Subscribe Feed (RSS)This is a response by me, lifted from the comments section of the previous post:
By the way, it’s so lame to blame their defensive shortcomings on them being “young.” They have talent — tons of it. It’s why they’re winning games. Do you think, switching pick and rolls like this, they’re going to be better on defense three years from now? No way. Not in the NBA. Maybe in high school you can do that, but not in the NBA. It’s a system problem, not a player problem. That’s not to say they have a bunch of great defensive players, but in this league, who does? Nobody. That’s why you need a system, a coordinated plan of how your team is going to defend, in order to succeed. I don’t see that here.
Defense, unlike most other facets of the NBA game, is a skill directly tied to experience. Some young players enter the league as good defenders, but not many. These guys are going up against players who are worlds better than what they’re used to.
Defense is also a skill that requires all 5 people on the court to be connected, in unison. It requires familiarity with one another.
Yes, young people can play defense, but it’s not a crazy coincidence that the best defensive teams in the NBA also tend to be the more experienced teams.
Dwight – I have a question…well, more of a request of your opinion. If you don’t want to address it, that’s fine and I understand. Since you’ve been around the league – and this team, in particular – for quite some time, do you have any idea/theory as to why our defensive efforts are falling short under the helm of a “defensive-minded coach”?
I hear that title tagged to Nate all the time, and I know that he can’t be out there with the team making decisions for them in real-time, but I do often wonder why certain things like the aforementioned pick-and-roll seem to escape them. What gives?
(I know I’m setting you up to take a lashing regardless of your answer, so ignoring this comment won’t offend me).
I honestly don’t see how this issue is a system problem, and not a player problem. From everything we keep hearing Nate is a tremendous defensive coach, and was given that title and job with the Olympic team. How was his system good enough to teach to the NBA’s best and have them win a gold with it, but not good enough to stop a pick and roll, the staple play of the NBA? Like everyone else I see the problem, but I really do believe it’s an experience and maybe even a little bit of a toughness issue with our guys. I do believe generally the defense is stronger in the second half of games, which to me is in direct correlation to the coaches giving advice at half-time to help our young guys out on the defensive end.
Never the less, whatever the cause, it needs to be figured out and quickly!
It all starts with leadership and Brandon Roy is not there yet and not getting better leading the defensive troops as the season goes by.
Yes, Brandon is an amazing player, yes we are lucky to have a true classy gentleman be our leader….but.
You can’t be Brandon Roy and take an entire half off. Never mind the final stats. He is sleep walking at times and defensively this kills our team. In other words, you need a quarterback on defense, to lead vocally and by example, to set the tone. The last couple of games he has been on cruise control.
In the future when guys like Bayless, Batum and Rudy and Oden, when they mature the burden won’t be on Roy all the time, but right now, you have 5 guys confused at times. He’s got to dig in and lock guys down early with intensity.
A couple of responses:
First, I’m positive Nate was a defensive-minded player. Little doubt about that. I’m not sure he’s ever been a defensive minded coach. I think that perception may come from the fact that his teams have always held opponents to low scores. But the problem with that is, it’s happening because his teams — going back to Seattle — have always played with a very slow pace factor. Many times, like last season in Portland, they played at the slowest pace in the league. That keeps the score down — for both teams.
Second, I would say ANY defensive system you used with perhaps 10 of the 12 best players in the world on your team would be pretty good, as long as the players buy in. Plus, players such as LeBron, Kobe, Wade — those guys are rarities in that they CAN switch those picks and guard players of different sizes. But there aren’t many of those types around. And certainly, on this team, there are none.
– Dwight
agree 100% this is not rocket science, saying you need experience to play defense is joke! It makes no sense.
I gotta say I’m real disappointed in our pick-and-roll defense and offense. I harp on it all the time as well. It is costing Greg Oden fouls as well as getting the bad match-ups.
I really like Nate, but it is getting ridiculous.
Thanks for the explanation.
I have been wondering for awhile, if this isn’t Nate’s way of demonstrating to KP that upgrades are needed among the PGs (SBlake and SRodriguez). I think he is right, that better PGs for defense will be needed in the long run.
I remember Nate as a player on those great Sonics teams and he was a great defender, third-best on those teams behind Gary Payton & Shawn Kemp. He was a quiet lead by example guy it seemed.
Gary was the best defensive point guard of all time and one of the best defenders of all time, and for what it’s worth the best I have ever seen. But what Gary had was swagger galore on defense and offense too. GP challenged you every time down the court and talked you silly with his motor mouth.
That swagger and cocky defensive attitude is what is missing from Brandon’s game at times and it’s missing from Aldridge’s game, and so on so on.
Perhaps GP needs to be an assistant on this team.
I wonder if the defense is so bad because the guys we have can’t be aggressive defensively. Look at the rookies we have playing major minutes, it’s not that these guys can’t play defense, but that the officials wont let them play defense.
Watch a guy like CP3 get up into the shirts of the guy he is guarding, then watch Bayless do the same thing, one gets a foul called the other doesn’t. Watch Dwight Howard bump a guy on the way to the basket, then watch Oden do the same thing, foul on Oden but good defense from Howard.
I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. With the young guys we have trying to play tough defense, they just don’t get the respect from the officials to allow them to play aggressive defensively. Nothing is going to change that except more experience.
What if there is a defensive plan to not rotate as much, but the players just consistantly mess it up? You could blame that on youth or inexperience, right? I’m just saying, there are certain situations where youth COULD be an excuse. Not saying it’s valid, just possible.
Here’s what I’ve been noticing lately with the Blazers’ pick and roll defense that has made it even easier to score against: The Blazer big men automatically assume that the guard will not be able to fight through the pick so he switches up on the opposing guard after he uses the screen, regardless of whether the Blazer guard was able to fight through the pick or not.
Well, the “problem” lately has been that the guard (Bayless in particular) has on a few occasions been able to fight through the pick so what’s ended up happening is that two guys end up checking the guard while the opposing big man is free to roll to the hoop or pop to the wing for an easy shot.
How do you explain Nate saying time and time again that our system is to fight over picks, but our players are not doing it?
What really concerns me is that Roy and Aldridge are weak defensively. Its a problem when your stars don’t defend well. Roy is a pretty good 1v1 defender and plays good D in crunch time but during the course of the game he’ll take his eye off his man and get beat for backdoor lobs or open 3s. Aldridge has no clue out there with his defensive rotations– his blocks are stylish but they usually go out of bounds and they mask the fact that he stinks in terms of position defense.
The best Blazer defenders ARE the young guys– Batum, Bayless (though he still has a long way to go) and Oden (Oden’s interior D is good and I refuse to blame him for his inability to defend guards on the perimeter) are probobly the Blazers’ 2nd, 3rd and 4th best defenders. Joel is #1.
One of the objectives Kevin Pritchard identified for the draft this past summer was to increase athleticism of perimeter players. In Batum and Bayless that objective was met. I would expect that the defensive mistakes those two make can be reasonably attributed to inexperience.
It is possible that players such as Rudy or Sergio or Blake are not athletic or fast or strong enough to do much better than what they are doing now. I think players like Brandon and LaMarcus are capable of better defense, but do not always put forth the required effort. An 82 game season has got to be a grind, and while it’s easy to agree and desire to play every game at 100 percent, actually doing so might be too much a challenge for young NBA players. That would make them human just as the rest of us should we venture to evaluate our compliance with those recently adopted New Years resolutions.
Coaches who do not have the ability or the system to succeed quickly lose the respect of the team. That is what happened to Maurice Cheeks in Portland and again in Philadelphia (where he was initially revered). It has not been suggested that is the case with the current Blazers.
The team is meeting or exceeding all rational expectations and it has been suggested by Kevin Pritchard that they are ahead of schedule. Two starters are missing from the lineup right now yet they have won eight of the past twelve games. Most guessed 45-55 games won this season and the team is currently right in the middle of that range. That means most were expecting they would lose 27-37 games during the regular season, but perhaps not enough attention or thought was invested in the reasons that number of losses would occur.
Blazer fans need to be patient. We need to adopt the same long-term focus that has created this team. After so many disappointing seasons (which includes some years when the winning was there)this season should be easy to enjoy. I think the coaches and the players are doing a fabulous job. Dallas beat the Magic like drum the other night in Orlando. But they don’t need a new coach or system either.
Once again, I agree Dwight. I am getting frustrated beyond belief watching this team attempt to play “defense”.
To all of those that are saying to give them time…I just don’t get it. Why make excuses? If you know ANYTHING about basketball, you couldn’t watch a Blazer game and be ok with their approach and execution of the pick and roll defense.
UH OH…I smell another Jason Quick article coming on. One where he’ll preach to us that we don’t know basketball as well as Nate. Can’t wait for that one. Hey Quick, it wouldn’t kill you to challenge coach every once in a while.
The reason the defense is so bad right now is not because we WANT to switch every pick, it’s because we’re FORCED to switch every pick, primarily because the guys that guard the ball handler can’t fight through the pick and we’re always caught in those “emergency” situations. Teams are too good in the NBA and once you switch you’re absolutely at their mercy. The Blazers definitely need to improve on this.
One more note, we haven’t had Steve Blake and Brandon Roy together in the same lineup for 15 of the last 17 games, which I think is a contributing factor because those are your best perimeter defenders on the team. This has forced Nate to play either Sergio and/or Bayless at that other open position. That’s not helping.
Lo: Not many people in the NBA “fight through” the pick anymore. Watch what they do. The man defending the screener “shows” on the outside of the screen, causing the guy with the ball to hold up a count or two. That gives the guy guarding the ball time to either go under the pick or over it, depending on how good a shooter the guy with the ball is. Watch Portland… the Blazer guys don’t really “show” they just pick the guy up. The guy guarding the ball just drops off onto the screener. It’s their system, it’s what they do — at least that’s what it looks like because about 80 percent of the time it’s what they do.
– Dwight
Let’s assume, right or wrong, that Nate needs to be replaced?
Who would be an improvement?
Leave coaches who’ve flaked on multiple teams and are unavailable out of the discussion- that means no Brown, van Gundy, etc…
John Thomas – Avery Johnson
THIS IS a message to everyone and a question to everyone…….
Point blank, any of you ignorant fans that believe that inexperience relates to consistent lapses in defense are not familiar with basketball or the NBA. My question for you about being “young”. Do college teams, that have higher turnover, younger age, etc – Have the same problems on defense the trailblazers do? The answer to this will be a flat out NO.
Let’s also talk about our rotation:
Sergio, Brandon, Lamarcus, Pryzbilla, Blake, Channing. Those are venterans that should and *do* know better on defense.
Rudy and Batum are probably the best defenders on the team if you truly watch the game of basketball. They were coached properly and even though being rookies, aren’t making the same mistakes.
I have no officially listed over half the playing rotation of the squad. So why do we switch 80%+ of the time? Why can we not set proper picks?
If the team isn’t listening, then that is a Nate problem. If the team is listening and not performing, that is a Nate problem. The excuse of being young is absolutely outrageous.
Next, just because you were an average player or even superstar player on the court doesn’t mean your a good coach.
PLEASE PORTLAND. IF YOUR GOING TO SUPPORT AND BACK MCMILLIAN GIVE US REASONS AS TO WHY HE IS A GOOD COACH. JUST BECAUSE PORTLAND HAS EXCEEDED YOUR EXPECTATIONS IN STANDINGS IS NOT AN ANSWER. THIS TEAM CAN AND WILL BE BETTER. DON’T SETTLE FOR MEDIOCRITY. THE IMPROVMENT IN OUR TEAM RECORD IS DIRECTLY CORRELATED TO THE ACQUISITION OF TALENT FROM DRAFTS, EURO LEAGUES, ETC.
Portland, get off the pipe.