALLY a personnel issue, or is it more of a function of our defensive schemes? I suspect both. Better personnel always helps, but good god, we seem to give up so many wide open 3-pointers. Stotts seems to consider anyone in the same zip code as a "contested" 3-point shot, and perhaps that's the problem. Go back and read his comments and watch the tape of the CLE game where Love made eight 3-pointers in the first quarter. Stotts said those were contested shots. Bullshit. Not even close. BNM
What those stats tell me is that the players we have do have the quickness/athleticism to stay in front of their man in one-on-one encounters, but don't have the awareness and decision-making capability to navigate the complexities of pick-and-rolls (especially when one action is used to set up a second and third action). Stotts has generally used a basic switching scheme to try and limit wide-open threes. The downside of that was creating bad mismatches on switches, like Lillard on Draymond Green or Kevin Durant. Stotts started changing his scheme in the past month/month and a half to do some partial hedging rather than switching (a thing some on this forum have been excoriating Stotts for not trying) and the result has been wide open three pointers as the primary defender dies on the screen, leaving the hedge ineffective (because it's not a hard hedge--Portland doesn't have the athletic bigs required to have them jump all the way out on a three-point shooter and then recover). As far as I'm concerned, what all this shows is that Stotts' hands are tied: when you have bad defensive personnel, there isn't a scheme that will turn them into an adequate defense. What the isolation number suggests is that maybe this team would have been a solid defense in the '90s or '00s, when there was far less movement, screens and far more one-on-one action. Nowadays, defensive ability is not measured quite as much by being able to lock a guy down one-on-one (though that's still a nice ability to have) and more by the awareness, instinct and split-second decision-making to navigate one action after another without making even one crucial mistake. From what I can tell, by watching and the statistical evidence, Portland doesn't have a lot of good defenders in that respect.
Yeah, the whole thing of switching Dame and C.J. onto the roll man in the pick and roll is just insane. We saw WAY too much of that earlier in the season (honestly, ANY of seeing Dame or C.J. hung out to dry on a center or power forward under the basket is WAY too much). Dame ranks in the 5.0 percentile on defending the roll man in those situations and C.J. is in the 2.5 percentile. Switching Dame or C.J. onto the roll man is just giving the other team two easy points. Unfortunately, neither is all that great guarding the ball handler in the pick and roll either. Dame is in the 34.2 percentile and C.J. is in the 39.4 percentile. We just flat out suck and guarding the pick and roll, it seems to almost always result in an easy post up or a wide open 3-pointer for the other team. BNM
