Over The Top: The James Borrego Thread

[Walt Cronkite]

Hope the games stay fun to watch with who ever takes his place.

[luciano-davidwesley]

Hope we play D new coach

[Braggins]

Month, (league rank), defensive rating;

November (24th) 111.5
December (28th) 117.1
January (13th) 110.1
February (10th) 110.3
March (19th) 115.4
April (25th) 120.9

I can't believe the defense got worse after the front office acquired a 33 year 5'9" pg and another 6'7" center to play with their premier offseason acquisition Kelly Oubre. It must be a coaching issue.

[Vanderbilt_Grad]

Month, (league rank), defensive rating;

November (24th) 111.5
December (28th) 117.1
January (13th) 110.1
February (10th) 110.3
March (19th) 115.4
April (25th) 120.9

I can't believe the defense got worse after the front office acquired a 33 year 5'9" pg and another 6'7" center to play with their premier offseason acquisition Kelly Oubre. It must be a coaching issue.

Just for grins I went and looked at stats for some of our guys to look at individual defensive rating by month. I don't feel like trying to make a table here or post a picture somewhere, but my overall impression.

LaMelo - Gave pretty consistent effort every month. Numbers didn't very a lot. He wasn't great, but very obviously wasn't the problem. Very notably he was the only guy who didn't drop off in Apr. Rating spread 109-115.

Terry - Really only gave effort in January. Got progressively worse in Feb & March. Was horrific in Apr. Was bad Oct-Dec too. Rating spread 111-125.

Miles - Similar pattern to Terry except that he started out strong in Oct & Nov. Dec & Apr stand out as especially horrific months for him. Rating spread 109-125.

Hayward - Shaky start in Oct-Nov. Really bad Dec. Locked in Jan-Feb. Rating spread 107-122.

Plum - Pretty good Nov-Dec. OK in Jan. Pretty good Feb. Drop off in March. Horrific Apr. Rating spread 106-121.

PJ. - Super Locked in Jan. Like really amazing. Best monthly number of anyone all year. OK in Feb. Total trash otherwise. Rating spread 105-123.


So LaMelo could stand to tighten up a bit, but at least he's consistent. Hayward seems fine when healthy.

Miles & PJ have the tools to play D, but didn't always give effort on that end. That's especially true of PJ who did better when he tried but didn't try most of the time.

I don't think any lineup with Terry as a starting SG is going to be good defensively.

[LofJ]

I agree with you Vandy. After a big man finding a long-term replacement for Rozier should be our next biggest priority.

[Braggins]

The month by month team defensive rating suggests they put together a couple straight months of pretty good defense, despite everyone agreeing the roster is terrible defensively, then their best all around defender (Hayward arguably) got injured and the front office added a washed up 5'9" pg + another 6'7" center (who is much worse defensively than our other small centers) to the rotation and the defense bottomed out again. Its kind of hard for me to come to the conclusion that Borrego was simply a horrible defensive coach.

edit: The roster was bad defensively last year and Hayward/Zeller missed huge chunks of the season and they still managed to finish right around league average defensive rating (ranked 16/30). They ended up actually downgrading the roster defensively from last year to this year by going from Graham/Monk to Oubre (its baffling Oubre is worse than those two on D, but true) even before they brought in IT/Harrell.