How do we fix our defense?

[CalgaryRapsFan]

Hypothetical question: if given the choice between being, say, 9th in offence and 9th in defence, versus being 2nd in offence and 16th in defence... Which do you pick? Would you rather be good at both, or elite at one and average at the other? In the context of the playoffs, that works out to mediocre (again, among playoff teams) at both, or great at one and poor at the other.

I think I'd prefer the latter. Don't really have a real reason, beyond gut instinct saying it is better to be truly great at something and have weaknesses. I think this decision informs whether the risk of restructuring around a very different C (and therefore potentially risking the offensive production to fix the defence) is worthwhile.

The problem with this approach, or at least the Raptors execution of it, is that the elite regular season offense has been so easy to shut down in the playoffs.

Big, strong defenders have been able to shut down DeRozan and Lowry in the playoffs, and the refs aren't' as inclined to bail them out with foul calls. When that happens, and your elite offense plummets in both efficiency and effectiveness, you lose your one advantage.

Toronto also doesn't have the defensive-minded players that are capable of turning it on to take their defense to that elusive 'next level' in the playoffs, except perhaps for very short bursts when they are locked-in.

The real question should actually be: Can you fix the defense enough to become elite, to the point that it can more than make up for what seems like an inevitable (three seasons worth of data) offensive drop-off come playoff time?

I think that's why so many people have pointed to the offensive system as being the weak link for so many years, despite what the regular season stats/rankings say. As a team, you can't hang your hat on the one facet of your game that isn't sustainable in the playoffs, yet that's exactly what the Raptors have done for going on four seasons.

[DanH]

Well, except that old cliche that "defense wins championships". If that's to be believed, wouldn't TO be better off improving on that side of the ball if possible? The assumption here is also that it's a trade-off -- that you can't be very good on O and elite on D. I don't see that assumption as necessarily true.

Frankly, I see no way for the team to be elite on D with DeRozan playing a huge role on the team. Same goes for JV - if either player is here, I think the ceiling is probably somewhere in the 6-10 range defensively, and that's with a LOT of changes.

That's why I asked about good offence and good defence - that seems achievable, and obviously elite offence and mediocre defence is achievable as that's what they have now. That's also roughly what they had last season, with ranks of 5th and 11th on the season.

[DanH]

I think I would vote for the latter as well. My feeling is that being elite at something gives you the ability to exploit something. You can game plan based on that clear advantage. Having said that I feel some hesitation to committing to it because the quality of our offence seems different from that of say Golden State. They seemingly can sustain their offence no matter the defence where as ours tends to wilt when faced with a really good defence.

Raps have played 8 teams so far this year that have a top 10 DRTG (101.9 or better) - Clippers, Hawks, Grizz, Pistons, Bucks, Thunder, Hornets and Warriors.

Their average ORTG in those games has been 118.7 (no games below 113), 17 points above what those teams give up on average, and 5 points better than the Raptors' offence has been on the year.

I'm not seeing the offence faltering against good defences as you are suggesting.

[jimmie]

I think I would vote for the latter as well. My feeling is that being elite at something gives you the ability to exploit something. You can game plan based on that clear advantage. Having said that I feel some hesitation to committing to it because the quality of our offence seems different from that of say Golden State. They seemingly can sustain their offence no matter the defence where as ours tends to wilt when faced with a really good defence.

Well, except that old cliche that "defense wins championships". If that's to be believed, wouldn't TO be better off improving on that side of the ball if possible? The assumption here is also that it's a trade-off -- that you can't be very good on O and elite on D. I don't see that assumption as necessarily true.

[LJ2]

Hypothetical question: if given the choice between being, say, 9th in offence and 9th in defence, versus being 2nd in offence and 16th in defence... Which do you pick? Would you rather be good at both, or elite at one and average at the other? In the context of the playoffs, that works out to mediocre (again, among playoff teams) at both, or great at one and poor at the other.

I think I'd prefer the latter. Don't really have a real reason, beyond gut instinct saying it is better to be truly great at something and have weaknesses. I think this decision informs whether the risk of restructuring around a very different C (and therefore potentially risking the offensive production to fix the defence) is worthwhile.

I think I would vote for the latter as well. My feeling is that being elite at something gives you the ability to exploit something. You can game plan based on that clear advantage. Having said that I feel some hesitation to committing to it because the quality of our offence seems different from that of say Golden State. They seemingly can sustain their offence no matter the defence where as ours tends to wilt when faced with a really good defence.

[jimmie]

I wonder. I have a feeling if we were to replace JV with this defensive centre with no offensive game, our offence would suffer.

I don't think anyone has suggested that.

[lewro]

Hypothetical question: if given the choice between being, say, 9th in offence and 9th in defence, versus being 2nd in offence and 16th in defence... Which do you pick? Would you rather be good at both, or elite at one and average at the other? In the context of the playoffs, that works out to mediocre (again, among playoff teams) at both, or great at one and poor at the other.

I think I'd prefer the latter. Don't really have a real reason, beyond gut instinct saying it is better to be truly great at something and have weaknesses. I think this decision informs whether the risk of restructuring around a very different C (and therefore potentially risking the offensive production to fix the defence) is worthwhile.

I'm more of defense guy, but basketball is more an offense sport than say baseball. I think if you look at teams like gsw and cavs they have very good offense but not top defense. Let's just throw the cavs out bc lebron is a one of a kind player. Gsw benefits a lot from dray imo. That's a player I covet and makes a difference to winning a championship or just being a fun Steve Nash suns.
I think we saw dd get doubled a lot last game and use jv as the outlet in the high post. Jv was open and looked to pass to a wing like Dmc. That's not really a big 3 imo or critical to our offense. It's a problem if that guy is not a good defender.
I think if we had dd and Kyle paired with a deandre type and a Blake type that would give us defense with good options on offense. That's not attainable but we're talking hypothetical. Some version of those players that COULD grow into what some us having been talking for a month or so like noel and Gordon.
They seem to be training jv to shoot 3s. I could see him paired with a defensive 4 and maybe having some success. I'm not that confident in it tho.
Good question. Imo these are the conversations we should be having. I think you've written better articles on these topics this season, even if I don't completely agree with you perspective. RR needs to talk about this more than "start pat" articles (no offense barolt). We've made some internal adjustments/improvement and that is good but still not enough. Imo biz was a big reason why we managed two games from the cavs. We need another piece on offense in addition to that.
It would be great to just plug in millsap or boogie but I'm not sure the likelihood. In the meantime I'm considering two or so smaller moves. Gotta consider a lot of options bc lebron is a big mountain to climb. We are capped, Kyle has a window. We have good assets but it's not infinite and it has to fit our trade partner and outbid our competitors. No easy task.

[golden]

Hypothetical question: if given the choice between being, say, 9th in offence and 9th in defence, versus being 2nd in offence and 16th in defence... Which do you pick? Would you rather be good at both, or elite at one and average at the other? In the context of the playoffs, that works out to mediocre (again, among playoff teams) at both, or great at one and poor at the other.

I think I'd prefer the latter. Don't really have a real reason, beyond gut instinct saying it is better to be truly great at something and have weaknesses. I think this decision informs whether the risk of restructuring around a very different C (and therefore potentially risking the offensive production to fix the defence) is worthwhile.

Ideally both in the top 10, with a priority on defense. Teams have gotten to the finals with mediocre offenses, but I believe less times with defensive efficiency out of the top 10. This is an interesting summary below, up to 2012.

https://www.sportingcharts.com/artic...champions.aspx

[DanH]

Scola was terrible indeed. And Biz was certainly good defensively. So far this year, the defence is worse, I think mostly because a) you are underestimating how detrimental a rookie can be to the defence, even an active and fun one to watch like Siakam, especially against starting quality opponents, b) DeRozan seems to have taken a step back there this year with the heavy load he carried early in the year - his defence and that heavy load have been improving of late, no coincidence, and c) the system has pulled back closer to the hedge-heavy system from 2014-15 (thankfully not to the same degree) than last year's more conservative version.

[DanH]

Ok so no matter what we played poorly defensively with Scola on the court. But don't ignore the other stats I posted. BB with every key player on the team over JV had a better defensive rating, including Patterson which would mean that Scola for sure was not on the court at that time.

So... Bench units defended better? Yeah, no surprise there, they were facing lesser opposition, and our bench consisted of our best defensive PF and best defensive guard. Of course the bench units were great defensively.

I tried presenting the biggest sample of Biz playing against higher quality opposition, and the results were not pretty. All the splits you posted are leveraged on most of those player's minutes with Biz coming against bench units and most of their minutes with JV coming against starters. There's way too much context there to take the on-off splits at face value.

[Lupe]

As an example: the Raptors' starting lineup last year had all sorts of defensive issues. Scola, DeRozan, the constantly rotating and/or hurt SF's.

One could argue that replacing JV with Biz in those lineups would fix the defensive issues (ie a rim protector could cover up the mistakes by everyone else). And yet (4-man unit since SF changed so much - plus, bigger sample):

KL-DD-LS-JV: 108.1 DRTG in 779 minutes
KL-DD-LS-BB: 108.5 DRTG in 388 minutes

If the other problems are significant, a rim protector does nothing to fix them. Teams just find different ways of exploiting those problems.

Ok so no matter what we played poorly defensively with Scola on the court. But don't ignore the other stats I posted. BB with every key player on the team over JV had a better defensive rating, including Patterson which would mean that Scola for sure was not on the court at that time.

Hypothetical question: if given the choice between being, say, 9th in offence and 9th in defence, versus being 2nd in offence and 16th in defence... Which do you pick? Would you rather be good at both, or elite at one and average at the other? In the context of the playoffs, that works out to mediocre (again, among playoff teams) at both, or great at one and poor at the other.

I think I'd prefer the latter. Don't really have a real reason, beyond gut instinct saying it is better to be truly great at something and have weaknesses. I think this decision informs whether the risk of restructuring around a very different C (and therefore potentially risking the offensive production to fix the defence) is worthwhile.

The latter would likely lead to a better net rating so I'll pick that.

However the premise of this thread was improving the defense, and that does not necessarily have to come at the cost of offense. Additionally I pointed out earlier that LeBron has never been eliminated by a non top-10 defense and only lost to a non top-5 defense once. History says you have a 0% chance of winning the series without ranking that high on the defensive end.

And I don't think people get to have their cake and eat it too on this discussion. We were ranked 11th in defense last year, we're 16th this year. We got rid of Scola who everyone agrees was the worst defensive player on the team and no matter who he played with, made the dRTG worse, and replaced him with someone who is at least mobile, athletic and can play hard and effectively on the defensive end in Siakam. So why hasn't the defense improved? Then people don't want to acknowledge that Bismack had any sort of significant impact on the defense even though basically every single statistic supports the notion that he did.

So if Bismack didn't help the defense much, and Scola was hurting it. Then how is losing Biz and getting rid of Scola resulting in a worse defense? Clearly he had a significant impact. The stats support it. The players themselves have said it. The coaching staff has said it. The general manager has said it. Many top reporters and analysts have said it. So why are some still denying it?

[DanH]

Hypothetical question: if given the choice between being, say, 9th in offence and 9th in defence, versus being 2nd in offence and 16th in defence... Which do you pick? Would you rather be good at both, or elite at one and average at the other? In the context of the playoffs, that works out to mediocre (again, among playoff teams) at both, or great at one and poor at the other.

I think I'd prefer the latter. Don't really have a real reason, beyond gut instinct saying it is better to be truly great at something and have weaknesses. I think this decision informs whether the risk of restructuring around a very different C (and therefore potentially risking the offensive production to fix the defence) is worthwhile.

[DanH]

Really? Because if we played a one-way C last year there's no wya we make it to the Eastern conference finals.

Also "last line of defence" exemplifies that you can't solve defensive problems just from that position. If everyone's getting through your first line of defence that is the problem. The margin that might get better with a different C wouldn't change that and would still mean we'd have defensive issues galore.

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As an example: the Raptors' starting lineup last year had all sorts of defensive issues. Scola, DeRozan, the constantly rotating and/or hurt SF's.

One could argue that replacing JV with Biz in those lineups would fix the defensive issues (ie a rim protector could cover up the mistakes by everyone else). And yet (4-man unit since SF changed so much - plus, bigger sample):

KL-DD-LS-JV: 108.1 DRTG in 779 minutes
KL-DD-LS-BB: 108.5 DRTG in 388 minutes

If the other problems are significant, a rim protector does nothing to fix them. Teams just find different ways of exploiting those problems.

[LJ2]

I wonder. I have a feeling if we were to replace JV with this defensive centre with no offensive game, our offence would suffer.

More importantly, our offence wouldn't have the luxury to suffer.

[white men can't jump]

It's amazing that we are even debating this to be honest. It's the Center position that needs to be our defensive Anchor, the last line of defense.

If we get a mobile defensive C (even with no offensive ability), we're pretty much going to the East Finals with a re-match of the Cavs. Lowry and Demar will never be as awful to start the playoffs as they were last year. Ross and Powell are better..... hell Carroll is starting to look better than he was last year. We have Sullinger who has to be a clear upgrade to Scola.

I'd hate to see a Deja Vu of the 2015 playoffs.

Really? Because if we played a one-way C last year there's no wya we make it to the Eastern conference finals.

Also "last line of defence" exemplifies that you can't solve defensive problems just from that position. If everyone's getting through your first line of defence that is the problem. The margin that might get better with a different C wouldn't change that and would still mean we'd have defensive issues galore.

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