No, it just means that the other team scores less per 100 possessions when Niko is on the floor. It tells you nothing about if Niko's 5 man units are holding the other 5 to less than expected. Dunleavy is 2nd in Defensive EFF on the Bulls. Do you consider him a strong defender? Hinrich is 4th on the Bulls in this stat. Do you consider him to be a strong defender?
Not at all, just that the Bulls defense as a team is most effective when Niko is on the floor. Personally, I judge a defense's effectiveness by the number of points it allows per possession. How do you measure a defense's effectiveness? By height?
I don't think you know what you are talking about. Or at the very least knowingly providing misleading information. Dunleavy is #2 in the list you provided. Is he an effective defender? Hinrich is #4. Is he an effective defender? Answer the question.
A terrible defender playing with 4 DPOY candidates will have great per 100 possession defensive stats. A guy in a zone defense might look good if the wings pressure the ball at the perimeter. Out of necessity (owing to a lack of defensive data in the basic boxscore), individual Defensive Ratings are heavily influenced by the team's defensive efficiency. They assume that all teammates are equally good (per minute) at forcing non-steal turnovers and non-block misses, as well as assuming that all teammates face the same number of total possessions per minute. Perhaps as a byproduct, big men tend to have the best Defensive Ratings (although Oliver notes that history's best defensive teams were generally anchored by dominant defensive big men, suggesting that those types of players are the most important to a team's defensive success). A corollary to this is that excellent perimeter defenders who don't steal the ball a lot — for instance, Joe Dumars or Doug Christie — are underrated defensively by DRtg, and are prone to look only as good as their team's overall defense performs. As always, if you have any comments or questions, please send us feedback.
No, I agree with the points Doris Burke made during the broadcast yesterday. Mirotic is sometimes struggling to guard threes because he hasn't seen the repetitions. He sometimes misses rotations when he's playing the four because he hasn't seen the repetitions. That's Thib's fault. It's comforting to think of Thibodeau as some genius figure, pulling the puppet strings so that his rookie is peaking right before the playoffs, but that's delusional. Mirotic would still be struggling in limited playing time if Gibson hadn't have gotten injured.
What he said. How much better would the Bulls be now if Mirotic would have gotten minutes all year? If Snell would have gotten minutes all year? McDermott might be a threat if he would have gotten some minutes, who knows? We'll never know, because Thibs bows to his veterans. Steve Kerr is in his first year of coaching, but he had the foresight to pull two veterans from his starting lineup (Iguodala and Lee) and replace them with two youngsters (Barnes and Green). They've gone from a .621 winning percentage last year to .817 this year with the exact same players. Thibs NEVER would have made moves like that, this is a guy who started Keith Bogans over Kyle Korver and gave Korver 20 minutes a night. Thibs certainly didn't get the best out of Korver, he's an All-Star now that he has a coach who will play him.
Another load of bullshit. Not only did you weakly try to backpedal, your own posts on the same page speak from both your faces.
OK, so you won't answer the question. What takeaway am I supposed to get from that list you posted? Mirotic is #1, Dunleavy is #2 and Hinrich is #4. You posted some numbers again, but do they have meaning? In your mind, what do they mean, especially in regards to Dunleavy and Hinrich?
What is your opinion of Jerry Sloan? Another idiot? Did he drop the ball with Korver in your mind as well?
But, that's the knock of being a rookie on a team with Pau Gasol, Joakim Noah and Taj Gibson ahead of you with title aspirations. This isn't the Timberwolves where you can just trot the rookie out there and let him learn. Now, if the goal is to knock Thibs, you can't really hammer away on Joakim, an all-NBA 1st teamer and you can't hammer away on Gasol, the starter in the all-star game this year. So the guy who finished 2nd in the 6th man award last season in the prime of his career is the guy that should obviously be relegated to 4th man at the start of the season. Thibs isn't a genius, just a guy that's really good at his job. Mirotic is another young player, like Asik, Gibson and Butler, that has blossomed under him. Once he starts stumbling at this, it would be fair to hammer away. As of now, that's just his track record. ----- Why didn't Tom Brady start right away over Drew Bledsoe? Idiot coach? Or is that typically how rookies are handled when adding them to a team that's trying to win when there is a productive veteran ahead of them?
For the first 59 games of the season, Niko shot .393 overall and .339 from 3pt range. Since March 1, he's transitioned into our best player off the bench. He's improved his FG% to .441, but his 3pt shooting has fallen to .263 over that stretch. The big difference, it seems, is that in about 2x the minutes he's getting to the line 3x more often. Once the guy figures out how to shoot closer to .500 from the field and .400 from 3pt, he's going to blow people away. Especially given that he's taking ~15 shots a game.
