This was talking about the offensive ineptitude of the Pistons. The Houston Rockets were one of the best defensive teams in the league this season, giving up only 92.3 points per game, sixth best in the NBA, but they didn't make the playoffs, either. In fact, of the 10 best defensive teams in the league according to points allowed, five of them didn't make the playoffs and the five that did are a combined 7-11 in the postseason so far. In the meanwhile, of the ten best offensive teams in the league according to points scored, eight of them, including McGrady and the Magic, made the playoffs and they have a combined 17-13 record in the postseason. "For them to score 18 straight points, and we don't get one easy basket during that stretch, that says a lot," said Detroit guard Richard Hamilton in Orlando Sentinel of one particular span of the tell-tale game. "We've got to go back to the drawing board Can we have both? Can we defend good enough to be considered a good defensive team and good enough offensively to score enough points to win. It leads me back to SAR.
i've always said "defense wins championships" is a load of crap in the nba. offense wins championships. particularly a singular offensive force who the other team can't contain one on one.
Simple offense - Team oriented, inside-out, and the pick and roll. Solid defense - Lakers, TWolves, Spurs, and Kings. I don't think it's the best defensive team or the best offensive team that wins the championship, it's the team that knows when to focus on defense and when to focus on offense. We saw this a few times with the Rockets. There were many times when we were down with 2 mins to go and still pulled out a win, but we are still a long way away from where each of our players mind-sets should be (Well at least Steve and Yao have the right mind-set, they are just prone to a few mistake right now.)
The Celtics beat Wilt's teams way more often than Wilt beat them. Magic was arguably more dominant that Bird or Isiah, but the latter both won championships vs LA. Isn't Shaquille O'Neal the MDE? It's 2-2 vs MINN, but I wouldn't bet my home on the Lakers this year if I were you.
Check this out also: Rk name Tm gm pts 3pm 3pa 3pm 3pa 3p% 23 C. Mobley, HOU 73 17.5 1.5 4.4 112 318 .352 78 Eddie Griffin, HOU 77 8.6 0.8 2.5 64 192 .333 93 Matt Harpring, UTH 78 17.6 0.8 2.1 66 160 .413 100 W. Szczerbiak, MIN 52 17.6 1.2 2.8 61 145 .421 Any reason why the top 2 players take more 3's than the bottom 2?why would Mobley take 4 pg and eddie 2.5 while the other 2 players 2.1 and 2.8 per game. Just a thought.
The salary/contract and talent distribution system was different back then. If using the salary system and having as many as teams as nowadays, that Celtics would have been broken up long time ago because nobody could afford 4-5 max contracts on the same team and Wilt's team would have been the champs. It's debatable whether Magic or Bird was more dominant. And Magic was in decline when Isiah took over. It's either Lakers if Shaq finds his MD form or Spurs.
I really wouldn't put that much faith in the statistic u provided, the simple idea that ppg measures defense is flawed. If you look at teams like the Mavs, Sac or New Jersey, who are more of an open court team, they score a lot on breaks and even when that doesn't happen, take quick shots. The result is they give the other team more chances to score also. The Rox runs iso and more half court sets, in return they don't give the other team as much oppertunity to score as the ones mentioned above. I remember reading a SI article about it and how the current measure of defense based ppg are flawed.
What does that have to do with Eddie Griffin and Cat taking more 3's than guys who are and have been better 3pt shooters. Why has Eddie Griffin taken more 3's than anyone despite shooting 33%. If he shot inside the arc, what would be his fg%?
I think you are looking at the wrong stat to measure defensive capabilities. You should look at opponent FG% instead of points allowed. Low points allowed only shows the team plays a slow tempo half court game. Lets look at the opponent FG%. 1 New York 2 San Antonio 3 Indiana 4 New Orleans 5 Philadelphia 6 Miami 7 Sacramento 8 Detroit 9 Phoenix 10 Orlando 11 LA Lakers 12 Portland 13 Utah 14 Dallas 15 Milwaukee 16 LA Clippers Of the top 16, only 3 didn't make the playoffs and one of them was number 16. Minnesota is not on the list but the have arguably the MVP of the league and may be bounced out in the first round again, the other 2 is Boston and Jersey who I believe will not have a chance in hell, to make it out of the East. If you look at the Lakers and their troubles. Last year they were #1 in opponent FG% and the were the champions, this year they are #11 and having a tough series in the first round. Defense does win championships as long as you have a competent offense.
Thats my thing. It has to have some kind of balance on both. A team has to be able to defend and score. The opponets fg% is a good indication of a good defensive team. Can this team score good enough in the futur to the point that all their games aren't decided by 1 fg or less. Similar to Sac and Dallas, a team must be able to score and play defense.
Good post, lee. You are consistent with reasoned and insightful posts, even if it's not the back-slapping pro RT, pro Cat stuff the clique wants. Oh, right, there is no clique.
Huh???? I was making an argument about how your measure of defense was flawed, I wasn't talking at all about rox's offense.
If we look further, we will find that it is the combination of all the stats, teams that win (hence, make the playoff) have higher FG% difference, higher rebound diff, lower turnovers diff ... I do agree that if you want to look at one (1) stat, it is the opponent FG%. Besides keeping the opponent from scoring, defense can turn into an easy basket for your team or can lift your team spirit (i.e. a good block). Everything points to defense wins.
Defense does win rings, but you do have to score at some point.I agree with the opp fg %, but also if you look at pt differential, it makes difference also. Detroit is fighting for their lives because they can't get any easy baskets at all. The same happened to the Rockets and alot of other teams that had to work hard for every basket. They had to grind out every basket because they didn't force to's and didn't get any fastbreaks. This makes the game really,really hard to win.
I would bet the main reasons our defensive stats are good are 1) in half-court sets, we usually have a big shot blocker (Yao, Cato, Griffin) and 2) the other team can't break against us with numbers from their end because our guards are usually between them and the basket, because the way we lost the ball was that our guards jacked up some crap from behind the arc. Dribble, dribble, dribble, jack, backpedal. Works every time.
Agree mostly with Leeb. To be a championship team you do need to be good at both ends of the floor, however you absolutely MUST be a top 5 defensive team. As was pointed out by rockbox, defense is properly measured by FG% against not Points Against. The Rockets do need to get better offensively; however, I dont see the solution as Rahim to solving the Rockets offensive woes. The other solutions proposed ie true PG, Odom, etc are much better imo. Rahim will hurt this team's ball movement even more so and will cause the defense to become worse. Sacramento is #1 in FG% against and San Antonio is #2 in this area. Sacramento is also #1 in pt differential. Statistically Sacramento was the best team in the NBA this season even though the Spurs had a better record. It will be interesting to see if the stats hold out this year. The Rockets were #5 in FG% against which is actually pretty amazing considering the amount of defensive meltdowns they had this season. That being said, the difference between #5 Houston and #15 Chicago is very small (about half the difference between #1 Sacto and #5 Houston). These stats show the HUGE difference between this year's Lakers and the Lakers of the three championship seasons. This season's Lakers are 20th in FG % against whereas the previous three years they were top 5. This version of the Lakers are brilliant offensively but simply do not play good enough defense and thus will find themselves at home watching on TV in June.
every team was stacked back in the day...that what happens when you have like half the amount of teams as you do today. come on....all that salary stuff is nonesense.....look at the lakers team then, Wilt, Logo, Elgin Baylor....then look at havlicek jones russell.
If someone has way too much time on their hands, I'd be curious to see which teams had the best differential between opp field goal % (defense) and their own field goal % (offense). Then we could categorize these teams according to if you'd call them a good defensive team with a decent offense, a good offensive team with a decent defense, and whatever else you get. I wonder how that would turn out.
