How do we fix our defense?

[lewro]

Why is it a paranoia to not believe the only thing that matters is a championship?

I don't think it's paranoia I think its competitive desire. The objective is to win. Not to be on a fancy treadmill

[planetmars]

I don't think it's paranoia I think its competitive desire. The objective is to win. Not to be on a fancy treadmill

The NBA is the wrong sport to hope for a championship though. Biggest disparity between teams that win and teams that don't in all the major sports leagues in North America. One guy can influence a game radically. And teams have two or three of them now.

[lewro]

Here's the thing. Both Golden State and Cleveland run lineups where every single guy on the floor can score easily.

You get to the Finals and have Curry, Klay, KD, and Dray on the floor at the same time against you, where you gonna put DeMar? He HAS to be better to win a title. Period. The rest of the pieces almost don't matter if he can't be better.

Of course demar has to play his best, everyone does, winning means excellence.
We don't have the talent, that's the point.
No one says kd, dray, jv, siakam in the same breath.
Our starting pf is Pascal siakam. Say that out loud. Im sure our players try, we're just not that good. That's obvious.

[3inthekeon]

I don't think it's paranoia I think its competitive desire. The objective is to win. Not to be on a fancy treadmill

So how exactly does this team become favourites to win the championship this year or next?

Maybe I don't know the NBA whatsoever, but trading for Nerlens Noel doesn't come close IMO.

[KeonClark]

The NBA is the wrong sport to hope for a championship though. Biggest disparity between teams that win and teams that don't in all the major sports leagues in North America. One guy can influence a game radically. And teams have two or three of them now.

It's a sick reality that the only thing out east that will beat lebron is father time..or maybe an injury which he never gets but then we could advance to the finals with the world's biggest asterisk.

I think that's why a lot of guys value jv. He'll be in his prime when lowry and lebron are likely retired. To me te sky is the limit with a norman powell. He could compliment demar really well when carrolls contract is up. Bruno? Who know? Don't all laugh at once the potential is there. Add a home run pick (shout out kawhi!) In the next year or 2, continued suave asset management, and when the dust clears after the lebron vs curry basketball association, the raptors could smoothly transition to still being right there, winning 50 games, and be like "hey look! There's that path to the ring! It's much clearer now, just one more piece! Let's go!"

[slaw]

Of course demar has to play his best, everyone does, winning means excellence.
We don't have the talent, that's the point.
No one says kd, dray, jv, siakam in the same breath.
Our starting pf is Pascal siakam. Say that out loud. Im sure our players try, we're just not that good. That's obvious.

Actually, the Raptors are pretty good. In fact, they're really good. Wins on the road in OKC, Charlotte and Houston and a 9-6 record despite rolling through a really tough part of the schedule are testament to that.

It kills me that people are down on this team after 14/15 games. It's a really good team. Can they beat GSW and the Cavs? probably not, but neither can 27 other teams.

[DanH]

Main thing the Raps have to do to fix their defence is to wait. Their strength of schedule has been insane, and calculating an adjusted DRTG by taking into account opposition, home/away and B2B's, the Raps have an effective DRTG of 104.2. That would currently rank pretty close to average, and would be a point better than their current rating.

They could do other stuff, like running out the right starting PF, or scaling back some of our guards' usage and minutes to allow for more consistent effort on both ends. I'd like to see both happen. But we should also consider that they've just been playing a brutal schedule - frankly, the schedule impact is probably under-estimated by my model because it just treats back to backs and road games generically and doesn't consider the effects of a long trip across time zones. Look at their defence before the GSW/CLE nightmare back to back - it was sitting at 102.5, which would be borderline top 10. Let's just... relax for a bit and see what happens as the schedule gets lighter.

[S.R.]

Man we've taken a leap from improving the Drtg a few notches to we need 2-3 guys from the top 20 in the league to win a championship.

[Barolt]

Man we've taken a leap from improving the Drtg a few notches to we need 2-3 guys from the top 20 in the league to win a championship.

I actually am in the 'if it ain't broke...' group as far as roster makeup is concerned. I really think our problems are overstated, and can be solved through a bunch of small fixes, like renewed focus on the defensive end and stopping or at least slowing penetration, as well as finding shooters in the corners.

Also, I'd really like to see Patterson starting, because I think that solves a lot of issues, but I don't think this'll ever happen.

Bench is still good, offense is still good, and chemistry goes a long, long way in this league.

[KeonClark]

Main thing the Raps have to do to fix their defence is to wait. Their strength of schedule has been insane, and calculating an adjusted DRTG by taking into account opposition, home/away and B2B's, the Raps have an effective DRTG of 104.2. That would currently rank pretty close to average, and would be a point better than their current rating.

They could do other stuff, like running out the right starting PF, or scaling back some of our guards' usage and minutes to allow for more consistent effort on both ends. I'd like to see both happen. But we should also consider that they've just been playing a brutal schedule - frankly, the schedule impact is probably under-estimated by my model because it just treats back to backs and road games generically and doesn't consider the effects of a long trip across time zones. Look at their defence before the GSW/CLE nightmare back to back - it was sitting at 102.5, which would be borderline top 10. Let's just... relax for a bit and see what happens as the schedule gets lighter.

Not to mention..we MIGHT have just watched demarre reach that elusive "100%" last night. Maybe 96 or 97%? Whatever the case, if that 15 million dollar junk yard dog is currently biting off his leash...it will do wonders. We haven't had it yet, and we wn 56 games, went to 6 in the conf finals and are probably on the bottom of the top 5 teams in the league, playing a fearless but short sophomore and a replacement level SF at the most important defensive position in the nba, sorry to the rim protection fans but it is.

One maybe 2 games of excellent ball is obviously too early, but the biggest acquisition we could hope to Make without parting with key reserves is hiding in plain sight, wearing shiny clothes and thick dyed blond locks.

[S.R.]

I actually am in the 'if it ain't broke...' group as far as roster makeup is concerned. I really think our problems are overstated, and can be solved through a bunch of small fixes, like renewed focus on the defensive end and stopping or at least slowing penetration, as well as finding shooters in the corners.

Also, I'd really like to see Patterson starting, because I think that solves a lot of issues, but I don't think this'll ever happen.

Bench is still good, offense is still good, and chemistry goes a long, long way in this league.

Yes, Masai has basically at this point put me in permanent "wait and see" mode. A couple years ago I was also all over dramatic roster changes, but you can't argue with the year-over-year on court success + continually stocking the cupboard with solid young talent + draft picks. It may be boring, but at this point I'm fine with waiting to see what MU does rather than second guessing how to build the roster all year. It's actually good to enjoy the ride for once.

Tho if at some point the wheels come off, then all bets are off

[lewro]

So how exactly does this team become favourites to win the championship this year or next?

Maybe I don't know the NBA whatsoever, but trading for Nerlens Noel doesn't come close IMO.

I agree. We have to try to get better in every way possible. I have complete doubt that we can get past lebron until he starts to slow down yrs from now or moves out west. That's as far as I am looking. We still lose to cavs with noel. Maybe we win one or two. My happiest moment in the ecf was watching biz put lebron on his ass. I'd like to see noel do that before the ship goes down too.
Are you referring to the jays trades? KC and cle don't have lebron guys on their teams and baseball is a team sport. We had legit shot there.

[lewro]

I'll bite on demarre helping us but not on the schedule. We're not as good as the clippers or spurs (most likely). We're in the mix with Boston and Charlotte. Boston still has those picks, cap flexibility and roster flexibility.
Jv goes down right now im not even sure we make the playoffs. Not home court for sure. Maybe cavs first round.
Internal improvement is fine but we're talking yrs. Where's Lowry at then? We're gonna keep building through the draft without trade and we are capped. That's fine but hang your window on jv and demar then, not Kyle and demar. I can get on board with that with lebron aging. I'm not sure how Masai would feel but Casey would definitely throw his clipboard and get nipple leakage.

[octothorp]

When you look at the NBA's team tracking defense stats (which can account for the strength of schedule somewhat), you can see that even though we're allowing more 3 point shots as a percentage of total shots allowed, we're tending to hold our opponents to a lower percentage than what they usually make (-2.2%, fourth best in the league), while shots of less than 6 feet is a middle of the road +0.2%, which we've allowed more attempts of than anyone else in the league.
While you can't pull up the stats for 2 point shots longer than 6 feet, we're fifth worst in this differential for all 2s, so you can assume we're near the absolute bottom for this differential in midrange and long 2s. It also happens that these are among the shots we allow the fewest of: we have the third fewest 5-9 footers attempted against us, the absolute fewest 10-14 footers, the 2nd fewest 15-19 footers.

In short: we give up a lot of 3 point attempts, but we tend to hold teams to well below their average (and this isn't just luck, we're 6th in the league in contesting 3s). We give up an average amount of shots around the hoop, but we're roughly average in defending these. We give up very few midrange jumpers but teams tend to shoot well above their averages on these against us.

There's some good and some bad there... on the one hand, our defense is average around the hoop and excellent at the 3 point line by this measure. On the other hand, we do a poor job overall of forcing teams to take traditionally low-efficiency shots. This latter issue is, potentially, a product of who we've played... Denver and OKC lead the league in attempts around the hoop while Houston, GS and Cleveland lead the league in 3 point attempts. That may average out over time and if that happens with our 3-point defense remaining above average and our around-the-hoop defense remaining average, then we're in really good shape.

Anyway, I'm definitely in the wait-and-see camp. There's enough positives there, and I am a believer that continuity counts for a lot.

[enlightenment]

Wait and see! Wait and see!