2021-2022 ROSTER TALK: [ARCHIVED]

[mvossman]

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.