What about the Defense?
With all of these new free agents coming in, all i hear is offense, offense, offense! Kurt Thomas, can make the long jumper and set good screens to produce OFFENSE. Jamal Crawford, a playmaker who is all OFFENSE and doesnt have a defensive game. Dont get me wrong, I am beyond excited to have Jamal Crawford. Im still excited about Kurt Thomas, but not as much as Jamal. The blazers have really improved their team over the offseason. But with all these offensive players, did they forget about defense?
I dont fully understand why they didnt sign at least one defensive player. I mean, i know we have Nic, Wesley, Marcus, Gerald, Chris Johnson, and Lamarcus. Who else? thats it. I dont really believe our rookies and second year players can play defense. Nate is a defensive coach. He wants all of his team to "try" to play defense, but why not just play plain, old, good defense? I would have been much more happy if we signed a good defensive player instead of Craig Smith..but that's just me.<p
34 comments
|
0 recs |
Do you like this story?
Comments
Defense?!
We don’t need no stinkin’ defense!

"I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all."
by thankyouforblaze on Dec 15, 2011 9:12 PM PST reply actions 1 recs
Beat me to it! Great pull on the pic.
"Per John Hollingers twitter - Over the final 12:45 of today's game, Brandon Roy's PER was 84.98" GM 4 vs Mavs
Blazers best defenders
PG: Armon Johnson/Nolan Smith/Raymond Felton
SG: Wesley Matthews/Nicolas Batum/Nolan Smith/Crawford
SF: Gerald Wallace/Nicolas Batum/Everyone else on the team/Luke Babbitt
PF: LaMarcus Aldridge/Marcus Camby/Kurt Thomas/The Rhino handles bulkier players better, Chris Johnson is a far superior weak side shot blocker
C: Marcus Camby/Kurt Thomas/Chris Johnson(Get the hint? Aldridge shouldn’t be playing D on centers)
Can’t really evaluate Elliot Williams at this point.
Paul Allen, the 2011 Trail Blazers Owner/GM
and some may disagree with me but watch out for CJ
under KT & MCs wings CJ is gonna learn some tricks from 2 old school masters. Not to mention whats gonna rub off on LMA.
by cavejunctionblazer on Dec 16, 2011 12:34 AM PST up reply actions
I am very optimistic about Chris Johnson
Loved what I saw in the playoffs.
Paul Allen, the 2011 Trail Blazers Owner/GM
Me too... He came to play
And you can’t say that about half of the other guys.
Kurt Thomas is our best C defender, and LMA is number 2
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.
Phase 1: Collect underpants
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: Profit!
I want to see the team play a real game so bad.
A Klondike bar regurgitated into a demonic ectoplasmic waffle cone does not compare to my instinctual lust for a Blazer game. I am serious.
Think we'll be just fine.
Good on the ball defenders on the wing: Felton, Matthews, Batum, Wallace.
Good on the ball defender in the paint: Kurt Thomas.
Good weakside defenders in the paint: Camby, Aldridge, Chris Johnson.
Good length all over the court: Camby, Johnson, Aldridge, Wallace, Batum, Crawford
Good hustle and scrap: Felton, Wallace, Matthews, Batum, Camby, Craig Smith
"These are dreams that we have." --Rudolfo Fernandez
Tie between Camby and Wallace
I wish we had the assets to get Holliday and Iggy off the Sixers.
by Oden Mad, Oden Smash! on Dec 16, 2011 12:42 AM PST via mobile reply actions
What would Nate be able to do with good defenders anyway?
The past few seasons while having good defenders, Nate wasn’t able to get the the team to play above average defense.
So I am glad we are moving to bring in more offensive players so we’d at least be able to average more than 100pts a game. Besides Kurt Thomas is a very crafty defender and Nolan Smith is a Dukie, they always know how to play defense and never slack of on D either. A full season with Gerald plus the improvements of Wes and Nic and we are bound to be at least just as good as last season so quit worrying.
Exactly. Coaches and their defensive schemes have the biggest impact on D.
We’ll be a middling team at best as long as Nate is coach.
The cake was a lie.
lol
"I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all."
by thankyouforblaze on Dec 16, 2011 7:56 AM PST up reply actions
Kurt Thomas is all D.
You cherry picked one thought in an NBA lifetime of only playing D.
dinasour type of guys choir boys
by mittsabishy on Dec 16, 2011 8:02 AM PST reply actions 1 recs
good question...
I disagree with this though…
Nate is a defensive coach
Nate is and always has been an offensive coach. Many people are deceived by the slow pace/low pts per game. Nate’s teams (when healthy) have always been among the leaders in pts per possession (a much better indicator of a good offense than pts per game). His teams have also always been mediocre defensive teams.
by vullkem116 on Dec 16, 2011 9:03 AM PST reply actions 1 recs
His defense seems to depend on the players
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.
Phase 1: Collect underpants
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: Profit!
The 2008-2009 team
IIRC, after the first half of the season the team was something like 22nd in DE, as in terrible. But they ended the year 13th, which means they were playing some pretty good D the second half of the year. It’s too bad they ran into a very tough Houston team in the first round of the playoffs…
It's really too bad that points per possession doesn't win championships.
Heck, we haven’t even made it out of the first round… Why? Because our opponents have more points than we do when the horn sounds.
You may not like the pts per possession but it is the best measure of an offense.
Again I would contend that it has been the terrible defense that has done the blazers in rather than their offense.. Championships generally require both.
Scott Skiles and Nate McMillan should be co-coaches
It would either be a match made in heaven, or a match made in hell. But it would be awesomely entertaining no matter what.
Phase 1: Collect underpants
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: Profit!
I neither like nor dislike points per possession
But if you have crappy defense and rebounding, points per game is much more important than efficiency — we have to score MORE than our opponent. Scoring ‘more efficiently’ than our opponent doesn’t win the game.
We’ve been stuck with bad defense… I think our best option is to change the offense so that we have a better overall combination.
Nate is a defensive effort coach
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.
by BaylessFace on Dec 16, 2011 2:09 PM PST up reply actions 2 recs
Exactly
Nate’s defense is great to run for the US team where you have massive physical advantages at every single position over every team you play. But in the NBA, it’s patently absurd to ask Joel or Camby to defend Dwight Howard the same way that Dwight defends Nenad Krstic or Robertas Javtokas.
Armon Johnson
is a formidable defensive presence. If he can get it together on offense, he’ll be a great +/- player (though his individual stats on offense will probably always be poor).
I think that we have some of the best
wing defense in the league.
It’s our interior D that needs help. MC has slowed a lot in his age, and its not going to get better this season.
\\\oo///
<
\__/
I thought the same thing
It’s a major stretch to call Kurt Thomas an offensive and not a defensive player, but Craig Smith and Jamal Crawford … those choices seem to make scoring the priority.
Seems to make sense though, looking at the rest of the roster. The core of Wallace, Aldridge, Batum and Wes Mat are all true two way players. It’s fine to have somewhat one-dimensional role players coming off the bench, as long as all the pieces fit together. It’s hard to judge fit with all the turnover, but we’ll soon find out.

by 




































