Blazers last in the league in defense

Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

This combined with how traps work against Dame but we rarely trap or pressure or show aggression on defense. Or how the defensive philosophy of dropping the big is to force mid range shots yet on offense we usually have players who shoot a ton of mid range shots (Aldridge, Melo, CJ).

It's like an NFL team playing prevent defense as their base strategy. It can work occasionally but over the course of the season it will get torched.

We are the Chip Kelley Ducks.

Try to torch someone on offense while playing a bend-don't-break defense. It works until someone figures out how to stop you offensively and then you just get run off the court.
 
We are the Chip Kelley Ducks.

Try to torch someone on offense while playing a bend-don't-break defense. It works until someone figures out how to stop you offensively and then you just get run off the court.
... or you run into an offense that's even close to as good as yours but is paired with a good defense.
 
And when players adjust on their own, he calls it “going rogue.”
that was infuriating. Nurk and Roco going all out to be aggressive is the only reason we won that game. Contrary to what some people think here, deciding to trap aggressively IS indeed a schematic choice by Terry, and one he doesn't implement nearly as often as he should.
 
Honest question. Since Stotts gets BLAME for our defense.......does he get CREDIT for our offense. Is there a really bad offensive team, but good on D that would like to be in our position? Curious if there a bad offensive/good defensive team out there with a record as good as ours?
 
Honest question. Since Stotts gets BLAME for our defense.......does he get CREDIT for our offense. Is there a really bad offensive team, but good on D that would like to be in our position? Curious if there a bad offensive/good defensive team out there with a record as good as ours?
I know you're around the team all of the time but still are you really a proponent of us being the only team in the history of the league to keep a coach for an entire decade without a ring if we don't win one this season? Are you even cool with the fact that this season we are making league history by keeping a coach for a ninth season who hasn't won a game past the second round?
 
Honest question. Since Stotts gets BLAME for our defense.......does he get CREDIT for our offense. Is there a really bad offensive team, but good on D that would like to be in our position? Curious if there a bad offensive/good defensive team out there with a record as good as ours?
For me, I believe the offense would similar no matter who the coach is. It doesn't take some sort of offensive mind to run PnR with Dame and ISO CJ and Melo with very little movement or passing.
 
For me, I believe the offense would similar no matter who the coach is. It doesn't take some sort of offensive mind to run PnR with Dame and ISO CJ and Melo with very little movement or passing.
I actually think a lot of coaches could get more out of this offense. More points in transition, more points off of both ball and player movement and still get a ton of points off of the PnR and iso situations both of which would have more options attached to them if they were accompanied by some player movement away from the primary action.
 
In this Tweet I linked two articles in which talk about our crappy defense 5 YEARS AGO. I could've changed a few names and info to make it sound like it was from today and would anyone have noticed? He had one of the best trapping bigs (Plumlee) in the league, defensive wings in Aminu/Harkless/Turner (all but Turner were players from the team the previous year), and a full training camp and ample practice time to implement a more aggressive defense but this guy Stotts actually chose to stick with his conservative defense.

It's all just excuses and I'm sick of it. Stotts just HOPES it will magically get better. The fact that Nurk is begging to play aggressive, just like Plumlee did, and the coach says that's not what he's telling him to do is beyond comprehension. He just doesn't get how to teach defense and the game has passed him by.

 
I actually think a lot of coaches could get more out of this offense. More points in transition, more points off of both ball and player movement and still get a ton of points off of the PnR and iso situations both of which would have more options attached to them if they were accompanied by some player movement away from the primary action.
Yeah, I just am answering the question that if we had a coach that knew nothing about offense I don't think there would even be much of a drop off.
 
Honest question. Since Stotts gets BLAME for our defense.......does he get CREDIT for our offense. Is there a really bad offensive team, but good on D that would like to be in our position? Curious if there a bad offensive/good defensive team out there with a record as good as ours?

What credit though? The offense right now is "Hey Dame and CJ, here's the ball. Go score."
 
What credit though? The offense right now is "Hey Dame and CJ, here's the ball. Go score."
That's not true he gives a ridiculous amount of plays to isoMelo as well. I actually don't know if he does anything besides tell the guys to just go out and do the best at what they are best at. That's on offense... I guess on defense getting aggressive and trying to make a difference is going rogue. I also think guys are going rogue on offense if they're playing at forward and decide to move from the corner before a shot goes up. So maybe he does have some a scheme... just not one that is particularly nuanced.
 
What credit though? The offense right now is "Hey Dame and CJ, here's the ball. Go score."
Which makes the fact that we are one of the most efficient offensive teams in the HISTORY of the game THAT much more impressive.
 
Which makes the fact that we are one of the most efficient offensive teams in the HISTORY of the game THAT much more impressive.

You act like that's impressive. The NBA has shifted offensively. Didn't you read the tweet? All of the top spots are teams from this season.
 
Honest question. Since Stotts gets BLAME for our defense.......does he get CREDIT for our offense. Is there a really bad offensive team, but good on D that would like to be in our position? Curious if there a bad offensive/good defensive team out there with a record as good as ours?
What has Terry done to make life easier for Dame? You want give him credit for letting Dame have the ball and others to shoot at will? What about the offensive flameouts in the playoffs?
 
Which makes the fact that we are one of the most efficient offensive teams in the HISTORY of the game THAT much more impressive.

Either that or Dame and CJ are arguably the most impressive duo in NBA history.
 
Think part of the reason is that he thinks the personnel does not have the capability to do it, and to an extent he is right. I remember they were very aggressive at the beginning of the season with the trapping and teams just ended up shooting a million open corner 3s and Stotts abandoned it. But it's kind of a chicken and egg situation. Part of the reason our players are bad at it is because they have never practiced this type of defense for any prolonged period, so of course the growing pains are going to look terrible. The other part is Stotts is kind of correct, expecting Kanter and Melo to go up and trap and recover is probably not very realistic. But I think there's a balance to it as well. He can try doing it more when the secondary player on the trap is a guy with length like RoCo or DJJ, or do it when we have RoCo playing center (which we often do now).

My issue with Stotts defensively, beyond just playing Kanter and Melo too many minutes, is that we play the same defense on almost every possession. Very rarely do we adjust or show teams different looks, and when we do, it's usually a 2-3 or 3-2 zone where half our players are confused whether we're in zone or we're in man. Some of that is on the players for sure, but after 9 years of this I think some of the blame has to go on Terry.
Honest Question:
What happened to the change in defense we were supposed to see at the beginning of the year. I know they switched back to the "old defense" because the players lack of training camp. It's been a long time since the beginning of the season. Haven't we gone back to the "new defense"? If so, does it suck? Or, are we using the "old defense", and it sucks?
 
Honest Question:
What happened to the change in defense we were supposed to see at the beginning of the year. I know they switched back to the "old defense" because the players lack of training camp. It's been a long time since the beginning of the season. Haven't we gone back to the "new defense"? If so, does it suck? Or, are we using the "old defense", and it sucks?
Still using the old defense except when players go "rogue."
 
Honest Question:
What happened to the change in defense we were supposed to see at the beginning of the year. I know they switched back to the "old defense" because the players lack of training camp. It's been a long time since the beginning of the season. Haven't we gone back to the "new defense"? If so, does it suck? Or, are we using the "old defense", and it sucks?

Tried it for pre-season and gave up when regular season started.
 
Either that or Dame and CJ are arguably the most impressive duo in NBA history.
If people on here are going to give the players credit for the offensive success, they need to blame the players on the other end.
 
If people on here are going to give the players credit for the offensive success, they need to blame the players on the other end.
It doesnt work that way. Our great offense is in spite of coaching. Our bad defense is a result of our coaching. The good offense is because of our players. The bad defense is not.
 
It doesnt work that way. Our great offense is in spite of coaching. Our bad defense is a result of our coaching. The good offense is because of our players. The bad defense is not.

Here's how you can tell that our great offense isn't the result of the coach.

As soon as we face a decent team that understands how to shut down Dame, our offense stagnates and we can't score. If our offense was the result of good coaching, wouldn't we be able to adjust to that and do something else to counter what the defense is throwing at us?
 
Here's how you can tell that our great offense isn't the result of the coach.

As soon as we face a decent team that understands how to shut down Dame, our offense stagnates and we can't score. If our offense was the result of good coaching, wouldn't we be able to adjust to that and do something else to counter what the defense is throwing at us?

Just looked it up. Against the top 5 defenses in the league in allowed ppg (NY, LAL, MIA, PHX, UTAH), Portland scores 108 ppg, vs season average of 115. I think just about every team scores less vs the top 5 than they do vs the rest of the league but am not researching, seems obvious. Lillard vs those top 5 teams this season scores 28 ppg. One of those games he had 9 points - the rest he averages a little over 30 . So I am not sure if "good defenses are shutting down Dame", and at the same time, when we play these great defenses, our team scores 108 vs 115, which is a lot of points, but i would assume fairly normal. I think our offense is our offense. Lillard doesnt score less vs the top 5 teams. Against the top 5 defenses, the team is 3-5. Again - I would think all teams have a worse winning % vs these five.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top