Blazers getting defensive

Nate McMillan is a defensive minded coach. Always has been, always will be. He wants his teams to play 48 minutes of defense and let that defense fuel the offense.

Despite this inclination for strong team defense, McMillan hasn't always had the personnel necessary to carry out the task. Zach Randolph, Darius Miles, Sebastian Telfair, Jarrett Jack, Dan Dickau, Juan Dixon, Voshon Leonard, Charles Smith, etc. None of those names listed ever earned any type of post-season defensive honors. But now, the Blazers have some players who compete with that "defense first" mind state. Greg Oden, Nicolas Batum, Joel Przybilla and now other players who are developing an appreciation for defense.

Throughout this preseason and training camp, McMillan has instilled in his team defense first. We heard it from players across the board, from LaMarcus Aldridge to Brandon Roy and Greg Oden, preaching about the increased defensive effort we'd see this season.

"We feel like if we put defense first, we can do anything," Aldridge said during Blazers media day interviews.

This was something Aldridge and Roy repeated throughout post-practice interviews during training camp. The increased focus on defense by the players came from the added attention, and new concepts injected by McMillan and his staff. And as Jason Quick wrote back in October, it started with Roy and Aldridge:

The Blazers, it appears, really are serious about this defending stuff.

The first hour of each Blazers practice has been spent on defensive drills; the next hour in executing the concepts. The last half hour is usually spent scrimmaging.

"We drill it, we drill it, we drill it, we drill it, we drill it," coach Nate McMillan said. "Then we talk about it, we drill it, we talk about it, we drill it."

McMillan, who considers himself a defensive-minded coach, said he didn't coach-up his players to talk about defense to the media. And he said he hasn't harped on them so much that it has seeped into their mindset.

Rather, the team's top two players - Aldridge and Roy - both came to their own conclusions at the end of last season, after the Blazers finished among the league's worst at forcing turnovers and grabbing defensive rebounds. McMillan said he asked his two stars what needed to improve next season for the team to succeed, and he said both emphatically pointed to defense.

Now, for all this talk and practice on containment and "overloading," the Blazers were not a very good defensive team to start the season. Through the first eight games, Portland was allowing an average of 99 points per game, which ranked near the bottom. That includes Greg Oden's return against Miami on Nov. 12 (the eighth game). During those first eight, the Blazers also faced some very stiff competition in the Los Angeles Lakers (first in the league in scoring at 107.8 ppg), Phoenix Suns (100.6 ppg), Utah Jazz (99.9 ppg) and Orlando Magic (100.4 ppg).

But over the last 10 games, the number of points allowed by Portland has dropped significantly, from 99 per to 88.2. And over the total of 18 games, the Blazers are now near the bottom of the NBA in points allowed, at 93 per, along with defensive-minded squads such as Boston (90.1), Houston (90.9), Cleveland (92.6), San Antonio (93.0) and New Orleans (93.0). It's a fairly rapid change for a team that struggled to get stops early on.

So what's the reason for this sudden uptick in defense? Well, it seems to boil down to a number of things. As this team came into the season, there were a number of new faces on the roster, with a handful becoming major contributors early (Oden, Nicolas Batum, Rudy Fernandez). With so much fluctuation from one season to the next, there was obviously a lack of familiarity among some of the players. A lot of these guys were not yet used to playing with each other and didn't know how to play off each other. That help-and-containment defense McMillan was harping on during the training camp wasn't there yet because a bulk of the roster was still figuring out how to play with one another. And while no one on this team is (yet) an elite individual defender, there are enough pieces to make the team a good defensive unit.

Add to the unfamiliarity the fact that Martell Webster (a starter) went down in the preseason and Greg Oden (also a starter) suffered a minor injury in the first game of the season, and there was even more change. Batum has done an outstanding job of stepping into the starting small forward role and becoming one of the team's better defenders in a very short period, routinely drawing the other team's best offensive weapon. Joel Przybilla (averaging eight rebounds and just over a block per game in 23 minutes), another of the better Blazer defenders, has gone from starting the season on the bench, back to starting, and now back to the second unit.

With the return of Oden and new familiarity of the team, opponents are having an even harder time getting points in the paint (the Blazers average 5.6 blocks per game) and second-chance points (the Blazers lead the league limiting opponents rebounds) and the Blazers are in the top 10 statistically in limiting opponents' assists. *Clarification from Casey Holdahl, of trailblazers.com: "Blazers play at the slowest pace in the NBA at 88.9 possessions per game, which is why our opponents don't get as many assists or rebounds." For more on the numbers game, check this post.

But what seems to be the main reason for the improvement is that this team's comfort level is extremely high right now. The Blazers are comfortable with how they are playing on both ends of the floor. There's finally some continuity in the rotation and guys are getting used to each other. Comfort and confidence. There's always room for improvement, more steals, creating more turnovers, but such a quick improvement defensively is encouraging.