Supernatural Luck Was Needed, but Linas Kleiza and the Nuggets Defeat the Kings 106-105

SF Carmelo Anthony and C Marcus Camby played well enough to just about offset the best Kings, SF Ron Artest and C Brad Miller, and Nuggets F-G Linas Kleiza came up huge in the game as a whole, and in making the buzzer beater shot, as the Nuggets were behind all game long, but defeated the Sacramento Kings 106-105. Kleiza is one of three Nuggets playing better this year than he did last year, the other two being Allen Iverson and Yakhouba Diawara. Kleiza’s big improvement has more than made up for the small drop in the performance of J.R. Smith.

The Nuggets played poor defense in the 1st half, but stepped it up somewhat in the second half. On offense, Iverson played very poorly in the 1st half but much better in the second half, whereas both Carmelo Anthony and Marcus Camby, the other two Nuggets who played most of the game, were consistent on offense throughout the game.

Although the Nuggets, led by Melo, Camby, and Kleiza, took the 3rd quarter 26-21, the Kings still led 87-77 going into the last quarter. Chucky Atkins made his only shot of the night, a three, to start off the 4th quarter, but Francisco Garcia answered that shot with a three of his own. A Kleiza three and an Iverson drive for a layup reduced the Kings lead to 6 with about 9 minutes to play. The two teams then traded a few baskets, and the Kings still had a fairly good lead, 101-94, with 3:38 left. But then Allen Iverson made a critical three for 101-97 Kings.

After Anthony blocked a little Garcia jumper, he missed a three. Ron Artest took the rebound and made a layup to give the Kings a 103-97 lead with 2:29 left. PG Beno Udrih, who played poorly in the game as a whole, then fouled Allen Iverson on a good layup, and A.I. almost never misses clutch free throws, so it was 103-100 Kings. Then Udrih turned it over via an offensive foul, and Kleiza made a short jumper to make it 103-102 Kings with 1:53 left. The Kings lead was gone and the Nuggets finally were in position to win it.

After Brad Miller missed a jumper and Iverson got a piece of a John Salmons jump shot, Camby traveled and then Udrih pumped in a long two to make it 105-102 Kings with 53 seconds left. After a Denver timeout, Kleiza missed a long range shot, but Beno Udrih bricked two free throws when he was fouled by Anthony Carter. It was still 105-102 Kings with 34 seconds to go. After the Denver 20 second timeout, Melo drove it in for 105-104 Kings with 17 seconds left.

For the second straight game, the Nuggets passed up a three attempt while down by three with fewer than 24 seconds left. But this time, the gamble paid off, as Brad Miller clunked two free throws off the intentional foul. With 3 seconds left, Iverson missed a short jumper, but Camby deflected the ball and it fortunately went out to Kleiza near the top of the key, and he cleanly drained a buzzer beater shot to give the banged up and mismanaged Nuggets the unlikely win over the couldn’t make a free throw Kings.

For the third straight game, Carmelo Anthony was in double digits for rebounding, with 12, and Eduardo Najera had a rare 11 rebounds, as these two made up for the absences of Kenyon Martin and Nene. I have been complaining about the lack of assistance for Camby on the boards during the power forward injuries, and my wish that Camby get badly needed help in scrambling for rebounds finally was fulfilled. Overall, the Nuggets pulled down a big 53 rebounds in this game, versus 46 for the Kings.

But Nuggets won this on the cheap offensively, having made only 39/91 shots, or 42.9%. But the Kings were in just about the same dismal boat, as they made 39/90 shots or 43.3%. The Nuggets made 9/28 threes, as J.R. Smith came out of his shooting slump to make 4 of 8 of them. The Kings made 8/23 threes; SF Francisco Garcia led with 3/6. Another cheap aspect of the win was that the Nuggets actually had more turnovers, 19, than they had assists, 18. The Kings beat the Nuggets on assists, with 23-19, and also on turnovers, 15-19, although they committed several turnovers in the 4th quarter at the worst possible time, which helped them to lose the game.

Both teams are banged up. Denver's starting PF Kenyon Martin missed his second straight game with a strained right hamstring, which he injured Thursday in Denver against Houston. The second PF, Nene, remained out, as did back up center Steven Hunter. For the Kings, PG Mike Bibby has been out all year after suffering a preseason torn ligament in his right thumb. He is expected to return in January. PF Shareef Abdur-Rahim has been plagued by knee trouble. And leading scorer SG Kevin Martin is out until sometime in January with a groin injury.

One thing I like about sports is that he who is top of the heap today is not necessarily top of the heap tomorrow. If somebody plays well enough, they take over as top dog. With this game, Carmelo Anthony completed a huge recovery from his early December slump and, for now at least, reclaimed his position at the heart of the Nuggets’ offense, joining Allen Iverson, Anthony Carter, and Linas Kleiza there. Melo’s recovery has been spectacular and very quickly accomplished. As recently as December 16 versus the Trailblazers in Denver, Melo was out of the main flow of the Iverson-Carter centered Nuggets offense, and played at a mediocre level, which is not good enough to win many games in the NBA, and is completely out of whack for an all-star caliber player.

In the first half of the ensuing game on December 20 against the Rockets, Melo was still missing every shot, but he got a huge number of rebounds and you could tell from his smile while missing a large number of 1st half shots that he knew he was about to come out of his shooting slump. Sure enough, he then hit 7 straight shots in the second half, and finished the double overtime game having put in a star performance, and having finally drawn even with Iverson for the first time in over two weeks.

Following this pulling even with Iverson, Melo had his first game in too long that was clearly better than Iverson’s game the next night, December 21, at Portland against the Trailblazers. This was a superstar performance. Melo’s December 23 game at Sacramento was merely a star performance instead of a superstar one, while Iverson was just good, which is bad for Iverson, well below his normal. But Nuggets fans don’t have to worry, like they did and may in the future have to worry with respect to Anthony, that Iverson will to any degree become marginalized or kept out of the main flow of the offense. Iverson will always be in the main flow of the offense, no matter exactly how well he plays, because of the position he plays, because of how aggressively he plays, and because the Coach is comfortable with him running things on offense.

Now Nuggets fans merely have to hope that Carmelo Anthony does not repeat any time soon the same mistakes he made when he fell out of the flow and into a major slump. He needs to keep hustling, to keep going for more rebounds than in the past, to keep defending better as possible and, most importantly, to keep shaking off defenders more often, so his pass and turnover challenged teammates are not afraid to pass to him. If Melo does most of these things most of the time, as in the past 3 games, he will get the ball much more often than he got it during his slump, even if the opposing teams religiously double team him.

In a word, Iverson is automatically at the center of the Denver offense, whereas Carmelo Anthony has to hustle and scrap a little more than he may want to in order to stay in the center of the Denver offense. It is almost obvious that the only way the Nuggets can win in the playoffs is if both Melo and A.I. are equally at the center of the offense, so what we are discussing is very important to say the least.

I am scratching my head trying to figure out why Yakhouba Diawara was brought out of mothballs to start at small forward, with PF Kenyon Martin and PF Nene both still out with injuries, while Carmelo Anthony was slid over to the power forward position. First, why would you want to move your star forward to another position for a road game unless you are forced to? Second, why would you think you would be successful taking a player who hasn’t played much since late November and inserting him as a starter? Which is it, is Diawara really bad and someone who should be mostly benched, or is he really good and worthy of starting in place of Melo small forward?

Is Karl using his moods instead of his brain to make decisions like this? Why is it so often one extreme or another with Karl and the reserves? Why can’t Diawara play 10-12 minutes or so most games, instead of just garbage time at one extreme, or starting and playing 15-25 minutes at the other extreme?

In this game, Karl was apparently fighting a war with himself regarding whether and to what extent Diawara should play. First he went to the extreme of starting him. Then, when Diawara did almost nothing in the first 6 minutes of the game and had his head handed to him by Ron Artest, Karl predictably panicked and took out Diawara and didn’t dare reinsert him for the entire rest of the game. So much for trying to restore Diawara’s confidence and his sharpness for dealing with real games instead of just practices. The Kings blitzed to a 20-10 lead during the 6 minutes. The Diawara-Ron Artest 3-spot match up with which the Nuggets started this game will be one of the most lopsided starting lineup matchups in the NBA this year. It’s kind of embarrassing even to be just a fan of a team that sometimes does stuff this stupid.

For the record, obviously, Melo should have started at small forward, with either Eduardo Najera or Linas Kleiza starting at power forward. My preference would be Najera, but Karl almost never does what I want him to do, so it would have been Kleiza starting if Diawara had not started. But if Najera is not good enough to start at power forward in an emergency, then why does he get all the playing time he enjoys?

Both Beno Udrih and Brad Miller are 80% free throw shooters, so how they missed 4 straight crucial free throws is beyond me and anyone else. The Nuggets were just plain beyond lucky to win this game. They now have a lucky win in the bank that they can use to offset an unlucky loss down the road, when it happens. Don’t worry, it will happen.

Winning this game was an unexpected holiday gift for Nuggets fans. I think they earned it, given all the injuries and Karl mistakes they have had to endure already, with the season not even half over yet. Being a Nuggets fan is truly miserable sometimes, and we deserved the extra gift that was put under the tree when those 4 free throws were missed and when Kleiza swished the buzzer beater. Something or somebody was watching over us.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of December 24, 2007

The Nuggets are under an unusually dangerous and damaging alert status, so the following update is provided.

INJURIES & SUSPENSIONS
1. Kenyon Martin injury 13 Points
2. Nene injury 9 Points
3. Steven Hunter injury 2 Points

UNEXPECTED STAR PLAYER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
None

BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 5-20 Points. The severity varies depending on the circumstances, mainly Karl’s beliefs and moods, and whether the other team is playing well enough to take advantage of the Nuggets playing with not enough breathers, with too many fouls, and so forth. Karl will normally be in the 5-15 range, but it could spike to as much as 20 in the event of the benching of a major player such as Kenyon Martin. The current points reported are for the use, or should I say the misuse, of the reserves for the most recent games, with the most weight being given to the game being reported on here. The bad use of reserves score for this game is 11 points.

2. Lack of adequate offensive schemes: 9 Points. This would be up to 18 points, except that Iverson reduces the damage. Another way of describing this is that the team has failed to decide whether it wants Melo alone, Iverson alone, Melo and Iverson together, or neither of them to be firstly responsible for scoring enough points to keep the Nuggets in the game. If it were neither, I call the name of that strategy the "share the wealth" strategy.

INTENSITY, HUSTLE, AND HEART
1. The Nugget’s intensity, hustle and heart is lacking: 0 Points. It’s not anywhere near bad as some fans think it is.

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 44, which constitutes YELLOW ALERT.

YELLOW ALERT (40-54): Minor damage is occurring to the season. The entire season is under medium threat. Beating quality teams is much more difficult and will be pretty rare. About 1/2 of all wins against good teams will now be losses. Beating mid-level teams is a little more difficult. About 1/4 of games that would be wins agsinst mid-level teams will now be losses. Beating low level teams is still relatively easy, but no longer almost a sure bet. A good team has become in between a good team and a mid-level team when it is under this alert

RESERVE WATCH

Number of Players Who Played at Least 6 Minutes: Nuggets 9 Kings 8
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 9 Kings 8

This feature is under development, and it will be expanded. The complications involved explain why (a) there are no formal statistics anywhere on the internet on the subject of how much non-starters contribute to different teams and (b) why coaches are not compared statistically the way players are. There are a lot of variables that come into the use of reserves that interfere with the objective of judging their use. Statisticians call this “statistical noise,” and if you have a substantial amount of it, then what you are trying to do with your statistics becomes very difficult or next to impossible.

GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
2.0-He's making a run for the exits

ESPN PLAYER RATINGS FOR THIS GAME:
You can tell how well they played at a glance. Of the advanced statistics I have seen on the internet, this one seems to have the best balance between offense and defense. Many other advanced statistics are biased in favor of good defenders, and do not reflect the heavy importance of offense in basketball. Here is the formula for the ESPN rating of a player:

Points + Rebounds + 1.4*Assists + Steals + 1.4*Blocks - .7*Turnovers + # of Field Goals Made +1/2*# of 3-pointers Made - .8*# of Missed Field Goals - .8*# of Missed Free Throws + .25 *# of Free Throws Made

All players on each team who played at least 5 minutes are shown. The number after “game,” is how well the player did in this game, whereas the number after “season” is that player’s overall average for the entire season.

NUGGETS
Carmelo Anthony: Game 48.4 Season 37.5
Marcus Camby: Game 40.4 Season 32.2
Allen Iverson: Game 31.2 Season 41.3
Linas Kleiza: Game 28.4 Season 17.0
Eduardo Najera: Game 19.7 Season 14.3
J.R. Smith: Game 17.7 Season 15.1
Anthony Carter: Game 6.3 Season 19.4
Chucky Atkins: Game 5.8 Season 8.7
Yakhouba Diawara: Game -1.6 Season 6.3

Bobby Jones: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Jelani McCoy: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Von Wafer: Did Not Play-Coach's Decision

Kenyon Martin: Did Not Play-Injury
Nene: Did Not Play-Injury
Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Injury

KINGS
Ron Artest: Game 51.1 Season 33.5
Brad Miller: Game 39.0 Season 27.7
John Salmons: Game 23.3 Season 26.9
Mikki Moore: Game 22.8 Season 16.0
Francisco Garcia: Game 19.4 Season 19.8
Beno Udrih: Game 17.3 Season 24.4
Quincy Douby: Game 11.5 Season 5.6
Spencer Hawes: Game 5.2 Season 5.6

NOTE: these stats do not correct for the big differences in playing times. Players with small minutes would get a higher rating if they had more minutes.

OBSERVATIONS ON RATINGS:
After about half a dozen games with Iverson doing more than Anthony, and two games where they were even, this game featured Anthony doing substantially more than Iverson for a change. Camby, back from missing the Trailblazers loss with a relatively minor back contusion problem, was huge in this game, with 19 points on 8/13 shooting to go along with 14 rebounds and 3 blocks. I guess Camby did not want to be the only Nugget still in a scoring slump over the Christmas holiday. Iverson missed 14 of 18 jump shots, though he made 6 assists and 3 steals. Linas Kleiza did a lot more than make the game winning shot at the final buzzer. He was as much above his average as Melo was above his. The Nuggets were kept in this game mainly by the tenacity and confidence of Camby, Anthony, and Kleiza.

For the Kings, Ron Artest was huge, and Brad Miller was big, but the absence of the injured starting SG, Kevin Martin, who is the leading scorer for Sacramento, was very damaging to the Kings in this game. Had Martin played, the Kings would most likely have been able to defeat at home the banged up and mismanaged Nuggets.

NUGGETS REAL PLAYER RATINGS—EXPLANATION
A Great New Feature from Nuggets 1

The straight up player rankings are obviously heavily affected by how many playing minutes the various players get. With many teams, you can rely on the coach to give his various players roughly the playing time that makes the most sense for his team. Unfortunately, you can not rely on George Karl to award playing time in just about the best way possible. He brings other factors besides actual performance into his rotation decisions. Therefore, it makes good sense to introduce a new and very important statistic that Nuggets 1 will call the Real Per Minute Player Rating which, as the name implies, is the gross ESPN player rating divided by the number of minutes. The statistic is called Real Player Rating for short.

This statistic allows everyone to see whether or not players who play only a small number of minutes are doing better than their low gross rating will indicate. At the same time, it will allow everyone to see whether players with a lot of minutes are playing worse than, as well as, or better than their gross rating shows. This is another big improvement in the Nuggets 1 never ending quest to give readers total information about the Nuggets. This statistic allows the reader, at a glance, to see exactly how well each player is doing without regard to playing time. So it gives you pure knowledge not available anywhere else..

SCALE FOR THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
1.60 More Superstar Performance beyond the Michael Jordan Level
1.40 1.60 Superstar Performance-Michael Jordan Level
1.20 1.40 Superstar Performance
1.00 1.20 Star Performance
0.90 1.00 Outstanding Game
0.80 0.90 Very Good Game
0.70 0.80 Good Game
0.60 0.70 Alright Game
0.50 0.60 Mediocre Game
0.40 0.50 Poor Game
0.30 0.40 Very Poor Game
0.20 0.30 Near Disaster
Less 0.20 Total Disaster

NUGGETS-KINGS REAL PLAYER RATINGS
All players who played 5 minutes or more are included. Any player who played only 5-9 minutes is noted

1. Ron Artest, Sac 1.161
2. Carmelo Anthony, Den 1.152
3. Quincy Douby, Sac 1.150
4. Marcus Camby, Den 1.063
5. Linas Kleiza, Den 1.052
6. Brad Miller, Sac 1.026
7. J.R. Smith, Den 0.983
8. Mikki Moore, Sac 0.814
9. Eduardo Najera, Den 0.758
10. Allen Iverson, Den 0.709
11. Francisco Garcia, Sac 0.693
12. John Salmons, Sac 0.597
13. Spencer Hawes, Sac 0.520
14. Beno Udrih, Sac 0.455
15. Anthony Carter, Den 0.332
16. Chucky Atkins, Den 0.290
17. Yakhouba Diawara, Den -0.267

OBSERVATIONS ON THE NUGGETS-TRAILBLAZERS REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Each team had 3 players who played extremely well, though no one had a “Michael Jordan zone” type of game. However, one of the 3 Kings stars, Quincy Douby, played only 10 minutes. Anthony and Camby roughly cancelled out Artest and Miller, so Kleiza was the x-factor that paved the way for the Nuggets to win. Both Anthony Carter and Allen Iverson played much worse than usual.

Also, although for the second straight game the Nuggets had most of the worst players on the court, the Nuggets did better in the middle range of players, as J.R. Smith and Eduardo Najera were a little better than Mikki Moore, Francisco Garcia, and John Salmons.

NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court. All Nuggets who played at least 6 minutes are shown.

Linas Kleiza: +10
J.R. Smith: +8
Eduardo Najera: +7
Marcus Camby: -2
Carmelo Anthony: +0
Chucky Atkins: +0
Allen Iverson: -1
Anthony Carter: -6
Yakhouba Diawara: -11

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
This reading frequently but not always gives you clues about who should be playing more and who should be playing less. Linas Kleiza has been often coming out strong on the plus-minus very often lately, since he is hustling on defense and hitting shots, while usually avoiding a lot of fouls and almost always avoiding a lot of turnovers. The up and down J.R. Smith, who was more down than up in the last month, was up in this game. Anthony Carter was badly off, and Diawara was destroyed by Ron Artest and company in his measly 6 minutes.

NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
All Nuggets who played at least 6 minutes are shown.

Yakhouba Diawara played 6 minutes and was 0/2 and 0/1 on 3’s for 0 points.

Eduardo Najera played 26 minutes and was 2/4 and ½ from the line for 5 points, and he made 11 rebounds, 2 blocks, and 1 steal.

Anthony Carter played 19 minutes and was 1/2 for 2 points, and he made 3 assists, 1 steal, and 1 rebound.

Chucky Atkins played 20 minutes and was 1/7 and 1/5 on 3’s for 3 points, and he made 2 assists, 2 steals, and 2 rebounds.

Linas Kleiza played 27 minutes and was 5/12 and 2/5 on 3’s for 12 points, and he made 9 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 blocks.

J.R. Smith played 18 minutes and was 5/9 and 4/8 on 3’s for 14 points, and he made 2 rebounds.

Marcus Camby played 38 minutes and was 8/13 and 3/5 from the line for 19 points, and he made 14 rebounds, 3 blocks, and 2 assists.

Carmelo Anthony played most of the game, 42 minutes, and was 11/21, 0/2 on 3’s, and 8/8 from the line for 30 points, and he made 12 rebounds, 2 blocks, and 2 assists.

Allen Iverson played virtually the entire game, 44 minutes, and was 6/21, 2/7 on 3’s, and 7/7 from the line for 21 points, and he made 6 assists, 3 steals, 2 rebounds, and 1 block.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Wednesday, December 26 in Denver to play the Bucks at 7 pm mountain time. Neither the Nuggets nor the Bucks will be playing on back to back nights.