What the Blazers turn around and current run of success tells me is that the league has forgotten what "Team Defense" looks like. Almost every team is a bunch of three point chuckers, and when you teach and encourage proper rotation skills to take away a team's open 3-point looks, they fall back to iso ball drives, which Ayton, Clingan, and Williams have been feasting on. This plus focusing on outlet passing on defensive rebounds and being aggressive and unselfish on offense when opposing defenses are not set equals success. Not quite Rocket Science, and smart teams will figure out what the Blazers are doing soon enough. But enjoy this run while we can and hope, maybe just maybe the tide may be beginning to turn in the offense/defense makeup of the league.
that's true mostly, but I think it's a bit too simplified I think, when talking about actual contenders, it's about balance, elite talent, and 2-way players. * 2024: Boston was 3rd in defense but 1st in offense; led the league in net rating at +11.6. Dallas was a bit of an outlier but they were 18th in defense and 10th in offense; net rating +2.2 * 2023: Denver was 15th in defense but 5th in offense; net rating of +3.4. Miami another outlier, IMO; 9th in defense but 25th in offense; net rating -0.3 * 2022: Golden State was 1st in defense and 17th in offense (but they have been there in the finals 4 previous times); net rating +5.6. Boston was 2nd in defense and 7th in offense; Net rating +7.5 * 2021: Milwaukee was 10th in defense and 6th in offense; net rating +5.8. Phoenix was 9th in defense and 5th in offense; net rating +5.9 * 2020: Lakers were 3rd in defense and 10th in offense; net rating +5.7. Miami was 11th in defense and 7th in offense; net rating +3.0 5 season is enough for some quick-and-dirty-maybe-mean-something-maybe-not averages average defensive rankings of champions: 6.4 average offensive rankings of champions: 7.8 average defensive rankings of finals teams: 8.1 average 0ffensive rankings of finals teams: 9.3 average net ratings of champions: +6.42 average net ratings of finals loser:+3.66 average net ratings of finals teams: +5.06 now, I don't know how predictive this is. Obviously this would need to be at least a 20 year sample instead of 5 years to see what is most important; and to see some other factors like 3pt shooting and rebounding. And to see the trendlines because we know the NBA has changed. And it would be nice to see this for all 4 conference finals teams compared to finals teams but from above it's probably necessary for a real contender to have a net rating of 3.0 or better while being close to top-10 in both offense and defense
I just meant with the Blazers. They’ve had shit defense for so long that I have been screaming about defense
