The rest of the Blazer season hinges on…
Yes, there are a lot of wins out there. The schedule is set up for a second-half run. But a few days ago, I asked people to tell me the difference between Portland and Cleveland after a game in the Rose Garden. Most everyone had the same answer: Lebron James.
I watched that game and yes, James is a tough player to overcome. But do I think the Blazers, overall, have more talent than the Cavaliers? Yes, on that night with West and Ilgauskas out, they certainly did.
The difference between Portland and Cleveland — and the difference between Portland and the other top teams — isn’t so much talent on the roster but the way the teams defend. And the Blazers have had problems on defense since the opening game of the season.
And forget about points allowed when judging this — how many points you allow is merely a product of the pace you play. Portland slows the game down and thus doesn’t allow as many points as other teams who run more. The key statistic when it comes to defense has always been field-goal percentage against. How well do teams shoot against you?
In this statistic the Blazers show themselves to be the worst defensive team among those good teams probably headed for the playoffs — and it isn’t really close.
The best teams at holding down opposing shooters? Just the teams you might expect — Boston (42.2 percent), Cleveland (42.4 percent), Orlando (42.8 percent). The Lakers are a couple of more spots down at 44.7 percent). At the other end of the spectrum, there only eight teams worse than the Blazers — and listen to this ragtag collection: Memphis, Sacramento, New York, Washington, Oklahoma City, Minnesota, New Jersey, Golden State. You want to be lumped in with those teams in any category? The Clippers are significantly better than Portland, for heaven’s sake.
Portland’s field-goal percentage against is 46.5 percent. When teams are shooting that well against you, you’re pretty fortunate to be able to call yourself a playoff team.
And that, more than anything else, is where the challenge is during the second half of the season. The Blazers must start defending with more intelligence and greater intensity than they have so far. That’s what’s keeping them out of the status of elite teams.
A LATE ADD TO THIS POST: Last season the Blazers held opponents to 45.1 percent shooting. Not great, but certainly better than this season. Young teams are supposed to get better, aren’t they?
NBA, Trail Blazers | Dwight Jaynes | January 26, 2009
Cleveland Cavaliers, defense, Dwight Jaynes, field-goal percentage against, Portland Trail Blazers
Dwight…yes young teams are supposed to get better, but you must remember the Blazers got even younger and added FOUR rookies to the rotation, that doesn’t exactly lend itself to getting better defensively
I’m not a basketball expert, but something seems to be missing here. Portland’s field-goal percentage against of 46.5% doesn’t seem significantly worse than Boston’s 42.4%. Wouldn’t you also need to consider the average number of field-goal attempts against per game? Is the latter statistic tracked and reported? If so, how does Portland compare to Boston in that category?
People who have either played or coached basketball know that good defense starts with the guards. Blazer guards let players penetrate the middle too much IMO. I think that a lot the blazers’ problems on defense can be attributed to youth. Rookies always have more trouble adjusting to defense vs. offense when making their transition to the league. I also think Greg Oden is finding his way to. Players who have had microfracture surgery do not retain full athleticism until year two after the surgery. If you watch clips of Oden from his one season at Ohio State on youtube, you can see that he’s still not quite at the same level athletically. I notice it more on defense. I was at the last game and noticed that G.O. is really starting to move better on defense. His activity has gotten greater. He ended up on smaller players such as Caron Butler several times and he did a good job of moving his feet and keeping guys in front of him. Before long, he’s going to be able to cover up the mistakes that the guards make on D. It’s going to take time but it will happen. When it does happen, we will see the opponents FG percentage go down. Despite the fact that Washington is a bad team, Portland did a good job keeping guys out of the paint. If nothing else, playing against a bad Wizards team was good practice.
Dwight – Do you enjoy writing about the Blazers anymore?
Lately, your posts on the Blazers have ranged from backhanded compliments to outright criticism. While the team obviously has a long ways to go to be considered elite, it seems as if this overachieving young team is creating unrealistic expectations, even among us who have the pleasure of watching them close-up.
They’ll get better as they learn the game. If they were better defensively, this combination of youth and talent would be legendary; as it is, they are merely extraordinary. I think us in Portland forget that sometimes.
Skeptic,
It may not seem like a significant difference between 46.5% shooting and 42.4% shooting, but it is. If a team gets up 75 shots and makes 46.5% of those shots (this is all just assuming each of those shots is worth 2 points. that’s not the case obviously because some of those shots are 3′s. but it just makes this easier if they are all 2) that’s 69 points. If they only make 42.4% percent of those shots, that’s 63 points. That’s a six point difference. Portland has lost 6 games by 6 or less. So, in theory our record could be as good as 32-11 if we had held our opponents to the same fg% as Boston.
Skeptic is right on, and Dwight doesn’t catch it despite offering the exact same point as a reason to ignore raw points allowed. If pace affects that, it certainly also affects the results of field goal percentage.
In my view the best way to correct for pacing is the Hollinger stat for offensive and defensive efficiency–simply put, the number of points scored/allowed per 100 possessions.
On offense, Portland is third behind only the Lakers and Cavs, getting 110 points per 100 poss. But for DEff, the Blazers are 19th. Not good, certainly below all the likely West playoff teams except the Suns–but not my much.
Is defense, particularly perimeter D and help on the drives to keep the big men from having to go out of position to help, indeed the big problem to correct? Sure. But I think Jaynes misapplies FG% against, particularly when he admits the influence of pace.
I wonder if Oden continues to improve and avoids silly fouls, will the Blazers defense improve. Also, it seems like Batum should be on the floor more in the fourth quarter.
The Blazers have essentially the same win/loss record as they did last year without Oden….. Interesting……. So what has Oden done to improve the team again ????
It’s more than just Oden moving his feet, the weakside rotation needs to cover for Joel and Greg when they go to clean up the weak defense from the perimeter. Hence when Joel had words for Rudy a few games ago. Brandon did a great job of being in the right place because of positioning and rotation against the Wiz.
Greg Oden is suing Myspace for taking the name of everything that surrounds you.
Once again to all those people who say McMillan is helping to grow this team, HA. We defend worse than we did last year, we play the slowest pace in the league even though we have the youngest players and should be running everyone ragged, and our guards just make dribble penetration too easy. Quite simply, until we either get a high quality PG who can play some defense and knows how to throw a pass into the post, or a head coach that knows how to coach, we will continue to be mediocre.
So many questions to answer… let’s try just a few:
– yes, I LOVE writing about the Blazers. It’s a blog and I write what I enjoy… so does that mean I have to be a cheerleader for the team? No, this isn’t that… you can find THAT a lot of places right now. I like to express my opinion here — whether you agree or not. That’s what blogs are for
– Torridjoe… I think pace affects field-goal percentage against in one way — it makes it easier to keep that percentage down when you play at a slow pace… The best defense for using field-goal percentage against as a barometer for a team’s worth is by looking at the results: man, talk about some bad teams at the low end and the best teams at the high end. That’s the ultimate truth.
– YES, I KNOW IT’S A YOUNG TEAM!!! aren’t we all tired of hearing that by now? so does that mean it can’t play defense? some of that energy of being young should be expended at the defensive end! and by the way, defense at the NBA level is as much systemic as anything… you can’t really guard anybody one-on-one at this level… so you need a system — a way for your players to help each other out on defense that doesn’t allow easy baskets… is Portland doing a good job of that? No, not in any way.
– Man, there’s a huge difference between shooting 46 percent and shooting 42 percent… in a league where a good portion of the games are decided by four or five points, it’s a monster stat.
– thanks to everyone for coming here!
—————– dwight
To me its all about impact. I don’t care what the stats say, Portland doesn’t play impact defense. When I say impact, I basically mean taking away what the other team wants to do.
When Portland was in a tight game against the lowly clippers, down the stretch the clippers ran their offense got good looks and easy baskets, and for some reason or another Portland wasn’t able to stop it.
Compare that to what Cleveland did to Portland last week, they forced Aldrige to the wing, and contested his shots, and banged Roy when he drove to the basket. Basically they impacted everything Portland tried to do on offense and thus won the game.
Thats what good teams do, and it only gets tougher in the playoffs.
I’ve said it all along, for a supposed defensive guru of a head coach, Portland plays surprising bad team defense.
Thanks for your blog, Dwight. You are spot on about Blazer D. Don’t worry about the naysayers. Go Blazers!
Dwight- Love this site man. While I think that the Blazers having a young team is a valid excuse, you’re are right about their defense. Terry made a great point: good teams get stops when they need to. That’s the big difference. Remember the Drexler, Porter, Duckworth, Kersey and Buck teams? Those guys always got the key stop. When Buck arrived, that’s when they went from first round & out to contenders. While I think Oden will be a difference maker on D, I think the team may have to make another aquisition similar to getting Buck back in 1989 to take the next step. That was a huge trade. One thing is sure for me though: it’s fun to have these discussions again.
Dwight, I admit I probably don’t have 1/4 of your basketball knowledge, but it seems to me that the best defensive teams grow together. That is why I think having 4 rookies in the rotation has a big effect on the team defense. I would think that 2-3 years from now (assuming we keep this team mostly intact) that this has a chance to be a very good defensive team…but it is going to take time
Well, if you agree that % is affected by pace (which clearly it must be; if you shoot 50% on 90 possessions, you will still lose to the team that shoots 45% on 110 possessions), then you should be agreeing that it’s not the best stat to use at all–because it’s unadjusted for pace.
Since EFF is corrected for pace, it’s a better stat. If you allow 105 points per 100 poss, that’s clearly better than allowing 110–and it’s apples to apples.
Dwight,
To me, the issue with the Blazers defense is not one strictly of age (I won;t say “young”) but of experience, or lack thereof. As was mentioned previously, we have 4 rookies getting significant playing time. No other team in the league comes even close to that, and I think that although we may want to ignore it, inexperience is real and it has an impact on how well the team plays. It shows regularly with the inconsistent nature of how the Blazers play (both offense and defense).
I also think the team still relies on Brandon Roy too much (also a function of inexperience). So until Brandon decides that he is going to become a premier defender (and I have no doubt Brandon can become whatever he wants on the court), the team will not play defense to the level it needs to be successful in the playoffs.
“But for DEff, the Blazers are 19th.”
That is actually a big improvement over most Nate coached teams. His average in 9 seasons is 23rd and the highest any of his teams have ever finished is 17th. We all know Nate talks a lot about defense but it doesn’t seem he’s great at teaching it.
Isn’t it important to note along with fg% the turnover ratios we usually have. Our to’s are low, and we force opponents to’s, this leads to both steals for us, and lately more easy buckets as our running game is improving, but also open shots when we take a chance and miss the opportunity leaving the other team with a open shot. So we may be poor at holding the opponents to a lower fg% but how do we stack up against other teams in the steals/ turnover department?? Content with the defense, want more intensity sometimes, but it will come.
This team already has what is takes to make some noise late in the season if:
-they get a great contribution in 2nd half of season from Martell Webster both defensively and offensively. Getting Webster back is like making a trade without making a trade, you get a bona fide 3 point shooter and legit NBA athlete
-More growth from Batum and Oden, which one of these guys is wiling to step up and not make any friends on the court. These guys have to get nasty and willing lock-down a Kobe, Duncan, Billups, Artest whoever….shove them around, and knock them on their rear-end.
Remember when Brian Grant stood up to the biggest bully of them all: Karl Malone.
The problem is that these guys are too soft when it comes to fouling. If you are late on the rotation and you’re going to get called for a foul anyway, knock the guy into the seats. Its not flagrant if you get him with your body. Watch what Boston and every other good defensive team does. Nobody walks down the lane for a layup with a couple of guys reaching in. They lay a body on them. A blocking foul has the same consequences as a reach in foul. Only after a guy gets knocked down a couple of times they start pulling up for short jumpers.
I hate it when guys play like that on the weekends, but this is the pros. Play like it.
In regard to a previous post… the Blazers, even after that Washington game where they were credited with “forcing” a boatload of Wiz turnovers, is still 22nd in the league in forcing turnovers. On top of that, they’re last or near last in fast-break points. That makes it very difficult to win, unless you make a ton of jump shots.
– Dwight