At this point I see it coming down to chemistry. We want to over examine what's going wrong out there on the court and from a lot of what I see its failing to communicate on defense and then running a stubborn offense.
A lot of these guys haven't played together, so there may be a chemistry issue brewing. There's a lot of new guys in the mix. Rose hasn't really played together with any of these players outside of Noah and Gibson. Gasol is new to everyone obviously. Butler, Gibson, and Noah have played together the past few years, as has Hinrich. But overall there's a lot of pieces to fit together here. And yes, I'm aware the 2010-11 team had a lot of new faces as well that hadn't played together. The core of that team had though.
As far as the worse defense, I refuse to believe a one trick pony with a fade away jumper, who turned over the ball all the time, who always let his guy go by on defense and always yelled at the starting center to "grab dat" referring to the rebound who was replaced by a post up offensive player who can also do the fade away jumper, rebound better, and block shots is our reason for no longer being a top defense. But, I don't really know what the problem is overall.
