Derrick Jones Jr. has been the Portland Trail Blazers’ best and most versatile on-ball defender this season. Yet, when head coach Terry Stotts was asked why Jones Jr. has been getting less minutes, his answer was “We were 29th defensively with Derrick starting and we’re 29th with Norman starting”. We dissect why Stotts is wrong about DJJ and what’s really the reason for the atrocious defense and terrible record against top teams.
Jones Jr. does help the defense
It’s very simple for Stotts to look at the team’s defensive rating and say that it hasn’t changed, but the truth is that it doesn’t tell the whole story. DJJ was a starter when Jusuf Nurkic, the team’s best (and only) rim protector, was out. Enes Kanter, who replaced him in the starting lineup, is a considerable downgrade on the defensive end compared to Nurkic.
Next up, it isn’t like DJJ plays every minute on the court. He was averaging 26 minutes per game as a starter. In those minutes, the Blazers allow 3.5 points per 100 possessions less than when he’s not on the court. When DJJ is off the court, the Blazers have the worst defensive rating in league history.
Jones Jr. is also the most versatile defender on the Blazers. Per BBall Index, Jones manages to have a positive impact on defense while having the highest “defensive context” in the league among wings. Defensive context takes into account the positional versatility, the role on defense and the matchup difficulty. Jones takes on the biggest defensive workload in the league on a team that would otherwise be the worst in history.
Lastly, Stotts made a point about DJJ starting. The Blazers’ 2 most used lineups this season are the starting lineups of Lillard, McCollum, Jones Jr., Covington, Nurkic and Lillard, Trent Jr., Jones Jr., Covington, Kanter. Both lineups have a great defensive rating of about 107.5. The sample size isn’t small either, with a combined 478 minutes for those lineups.
Stotts discredited DJJ’s season-long efforts with one simple line that wasn’t actually based on Jones’ play or numbers, just on where the team ranked defensively. It seems rather interesting to note that Derrick Jones Jr. has a player option worth $10m for next season.
Rotations
DJJ isn’t the problem, so who or what is? For one, Stotts’ rotations. There are numerous problems in the rotation caused by Stotts’ fixation on starting Norman Powell at the small forward position, when in reality he’s a 6’3’’ guard. We’ll go over the problems one by one, but not before going over the reason why Powell is starting at the 3.
The first reason is that Stotts wants to play his best players, which makes sense. The second reason is that If you look at Norman Powell’s stats this season for the Raptors, it jumps out that he did way better as the starting small forward than off the bench. However, his current situation isn’t comparable. The Raptors’ backcourt of Lowry and Van Vleet doesn’t (try to) score as much as the Blazers’ backcourt of Lillard and McCollum.
Powell’s success didn’t come directly from starting. It came with the extra shots that come with the increased minutes. Powell isn’t getting a lot of shots when he’s on the court with both Dame and C.J., so starting him at small forward doesn’t make a lot of sense when he can be the second scoring option whenever Dame or C.J. take a breather.
Due to those breathers coming in the last 5 minutes of the 1st/3rd Q for C.J. and first 5 minutes of the 2nd/4th Q for Dame, starting Norm means that the Blazers can’t have 2 of Dame/C.J./Norm on the floor at all times, since Powell can’t play the first 7 minutes of a half AND the 5 when CJ rests AND then the 5 when Dame rests. That’s 17 straight minutes, once in each half. Because of this, The Blazers have to play Anfernee Simons, who should not be getting rotational minutes at this point of his career, and Nassir Little at shooting guard instead of small forward.
Not having CJ or Powell next to Dame at all times puts way more pressure on Lillard than needed. Starting DJJ would mean that Powell can get all the guard minutes when Dame/CJ sit, which means no Simons, who has been a huge net negative. It would also mean more minutes for Nassir Little at SF, who has shown more of what the Blazers need than Simons. The last thing it does is add more defense with more athletic wings and less undersized lineups.
Finally, Terry Stotts seems hellbent on playing Enes Kanter and Carmelo Anthony together “because they are our backup 5 and 4”. The pairing has been a defensive disaster. Instead of staggering Melo’s and Kanter’s minutes, by playing Melo with Nurkic at all times and Kanter with RoCo, Stotts will continue to play them together.
Rotations far from the only problem
Playing the right players at the right time would certainly help, but it would not solve everything. Terry Stotts’ defensive scheme is an ancient one that doesn’t keep up with the modern era of guard-oriented, pick-and-roll, 3-point heavy offense.
Stotts plays drop coverage. Drop coverage is basically the big dropping down towards the paint on a pick-and-roll instead of playing high and trying to put pressure on the ball handler. It has allowed every star guard, and even the guards on tiers below star-level, to destroy the Blazers defense time and time again. Drop coverage allows them open shots or the opportunity to attack the big downhill.
The Blazers don’t play up on screens. They don’t double team, blitz or trap either. They don’t rotate or close out well. They switch unnecessarily. All around, the defense lacks aggression. It lacks energy. It lacks heart. Yet Jusuf Nurkic, who is openly trying to change that and doing it at a good level while just returning from injury, is the only player who ever gets yelled at by Stotts. Against the Jazz, Stotts had no problem giving Nurkic an earful. That same energy is never there for anyone else, not even for the ones who are defending at a lackluster level.
For years, the Blazers asked for athletic defensive wings, and now with 3 of them (DJJ, Little, RoCo) the Blazers defense is still terrible. Stotts hasn’t taken accountability once for his schemes. He never admits they don’t work. All too often Stotts uttered the words “They just made shots” or “We have to play harder and communicate better”, making it seem like he can’t do anything about it.
That blame he passes on to his players post-game, along with him singling out Nurkic and discrediting DJJ’s efforts are pointing towards Terry Stotts losing control of the locker room. The man who was always labeled a “players’ coach” is now turning on his own players, as he starts feeling the pressure from owner Jody Allen and GM Neil Olshey to improve defensively.
“We’re not worried about our offense”
We have arrived at the part about offense, which the Blazers should pass with flying colors since they have a lot of firepower and because Stotts is a supposed “offensive genius”. Wrong. Like mentioned before, the Blazers only average 107 points against the teams better than them in the West. Somehow, Terry Stotts says that they’re not worried about the offensive side.
They should be: The Blazers rank dead last in assists. They take the highest share of tightly guarded 3’s in the league while taking the lowest share of wide-open ones, both by a large margin. Those are just the numbers.
The real in-game picture is that the Blazers don’t have any answer when Lillard gets trapped or double-teamed, and that happens at a historic rate. They don’t move around off the ball, ever. Stotts’ playbook is limited to P&R/P&P, iso’s and Melo post-ups. He doesn’t run plays to get shooters open or to get DJJ/Little backdoor cuts or alley-oops and barely uses effective off-ball screens. Simple fundamentals like ‘drive and kick’ are a rare sighting.
Stotts knows this is his last chance. It’s a deep playoff run, or he’s fired. He better hope they can find a rhythm quickly because with an already bad defense and a sputtering offense he won’t get far. Definitely not if he keeps calling out his players for no apparent reason and being wrong in it too.
Courtside 
Very good insight. I loved that you presented data to back up everything.
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