And yet we recently lost to half of a Pelicans team, Magic, Nets, and nearly the freaking Knicks. That should tell just how bad we are on the defensive end, including defensive rebounds. Completely neutralizing a really good offensive performance and then some sometimes. What did Harden complain about? "No energy". It's almost like playing NONE of our most energetic healthy players (Clark, House, Hartenstein) for various reasons has something to do with it. That's on stubborn D'Antoni for refusing to play some of the younger players and no one holding him accountable for it.
I know, I know. Jeff B was coming back but he wasn't 100% convinced, see his retirement attempt. Let the man have his private life. Nearly everyone switches now, it's no kept secret.
This has been a crazy roller-coaster season, with lots of weird games - losses to teams like the Cavs, and wins over top teams like the Warriors, Raptors and Nuggets. We've had injuries at every position, players picked up from buyouts midseason. We've probably used 25 different lineups, had winning streaks and losing streaks... The one constant? Our defense has been atrocious, every single week, every single month. This is from @redninetyfour - The best our DRtg has been is 18th, week 5. Since then it's been between 24th/27th Our DRtg right now is 113.2 That's the 14th WORST SEASON IN NBA HISTORY. You can't just turn a defense like that around in the playoffs, it's never been done before. I never want to see a post or a thread on this forum about shooting more midrange, taking less 3s, when we have one of the best offenses ever and one of the worst defenses ever. FOCUS ON THE ****ING DEFENSE!!!
Interesting post. With offense, MDA has a pretty relaxed system where everyone can pick up their role pretty easily. Doesn't require a ton of chemistry unless a key piece is added/subtracted. Defense is different and I suspect a lot of struggles are tied into that. Defense requires the same line up to fight a lot of battles together, understand the different attacks they can face, understand each others' weaknesses, get into a movement-pattern in terms of how to contract/expand/switch. Front office is living a bogus dream if they think that can just plug n play anyone. We're at a talent deficit against the Warriors. We need cohesion and chemistry much much much much more than they do. IMO Morey is still pinching pennies and hoping better opportunities arise. Waiting to hit some kind of lottery. Acquiring a slightly lesser player 2 months ago would have been better for this team than acquiring a slightly better one at the deadline.
When you take a lot of dumb 3s your defense suffers....its a proven fact btw that stretch of games before bzdelik came our defense was AWESOME even the stats were good it was rated 3rd in nba or something similar
Last year we took 3470 3-pointers at a .362% rate. This year we are on course to take 3645 at a .345% rate. Now that is a difference, a statistically significant difference. But we have always been a record setting 3PA team, usually middle of the pack in terms of 3P%. I can't see how shooting 3s at a 1.7 percentage point rate is the cause behind going from a top 5 defense to literally the 14th worst in NBA/ABA history. Also, our DRtg in the 17 games we played at the start of the season before Bzdelik return was 21st at 109.8. In the 5 game before his return it was 22nd at 111.4. I have no idea what "AWESOME" stretch you are talking about. That was the point of my post above where RedNinetyFour broke it down week by week. We have been terrible EVERY WEEK.
It's hard to tell what was Jeff's idea and what wasn't. Like you said, there was a time Bzdelik wasn't around, but there was also a time Bzdelik was visiting for shootarounds or communicated thru FaceTime or something. They were still talking to him.
A big part of the problem is that PJ is not a PF. Ideally he would be our starting SF. And Faried can't shoot well enough to play PF. We could really use Mirotic on this team.
Which speaks to the fact that this is a roster construction issue at it's core... Having the oldest, and the shortest team in the league is not a good place to be...
Bzdelik has failed in his role this year. We have the 26th ranked defense, which is unacceptable. I don't care what the personnel is, a good scheme and good discipline should get you at least an average defense, no matter the personnel. 26th? That's a joke. In hindsight we shouldn't have paid him to come out of retirement, he didn't make a difference at all.
With or without Clint, I wonder if our mentality is still not to foul. Instead of letting players blow by for easy and chalk it up to "oh, he got me", I'd like to see the team implement more disruptive plays like fouling to replace easy lay-ins. Esp when our offensive flow is not there, we should make sure theirs isn't either. Bad defense or not, fouling can be used more strategically to fight off spells of bad D. Obviously, I'm not referring to those easy and-1 fouls our guys keep doing to negate the already-low number of 3s we make.
Tucker can't guard the perimeter against faster/quicker players. He's kind of torn between being a 3/4/5, not PERFECT anywhere. It's his ability to switch and play sound defense at any spot that's ideal. The team can't defend the perimeter, isn't making switches appropriately on PnR and then there is no one who can guard the paint (except Harden in post up situations). Our defense seems to hold its own in iso situations, be it on the perimeter or in the paint (not stat checked this) but when teams run action we just can't make the right switches, get caught moving around a lot and then someone is attacking a weakly guarded paint. It's just pitiful. The problem is I don't think there is any trade they can make to solve it.
we always get killed by tradition play back to the basket center just didn't think backup center like Okafor, who had trouble finding a team can kill us too they also doing a good job on defense
Which brings us to Nene, our 7' tall center. Not the greatest defender, but he's a wide, intimidating body with a decade or more of NBA experience. I get the impression that MDA doesn't play him much, even when we're getting torched inside, because he's limited offensively. But we didn't need offense last night, we needed someone to clog the paint and make the Pels think twice about building a house there. I was baffled not to see him more last night.
Ennis gets blown by when players attack him going to the basket. Gordon isn't as good as he has been defending drives the last couple of years too, he used to be great staying in front and using his underappreciated-thicc frame, I worried in the off-season that this would happen with him talking about losing 10lb, although who knows if that's why. PJ can box-out but he's just too small to get rebounds, he's actually averaging a career-low in rebounds per36, maybe it's the extra minutes and the load he has to take on that's taking it out of him. I think bringing in Mirotic would be a good move for some size and rebounding at the PF position. Would he fare well against GSW? Probably not, but right now we have the worst defense of any team that isn't tanking, so just worrying about Golden State seems a bit of a luxury.
Been saying this for awhile, a lot if these dudes continue to focus on the wrong things. And then they keep going to Mike cause they think they are armchair coaches.
