Defense!

Analysis of the box score from the first pre-season game.

I couldn’t listen to the game since I’m here at work getting paid to surf the web so I’ve been staring at the box score all night trying to see what’s going on. A few good things suprised me:
It was interesting to see how much defensive minded the team was. Bell’s numbers weren’t good, but is that because he contained Brandon Roy? His numbers were even worse, and Bell got a +17 while Roy got a -20. All of our starters got about a +20 while their starters got an average of -3.5. Our starters got 24 free throws to their 8. Our starters had more blocks and steals than their entire team of 11. And that’s without Bell getting any, which by Roys numbers you know he had a hand in a few but didn’t get credit.
They had 46 fouls to our 28. I think that shows they weren’t able to contain our offense like we did theirs. We rebounded 43>33 showing great hustle. I read a blog over the summer saying Al Jeffersons defense wasn’t much better than Boozer’s, but his presence in the middle will make the great help defenders (AK and Millsap) much better. AK was amazing in his glory days, and still is, but his blocks have been down since we’ve lost a presense in the paint. David Locke said AK and Millsap were brilliant defensively in the third quarter.
The best teams in history were the best because of their defense and it looks like we are headed that way. Even if it takes Al all year to learn the offense, I think we’ll be ok. We happen to have the best point guard at finding ways to score, even if he has to do it himself. Jefferson just made it easier for Millsap and everyone else to score more.
I can’t wait till we see 35-38 minutes of our starters on the floor instead of 20-24. We have a great bench, but we’ll be just fine while they develop.  The Blazers scored easily against our bench, but I still would have been suprised if they had won after the inroads the vets established.