How do we fix our defense?

[omgsomuchpotential]

Can he guard Paul George?

Doesn't seem to have elite length.

[slaw]

This thread is full of hate. Why is that? I get people being concerned about our defense, but overall its lack of desire on that end. Were getting to the point where I am saying FUCK IT & letting Lowry walk. I don't just feel defense us important, but offense is too. We have a very predictable offense, and that's what is going to burn us come playoff time.

One other thing: Sullinger hasn't played yet. He could be our lifeline. That or someone getting at this this team & telling them to smell the coffee.

It's been 14 games.......

[3inthekeon]

Random thoughts.

Per BBRef, we've had the toughest schedule in the league and its not even close. Things will even out at some point.

Lowry and DD have played the 1st and 4th most min/game in the NBA. And as Dan pointed out, DD's minutes plus insane usage plus being a poor defender at the best of times will cause issues. Even happens to elite defenders. Well documented Butler's defence slipped as his usage climbed. Same thing happening to Kawhi this year. That's on Casey.

The DRPM numbers posted earlier are wrong. There have been big changes last year to this, the biggest being Cojo going from a better than average defender (for a PG) to one of the worst. DBPM also shows Cojo has slipped, though not as dramatically. This early in the season though, I think there is a lot of noise in all-i-one numbers, but Cojo's defensive slippage does seem to pass the eye test also.

Vantage posted Keep-in-front stats late last year. NBA PG average was only a bit over 40%.. PG's naturally get blown by a lot.

Losing Greer and Bismack seems to have hurt the D. That said, RPM has Bismack as the overall worst centre in the NBA thus far this year, with a worse DRPM than JV.

[Scraptor]

This thread is full of hate. Why is that? I get people being concerned about our defense, but overall its lack of desire on that end. Were getting to the point where I am saying FUCK IT & letting Lowry walk. I don't just feel defense us important, but offense is too. We have a very predictable offense, and that's what is going to burn us come playoff time.

One other thing: Sullinger hasn't played yet. He could be our lifeline. That or someone getting at this this team & telling them to smell the coffee.

I disagree with almost everything you wrote.

This thread actually has lots of relevant critical discussion, not hate.
The defense is not about lack of desire, but as I showed, the removal of our rim protector.
Letting Lowry walk would be a disaster. I still don't get how Raptors fans can overlook everything he does for this team.
Yes our predictable offense could burn us, but removing Lowry from the equation isn't going to make us less predictable.

If Sullinger is our lifeline, we're fucked. What can he offer outside of gaudy rebounding? He shot an execrable 47.6% TS last year and doesn't protect the rim.

Lack of effort hasn't been the issue. It's more complex than not wanting it bad enough.

[planetmars]

Has anyone brought up pace yet? 95.9 (and 20th) this year compared to 92.9 (and 29th) last year. Casey ball is at its best when pace is slowed down. Gets the other team out of their comfort zone on offense when they have to play in the half court.

[charlesnba23]

Trade Ross for Thabo, Korver and a pick. You trade a 3 and d player to get a real d player and a real 3 one, and cap space for summer, and another player.

You re-sign them if they want to at a cheap price, but first, you sign Ibaka.

JV/Nogueira/Poeltl
Ibaka/Siakam/Rookie
Carroll/Thabo/Caboclo
DeRozan/Powell/Korver
Lowry/Joseph/Wright

[planetmars]

Trade Ross for Thabo, Korver and a pick. You trade a 3 and d player to get a real d player and a real 3 one, and cap space for summer, and another player.

You re-sign them if they want to at a cheap price, but first, you sign Ibaka.

JV/Nogueira/Poeltl
Ibaka/Siakam/Rookie
Carroll/Thabo/Caboclo
DeRozan/Powell/Korver
Lowry/Joseph/Wright

There is no cap space this summer. Not if you want Lowry back.

[Barolt]

Trade Ross for Thabo, Korver and a pick. You trade a 3 and d player to get a real d player and a real 3 one, and cap space for summer, and another player.

You re-sign them if they want to at a cheap price, but first, you sign Ibaka.

JV/Nogueira/Poeltl
Ibaka/Siakam/Rookie
Carroll/Thabo/Caboclo
DeRozan/Powell/Korver
Lowry/Joseph/Wright

Why does ATL trade Korver, Thabo and a pick for Ross? I'm high on Ross' value right now, but I have no idea why ATL does that trade.

[planetmars]

Why does ATL trade Korver, Thabo and a pick for Ross? I'm high on Ross' value right now, but I have no idea why ATL does that trade.

I suspect it's because Korver and Thabo are both UFA's and Ross is locked up for another 2 years after this one.

[Barolt]

I suspect it's because Korver and Thabo are both UFA's and Ross is locked up for another 2 years after this one.

But why trade two good wings for one good wing? It's a lateral move at best for them, and they're giving up a pick. I get that people want to get rid of Ross because they don't like him, but... this isn't really a reasonable trade.

[planetmars]

But why trade two good wings for one good wing? It's a lateral move at best for them, and they're giving up a pick. I get that people want to get rid of Ross because they don't like him, but... this isn't really a reasonable trade.

I don't think Atlanta would do that trade either (and neither would Masai).. Although Korver isn't the same guy he was 2 years ago. I like Thabo a lot but he and Ross play similar games and Ross is locked up to a very reasonable salary. Thabo could make twice as much in free agency. The pick is questionable. Not sure why Atlanta would throw that in.

[Scraptor]

Wow, I can't believe the RPM numbers have changed so dramatically. It doesn't even make sense, as the numbers I had for this year from ESPN are now showing up as last year's. And if I had simply misread the year... where did all of "this year's" numbers come from? They don't show anywhere now. I couldn't have imagined all of them, and I didn't misread the column, otherwise the numbers that I transcribed would show up in one of the other columns.

And we didn't play yesterday, and Jakob didn't even play Monday, so why would Jakob's number change over the last 24 hours?

I wonder if I caught them in the middle of some kind of update.

Anyways, I apologize for the misleading info. Thanks to 3inthekeon for the catch.

Fixed comparison of DRPM, last year vs this year
Kyle +1.70 vs +0.40 (regression)
CoJo -0.09 vs -1.93 (regression)
Norm +0.09 vs -0.02
DeMar -2.47 vs -1.53 (improvement)
Carroll +0.96 vs +0.49 (slight regression)
TRoss -1.41 vs -0.08 (improvement)
JJ +0.72
Patman -0.16 vs +0.87 (improvement)
Scola -0.01
Bismack +3.02
Jonas +0.64 vs +0.12 (slight regression)
Lucas +0.18 vs +1.36 (improvement)
Jakob not here last year vs +0.72
Pascal not here last year vs +0.72

Anyways I think the regression of Kyle/Cory and to a lesser extent DeMarre/Jonas is somewhat cancelled out by the improvement of the other playerslike DeMar/TRoss/Patterson and having Pascal replace Scola.

The biggest difference still looks like 1800 minutes of Bismack at +3.02.

Anyways, maybe it's time for me to step away from the numbers, I'm clearly on crazy pills.

[KeonClark]

But why trade two good wings for one good wing? It's a lateral move at best for them, and they're giving up a pick. I get that people want to get rid of Ross because they don't like him, but... this isn't really a reasonable trade.

I don't think many people don't like ross this year. Seems carroll has fallen out of favor. There's redundancy with Ross and Powell both on the roster and both should be over 20 min a game, but that's not ross' fault. He's been bringing the heat. He SHOULD have had b2b game winner and game tying shots from deep.

[DanH]

Wow, I can't believe the RPM numbers have changed so dramatically. It doesn't even make sense, as the numbers I had for this year from ESPN are now showing up as last year's. And if I had simply misread the year... where did all of "this year's" numbers come from? They don't show anywhere now. I couldn't have imagined all of them, and I didn't misread the column, otherwise the numbers that I transcribed would show up in one of the other columns.

And we didn't play yesterday, and Jakob didn't even play Monday, so why would Jakob's number change over the last 24 hours?

I wonder if I caught them in the middle of some kind of update.

Anyways, I apologize for the misleading info. Thanks to 3inthekeon for the catch.

Fixed comparison of DRPM, last year vs this year
Kyle +1.70 vs +0.40 (regression)
CoJo -0.09 vs -1.93 (regression)
Norm +0.09 vs -0.02
DeMar -2.47 vs -1.53 (improvement)
Carroll +0.96 vs +0.49 (slight regression)
TRoss -1.41 vs -0.08 (improvement)
JJ +0.72
Patman -0.16 vs +0.87 (improvement)
Scola -0.01
Bismack +3.02
Jonas +0.64 vs +0.12 (slight regression)
Lucas +0.18 vs +1.36 (improvement)
Jakob not here last year vs +0.72
Pascal not here last year vs +0.72

Anyways I think the regression of Kyle/Cory and to a lesser extent DeMarre/Jonas is somewhat cancelled out by the improvement of the other playerslike DeMar/TRoss/Patterson and having Pascal replace Scola.

The biggest difference still looks like 1800 minutes of Bismack at +3.02.

Anyways, maybe it's time for me to step away from the numbers, I'm clearly on crazy pills.

It's just way too early to be looking at RPM numbers. They are barely trustworthy over a full season. Only reason BPM is more stable is because it's an approximation based on box score numbers, which normalize much faster than +/- data.

[BrydenB]

I think the Raptors can make minor adjustments that can help in a bunch of ways:
1) Start PPat
2) If JV is a plus offensive player then leverage him more on that end. It may even energize him on D a little more, although I do contend he isn't much of the problem
3) If Demar is spending so much energy on offense that he can't try on defense, then see point #2. Use JV on offense a little more, save some energy for defense and try a little harder.