12-23-2021, 10:38 AM
(12-23-2021, 09:04 AM)Kammrath Wrote: Yep you identified this problem a while ago, keep speaking the truth! The lone voice in the wilderness is a hard job.
DAL is a top 5 D in the 948 mins without the Luka+THJ pairing.
And yet in much bigger samples
2020: Luka+THJ Off 116 Def 112 Net +4 1231 minutes
2019: Luka+THJ Off 117 Def 108 Net +9 1207 minutes
What does this tell us? That there is way too much noise in 2 man lineups to get much of anything, especially in a 3rd of a season.
I don't think anybody on here disputes that THJ and Luka are poor defenders, and a questionable fit as starters because of it (seems like there was thread going over this just yesterday).
The controversial comment Sefant made was suggesting that Brunson is a good defender and that if only Luka played defense like him we would be top 5-10. Looking at raw two man data without a ton of context is not going to be very helpful in validating that claim. If you want to look at on/off data to make some conclusions, there are some very good advanced stats (Lebron, EPM, Darko) that do a much better job of integrating all of the information. They all come to the same conclusion. All three guys are poor defenders.