What about the Defense?

under KT & MCs wings CJ is gonna learn some tricks from 2 old school masters. Not to mention whats gonna rub off on LMA.

The only big reason to not play LMA at the 5 is that he defends many 4’s really well (e.g. Blake Griffin, Pau Gasol, Boozer last season). I like him at the 5 against many teams, especially Miami (with Nic Batum guarding that skinny jump shooter they have at the 4) and OKC.

Marcus Camby has lost the quickness that his main strength, weak-side help defense, requires. That lack of quickness also makes him a sieve, by no fault of his own, in Nate’s switch heavy defense. Although we saw it quite often last season, that weakness was on full display in the game we lost to Miami, where Chris Bosh managed to burn Camby on multiple possessions with mid range jumpers. Nic Batum would rotate off Bosh after the switch, while Camby had to get from Lebron James back onto Bosh, leaving Bosh open on the pop.

We’ll be a middling team at best as long as Nate is coach.

The Blazers have been a top-10 defense for several short stretches. During each of those stretches, Nate had either a nearly healthy Greg Oden, or Gerald Wallace. Without one of those elite defenders, his teams (admittedly, I don’t know a lot about his Sonic teams) have basically been groups of average defenders who play average D.

and, as Nate is still our coach, our D will continue to be average at best. That’s been the case for all his teams, seemingly independent of personnel.

but doesn’t seem to have a solid system. From what I’ve seen the past few years, his guys give it their all on defense, but they aren’t always put in position to be successful even when they do everything right. Someone else can put a name on it, but what I see is 5 guys scrambling to stop whomever they’re facing (and, that could be anyone from 1-5 the way they switch screens!). The result is a lot of uncoordinated pressure and scrambling. It looks tiring and ineffective at times. At other times, it does seem to work if the opposing offense is flustered or not entirely focused.

Watching elite defenses like Chicago, Boston, San Antonio, and Miami, there is much less focus on getting individual stops and more on pushing the ball into help areas. It seems like it takes a couple of good reads or a dangerous pass to get a good scoring opportunity against those defenses. With the Blazers, once the initial pressure is beaten, the defense is often done.

It’s frustrating to see a roster with strong defenders top to bottom but average results at best. I remember noticing that the defense seemed to improve when Joel was on the floor last season even though he was slow as molasses. He barked and shoved guys into position, and they didn’t balk. I think they honestly didn’t know where to be.

It just rubs it in when opponents’ and national announcers tout our “tough defense.” At this point, all signs have to point to Nate. People talk about his success with the Olympic team, but I saw the same one-on-one, scrambling, pressure D the Blazers run. Unfortunately, the Blazers don’t have a huge individual advantage at every position like the US Team did.