RealGM

I've done a little research on our defense.

Last season we went into the All Star break on a six game win streak, the last game being a game against Portland where we held them to 77 points and played terrific defense.

After the All Star Break, things got messy. We barely won against New York in overtime, giving up 20+ to Tracy McGrady. We barely won against Minnesota, who killed us by rotating the ball to 3PT shooters on our over helping. We had some good defensive games from that point to the end of the year, but for the 31 games after the All Star break we gave up 50.8% eFG% to our opponents, which is a figure among the bottom five in the NBA.

We recovered for the playoffs to play some good defense against the Lakers.

This year, through the first 15 games, we're giving up 50.9% eFG% which includes a much higher 3PT%.

So that's 46 straight regular season games dating back to last season that we've giving up 50%+ eFG% to opponents. The first 51 games of last year our opponents shot 45% eFG%, a top five figure in the NBA.

So what gives? We've played almost as much bad defense as good defense, dating back to lack season. Tonight, Dallas had wide open three pointers all night, the help was bad, we switched on screens constantly, and got beat in transition on key possessions late in the game.

At this point, are we a good defensive team that is having a bad streak, or are we a bad defensive team that happened to get lucky to start last season?

I suspect the latter. We have the tools just not the want to.

imo i think we are all overreacting (myself included.) we're expecting to much from this team after a huge season last year. we are 10-5 after today we are sitting in the 6th seed spot. last year we were just on the edge of a .500 team at 8-7 (wild guess we were probably around 8-10th seed).

last year we were giving up 97.8 points per game
this year we are giving up 102.2 points per game
thats only 4.4 extra points we are letting up

last year we were giving up 81.9 FGA and 36.6 FGM .447%
this year we are giving up 82 FGA and 38.9 FGM .475%
and would you look at that, them 2 extra FGM are stopping us from being a 9th Defensive rating compared to a 22 defensive rating

and if you think that .475% is A LOT higher than .447%, think again.
if we don't allow them, them extra two buckets that takes the opponents FG% down to .450% which is only.002% differential (if my math is correct )

Just a little stat i find very interesting.
we are allowing 105 points per game at HOME!
last year just 95! at HOME
on the road we are allowing 98 points per game. yea, go figure...
last year, 99.8

now i don't have that much of a problem with the defense, yes we do have huge defensive lapses but i relate that back to Ron Adams missing and him hounding down everyones throat about defense being "second nature" as he said iirc.

just my two cents.

I think an unwritten point that Slick has come across is that our defense didn't start sucking when Adams left, it was sucking for the late part of last season when he was still here. Interesting food for thought - the issue may not have anything to do with Adams at all.

Another interesting thing is that we are all under the impression that were were a great defensive team last year, when in truth we were a great defensive team for only the first half of last year.

those were the 2 most interesting things i noticed from Slicks post.
Nice job Slick.

Indiana shooting over 50% from 3pt range and over 50% eFG% overall in the first half. Another fine defensive effort...

slick_watts wrote:Indiana shooting over 50% from 3pt range and over 50% eFG% overall in the first half. Another fine defensive effort...

To be fair, Granger jacked up that one well behind the line and it went in. Overall, we are giving a good 3pt shooting team looks and that rarely works out.

Here's some more stuff I dug up.

I have been noticing that we've given up a lot of big nights to opposing big men shooting on the perimeter. Everyone remembers Matt Bonner, but Charlie Villanueva, Austin Daye, Kevin Love, Andrei Kirilenko, Ryan Gomes, Nicolas Batum, Dirk Nowitzki, and James Posey are all front court players that have hit two or more threes against us. Josh McRoberts, Anthony Tolliver, and others I've noticed have come close, generally missing open looks.

The fact is that we're giving up 41.3% 3PT to opposing front courts, which includes over 50% 3PT to opposing power forwards. Opposing backcourts are shooting 35.4% 3PT, which while not great, is clearly a much better figure.

From what I can tell, the problem is mainly over help and lack of communication. James Posey's three point barrage last night saw Jeff Green over helping and recovering a step slow to contest the shot.

But maybe the biggest problem for us on defense is gambling. All of our players gamble for steals, or gamble for position, way too much. We gamble on help, we gamble on rotations. It's worked out for us so far, but playing this recklessly on defense is going to lead to problems. Two of our close victories (Boston and Portland) saw the opponent miss a wide open corner three that was there due to over help and undisciplined rotations.

Brooks has to get the team calmed down and back to playing fundamental defense.

The Defense has improved somewhat in the last few weeks. We're still giving up a high shooting efficiency (50.5% eFG, league average is 49.7%). But we're fouling less and we're forcing more turnovers. Defensive rebounding still remains mediocre.

There still hasn't been a game-long stretch where the defense has looked as good as the first portion of last season. But there have been some modest improvements. A good week with the cupcake schedule we have coming up could creep our DRTG close to league average.

slick_watts wrote:The Defense has improved somewhat in the last few weeks. We're still giving up a high shooting efficiency (50.5% eFG, league average is 49.7%). But we're fouling less and we're forcing more turnovers. Defensive rebounding still remains mediocre.

There still hasn't been a game-long stretch where the defense has looked as good as the first portion of last season. But there have been some modest improvements. A good week with the cupcake schedule we have coming up could creep our DRTG close to league average.

I thought the 2nd half of the Hornets game we looked like the defense of old, didnt give them any wide open looks.

dream_catcher_9 wrote:

slick_watts wrote:The Defense has improved somewhat in the last few weeks. We're still giving up a high shooting efficiency (50.5% eFG, league average is 49.7%). But we're fouling less and we're forcing more turnovers. Defensive rebounding still remains mediocre.

There still hasn't been a game-long stretch where the defense has looked as good as the first portion of last season. But there have been some modest improvements. A good week with the cupcake schedule we have coming up could creep our DRTG close to league average.

I thought the 2nd half of the Hornets game we looked like the defense of old, didnt give them any wide open looks.

You must mean, except for the wide open three point attempt Marco Bellinelli missed that would have tied the game?

Joking aside, the defense was pretty good in that second half.

Defense will be 16th in DRTG after this game, half a point away from league average.

December is over and the defense was a bit better, three points better per 100 possessions and a bit better than league average.

All of the improvement seen in December came from opponent turnovers and an improvement in our ability to secure defensive rebounds. Unfortunately, teams continued to shoot rather well against us in December, to almost the exact same tune as November.

Here's a rundown:

November Defense

Opponent eFG%: 50.4% (league average 49.5%)
Opponent TOV%: .126 (league average .138)
Defensive Rebounding%: 74.1% (league average 73.9%)
FT/FGA: .228 (league avearge .224)

December Defense

Opponent eFG% 50.4% (no improvement)
Opponent TOV% .142 (big improvement)
Defensive Rebounding% 74.9% (improvement)
FT/FGA .232 (slight regression)

Again it's important to realize that opponent shooting is much more important than either of the other factors. Not being a good shooting team ourselves, OKC is at a huge disadvantage winning games when they shoot so much worse than their opponents. We make up quite a bit of this difference at the foul line, but it'll be hard to be a successful playoff team shooting 1-2 full percentage points worse than your opponent on average.

It's probably also worth noting that our defense this year resembles the defense played during the regular season last year after the all star break.

If only Scott Brooks would read this thread, instead of going small-ball all the time. Any ways you do have some points there. Thunders is making there oppents hitting wide open 3's and they need to work on that little bit more.

Defensive Rebounding% 74.9%

I never knew Thunders defensive rebounding had gone up...