in any team sport, coach is the most important thing and depending on how good or bad coach is, team can overachieve or underachive or be good or bad as expected
first and foremost, coach needs to get his players to play with effort, then he needs to find a defensive scheme(s) that is compatible with the players he has, cause you cant ask your players to do something theyre not able to do and then you need to find the right rotations, make sure you always have a couple of defenders on the floor and certainly not a line-up of four non-defenders like cj mccollum, simons, carmelo and kanter
terry stotts has nurk who is defensive anchor, covington, jones jr, little, powell, thats five players who can defend and its his fucking job to work his magic with them, find a defensive scheme(s) that suits them and then make sure he gets rest of his players who cant play defense (dame, cj mccollum, simons, carmelo, kanter) buy in and play with effort
look at the knicks this season, its all tom thibodeau, theres literally no way they have so many good defenders to be ranked as 4th best defense in the nba and that means they are overachievers thanks to their coach and the same way, no-one can persuade me that the blazers cant do better than 29th ranked defense
if the defense doesnt improve by the end of the season, terry stotts should be fired and the blazers should look to bring some defensive minded coach, some guy with ideas, someone who is not afraid to shake rotation, try new things, hold players accountable etc... wouldnt that be a sight