Some thoughts and observations
I wanted to identify what I believe are the
principal reasons for our improved defensive efficiency:
- teams are making about 3% fewer jumpshots against us this year
- teams are attempting more jumpshots against us than last year (up 1% from last year)
- teams are shooting 2% less from "close" range
- teams are attempting 1% fewer of these shots)
- teams are scoring later in the shot clock (better defensive transition)
- we're blocking more shots
- we're creating more turnovers
There's no good way I can think of to quantify the interconnectedness of these elements (e.g. better defensive transition may mean greater opportunity to create turnovers, forcing teams deeper into the clock may result in more jumpshots, but it's hard to measure the effect). So it's hard to see statistically what has caused the improvement: maybe we're more active in passing lanes? closing out harder? clogging the paint more and other teams are missing jumpshots? maybe we're having more dead-ball turnovers, causing fewer transition opportunities.
To my eye, it looks as if the Mavs
- are more actively clogging the paint and the passing lanes,
- are trapping harder on the baseline,
- are closing out more consistently and effectively on jumpshots (particularly Roddy, Delonte, Carter, and Marion), and
- have fewer open court turnovers
There's some other variables out there as well - there have been some absolutely putrid defensive games, and similarly poor offensive games from the competition, that can create a lot of noise here. here have been 2835 possessions over 30 games. Take out our two best defensive performances (Sacramento win and the Clippers loss) and our two worst ones (home win against Utah, early loss against Denver) and our efficiency #s probably look pretty different (though I'd have to pass this research on to J0shi or someone else to perform).
Good to see we have an improved defensive efficiency ranking so far. It will be interesting to see where this team ends up. (As much as I loved the guy,) not having JJB has helped us out quite a bit. Marion, Odom, Carter, Roddy - these guys are giving us a lot of length and good close-outs that are really lifting this team.
Dude did identify one evident problem -
pick & roll defense. We're either allowing way too much penetration on 1-5 pick & rolls, as guys are finding it easier to turn a corner on our bigs. Dallas
is allowing the fewest PPP for a pick and roll ball-handler, but that's because of solid initial defensive rotations. This hasn't bitten us in the ass nearly as much as it should (although it has lost us a couple of games) because of good close-out abilities by our 2-3-4 guys. But our 5 guys have been very slow recovering back to their man (the mavs are 24th in points scored by the roll-man), and with some more clever offensive spacing, this could be a real defensive vulnerability.