Last half of the season: 3rd Best Defense

[djsunyc]

76 games played (28-48): DRTG: 114.0 (16th)

first 38 games (8-30): DRTG 117.6 (27th)

last 38 games (20-18): DRTG 110.3 (3rd)

sine jan 1st 43 games (21-22): DRTG 111.7 (6th)

50% of the season is a long sustained period of great defensive play.

[Duffman100]

Not to be a negative Nelly, but Gradey being injured sure did help.

[DreamTeam09]

We have become a good defensive team. The foundation of that being Scottie & Barnes. IQ & RJ have done better than some would have expected.
Having some bench defenders does help as well.

[MEDIC]

Not to be a negative Nelly, but Gradey being injured sure did help.

That's not being negative. That's just reality.

It's impossible to compete wihen you have a player on the floor that gets targeted liike that. The guy was bullied all season. It created a huge hole in the defense.

Walter plugs those holes.So does Ochai. So does Lawson. Even RJ is a way better defender.

I have warmed up to Darko since he turned the defense around..The team needs to continue to build.on it. Masai needs to find more 3 & D players & a proper backup C. The goal should be top 5 defense for the wholle season next year.

[Tripod]

For sure Gradey got hunted on defense...but he did play in Jan and Feb then in March our schedule got easier.

But when honed in on defense without Gradey being hunted, it just had a totally different feel to games.

Adding Lively will only make it better...lol

[C_Money]

Not to be a negative Nelly, but Gradey being injured sure did help.

I’d say playing G League caliber rosters helped even more.

[Thaddy]

Dick doesn't have the offensive talent or foundational skills you would need to disregard his defense. I hope he's viewed as a tradeable piece in the off-season, we badly need big man talent. We wouldn't really lose much shooting since he's been bad there for the most part.

[YogurtProducer]

Not to be a negative Nelly, but Gradey being injured sure did help.

I’d say playing G League caliber rosters helped even more.

Yeah we’ve had a cakewalk schedule

[S.W.A.N]

Not to be a negative Nelly, but Gradey being injured sure did help.

I’d say playing G League caliber rosters helped even more.

Yeah we’ve had a cakewalk schedule

The defense improved before the cakewalk started. But you both are correct, the bad numbers to start the season look worse than reality because of injuries/high degree of difficulty
end of season looks better than reality due to soft schedule

Still, the eye test and numbers both suggest when Barnes and Yak are on the floor we are going to have a good defense. Upgrading from Gradey to Ingram and second year improvements from our rooks should lead to a pretty solid defense.

Top 10 defense should be the minimum standard for next year

[Raps in 4]

And that's with us trying to lose games. The haters owe Darko an apology.

[Indeed]

Never like to base on end of season tanking team stats. Looking forward to next year.

[kalel123]

Difficult to not take it with a grain of salt with the uneven schedule and the epic tank fest we've been involved in trotting out G league scrubs.

[Tha Cynic]

Not to be a negative Nelly, but Gradey being injured sure did help.

He may be the main reason why we’re in 7th instead of 5th lol

[anotherhomer]

Not to be a negative Nelly, but Gradey being injured sure did help.

i maybe willing to trade gradey if needed

[Tha Cynic]

Reminder that we face the same teams that other teams face.

[GLF]

Reminder that we face the same teams that other teams face.

I was just about to say this lol. The only difference between us and other teams is we got all the tanking teams at the same time in the season, but if our defence is getting propped up by playing these teams so is everyone else in the league. If we played more of these teams in the first half of the season, especially with Davion here, we wouldn’t have been 27th. Yes we 100% aren’t the 3rd best defensive team in the league if it wasn’t for the schedule, but we definitely aren’t the 27th worst. Top 10-12 isn’t out of the question next season. Also as someone else said, Gradey was there for January and February so it’s not completely bc Gradey was out. Also next season Gradey will be playing other team’s bench mostly and won’t be getting force fed a whole bunch of minutes bc we’ll actually be trying to win. If he is getting hunted and struggling as bad as he did before he got injured, other guys will most likely play over him.

[Kingsway_fan]

Meaningless stat.

Highly ridiculously skewed schedule with mostly tanking teams LOOKING TO LOSE, PLAYING THEIR YMCA Mens league players....

Let's see that stat the first third of the season next year....

[earthtone]

Meaningless stat.

Highly ridiculously skewed schedule with mostly tanking teams LOOKING TO LOSE, PLAYING THEIR YMCA Mens league players....

Let's see that stat the first third of the season next year....

Against Top 10 offences we’ve still been a Top 10 defence in the league over that time frame. The sample size against good competition is small, but we’ve been strong defensively against the top dogs and bottom feeders.

[Los_29]

Our schedule has been comically easy and we’ve been playing guys that won’t be on our roster next year. I’m not sure what to think of this.

[ATLTimekeeper]

It's not just schedule, as we've been trying to lose these games, too.

The turnaround coincides with RJ saying he was going to focus on D the second half of the season. That and no Gradey and no Kelly.