Awesome to see JR shoot 50% from the field and 3/7 from 3 in his second game back after 3 months on the sideline. The more he hits shots, the more he will play, the better his conditioning will get, in turn increasing his D and shotmaking ability.
Can't wait until he is starting and Love is back and finally the band is back together. We basically haven't had our championship starting 5 for a majority of that year and that has played into inconsistency big-time. Obv LeBron is the best, but many people on the team, Lue and Bron included, called JR our BEST perimeter defender last year. (His numbers were very good on that end too.... not just normal BS you say about your teammate).
So yeah, when you're missing your BEST perimeter defender, your D is going to take a big hit. (And obviously losing Delly was big in that regard too,even tho he's getting torched a lot more this year, lol. Throw that in with no Moz(even tho he didn't play a lot/didn't play great, he still made the D better throughout the year), LeBron going into EXTRA defensive chill-mode.. I'm not surprised our tanking has dropped so much. I don't think our defensive rating is even close to indicative of how good/bad our D really is, and I think we will be good enough to get stops when it matters.
But I def. appreciate JR. Great to see him hit them