I linked to it in the first post. They are an anomaly. Generally elite or very good in other defensive factors. Clearly, they are evidence that you can win that way. Excellent point. Good points. I worry about our ability on the boards against GSW too, mainly because of Cousins. But I think we potentially have other ways to take him out of the game.
It has a lot to do with continuity. Different lineups night in and out with players being injured causes for players to have communication issues in a switching defense. There is a reason why the Rockets defense has been playing better as of late.
I'd like to see more of Tucker at 3 and Faried at 4 since Faried has looked like he can co-exist on the floor with Capela. It's not anyone's fault, but Tucker is being played against big guys way too much this year. It also sucks that Capela hasn't advanced enough this season. They don't need him to be a superstar, but if he had gotten just a bit better at closing off the paint and blocking/changing shots, it may have helped tremendously. Instead he seems to have regressed and bulky 7'+ guys (all-stars or scrubs, it doesn't matter) are total kryptonite to him.
This is why I worry about playing the Bucks. In my opinion that is a scheduled loss. I hope, I'm wrong.
I feel the same. Maybe not to that extent but i feel they are worse matchup than gsw for us. Maybe they will run out of gas and exprience though
It's not just their length, their depth worries me as well. I believe our bench scoring will be key and most importantly stopping them on the defensive end, especially transition defense. This is assuming we will continue to suck on the defensive rebounding and inconsistent defense. We're playing them next week so let's see...
Capela has dramatically regressed on the defensive end in terms of rim protection. D'Antoni usually rolls out a lineup of midgets, and our rebounding sucks. Pretty simple.
I agree with this to a point. But the Rockets experienced injuries last year as well, and as pointed out still managed to have a strong defense.
Forced TOV% probably correlates to a better offensive team. You create possessions. The other stats don’t do that.
Yes, another poster also made this point. We are certainly much more efficient off forced turnovers compared to off defensive boards (its like a 122 rating versus a 117 rating, from what I can tell from pbpstats.com). Although when I checked, forcing turnovers actually has a slightly negative correlation with offensive rating when looking at all team regular seasons between 1974 and 2012, whereas the correlation between opponent offensive rebounding and a team’s offensive rating was closer to zero. Possible Explanation: teams that gamble a lot to force turnovers can potentially hurt their defensive integrity in other ways, which can actually end up hurting their offense (since it’s harder to score off a made field goal or free throw, versus a missed field goal). Maybe that doesn’t apply in our case, though our offensive has not improved much compared to last year despite a huge jump in forcing turnovers, and in fact the offense has regressed relative to the rest of the league.
Ariza and LUC!!!!! You guys are forgetting the importance of Luc in our rotation with his ability to switch, PLAY THE 5 defensively.... And also PLAY the 5 offensively, with the 3-ball, AND THE DRIBBLE DRIVE!!!!!! Luc's defense was better and even more important to our success than Ariza's was when he was healthy and he really covered for both Ariza's and Tucker's deficiencies. We were the best team in the league until his shoulder acted up. We replaced Ariza effectively enough with House, Jr. House is a better offensive player than Ariza and a good defensively as Ariza..... with the exception of locking down bigs. We have been exposed defensively with our small ball switching defensive lineup SANS CAPELA. Because we have nobody that can shoot the 3 to open up the floor, while effectively switching on to 5's and 4's alongside Tucker. No, Faried is not the answer to this dilemma. He's simply an athletic small 5....who is a terrible defender in the post and is exposed when switched. Because we haven't effectively replaced the LUC/Ariza combo, we've been forced to play the vast majority of our minutes with a standard big. And haven't been able to apply pressure to the opponents to sit their bigs because our small ball lineup with a shooting 5 that can hold their big was blowing them away. Our small ball lineup with no big is nonexistent. We can't play them because the opponent mismatches us and forces us to bring back our big. Then when we go back to the standard 1-big lineup, the opponent can wear us down, we can't switch everything, and our bigs have been further exposed to the point where we've gone to gimmicks like dropping the big......so we can board and not get hammered in the post. Just wait until we try dropping Capela against the lineups that we're going to face in the playoffs. Our demise awaits. Short of the double miracle of opponent injury and some crazy roster additions by April 10th that somehow magically work out, we are marching to our defeat, coming up a couple yards short of the finish line.............UHHHHHH GAIN!!!!! #alsorans
Do you have anyone in mind for this Luc replacement? Or are they the same as your Capela replacements, a player who can defend the 5 and shoot 3s?
Why do you think I'm always checking out long guys that can get up and down, shoot the 3, and possibly handle? Bruno.....Qi..... Randolph......Uthoff.....Harty.......Clark..... If we can't get that and we're gonna drop the big.... Then that guy HAS TO BE ABLE TO SPOT UP LIKE LOPEZ AND GIVE US A HIGH VOLUME OF EFFICIENT 3's. Without that guy we CANNOT win a championship!
While forcing turnovers creates good offensive possessions, i wonder how much of a difference does it make. I mean, how many more turnovers do top teams in this category create than bottom teams, and therefore how many more good possessions do they create? Compare that to good defensive rebounding.
It's not really one or the other. It's hard to slice off two types by saying there are TOV teams and then there are REB teams. Keep in my, that's just an OP theory. Great defensive teams do both well. GSW is an anomaly in that regard. JVG. Sloan, Riley and Pop preach it -- simply, "get at the ball." And, not so surprising, they like to run Ball Control offense (Pops used to rely much more heavily on PnR than recently, but still does). But still, you have to defense GSW's Death Lineup. If you don't design your team to do that, then what are you planning to achieve? That focus has caused a weakness vs other teams. So, OK, but who cares.
Well, if Morey has his way (#Sleeves Part 2) this offseason you can think about a small ball lineup of: CP3 / Harden / Butler / House / Tucker.
