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Statistics say (almost anything you want LOL) Denver's defense last year was pretty good.

Defensive rating was #10
PPG allowed was #6
FG% allowed was #15
3FG% allowed was #1
TS% allowed was #13

Those stats are more impressive than I expected. I'm not a "stats guy". I go more by the eye-test.

My biggest complain last year was our help-defense and our help-the-helper defense.

Have I set my expectations too high?

I think you are setting your expectations too high. People remember the blow bys and they remember the times that the help defense was late, but they forget the times Jokic would force a bad pass through a hedge. People forget the blocks Juancho and Craig would get helping off the corner. Jokic is good at forcing turnovers on the perimeter, Craig and Harris are top 5 in shooting percentage allowed for the NBA, Millsap, Craig, and Juancho are all above average help defenders off the corner, and of course Millsap is a very good big man defender. Our defense is designed to give up mid range shots, there were a lot of open ones. We try to help at the rim and shut down the the 3 line. That is why our defensive rating is great, our 3 pt allowed is amazing, and the PPG as well. We allow abuot average ts% and right in the middle for FG% allowed because of the defensive design. Even 10 years ago most would be screaming mad about shutting down the 3 line and leaving the mid range open, but with the focus on 3s and dunks it is the best defensive design for this era.


The crazy thing is that we had no combo forward defender on this team, guys like Gay were just too fast for Millsap, Grant fixes that. If we can get all our guys to stay relatively healthy our defense should be considerably better this year.

Surprising stats, that's for sure. While I don't think we're as inept as most think we are, I maintain we are still just looking to overpower teams with our offense.