https://www.thebirdwrites.com/2019/7...nd-carmelo-538

New article up on The Bird Writes about our defensive potential next season.

There's a few issues I have with it (the estimations are based almost entire on 538's new DRAYMOND metric, which has a bunch of issues*) but overall the statistics they've used seem to back up the claim that we may well have a top 10 defense even if we only reach half of our team's potential.

Here's the real verdict given at the end of the article: ''Ball believes that this could be one of the best defensive teams in the league, and FiveThirtyEight seems to agree. Whether it is by DRAYMOND, CARMELO or DPM, this Pelicans roster appears to have a balance of established production and tangible potential that bodes well for the year to come. Their total expected DPM, which estimates the minutes that will be given to each player, pegs this group for the seventh-best mark in the league (+2.4). If they can match or surpass that, they may find themselves back in the postseason a lot sooner than expected.''

*Issues with DRAYMOND include the fact that big men inherently contest more shots due to proximity to the rim, so the system therefore biases towards big men. It also doesn't account for the quality of the shot being taken or the quality of the shooter, nor does it account for non-tangible defensive elements, such as screen setting, boxing out, denial of position, rhythm disruption, help defense, etc. It's a very flawed metric which can definitely be useful, because no metric is perfect, but should not be used as your only judgement of defense.