View attachment 34168
but only 3 years removed from ranking #6, so hard to accept it as coaching/scheme only problem. would look @ personnel equally important. i would initially rank the loss of coach vanterpool as a very significant reason except, well, minesota is still very bad at it. we had players that cared about it very much and understood that was their role. harkless, aminu, davis, turner, and to a certain extent even vonleh. look at that group of vetern players and compare it to our bench experience last season. older teams trend much better in defensive analytics. last years bench consisting no one over the age of 25(hezonja) after the departure of bazemore and tolliver and bazemore had to start after the hood injury. loved that GTjr made the leap, but he wasn't enough considering we played Melo at the 4, and he isn't the same defender he was 5 years ago, and that reputation wasn't very good. a sad fact for this discussion includes tolliver starting 9 games and averaging 17 mpg overall. Pau gasol never played a minute for us. without Nurk and collins we were under manned to play the style defense that was succesful in 17-18. whiteside while an excellent rim protector, is slow footed and seemed slower to read/react than Nurk in covering up weaknesses on the perimeter. opponents also scored an additional 5 points per game in the paint and nearly 4 additional points on second chance attempts. 9 points per game between just these two stats.
