After the first month of the season countless members of the mainstream media and fickle fans made it trendy to rip on Toronto’s defense.

Sure, the team was on pace to finish the season as the worst defense in the history of the NBA, but what those people failed to acknowledge was the fact Jay Triano and his coaching staff were trying to get a roster of 15 players on the same page when eight of those faces were new. Not an easy task by any stretch of the imagination, especially when key components like Chris Bosh and Hedo Turkoglu missed the majority of the preseason.

It may have taken 30 games but the team is starting to gel on the defensive end.

“We showed the players tape of the last time we played these guys,” Jay Triano informed the media following the win last night against Charlotte. “We were five feet off these guys and let them do whatever they wanted to do. Even though we knew we were going to get blown by tonight – and a couple of times we did – I just felt more pressure on the ball would create more turnovers or deflections and that’s how we’ve been playing for the past 13 games.  We just decided to not be positional players and that if we’re going to get beat lets get beat while being aggressive.”

Coming out of training camp it seemed the players were too comfortable protecting the paint and it resulted in players sagging off opponents too much when they were playing defense. The perfect example of this was a game against Orlando where Toronto allowed the Magic to shoot a scorching 17-32 from beyond the arc.

Now Toronto has found a way to guard the paint while getting out to jam opponents at the perimeter.

“It’s harder to pass with pressure on you,” Chris Bosh told Hoops Addict. “When you don’t put pressure on guys they can just pick you apart because they can see the whole court. But when you take half of their vision away it’s easier to help and it makes it tougher for them to make the moves they want to make.”

Not only does it take away on opponents vision, but it also takes away from their options.

“I know it probably sounds funny, but the closer you guard someone the easier it is for you to guard them,” Jarrett Jack explained to Hoops Addict. “If you give someone room you allow them to go two directions but if you get up on him you limit them to going one way so you kind of control, or limit, the amount of directions they have.”

Another added perk to this new defensive mindset is that by jamming guys on the perimeter it’s resulting in the team getting more defensive rebounds. With Toronto ranking near the bottom of the NBA in rebounds the past few seasons it’s a big advantage if guards can start crashing the glass.

“Chris (Bosh) has obviously been huge all year but now you’ve got guys like Sonny (Weems) coming up with three or four rebounds,” Antoine Wright told Hoops Addict. “You’ve got guys like Marco Belinelli coming up with three or four rebounds, too. We don’t just have one guy that is getting a double-double but everybody is contributing a couple of rebounds and helping us get the ball out.”

Against Charlotte their defensive pressure led to Toronto forcing 22 turnovers. Sure, Charlotte went into the game averaging an atrocious 16.6 turnovers per game, but by applying a little extra pressure those 22 turnovers led to 30 points.

“I think we’re doing a good job of shrinking out paint and making teams beat us from the outside,” a grinning Jack boasted to Hoops Addict after getting the revenge he’s been talking about all week. “We aren’t allowing teams to get easy baskets. In their offense we try to make them to to their third and fourth option and that plays to our strength.”

A nice byproduct of shrinking the paint is it forces teams like Charlotte to throw away the ball 22 times.

“It’s recognizing what we can do against a team like that,” Bosh added. “We know they struggle shooting from the outside – even though they shot really well tonight – but we wanted to play a lot of the passing lanes and stay between them and the basket. We got our hands on a lot of passes and we got some loose balls while forcing a lot of turnovers and I think that’s why we won the game.”

While pessimists will look at the fact Toronto allowed Charlotte to shoot 54.2 per cent from the field and say there is still plenty of room for growth, it should also be pointed out that their field goal percentage was inflated after Charlotte shot a sizzling 73.3% (11-15) in the first quarter. For the final three quarters Toronto held Charlotte to a respectable 49.1% (28-57) from the field.

The point is the defense is improving on a daily basis. Last night it was forcing turnovers and chipping away at Charlotte’s field goal percentage as the game progressed while against Detroit it marked the fourth consecutive game where the team held an opponent to less than 100 points.

For Toronto it’s all about baby steps and its great to see the teams defense moving in the right direction.