Return of Nuggets 1: Forum #2 Comments From May, 2008, Part 2

Forum commentary I did from March 2008 through July 2008, when I didn't have time to do the detailed and extensive reports that I like to do, is being posted in early October, 2008. The primary themes are how the Nuggets are blowing a great (and expensive!) opportunity to play the game of basketball in such a way that respects the sport and that takes as much advantage as possible of who they have on the roster. The 2006-09 Nuggets have turned out to be an excellent case study of how not to run a basketball team; many things you should not do if you are a basketball manager or coach can be identified from what the Nuggets actually did during these years.

In these comments, do not look for the usual huge amount of detail and proof that you see in the ordinary releases here at Nuggets 1. Some of this is more like everyday conversation than like top quality sports writing. On the other hand, some of the comments do include some detailed reasoning and proof that I pride myself on in the primary reports I release.
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MAY 2008 FORUM COMMENTARY ON THE NUGGETS, ESPECIALLY ABOUT THEIR MISTAKES

How about a summary type of topic for a change? I'm only part-time right now due to being in the final stages of my huge real estate project/problem, so a broadly speaking topic fits my current time capability. (Every real estate project is also a real estate problem these days.)

Speaking broadly, the Nuggets and their fans have three ongoing nightmares.

1. The coaching staff does not know how pro teams win playoff games. Karl actually virtually admitted this in public!
2. The front court is essentially never healthy and in sync.
3. The back court is totally hosed up because there is no established, playoff caliber PG nor, shockingly, even an understanding among the coaches of the importance of the position.

The fact that the team won 50 games despite those crippling problems proves that this team mostly played their best under the circumstances this past season. But losing in the playoffs was obviously inevitable, and will continue to be so unless the above is solved.

As a rough estimate, solving any one of the above would get the Nuggets' current roster in line to win a playoff series. Solving two of the three could get the Nuggets to the Western finals. If all three were solved, the Nuggets would then and only then be candidates to possibly reach the NBA finals.

But these nightmares are ongoing. Currently there is no end in sight to these bad dreams. Let's hope the Nuggets wake up before they start returning to the 24-58 days.
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Does anyone know of a case in NBA history where a team had a different starting PG in the playoffs than it had for most of the regular season, and the reason had nothing to do with an injury, but was a voluntary coaching decision?

Update: Also, situations where the playoff PG was acquired during the season do not count; I'm talking about where both the regular season and the playoff PG were on the roster the whole year, and neither was injured for the playoffs, nor in the regular season for more than about 20 games.
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Thanks, but I updated my question; see above. I'm not interested if the playoff PG was not on the roster the whole season. Sorry I couldn't be more precise to begin with.

Oh, and if anyone doesn't know, yes, this is another of my little researches to prove that Mr. Karl is even more out there in I can't win a playoff game never never land than people think.
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Who was the regular season PG? And, were both him and Devin Harris not injured much during the regular and not injured for the playoffs? And were both of them on the roster for the whole year?
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Ok, so for the 2005-06 Mavericks, Jason Terry was the starting PG for most of the regular season, but Devin Harris started most or all of the playoff games at the PG? And neither had any substantial injury problems during the regular or during the playoffs, and both were on the roster the whole season?
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Well a check of what records are available confirm that Jason Terry was the starting PG for 80 regular season games, so if Harris was the playoff starter and if Harris was not substantially injured during the regular season, than this would be the second known instance of this seemingly insane thing, along with the 2007-08 Nuggets.

Isn't it interesting that Avery Johnson is currently out of a job due to dismal playoff results, allthough the sum total of evidence against him is actually less than the evidence against Karl? Just a coincidence that his name comes up here? I tend to doubt it.

Oh well, I guess if you are a big market team you get new coaches for lesser cause than if you are a smaller market team.

Any other examples, though, or are there just two known cases in the history of the NBA of this?
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A very interesting side question would be whether the Mavericks, who as I recall were supposed to win the Championship that year, blew the series by doing that backcourt switch. It's a side question for me but for Mavericks fans it may be a monster question.
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Exactly, with owners as well as people in general, there is a wide variation in attitudes toward success and relative failure. The owner of the Nuggets, Stan Kroenke, is a purring cat toward his staff compared with Mark Cuban. Obviously; they could not be more different owners in terms of how they evaluate the accomplishments or lack thereof of their staffs.

Someone should explain to Mr. Kroenke that there is a large untapped world of coaching talent out there, and that there is no law for example against Denver being the team that names Brian Shaw as head coach, who sooner or later IS going to be a head coach somewhere.
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A quick check of Wikipedia shows that there were 12 playoff teams from 1977-78 to 1983-84 and 16 playoff teams since then. That would be 468 playoff teams from 1977-78 through and including 2007-08, a span of 31 years.

I would be surprised if even 1 percent of those teams voluntarily started a different PG in the playoffs compared with the regular season with no injury or acquisition factors involved. If it was more than 1 percent, there would have to be 5 such teams, and I highly, highly doubt there have been.
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Karl so badly screwed this up that he drove me to a level of dislike for the guy's beliefs and basketball team management that I thought I would never reach. If screwing up a team was a crime, he would be sitting in jail right now, because he committed a real whopper this year, a major Class A Felony. This year's failure to put a PG on the court, which is what really happened if the truth were told, was even worse than the Martin benching in 2005-06 and the JR Smith tormenting and playoff benching in 2006-07.
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A never seen before team statistic cooked up by your Nuggets insanity specialist...

I took assists per game and divided them into pace, which is the average sum of offensive and defensive possessions per game, to come up with what I think I will call "Quality of Offensive Flow". I don't want to oversell it by calling it "Quality of Offense," because the quality of the offense is also determined by pace adjusted unassisted scores and other, lessor factors.

But this performance measure tells you to what extent the offense has an effective and efficient flow to it or, in other words, how many assists there are relative to the pace of the team. In still other words, this is going to tell you how effective and efficient the passing game is for each team.

Teams that rank high on this tend to be teams that:

1. Have good to excellent point guards.
2. Have good to excellent basketball offense coaching.
3. Have well designed offenses with some effective and efficient set plays included.
4. Have relatively unselfish players.
5. Are teams that basketball watchers most like to watch.

Teams that rank low on this tend to have the reverse characteristics and need to spend a lot of effort in the off-season trying to bring their offenses up to speed.

Unfortunately for those who think that offense is more important than defense, this measure by itself can not predict who is most or more likely to go far in the playoffs or to win the NBA Championship. But stay tuned, because in subsequent posts I am going to end up with a never published before measure that DOES give you a good idea of who is going to go far in the playoffs and contend for the Championship, and that reveals who the "pretender" teams are.

You can see that the Nuggets ranked a relatively high 7th in this despite the facts uncovered in my dismantling of the Nuggets point guard disaster. And they ranked a relatively high 7th despite the fact that Nuggets fans have come to believe that they have a team filled with selfish statistical padders, with Iverson leading the way. But like other apparent Iverson bum raps of history, an investigation shows that this turns out to be yet another bum rap. For the record: the Nuggets are NOT a team filled with selfish stat padders.

Charles Barkley was wrong after all!

And I never claimed that the Nuggets had a bad offensive flow. Rather, I claimed that the Nuggets could have a better offensive flow than they did have had they done the things I wanted them to do. At the very least, they should have had a better offensive flow than the Los Angeles Lakers, who do not by any stretch have one of the best point guards in the League.

QUALITY OF OFFENSIVE FLOW
Assists/Pace

1 Utah 0.3102
2 Phoenix 0.2808
3 Toronto 0.2683
4 New Jersey 0.2608
5 Los Angeles Lakers 0.2593
6 Detroit 0.2584
7 Denver 0.2515
8 Boston 0.2500
9 New Orleans 0.2466
10 Atlanta 0.2447
11 Portland 0.2431
12 San Antonio 0.2408
13 Chicago 0.2405
14 Houston 0.2399
15 Milwaukee 0.2386
16 Dallas 0.2365
17 Miami 0.2365
18 Indiana 0.2362
19 Charlotte 0.2359
20 Los Angeles Clippers 0.2329
21 Golden State 0.2300
22 Philadelphia 0.2282
23 Orlando 0.2266
24 Cleveland 0.2252
25 Seattle 0.2242
26 Washington 0.2220
27 Minnesota 0.2199
28 New York 0.2071
29 Memphis 0.2051
30 Sacramento 0.2047

By far, the highest quality offensive flow in 2007-08 was run by the Utah Jazz, with the Phoenix Suns a ways behind in 2nd. Jerry Sloan may be old school, but the quality of his coaching is mind boggling. The Toronto Raptors were third best.

The New Jersey Nets, the Los Angeles Lakers, and the Detroit Pistons were just about tied for 4th-6th, and then the Denver Nuggets were the 7th best offensive flow team.

Rounding out the top ten were the Boston Celtics, the upstart and extremely well coached New Orlenas Hornets, and the young but very promising Atlanta Hawks.

The New York Knicks just wisely hired the Coach of the team with the 2nd best flow, the Suns, to coach their team that had the 3rd up from the bottom offensive flow this past season. That Coach, Mike D'Antoni, has got his work cut out for him.

Coming next: Quality of Defensive Flow of NBA Teams.
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Here are the actual points scored adjusted for pace (points per 100 possessions).

OFFENSE EFFICIENCY
Points Per 100 Possessions (2007-08)

1 Phoenix Suns 115.8
2 Los Angeles Lakers 114.9
3 Golden State Warriors 113.7
4 New Orleans Hornets 113.6
5 Orlando Magic 113.6
6 Dallas Mavericks 113.1
7 Detroit Pistons 112.5
8 Toronto Raptors 112.2
9 Boston Celtics 112.1
10 Denver Nuggets 112.1
11 Washington Wizards 110.4
12 San Antonio Spurs 109.1
13 Sacramento Kings 108.9
14 Utah Jazz 108.7
15 Portland Trail Blazers 108.4
16 Atlanta Hawks 108.3
17 Houston Rockets 108.2
18 Indiana Pacers 108.0
19 Cleveland Cavaliers 107.5
20 Philadelphia 76ers 107.3
21 Memphis Grizzlies 106.7
22 Milwaukee Bucks 106.6
23 Charlotte Bobcats 106.3
24 New York Knicks 105.6
25 New Jersey Nets 105.6
26 Chicago Bulls 105.2
27 Minnesota Timberwolves 104.9
28 Los Angeles Clippers 102.9
29 Miami Heat 102.2
30 Seattle SuperSonics 101.7
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If you combine the two above, you would have the best overall measure of how good each team's offense is, because you would be considering both the points and the assists per 100 possessions. Assists are important not only because it says so in the basketball training books, and because all good coaches want a lot of assists, but because assisted scores are harder to defend against in general and especially in the NBA playoffs than are non-assisted scores. Iverson on an isolation play gets shut down in the playoffs more often than he does in the regular season. And you can forget about making a long run in the playoffs if you don't rank high in assists per possession (quality of offensive flow).

So if we add the ranks above, here are how the NBA offenses stacked up in 2007-08:

REAL NBA TEAMS OFFENSE RANKING (2007-08)
Rank for Quality of Offensive Flow combined with Rank for Offensive Efficiency

1 Phoenix Suns 3
2 Los Angeles Lakers 7
3 Toronto Raptors 11
4 Detroit Pistons 13
5 New Orleans Hornets 13
6 Utah Jazz 15
7 Boston Celtics 17
8 Denver Nuggets 17
9 Dallas Mavericks 22
10 San Antonio Spurs 24
11 Golden State Warriors 24
12 Atlanta Hawks 26
13 Portland Trail Blazers 26
14 Orlando Magic 28
15 New Jersey Nets 29
16 Houston Rockets 31
17 Indiana Pacers 36
18 Milwaukee Bucks 37
19 Washington Wizards 37
20 Chicago Bulls 39
21 Philadelphia 76ers 42
22 Charlotte Bobcats 42
23 Sacramento Kings 43
24 Cleveland Cavaliers 43
25 Miami Heat 46
26 Los Angeles Clippers 48
27 Memphis Grizzlies 50
28 New York Knicks 52
29 Minnesota Timberwolves 54
30 Seattle SuperSonics 55

Note that the New Jersey Nets have a great offensive flow and passing game, but they just don't have enough guys who can score well to be a top offensive team. But if they ever got Carmelo Anthony....

The Nuggets were 7th in offensive flow quality and 10th in scoring efficiency, which made them tied with the Celtics for 7th best offense in the NBA.
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Okay, getting back to the new performance measure, here it is for defenses. Denver Nuggets fans may want to run and hide now. I'm warning you this is going to be disturbing to say the least.

Teams that rank high in this are teams that tend to:

1. Have good defenders in general.
2. Have smart defenders who know where to be and where to go on a play.
3. Have smart coaches who can help prepare a team to play smart and tough defensively.
4. Have players who are good at disrupting the flow of the other team's offense, up to and including forcing turnovers.
5 Have defenders who hustle a lot.
6. Have defenders who know how to play good man to man defense without fouling a lot.

QUALITY OF DEFENSIVE FLOW
Assists/Pace of Opponents

1 Phoenix 0.2061
2 San Antonio 0.2087
3 Boston 0.2098
4 Houston 0.2119
5 Dallas 0.2128
6 Detroit 0.2213
7 Indiana 0.2310
8 Los Angeles Lakers 0.2327
9 Utah 0.2338
10 Orlando 0.2342
11 Cleveland 0.2365
12 Chicago 0.2383
13 New York 0.2392
14 Portland 0.2408
15 Charlotte 0.2414
16 Golden State 0.2433
17 New Jersey 0.2453
18 Sacramento 0.2454
19 New Orleans 0.2455
20 Toronto 0.2469
21 Los Angeles Clippers 0.2472
22 Atlanta 0.2481
23 Miami 0.2500
24 Memphis 0.2553
25 Minnesota 0.2564
26 Seattle 0.2568
27 Milwaukee 0.2586
28 Philadelphia 0.2595
29 Denver 0.2617
30 Washington 0.2707

Oh my god, the Nuggets are almost dead last in terms of what offensive flow they allow! In other words, they allow almost everything compared to other teams.
I now have gotten to the bottom of confusion regarding the Nuggets defense. Some have been looking at points given up per 100 possessions, which the Nuggets rank surprisingly high on, and have been claiming the Nuggets defense is not all that bad. But they didn't know about this never seen before performance measure, which shows that the Nuggets are total losers when it comes to stopping scoring that comes out of passing and assisting. The confusion is now explained: the Nuggets are not anywhere near as good a defense as the points per 100 possessions given up suggests, because for one thing, in the playoffs, teams can run over the Nuggets simply by ramping up their passing game and assisting. This is exactly what the Lakers did; they passed and assisted more than they usually do to run all over the Nuggets.

The Nuggets have to become a smarter team defensively or there is no hope for them, because this investigation shows that they do hustle and try on defense, and they do have some man to man defending skills, but they get totally burned by a good passing game. They have to learn to rotate, defend the pick and roll, and guard the perimeter far better than they did this year or they will never get anywhere. The Nuggets are especially terrible in disrupting/preventing the 3-point shot, which becomes especially deadly in the playoffs.

Also, the Nuggets are going to have to force more turnovers if they hope to ever win in the playoffs.

This discovery also means that the Nuggets can not afford to be the fastest pace team in the NBA on offense, because they are almost clueless with respect to defending during a fast paced game. They would be smart to play at a much slower pace, so that they would have a chance to improve on their terrible defensive flow measure. I'll be discussing this in more detail in future reports.

The big shock here is that the Phoenix Suns edged out the San Antonio Spurs as the best defensive flow team. Although the Suns gave up more points than the Spurs, and slightly more than the Spurs in points per 100 possessions, they were about equal with them in assists given up adjusted for pace. This is so far as I know a fact not known by anyone, including the Suns, and it makes the trade of Shawn Marion for Shaquille O'Neal look even more stupid than it already did, because the Suns were overestimating their defensive weakness when they made that trade.

The Boston Celtics, the Houston Rockets, and the Dallas Mavericks, in 3rd-5th, are also extremely good at disrupting the offense of their opponents. The Detroit Pistons are the 6th best defense in terms of flow.

The Pacers are 7th, the Lakers 8th, the Jazz 9th, and the Magic 10th.
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Here are the points allowed per 100 possessions (points allowed adjusted for pace). Notice how the Nuggets are a surprisingly high 10th.

One thing this shows you is that the Nuggets, led by Marcus Camby and Kenyon Martin, have defenders who are very to extremely good at shutting down unassisted scores, but they lack players who know how to keep the passing game and outside shooting in check. Do I dare say this is another reason why J.R. Smith should have played more, since although he does get burned from time to time, at least he puts out a big effort to be as far from the hoop as necessary to disrupt the passing lanes and the perimeter shooting of the other team? Damn straight I dare to say it, and I just did say it.

DEFENSIVE EFFICIENCY (2007-08)
Points Allowed per 100 Possessions

1 Boston Celtics 100.2
2 Houston Rockets 103.0
3 San Antonio Spurs 103.6
4 Detroit Pistons 104.2
5 Utah Jazz 105.9
6 Orlando Magic 107.0
7 Los Angeles Lakers 107.1
8 New Orleans Hornets 107.1
9 Dallas Mavericks 107.4
10 Denver Nuggets 107.5
11 Philadelphia 76ers 107.7
12 Cleveland Cavaliers 108.0
13 Chicago Bulls 108.6
14 Toronto Raptors 108.6
15 Indiana Pacers 109.0
16 Phoenix Suns 109.3
17 Portland Trail Blazers 109.9
18 Atlanta Hawks 110.4
19 Los Angeles Clippers 110.8
20 Golden State Warriors 111.0
21 New Jersey Nets 111.0
22 Washington Wizards 111.2
23 Charlotte Bobcats 111.3
24 Seattle SuperSonics 111.3
25 Miami Heat 111.6
26 Sacramento Kings 111.6
27 Minnesota Timberwolves 113.4
28 Memphis Grizzlies 113.7
29 New York Knicks 114.2
30 Milwaukee Bucks 114.4
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Now we can find out who really are the best defensive teams in the NBA. Once again, I combine the flow measure with the raw points measure by adding the ranks for each team.

REAL NBA TEAMS DEFENSE RANKING (2007-08)
Rank for Quality of Defensive Flow combined with Rank for Defensive Efficiency

1 Boston Celtics 4
2 San Antonio Spurs 5
3 Houston Rockets 6
4 Detroit Pistons 10
5 Utah Jazz 14
6 Dallas Mavericks 14
7 Los Angeles Lakers 15
8 Orlando Magic 16
9 Phoenix Suns 17
10 Indiana Pacers 22
11 Cleveland Cavaliers 23
12 Chicago Bulls 25
13 New Orleans Hornets 27
14 Portland Trail Blazers 31
15 Toronto Raptors 34
16 Golden State Warriors 36
17 New Jersey Nets 38
18 Charlotte Bobcats 38
19 Denver Nuggets 39
20 Philadelphia 76ers 39
21 Atlanta Hawks 40
22 Los Angeles Clippers 40
23 New York Knicks 42
24 Sacramento Kings 44
25 Miami Heat 48
26 Seattle SuperSonics 50
27 Washington Wizards 52
28 Minnesota Timberwolves 52
29 Memphis Grizzlies 52
30 Milwaukee Bucks 57

The Celtics, the Spurs, and the Rockets are just about tied as the best defensive teams in the NBA, with the Pistons not far behind in 4th. The Jazz, the Mavericks, the Lakers, Magic, and Suns are all excellent defensive teams, ranked close together from 5th through 9th. The Indiana Pacers (Coach Jim O'Brien) are the 10th best defensive team.

The Nuggets are tied with the 76'ers as only the 19th/20th best defensive team in the NBA, not even remotely good enough to contend in the playoffs. There are only 10 teams in the NBA with worse defenses than the Nuggets!

The bad news is that the Nuggets defensively made fewer improvements and were worse than most people thought this year. The good news is that they have interior defending pretty well down, and so they can concentrate all their efforts on outside defending, passing game disruption, and forcing turnovers. That is, that's what they will do if they are smart. But damn, the coaches are not known for being smart.
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Now how about net or combined quality of flow. This is quality of offensive flow minus quality of defensive flow for a team. Obviously, you need to combine offense and defense to find out how good a team is overall.

This will tell you how good a team is at passing and getting assists and at the same time how good it is at stopping the other teams from passing and getting assists, with everything adjusted for pace.

OFFENSIVE FLOW OR ASSISTS/POSSESSION MINUS DEFENSIVE FLOW OR OPPOSITION ASSISTS/POSSESSION
In hip hop terms, what are the NBA's best "flow teams"? (Who would have thought the best flow team is in Salt Lake City, Utah?!)

1 Utah 0.0764
2 Phoenix 0.0747
3 Boston 0.0402
4 Detroit 0.0371
5 San Antonio 0.0321
6 Houston 0.0280
7 Los Angeles 0.0266
8 Dallas 0.0236
9 Toronto 0.0214
10 New Jersey 0.0155
11 Indiana 0.0052
12 Portland 0.0023
13 Chicago 0.0022
14 New Orleans 0.0011
15 Atlanta -0.0033
16 Charlotte -0.0055
17 Orlando -0.0076
18 Denver -0.0102
19 Cleveland -0.0113
20 Golden State -0.0133
21 Miami -0.0135
22 Los Angeles Clippers -0.0143
23 Milwaukee -0.0200
24 Philadelphia -0.0313
25 New York -0.0321
26 Seattle -0.0326
27 Minnesota -0.0365
28 Sacramento -0.0407
29 Washington -0.0487
30 Memphis -0.0502

As you can check above, the Nuggets are 7th in offensive flow and 29th in defensive flow, so it is no surprise they end up about in the middle when both are combined. They end up a dismal 18th in flow achieved minus flow allowed.

The most important thing all of this says about the Nuggets is as follows. The Nuggets are never going to win a playoff series unless they can get a lot better at disrupting passing, disrupting assisting, and disrupting perimeter shooting of opponents, and unless they can force more turnovers. In order to have even a chance of doing this, they are going to have to slow their pace down.

I promised that I would eventually get to a never before published performance measure that DOES help predict the real contenders from the pretenders. This combination of offensive flow and defensive flow is as you can see a good predictor of who is going to go the farthest in the NBA playoffs. Assists are more important in the playoffs than in the regular season because defending is touger in the playoffs and you need more passing and assists to overcome that.

The final 4 NBA teams, the Celtics, the Pistons, the Lakers, and the Spurs, are all in the top 7 of this performance measure. The other three among the top 7 are the Jazz, the Suns, and the Rockets. The #1 Jazz are the NBA's best flow team so to speak, but they did not have enough actual scoring production to be able to defeat the Lakers. The acquisition of Kyle Korver was moving in the right direction, but it was not enough. And the #2 Suns were toppled by the Spurs largely because of the mistake they made in trading Shawn Marion for Shaquille O'Neal. As for the the 6th place Rockets, they were without Yao Ming and they were defeated by the 1st place Jazz in the quarters.
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Lastly, what if we combine everything above and see how the teams rank? We are combining:

1. Quality of offensive flow
2. Quality of defensive flow
3. Offensive Efficiency
4. Defensive Efficiency

Here we go:

1 Phoenix Suns 20
2 Boston Celtics 21
3 Los Angeles Lakers 22
4 Detroit Pistons 23
5 San Antonio Spurs 29
6 Utah Jazz 29
7 Dallas Mavericks 36
8 Houston Rockets 37
9 New Orleans Hornets 40
10 Orlando Magic 44
11 Toronto Raptors 45
12 Denver Nuggets 56
13 Portland Trail Blazers 57
14 Indiana Pacers 58
15 Golden State Warriors 60
16 Chicago Bulls 64
17 Atlanta Hawks 66
18 Cleveland Cavaliers 66
19 New Jersey Nets 67
20 Charlotte Bobcats 80
21 Philadelphia 76ers 81
22 Sacramento Kings 87
23 Los Angeles Clippers 88
24 Washington Wizards 89
25 Milwaukee Bucks 94
26 Miami Heat 94
27 New York Knicks 94
28 Memphis Grizzlies 102
29 Seattle SuperSonics 105
30 Minnesota Timberwolves 106

And there you have it. These 4 performance measures when combined together perfectly predicted who was going to be the final 4 teams in the NBA this year. For the record, the Jazz finished tied with the Spurs for the last slot.

Wait a minute you say, what about the Suns? The Suns forfeited their right to play the Lakers for the Western Conference crown when they traded Shawn Marion for Shaquille O'Neal. They had an inferiority complex regarding their defense, which as we have seen was not as bad as they were thinking it was before they made that trade. Once O'Neal was on the team, the Suns no longer were really in the top 4 of the NBA. The Spurs added insult to injury by using the hack-a-Shaq strategy against the Suns, which really and truly needs to be made illegal as soon as possible.

Notice that it turns out that Mark Cuban had a right to be upset with Avery Johnson, because the Mavericks should have done better in their Hornets series than they did.

As for the Nuggets, they are only the 12th best team in the NBA, way behind the top 11, and only a little ahead of the next three. As we have discovered, their biggest problem by far is not defense in general but is with certain kinds of defending. Namely, they are terrible at disrupting passing, preventing the assists that come from a good passing game, defending outside shooting, and defending the 3-point shot.