Originally Posted by
Pelicanidae
I understand the concern with regards to defense, and personally I don't think defense will be our strength this upcoming season, but think of it this way.
Last season we had Bledsoe and Ball. We were a historically awful defense. However good you think they were on defense, it did nothing to rectify the overall team defense - this year, it's all about the team locking in and playing defense more competitively, more aggressively, and with more consistency. If we do that, even if you think the individual links in the chain are less impressive, the chain itself will be stronger.
Now, then there's the question of whether we actually are worse off defensive than last year. I'm not sure we are.
Firstly, Bledsoe is on paper a good defender who has a history of defense, but whatever that reputation may be, it's not the player we got. Our Bledsoe stunk on defense. Graham, by comparison, is actually a better defender than people sometimes seem to think. He's not lockdown, by any means, but he's exactly the same height as Bledsoe and has a 6'6 wingspan, so there's tools to work with, and he actually fights on D. Despite his size, his D-EPM last season was +0.2: Bledsoe's was -1.8. Even if Bledsoe's defensive ceiling is higher than Grahams, I think it's reasonable to expect that Graham's defense on our team will be better than Bled's was last year.
Then there's NAW. NAW is a weird one because some games he looked very good on defense, racking up steals and deflections, chasing around screens, using his length well. Other games he was just really not good at all. Despite that, his defensive EPM last year was -0.7, which is not at all good but isn't quite Bledsoe levels of badness: if he can be more consistent this year, I feel like he will be fine on defense.
Then, while I think Adams is better than JV defensively at their best, again, the version of Adams we had was plagued by injuries and he could barely move for months. JV is probably better.
So what I'm saying is, Graham and JV will probably be better than Bledsoe and Adams defensively, NAW probably won't be too bad, and I feel like Zion was making clear improvement throughout last year that I hope continues this season. Overall, while I don't think we're going to be a top 10 defensive team or anything, I feel like we can avoid being bottom 5 again. 17th rated defense or something incoming.