Since their stats over the past 10 games are WORSE than against the rest of the league (their season averages), they clearly do not play a better game against Steve.
Jeff stop it Using LOGIC HERE They only want to BASH and don't give a d*mn about the truth they love it they wallow in it like pigs in slop Rocket River
I looked at the stat for the last 10 games and realized it's more work to come up with a consolidate number, especially the avg FG% for all opposing PGs. I don't know how much time you spent to come up with yours? So far, my numbers are slightly different than yours. Correct me if I am wrong, you only looked at opponent starting PGs, did you not? I looked at opponent backups Banks, Blake, Mooch, Atkins, Speedy, Lopez also because Steve pretty much played against them 90% of the time. If you only looked at starting PG, their numbers would drop off while a bit since their backups played a fair amount of time. I come up with 16.9 pts/ game and 38% FG against Steve. Their season avg is also 16.9 pts/ game. I can't compute the FG% but the backups's season avg are all lower than the starters'. I had expected opposing PGs to have much better stats than what shows here, considering the games James, Banks, Blake, Mooch and Atkins had against Steve. I had overlooked Stephon's bad game. Arroyo and Lopez's last game was also worse than earlier. The rest of the guys seem to have even stats. Consider, as a team, we hold opponents to below their season's avg, Steve's giving up about the same numbers to his counterpart looks worse that it really is. I did say that Steve's improved since last year from the very beginning. I will also concede that Steve's defense is a little better than I had thought.
Ok, if you want to do time comparisons, that actually favors Steve as well. During those 10 games, Francis has averaged 40 minutes per game. The opposing starter has averaged 32. That means Francis was on the starter for that full time plus 8 minutes agains back-ups. The other 8 minutes was covered by Mike Wilks. In essence, Steve only spent about HALF the time guarding the back-up, not 90%. If you figure that also means Francis had far less rest than his starting opponent, that makes his defensive effort all the more impressive. Look, I'm not saying Steve is Gary Payton. He's not. Steve is a better-than-average defender, but that's it. My point is that, on balance, he has improved like the Rockets have improved. He does not stand out as a poor defender and, based on the numbers, is actually above average.
