Guys...
Please let's stop the narrative, right here, that Irving had a bad defensive series. I don't think there's much analytical evidence to suggest he did, at least compared to his peers.
Defensively, here's how our 4 guards faired against Detroit over the series:
Code:
Rank / Player Opp FG% DFGM/A Diff%
1. Matthew Dellevadova 47.8% 2.8/5.8 +4.3
2. Kyrie Irving 51.6% 4.0/7.8 +8.2
3. JR Smith 52.9% 4.5/8.5 +9.4
4. Iman Shumpert 62.5% 3.8/6.0 +18.1
So.. none of our guards were particularly effective at stopping Detroit; and we can only criticize Irving if we're just as ready to criticize the rest of them, particularly JR Smith and Iman Shumpert; also note that the Pistons took more shots against Smith, and Shumpert on a per game or per minute basis.
So from opponent efficiency stats, it's simply a false narrative.
And this is why using raw +/- is such a misleading statistic for individual comparison.
And with respect to overall opponent shooting efficiency, you can see above that Irving wasn't the primary cause of the problem; but, it would be fair to say that when he was on the floor teams shot better against us.
Irving ON, Opponent TS% = 58.9% (+6.3% from James)
Irving OFF, Opponent TS% = 44.7%
But I think the more important observable here is the effect LeBron James had on the entire team defense:
James ON, Opponent TS% = 53.6% (-6.3% from Irving)
James OFF, Opponent TS% = 68.8% !!
So what's going on here?
The top 5 players correlated with LeBron James being OFF the floor are:
1) Richard Jefferson ~ 25 mins / 47 P
2) Kyrie Irving ~ 24 mins / 45 P
3) Matthew Dellevadova ~ 18 mins / 36 P
4) Kevin Love ~ 18 mins / 33 P
5) J.R. Smith ~ 15 mins / 27 P
The top 3 5-man units correlated with LeBron James being OFF the floor are:
1) Irving-Delly-Smith-Jefferson-Love 5.6M/12P
2) Delly-Irving-Shumpert-Jefferson-Mozgov 4.0M/8P
3) Irving-Smith-Jefferson-Love-Thompson 4.6M/7P
All three of these lineups are quite poor defensively, and not simply because of Irving; but because Mozgov and Love aren't protecting the rim, and Jefferson is being run over.
In my view, it's just not accurate to conclude that Irving was the primary weakness on defense.
p.s.
Wrong thread... fucking trade threads.