Philly 'D' falls, Portland's up with Miller switching coasts

The Numbers Game is a weekly notebook of the most compelling numbers that can be found in and beyond the boxscore.

Last week, we listed the Portland Trail Blazers as the second most-improved defensive team in the league. Since then, they've fallen down the chart a bit, now ranking as the ninth most-improved defensive team, allowing four points less per 100 possessions than they did last season. Still, it's a strong turnaround.

The Philadelphia 76ers are at the other end of the list, allowing 3.9 more points per 100 possessions . Only the Toronto Raptors have fallen off more defensively.

Portland up. Philly down. Is Andre Miller the difference? Should we consider him to be a good defensive player?

When asked about their team's defensive struggles this season, two Sixers, coach Eddie Jordan and Andre Iguodala, brought up the departures of veterans like Miller, Reggie Evans, Theo Ratliff and Donyell Marshall.

It's true that Evans, Ratliff and Marshall were all savvy , but combined, they played just 1,909 minutes last season. Miller played 2,976. Further, the Sixers allowed 103.9 points per 100 possessions with Miller on the floor last season and 107.1 with him on the bench. Miller's -3.2 differential was aided by the amount of time he spent on the floor next to Iguodala and Thaddeus Young, but Lou Williams' +5.9 differential last season makes it pretty clear that he's not the defender that Miller is.

The addition of Miller hasn't exactly made the Blazers a title contender. They're 12-8 but have lost three straight games. They're searching for answers.

Miller came off the bench for the first five games of the season, started the next nine, and has come off the bench again for the last six. While Brandon Roy may not have been comfortable in that middle stretch of games, the Blazers were a much better defensive team when Miller started.

Now, the Blazers' opponents in those games were weaker than their opponents have been when Miller has come off the bench, but six of those nine games were also on the road.

The defensive differential isn't as strong when you look at Miller's minutes on and off the court across all 20 games.

Interestingly, if you look deeper at Millers on-off court numbers both with the Sixers last season and with the Blazers this season, you see that his team forces fewer turnovers with him on the floor, but holds its opponents to a lower shooting percentage and rebounds the ball better.

The Atlanta Hawks' improvement this season has come completely on the offensive end of the floor. Scoring 3.8 points per 100 possessions more than they did last season, they're the third most improved offense in the league. Defensively, they're not as good as they were last year.

The offensive improvement can be credited to the addition of Jamal Crawford and the more efficient play of Josh Smith, who famously went 12 games before attempting a 3-pointer. He's shooting 54 percent from the field, a big jump from his career high of 49 percent last season.

Smith's commitment to shoot less from the perimeter, as well as the increased production from center Al Horford, can be seen in the Hawks' points in the paint numbers.

Last season, the Hawks ranked 11th in the league by scoring 43.2 points in the paint per 100 possessions. This season, they're No. 1, scoring 52.5. They went from scoring 40.5 percent of their total points in the paint to 47.6 percent.

The Nets made history Wednesday night, losing their 18th straight game to start the season. They trailed the Mavs by as many as 31 points and lost by 16, but it was actually their second-best offensive game of the season. The problem, of course, was the defense.

The Mavs scored 49 points on an incredible 17-for-19 from the field in the second quarter. They scored on 22 of their 24 possessions that period. If weren't for those darn 12 minutes, the Nets would have won the game by 11.

Ray Allen is just 53 points shy of 20,000 for his career. Only four active players have scored 20,000 points: Shaquille O'Neal (27,753), Kobe Bryant (24,310), Allen Iverson (24,020) and Kevin Garnett (21,553). A few other players can join the group this season.

If they stay healthy, Dirk Nowitzki (19,597), Tim Duncan (19,487) and Paul Pierce (18,946) will most certainly reach the 20,000-point milestone in 2009-10. Vince Carter (18,542) has an outside shot, but would need to average 23.1 points in Orlando's final 63 games to do it. He's averaging just 19.9 thus far this season.

• Bryant finally broke through against the Nets. After 11 straight games in which he shot less than 40 percent against New Jersey, he made 11 of his 17 shots on Sunday as the Lakers handed the Nets loss No. 17. The last time Bryant shot better than 40 percent against the Nets was Game 4 of the 2002 Finals.

• The Nets are now 0-29 without Carter since he first suited up for them on Dec. 27, 2004.

• It's time to revisit Gilbert Arenas' media-day declaration that he's "trying to take less than a hundred" 3-pointers this season. Through 17 games, Arenas has attempted 82 threes, a pace which would give him 396 for the season. Of course, that's far from a career high. He attempted 584 in 74 games in 2006-07, his last almost-full season.

• Speaking of launching threes ... Danny Granger is on pace to crush the record for most 3-point attempts in a season, set by George McLoud in 1995-96. That was the second of three seasons in which the arc was moved in to a uniform 22 feet from the basket, and McLoud made it know how much he loved the shorter distance by launching 678 threes. Granger has attempted 134 threes in 15 games so far this season. If he keeps up that pace of 8.9 threes per game over the Pacers' last 66 games, he'll finish with 724 attempts for the season.

All numbers are through Wednesday, Dec. 2.

If you have a question for StatsCube, send it via email. For more on what StatsCube can do, Read this.

John Schuhmann is a staff writer for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here or follow him on Twitter.