He wasn’t even officially introduced as New Orleans associate head coach until June 22, but Darren Erman has already become a familiar face this month around the Pelicans’ practice facility in Metairie. Although the 2015-16 season is months away and head coach Alvin Gentry was busy in California and Ohio coaching in the NBA Finals, Erman has gotten right to work. He’s a daily fixture in his office and a regular at the Saints/Pelicans on-campus cafeteria, stopping by briefly to grab lunch, before heading back to break down more game tape.
“If you want to find him, all you have to do is come and look in this building right here,” Gentry said of Erman during his introductory press conference, at the practice facility. “He’ll be here 23 out of 24 hours. Tremendous guy, great worker. He’s going to be great for our defense.”
Erman has been examining video from the 2014-15 season of a New Orleans defense that ranked 22nd in the NBA in efficiency (107.3 points allowed per 100 possessions), which was actually an improvement from 27th the previous season and 28th in 2012-13. One perplexing aspect of NOLA’s inability to move out of the bottom 10 of the league is that those three years coincide with Anthony Davis’ arrival. Davis has won the NBA’s blocked shots title each of the past two seasons and finished 11th as a rookie in relatively modest minutes (28.8 mpg).
As he’s watched film of a Pelicans defense that gave up 100-plus points 37 times during the regular season (going 14-23), Erman has seen the ability to be effective at that end of the floor, but one that needs to be evident more frequently. New Orleans’ roster features several players who’ve earned a reputation for intensity and aggressiveness, as well as a few who possess the physical tools to become better defensive players.
“I think this team has a lot of potential to do good things,” Erman said. “You have guys who are versatile and play pretty hard. Watching them on film, Dante (Cunningham) brings it, Quincy (Pondexter) brings it, Anthony (Davis), Omer (Asik). Jrue (Holiday is) really good, Tyreke (Evans), Eric (Gordon). All of these guys have shown ability.”
The Pelicans’ inconsistency as a team – particularly early in 2014-15 when they never won more than two consecutive games prior to Jan. 25 – was partly due to ups and downs on the defensive end. In four separate early-season instances after New Orleans had won two games in a row, its attempt for a third straight victory was foiled by defensive letdowns of allowing 118, 102, 112 and 114 points, respectively.
“If you show flashes of being good, you show an ability that you can do it,” Erman said of his view of New Orleans’ potential to be better defensively. “You just (demonstrated) that you can do it, (but) you’ve just got to do it more consistently. So we’ve got to get them to do it on a more consistent level.”
Gentry noted that while Erman was an assistant in Golden State, the Warriors drastically improved their defensive effectiveness. That progression culminated this season with Golden State winning its first NBA championship in 40 years, after it had long previously been known as an offensive juggernaut, but also a very porous defensive club.
Gentry: “When he was at Golden State, they went from 23rd to 15th to third in the two years he was there. He has a way of making guys understand the importance of it. I think he has a way of communicating with guys.”
Erman, who was also head coach in leading the Warriors to the inaugural NBA Summer League championship in 2013 – a squad that featured recent NBA Finals hero Draymond Green – spent last season as a Boston Celtics assistant under Brad Stevens. Like Gentry, Stevens describes Erman as a grinder with a knack for focusing on the finer points of defensive play.
“He is detail-oriented as detail-oriented gets,” Stevens told MassLive.com during the 2014-15 preseason. “If your hands aren’t in the right place as you’re guarding in a pick-and-roll, or if your body positioning’s not at the right angle, or you don’t guard the post in the exact right way, he’ll stop it and he’ll correct it… He’s really studied the game.”