The Kings' (Three-Game) Defensive Renaissance

And still starts as Greene and Head have entered the lineup. Didn’t want to make it seem as if the Dalembert stint and Greene/Head stint were separate.

LG AVG is league average.

It’s the average number of points allowed by a team per 100 possessions. Lower is better.

It’s a way of adjusting for how fast or slow a team plays. It’s a total of your opponents points times 100 divided by their total possessions( FGA+ Off rebs+ their Turnovers + 45% of thier FT’s). It a formula that can be used for one game or a season total.

Teams like Dal & Por play at a very slow Pace, between 91-92 possessions per game. If your hold them to 90 pts or less then 1 pt per possession, that’s good defense. Teams like Hou & LAL average 99-100 possessions, so if you hold them to 90pt your holding them to 0.9 pts per possession which is exellent defense.

Defensive rating does the math for you. Hold a team to 100 rating and your a good defense, hold them to 90 rating and your excellent, Hold them to 110 and your the worst defense in the league. Currently, 103 is the NBA average and currently the Kings are 106.7.

To me the only thing that matters is competitiveness. Couldn’t give one shit about wins and losses at the moment

I tend to feel it’s more about putting the round ball through the basket more than your opponent. Don’t get me wrong, it might not happen that way with how things are going but so long as it is an overall improvement I wouldn’t worry too much.

that at this moment it is more important to fill the seats at Arco than to get wins.

Perhaps Ws will fill the seats, but if the basketball is horrible to watch for those who don’t enjoy gritty, lockdown D (and there are many, I think), it may not work.

For the record, I like gritty, lockdown D.

I say screw it and go back to what was working in the first five games.

Dammit NBA schedulers, why can’t we play the T-Wolves, Nets, Cavs, and Raptors 4 out of every 5 games?!?

Westphal shook things up for the sake of defense … and it looks like it worked.

While it may not be translated to a better winning percentage, it has improved the defense. If that was the goal, then it worked. Can’t argue that.

We won 3 of first 5 games of the season with only a 2.2 point different and as a purely defensive team we are, in my opinion, worse off because we only won 1 of 3 games and have a 3.3 point differential.

I dunno about using point differently but considering our oppenents the last 3 games were significantly better than in those first 5 games and the differential between our ORtg and DRtg the last three games has been less than a point per 100 possessions I think we are doing better in the last three games.

We played New Jersey twice. We lost with the season starters and won with the current line up.
NJ for the season has a offensive rating of 100.9 and a defensive rating of 105.6

In the first game which we lost we had a off rate of 96.2 and a defense rate of 101.9, so we scored 9.4 pts fewer than NJ normally gives up and allowed 1pt more than they usually score. That’s a 10.4 pt advantage for the Nets.

In the last game which we won, we had a off rate of 103.6 and a defensive rat of 97.6. That’s 2 pts less than what NJ normally gives up, and 3.3 pts less than what NJ nomally scores. That’s a 1.3 pt advantage for the Kings. Overall a 11.7pt turn around in our favor.

Minny scores 98.3 on average but we allowed 111.4 or 13.1 more, and Minny allows 108.3 and we scored 110.5 or 2.2 more. That’s an 10.9 pt advantage to the Twolves with the early starters.

Cle scores 100.7 but we allowed 115.1 or 14.7 more, while the Kings only scored 7.4 above Cle’s usual 106.7 defense. That’s 7.3pt advantage for Cle.

Tor scores 101.9 but we allowed 113.7 or a 11.8 pt more then their norm. We scored 116.8 which is 11.2 over their norm of 105.6. Which is still a 0.6 advantage for Tor.

In everyone of the early season games we play a bad team and made them look better. And, barely sqeaked out wins by +1, +3, +3, and a lose of -6. If we continued to play good teams with that same defense, we were never going to win any games. At least now, with the new defense we have a chance of keeping good teams from running away with the game. And, by the way, the 9pt loss to Minny 7 games ago happened before the defensive changes took affect.

but then the accusations of GroupThink would fly. So I will just quietly rec this and not post a response.

…Dammit.

to see if the impatience and fickleness that we’ve been seeing is really just a few people with strong opinions, or actually an indicator of a very fractured fanbase.

But I’ve seen a few people make similar comments – and if you can find many individuals here who are talking out of both sides of their mouths (as listed in your post), I’d be surprised.

Otherwise, you’re just taking a multitude of differing opinions – and I’m not sure why anyone would be surprised to find said varying opinions on a site this large and active.

You are putting the cart way before the horse. While there has been improvement defensively, nobody knows if it’s sustainable long-term (if the offense will come around). Plus, it hasn’t resulted in any wins.

Promising, sure. Vindication of the coaching staff? Heck no.

it took him 95 games, two training camps, two preseason to figure out what most people on this site already knew. That Beno is a bad defender, and Luther Head is better.

and “defense”, "players"and “team” as well, just to be sure, because I’m utterly confused by this statement.