The rested Clippers unwisely elected to try to jump shoot their way to a road win over the Nuggets, who were playing on back to back nights. They apparently didn’t get the memo sent out to all the teams in the League that the Nuggets can be beaten if you run your offense into the paint as often as possible. Camby is not able to get enough rebounding help from the combination of Kenyon Martin, Carmelo Anthony, Eduardo Najera, and Linas Kleiza. So the Nuggets are very vulnerable to badly losing the rebounding battle and then losing the game due to too many second chance scores for their opponent and not enough of them for themselves. But the Clippers didn’t game plan correctly, and they settled for jumpers, and made just 6 offensive rebounds, and were taken out the game when the Nuggets made a whole lot of jumpers themselves. Denver made 46/85 of their shots overall, for an excellent percentage of .541. The Clippers were good but not good enough with their shooting, 37/79 or .468. And unlike all other teams who have played the Nuggets recently, the Clippers failed to win the rebounding battle, as the Nuggets took it 39-38. The Clippers lacked the smarts, the plan, or the leadership to fully contest this game.
So the Clippers fell further and further behind from late in the 1st quarter on, after the Nuggets took the lead after yet another dangerously slow Nuggets start. The Nuggets built up to a 21 point lead and then coasted for the easy win against the slumping Clippers, who remain without their player who could have wreaked real havoc in the paint, Elton Brand, who is due back in January.
Anthony Carter and especially J.R. Smith went from very poor games in Los Angeles the night before, where the Nuggets collapsed against the Lakers in the 4th quarter, to very good games in the friendly confines of the Pepsi Center in Denver for this game. Carter made 10 assists and scored 8 points on efficient 4/5 shooting as he put the Nuggets in front in shots attempted for a change by keeping the ball moving quickly.
But Carter was not immune from turning it over alot. The Nuggets made 19 turnovers, which will usually be plenty to get you killed against any of the top teams of the West, but the Clippers were sloppy as well and made 20 turnovers. Corey Maggette, back from a hamstring problem, made 6 turnovers alone and Cuttino Mobley, who missed 7 of 9 jump shots and 2 of 3 layups during his disaster of a game, made 4 turnovers for the struggling Clippers, who have lost 4 straight and 8 of their last 10. For the happy go lucky Nuggets, Melo, Iverson, and Anthony Carter all had 4 turnoers each and Eduardo Najera had 3.
Sorry about the sarcasm, but the Nuggets are even worse this year so far in turnovers than last year. And they are dead last in the NBA in turnovers. That’s right, every single team has made fewer turnovers per game than the Nuggets. There is no way you are going to win a playoff series with that many turnovers. The Nuggets simply have to cut down on the bad passes, travels, and offensive fouls. I’m not being a grinch about the win, I’m just telling you how it is.
J.R. Smith has now officially removed all of the bench rust from his game and is back to being available as the Nugget’s best and apparently only really good 3-point shooter. Since Smith made 3 threes in the first 2 1/2 minutes of the 2nd quarter, it is safe to say that last year’s J.R. Smith has finally returned after being chased away by George Karl, who simply doesn’t like the dude’s personality. Unfortunately, Smith’s bizarre mistakes off the court have enabled Karl to escape scot-free from criticism regarding Smith’s small minutes for someone with such a good shooting touch. Smith made 6 of 9 3-pointers and 2 of 2 layups for 22 points on 8/11 shooting overall. The Nuggets, who have been sinking like a rock in three-point shooting the last 10 days or so, finally beat a team in this all-important skill thanks to J.R. Smith. The Nuggets were 10/20 and the Clippers were 7/14 in 3-point shooting. Denver is now 11th out of 30 teams in made 3-pointers, and 18th in 3-point accuracy. Neither is good enough for the Nuggets to be able to fully compete with the Spurs or the Suns.
The Nuggets are under an unusually dangerous and damaging alert status, so the following update is provided.
ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of December 1, 2007
INJURIES
1. Nene injury 9 Points
2. Chucky Atkins injury 7 Points
4. Steven Hunter injury 3 Points
UNEXPECTED STAR PLAYER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
1. Carmelo Anthony a little off and a little inconsistent 4 Points
2. Inability of Melo, Kleiza, and Najera to give Camby enough rebounding and defending support inside 6 Points
BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the reserves 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. Karl will normally be in the 5-13 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 level of the problem: 8 points.
2. Lack of adequate offensive schemes: 11 Points. This would be up to 17 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: 2 Points. It’s not anywhere near bad as some fans who are panicking think it is. This is a relatively small problem.
TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 50, 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 against 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 like the Nuggets has become in between a good team and a mid-level team when it is under this alert.
RESERVE WATCH
I am changing the reserve watch calculations in order to allow for the calculation to be made even when there is garbage time. Instead of expressing the scale in terms of minutes out of a 48 minute game, I am going to convert to percentages of the minutes, and then not count the garbage time, if there is any, as part of the game. Garbage time, in case somebody reading this doesn’t know, is the playing time after all the key players have been pulled from the game because the outcome of the game is no longer in any doubt. In garbage time, by definition, only reserves are playing who would not be playing if it were not garbage time.
And I am making another change that is even more important. Instead of assuming that the five starters are the most important players in a game, I am now going to assume that the 5 players with the most minutes are the most important players in a game, and all the other players are the “reserves,” whether they started or not. I have been already doing this with J.R. Smith, but now I am going to generalize it. By doing this, I can then make immediate and valid comparisons between the Nuggets and their opponents in games as to the performance obtained by the Coach from players other than the five who played the most. Then you can do a matrix comparison for each game, comparing the performance of the top five and the performance of the other players between the two teams. How much performance a coach gets from his reserves is one of the most important indicators of how well the coaching staff is doing, very possibly the most important.
Trust me, this is going to be really good. You will be able to see, in the case of the Nuggets, whether the top 5 are able to pile up a big enough advantage over the top 5 of the other team to be able to compensate for the very frequent pounding that the Denver reserves will take under George Karl.
Based on extensive analysis of box scores, I am starting with the following, subject to very minor revisions in the future.
SCALE TO EVALUATE WHETHER RESERVES HAVE PLAYED ENOUGH BUT NOT TOO MUCH
The scale is set up by what percentage of the total minutes the reserves have played.
Extreme Overreliance on the Top 5: 0% to 22.9% of the total effective game player minutes
Heavy Overreliance on the Top 5: 22.9% to 25.0% of the total effective game player minutes
Overreliance on the Top 5: 25.0% to 27.1% of the total effective game player minutes
Optimal Mid Range Tilted Toward the Top 5: 27.1% to 29.2% of the total effective game player minutes
Optimal Mid Range Tilted Toward the Reserves: 29.2% t 31.3% of the total effective game player minutes
Moderate Overuse of the Reserves: 31.3% to 33.3% of the total effective game player minutes
Heavy Overuse of the Reserves: 33.3% to 35.4% of the total effective game player minutes
Extreme Overuse of the Reserves: 35.4% or more of the total effective game player minutes.
Now we have to set a scale for points and rebounds of players not in the Top 5. It is much better to use a scale that is flexible from game to game rather than a scale that never changes. Since the objective of this whole mini project is to evaluate whether the lesser players are contributing enough in actual games, why don’t we use the total performance of the opponent as the base and then use a percentage system like we do to with the minutes to evaluate the reserves on points and rebounding. The performance of the opponent base could be the opponent’s total points and rebounds, or it could be just the points and rebounds of the opponent’s lesser players. It’s better to use the totals, because the objective is to beat the other team as a whole, not just the other team’s reserves. Whenever the Nugget’s top 5 are beaten by their opponent’s top 5, the lesser players will have to make up the difference or the game will be lost.
After more extensive analysis of box scores, especially those for good teams such as the Spurs and the Suns, the following scale is going to be used to evaluate the lesser minutes players on points and rebounds. There might be some minor tweaking in the future.
POINTS AND REBOUNDS BY RESERVES PERFORMANCE SCALE
0.0% to 19.5 % of the other team’s amount: Extremely poor performance Grade F to F+
19.5% to 22.0% of the other team’s amount: Very poor performance Grade D- to D
22.0% to 24.5% of the other team’s amount: Poor performance Grade D+ to C-
24.5% to 27.0% of the other team’s amount: Satisfactory or OK performance Grade C to C+
27.0% to 29.5% of the other team’s amount: Good performance Grade B- to B
29.5% to 32.0% of the other team’s amount: Very good performance Grade B+ to A-
32.0% and UP of the other team’s amount: Extremely good performance Grade A
So, to sum up what I will be doing for the improved “Reserve Watch,” there will be straight up comparisons of how the two team’s reserves did, as well as performance evaluations for each squad’s reserves in the three areas: minutes, points, and rebounds. This is going to allow a direct comparison of coaching quality in individual games, because the performance of lesser players is one of the most important and very possibly the most important way to evaluate how well the coaching staff is doing their job.
So, here we go for the Clippers game:
RESERVE WATCH
Nuggets Length of Game: 44 Minutes (4 minutes of garbage time)
Nuggets Player Minutes: 44 x 5 =220
Clippers Length of Game: 47 Minutes (1 minute of garbage time)
Clippers Player Minutes: 47 x 5 =235
RESERVE MINUTES
Reserve Minutes Nuggets: 28.2% = Optimal Tilted Toward the Top 5 Grade C
Reserve Minutes Clippers: 28.5% = Optimal Tilted Toward the Top 5 Grade C
TOP 5 AND RESERVES-POINTS
Reserve Points Nuggets: 45.8% = Extremely Good Grade A
Reserve Points Clippers: 26.0% = Satisfactory or OK Grade C+
Top 5 Score: Clippers 75 Nuggets 74
Reserves Score: Nuggets 49 Clippers 32 = Nuggets A- Clippers F+
Total Score Nuggets 123 Clippers 107
TOP 5 AND RESERVES-REBOUNDS
Reserve Rebounds Nuggets: 28.9% = Good Grade B
Reserve Rebounds Clippers: 35.9% = Extremely good Grade A
Top 5 Rebounding: Nuggets 28 Clippers 24
Reserves Rebounding: Clippers 14 Nuggets 11 = Nuggets D Clippers B
Total Rebounding: Nuggets 39 Clippers 38
Karl’s Grades: C, A, A-, B, D
Clipper’s Coach’s Grades: C, C+, F+, A, B
Karl’s Overall Grade: B-
Clipper’s Coach Overall Grade: C+
CONCLUSION: With respect to the extremely important role that reserves play in balancing out and helping the starters win basketball games, the Nuggets appear to have had the very slightly better coaching for this game.
You will find that whenever Karl’s grade is about B or better in this, the Nuggets will likely have won the game, even if they have played the Spurs!
GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
3.0 He’s getting ready to make a break for the exits.
ESPN PLAYER RATINGS FOR THIS GAME
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 6 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 38.9 Season 37.0
Allen Iverson: Game 34.4 Season 37.3
J.R. Smith: Game 34.0 Season 18.7
Anthony Carter: Game 26.4 Season 18.4
Marcus Camby: Game 23.0 Season 32.6
Linas Kleiza: Game 17.6 Season 17.3
Eduardo Najera: Game 17.4 Season 13.6
Kenyon Martin: Game 15.9 Season 16.3
Bobby Jones: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Yakhouba Diawara: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Jelani McCoy: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Von Wafer: Did Not Play-Coach's Decision
Nene: Did Not Play-Injury
Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Injury
CLIPPERS
Corey Maggette: Game 37.8 Season 32.5
Chris Kaman: Game 32.6 Season 37.5
Brevin Knight: Game 26.9 Season 10.4
Tim Thomas: Game 17.1 Season 23.9
Al Thornton: Game 16.3 Season 9.3
Dan Dickau: Game 16.1 Season 8.7
Ruben Patterson: Game 13.2 Season 10.7
Quinton Ross: Game 12.1 Season 9.0
Aaron Williams: Game 8.9 Season 5.5
Cuttino Mobley: Game 3.6 Season 21.0
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.
COMMENTS ON RATINGS: J.R. Smith kicks it into high gear, while Marcus Camby takes a breather. Cuttino Mobley’s disaster was a big reason why the Clippers could not be in this game late in the 4th.
NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court. Any player who played at least 6 minutes is shown.
Marcus Camby: +18
Allen Iverson: +16
Carmelo Anthony: +14
Kenyon Martin: +14
J.R. Smith: +9
Anthony Carter: +8
Eduardo Najera: +6
Linas Kleiza: +1
Comments: Kleiza had a decent game, but the Nuggets didn’t do so well whenever he was on the court.
NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
Eduardo Najera played 27 minutes and was 3/9, 1/3 on 3’s, and 3/5 from the line for 10 points, and he made 6 rebounds, 3 assists, and 1 block.
Linas Kleiza played 16 minutes and was 4/6 and 1/3 on 3’s for 9 points, and he made 5 rebounds and 1 assist.
Anthony Carter played 36 minutes and was 4/5 for 8 points, and he made 10 assists, 3 rebounds, and a steal.
Kenyon Martin played 25 minutes and was 4/5 and 1/6 from the line for 9 points, and he made 5 rebounds, 1 block, and 1 steal.
J.R. Smith played 21 minutes and was 8/11 and 6/9 on 3’s for 22 points, and he made 1 assist, 1 steal, and 1 rebound.
Marcus Camby played 32 minutes and was 2/5 and 2/2 from the line for 6 points, and he made 12 rebounds, 3 assists, and 1 block.
Allen Iverson played 41 minutes and was 11/26, 0/2 on 3’s, and 4/6 from the line for 26 points, and he made 7 assists and 3 rebounds.
Carmelo Anthony played 32 minutes and was 7/15, 0/1 on 3’s, and 10/11 from the line for 24 points, and he made 6 assists, 4 rebounds, and 3 steals.
NEXT UP
The next game will be Sunday, December 2, in Denver to play the Heat at 6 pm mountain time. Neither the Nuggets nor the Heat will be playing on back to back nights, so the Nuggets will enjoy a standard home court advantage.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Friday, November 30, 2007
Video: Lakers 127 Nuggets 99
More videos can be found below all the posts on this page, and there is a huge selection of videos on the +Nuggets 1 Videos page
MARCUS CAMBY JAMS IT DOWN
MARCUS CAMBY JAMS IT DOWN
The Lakers Pound the LOST Nuggets in the 4th Quarter, Win Going Away 127-99
The Los Angeles Lakers ran away with the game in the 4th quarter, outscoring the Nuggets 46-24 in the period, and defeated the drifting and Lost Nuggets 127-99. The Nuggets are Lost because they are just like the stranded passengers on that strange island on television. They are outwitted by the sometimes strange but ultimately effective strategies of their opponents, "the others," every time. The Nuggets can never become un-lost, if you will, until they can better the strategies of the others who seek to keep them lost forever.
The last 5 minutes of the game was garbage time. The Lakers made a mind-boggling 32 assists as they upstaged the Nuggets. The Lakers had 16 fast break points versus a puny 7 for the Nuggets, who supposedly are a running team which gets a lot of fast breaks. But the fast breaks only seem to be coming against the lower quality teams, so the Nuggets are not really a running and fast breaking team, if the truth were told.
Carmelo Anthony didn’t hang around for garbage time. He did a very poor imitation of a Mardy Collins neck grab on Sasha Vujacic and got thrown out of the game with a flagrant type 2 foul with about 6 minutes left. The game had taken a really nasty turn for the Nuggets in the previous 6 minutes, the first half of the fourth, as the Nuggets were smothered by Vujacic, Farmar, and company 24-12. This pounding did not at all fit with Melo’s mellow attitude toward the season so far, and he lost his composure in the left corner on one of Phil Jackson’s wonders, who the Nuggets had no answer for, of course. Melo was also undoubtedly frustrated by the 30 point swing in favor of the Lakers while he was on the court, one of the worst poundings of his NBA career.
The ejection of Melo was appropriate, but it’s a good thing that the Commissioner did not go off the deep end and order a suspension of a game or two, because the incident, while a stupid unsportsmanlike flagrant, was not even close to being malicious or a real danger to Vujacic.
The Laker's reserves outscored their Denver counterparts 63-29. The Laker’s second unit played so spectacularly in the 4th quarter that the Lakers ran away with the game without needing Kobe Bryant in it, a true dismantling and Phil Jackson gem if there ever was one. A J.R. Smith driving finger roll layup to open the 4th quarter made it merely 81-77 Lakers, but it was all steep downhill from there.
"The young fellas came in and took care of business," Bryant said after the game. "We have young players who have a lot of heart and who care. And when you have that combination, you have a lot of potential. In the past, I've always been the only guy in the gym really working hard. But now I've got guys in there with me pushing themselves every single day, and that makes a big difference." Bryant was also quoted on Vujacic: “The ball started flowing to him, he had some open looks and he was able to knock them down. We really need him out there for defense, more than anything. But when there are shots available to him, it's important that he knocks them down."
The scary thing is, I’m starting to have hunches in advance of games about which obscure 5-10 points a game reserve on the other team is going to paste the Nuggets for more than 20 points by feasting on all the open looks that the often inept Denver defense gives up. In the preview for this game, I specifically mentioned Sasha Vujacic as one of Phil Jackson’s carefully developed “out of nowhere” weapons who might torch the Nuggets. I qualified it by saying that it was more likely that PG Jordan Farmar or PF Ronny Turiaf would be the surprise. Although Vujacic was the big surprise, Farmar was a moderate surprise and it was Luke Walton instead of Turiaf who was the other surprise. Luke Walton added a career-high 14 points in 27 minutes on 6/9 shooting.
It was no surprise that Yakhouba Diawara and Bobby Jones did not appear before garbage time. These two players are now in the Coach’s doghouse, which is one of the largest doghouses the NBA has ever seen. This despite the fact that Jones is needed, at least while Nene is out and Martin is limited.
And this despite the fact that Yak is playing much better offensively this year than last. So if anyone ever wondered whether it’s really true that George Karl benches players even when they are playing well, and playing better than the year before, or better than their career average, if you prefer, the answer is a definite yes. We just caught him red handed at it.
Diawara’s FG% has exploded from .342 to .481. Even more amazing, his 3-pointer accuracy has exploded from .288 to .452. Yak has made 14/31 threes this season. Has any coach in the League made a more stupid benching decision lately than benching one of the current best 3-point shooters in the NBA? Is Greg Popovich going to bench Brent Barry anytime soon? I don’t think so. Diawara has been benched for no good reason, plain and simple. Why does it always have to be extremes with George Karl? He goes from playing Yak 20-25 minutes a game to not playing him at all. How about a happy medium of 10-15 minutes a game?
In total, Karl is back in the 8 player rut after shocking the world during the cream puff home stand with a few 9 player games, all of which were rout wins. Phil Jackson, who earlier in the day got his multi-million dollar contract extension, used 9 players effectively. It’s not just the number of reserves that Jackson deploys, but it’s the rough consistency of their minutes, and the offensive schemes that include reserves to some extent, that make Jackson’s coaching a work of art. Jackson’s reserves badly outscored Karl’s 63-37. Jackson’s reserves out rebounded Karl’s reserves 24-15. And Jackson’s reserves out-assisted Karl’s reserves 14-4.
Assists by reserves are relatively rare by the Nuggets, due to the 1-2 punch of the lack of adequate offensive planning and the lack of any consistency in the playing time of the reserves. The Denver reserves in this game, Kleiza, Najera, and J.R. Smith, were literally unprepared to contribute in a big way to the offensive flow of the game. How can you be prepared well when there are few schemes and you are playing different minutes and with different teammates almost every game?
The Nuggets are under an unusually dangerous and damaging alert status, so the following update is provided.
ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of November 30, 2007
INJURIES
1. Nene injury 9 Points
2. Chucky Atkins injury 7 Points
4. Steven Hunter injury 3 Points
UNEXPECTED STAR PLAYER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
1. Carmelo Anthony a little off and a little inconsistent 5 Points
2. Inability of Melo, Kleiza, and Najera to give Camby enough rebounding and defending support inside 6 Points
BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the reserves enough: 5-15 Points, it varies depending on the circumstances. A conservative value of 8 is used for the alert calculation.
2. Lack of adequate offensive schemes: 11 Points. This would be up to 15 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: 3 Points. It’s not anywhere near bad as some fans who are panicking think it is. This is a relatively small problem.
TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 52, 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 against 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 like the Nuggets has become in between a good team and a mid-level team when it is under this alert.
RESERVE WATCH
There is no Reserve Watch for the Rockets game due to extensive garbage time, where starters were pulled intentionally about half way through the 4th quarter because the game was decided.
GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
2.0 He’s running for the exits.
ESPN PLAYER RATINGS FOR THIS GAME
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 6 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.
Carmelo Anthony: Game 37.1 Season 37.0
Allen Iverson: Game 31.6 Season 37.4
Marcus Camby: Game 26.9 Season 32.7
Linas Kleiza: Game 23.6 Season 17.3
J.R. Smith: Game 12.0 Season 18.7
Anthony Carter: Game 11.5 Season 20.4
Bobby Jones: Game 10.2 Season 13.8
Kenyon Martin: Game 9.6 Season 16.2
Eduardo Najera: Game 6.0 Season 13.6
Yakhouba Diawara: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Jelani McCoy Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Nene: Did Not Play-Injury
Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Injury
LAKERS
Kobe Bryant: Game 43.2 Season 43.5
Sasha Vujacic: Game 31.3 Season 9.2
Luke Walton: Game 29.1 Season 16.1
Andrew Bynum: Game 25.6 Season 26.2
Derek Fisher: Game 25.0 Season 19.5
Jordan Farmar: Game 24.6 Season 18.8
Ronny Turiaf: Game 17.6 Season 15.5
Lamar Odom: Game 14.6 Season 21.8
Vladimir Radmanovic: Game 14.1 Season 14.4
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.
COMMENTS ON RATINGS: Notice how the Nuggets had 4 players come in with poorer performances than the lowest Laker, Radmanovic. J.R. Smith, Anthony Carter, Kenyon Martin, and Eduardo Najera all produced substantially less than the least productive of the 9 Lakers. Now that is dismal fact for you if you are a Nuggets fan.
To have 9 players with ratings of 14.1 and up is heavy duty evidence of the extreme quality of Phil Jackson’s coaching. You have to wonder how many fewer rings Michael Jordan would have won had he not enjoyed Phil Jackson as his coach. It would have been fewer, that’s for sure.
NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court.
Camby: -4
Kleiza: -8
Jones: -9
Najera: -12
Smith: -12
Iverson: -14
Martin: -16
Carter: -25
Anthony: -30
NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
Eduardo Najera played 25 minutes and was 0/4, 0/3 on 3’s, and 1/2 from the line for 1 point, and he made 6 rebounds, 2 steals, and 1 assist.
Linas Kleiza played 20 minutes and was 6/12, 1/3 on 3's, and 2/2 from the line for 15 points, and he made 4 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 steal.
Anthony Carter played 30 minutes and was 2/6 and 1/2 on 3’s for 5 points, and he made 4 assists and 3 rebounds.
Kenyon Martin played 22 minutes and was 1/5 for 2 points, and he made 6 rebounds, 2 blocks, 1 steal, and 1 assist.
J.R. Smith played 24 minutes and was 4/12, 1/2 on 3’s, and 2/4 from the line for 11 points, and he made 3 rebounds, 1 steal, and 1 assist.
Marcus Camby played 31 minutes and was 4/10 and 3/3 from the line for 11 points, and he made 9 rebounds, 3 blocks, 2 steals, and 1 assist.
Allen Iverson played 37 minutes and was 8/18, 0/1 on 3’s, and 5/10 from the line for 21 points, and he made 6 assists, 3 steals, and 4 rebounds.
Carmelo Anthony played 35 minutes and was 11/15, 0/1 on 3’s, and 1/1 from the line for 23 points, and he made 4 rebounds, 2 assists, and 2 steals.
NEXT UP
The next game will be Friday, November 30 in Denver to play the Clippers at 8:30 pm mountain time. The Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights, but the Clippers will not be. But the Nugget's home court advantage should roughly offset the no rest disadvantage.
The last 5 minutes of the game was garbage time. The Lakers made a mind-boggling 32 assists as they upstaged the Nuggets. The Lakers had 16 fast break points versus a puny 7 for the Nuggets, who supposedly are a running team which gets a lot of fast breaks. But the fast breaks only seem to be coming against the lower quality teams, so the Nuggets are not really a running and fast breaking team, if the truth were told.
Carmelo Anthony didn’t hang around for garbage time. He did a very poor imitation of a Mardy Collins neck grab on Sasha Vujacic and got thrown out of the game with a flagrant type 2 foul with about 6 minutes left. The game had taken a really nasty turn for the Nuggets in the previous 6 minutes, the first half of the fourth, as the Nuggets were smothered by Vujacic, Farmar, and company 24-12. This pounding did not at all fit with Melo’s mellow attitude toward the season so far, and he lost his composure in the left corner on one of Phil Jackson’s wonders, who the Nuggets had no answer for, of course. Melo was also undoubtedly frustrated by the 30 point swing in favor of the Lakers while he was on the court, one of the worst poundings of his NBA career.
The ejection of Melo was appropriate, but it’s a good thing that the Commissioner did not go off the deep end and order a suspension of a game or two, because the incident, while a stupid unsportsmanlike flagrant, was not even close to being malicious or a real danger to Vujacic.
The Laker's reserves outscored their Denver counterparts 63-29. The Laker’s second unit played so spectacularly in the 4th quarter that the Lakers ran away with the game without needing Kobe Bryant in it, a true dismantling and Phil Jackson gem if there ever was one. A J.R. Smith driving finger roll layup to open the 4th quarter made it merely 81-77 Lakers, but it was all steep downhill from there.
"The young fellas came in and took care of business," Bryant said after the game. "We have young players who have a lot of heart and who care. And when you have that combination, you have a lot of potential. In the past, I've always been the only guy in the gym really working hard. But now I've got guys in there with me pushing themselves every single day, and that makes a big difference." Bryant was also quoted on Vujacic: “The ball started flowing to him, he had some open looks and he was able to knock them down. We really need him out there for defense, more than anything. But when there are shots available to him, it's important that he knocks them down."
The scary thing is, I’m starting to have hunches in advance of games about which obscure 5-10 points a game reserve on the other team is going to paste the Nuggets for more than 20 points by feasting on all the open looks that the often inept Denver defense gives up. In the preview for this game, I specifically mentioned Sasha Vujacic as one of Phil Jackson’s carefully developed “out of nowhere” weapons who might torch the Nuggets. I qualified it by saying that it was more likely that PG Jordan Farmar or PF Ronny Turiaf would be the surprise. Although Vujacic was the big surprise, Farmar was a moderate surprise and it was Luke Walton instead of Turiaf who was the other surprise. Luke Walton added a career-high 14 points in 27 minutes on 6/9 shooting.
It was no surprise that Yakhouba Diawara and Bobby Jones did not appear before garbage time. These two players are now in the Coach’s doghouse, which is one of the largest doghouses the NBA has ever seen. This despite the fact that Jones is needed, at least while Nene is out and Martin is limited.
And this despite the fact that Yak is playing much better offensively this year than last. So if anyone ever wondered whether it’s really true that George Karl benches players even when they are playing well, and playing better than the year before, or better than their career average, if you prefer, the answer is a definite yes. We just caught him red handed at it.
Diawara’s FG% has exploded from .342 to .481. Even more amazing, his 3-pointer accuracy has exploded from .288 to .452. Yak has made 14/31 threes this season. Has any coach in the League made a more stupid benching decision lately than benching one of the current best 3-point shooters in the NBA? Is Greg Popovich going to bench Brent Barry anytime soon? I don’t think so. Diawara has been benched for no good reason, plain and simple. Why does it always have to be extremes with George Karl? He goes from playing Yak 20-25 minutes a game to not playing him at all. How about a happy medium of 10-15 minutes a game?
In total, Karl is back in the 8 player rut after shocking the world during the cream puff home stand with a few 9 player games, all of which were rout wins. Phil Jackson, who earlier in the day got his multi-million dollar contract extension, used 9 players effectively. It’s not just the number of reserves that Jackson deploys, but it’s the rough consistency of their minutes, and the offensive schemes that include reserves to some extent, that make Jackson’s coaching a work of art. Jackson’s reserves badly outscored Karl’s 63-37. Jackson’s reserves out rebounded Karl’s reserves 24-15. And Jackson’s reserves out-assisted Karl’s reserves 14-4.
Assists by reserves are relatively rare by the Nuggets, due to the 1-2 punch of the lack of adequate offensive planning and the lack of any consistency in the playing time of the reserves. The Denver reserves in this game, Kleiza, Najera, and J.R. Smith, were literally unprepared to contribute in a big way to the offensive flow of the game. How can you be prepared well when there are few schemes and you are playing different minutes and with different teammates almost every game?
The Nuggets are under an unusually dangerous and damaging alert status, so the following update is provided.
ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of November 30, 2007
INJURIES
1. Nene injury 9 Points
2. Chucky Atkins injury 7 Points
4. Steven Hunter injury 3 Points
UNEXPECTED STAR PLAYER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
1. Carmelo Anthony a little off and a little inconsistent 5 Points
2. Inability of Melo, Kleiza, and Najera to give Camby enough rebounding and defending support inside 6 Points
BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the reserves enough: 5-15 Points, it varies depending on the circumstances. A conservative value of 8 is used for the alert calculation.
2. Lack of adequate offensive schemes: 11 Points. This would be up to 15 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: 3 Points. It’s not anywhere near bad as some fans who are panicking think it is. This is a relatively small problem.
TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 52, 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 against 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 like the Nuggets has become in between a good team and a mid-level team when it is under this alert.
RESERVE WATCH
There is no Reserve Watch for the Rockets game due to extensive garbage time, where starters were pulled intentionally about half way through the 4th quarter because the game was decided.
GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
2.0 He’s running for the exits.
ESPN PLAYER RATINGS FOR THIS GAME
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 6 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.
Carmelo Anthony: Game 37.1 Season 37.0
Allen Iverson: Game 31.6 Season 37.4
Marcus Camby: Game 26.9 Season 32.7
Linas Kleiza: Game 23.6 Season 17.3
J.R. Smith: Game 12.0 Season 18.7
Anthony Carter: Game 11.5 Season 20.4
Bobby Jones: Game 10.2 Season 13.8
Kenyon Martin: Game 9.6 Season 16.2
Eduardo Najera: Game 6.0 Season 13.6
Yakhouba Diawara: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Jelani McCoy Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Nene: Did Not Play-Injury
Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Injury
LAKERS
Kobe Bryant: Game 43.2 Season 43.5
Sasha Vujacic: Game 31.3 Season 9.2
Luke Walton: Game 29.1 Season 16.1
Andrew Bynum: Game 25.6 Season 26.2
Derek Fisher: Game 25.0 Season 19.5
Jordan Farmar: Game 24.6 Season 18.8
Ronny Turiaf: Game 17.6 Season 15.5
Lamar Odom: Game 14.6 Season 21.8
Vladimir Radmanovic: Game 14.1 Season 14.4
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.
COMMENTS ON RATINGS: Notice how the Nuggets had 4 players come in with poorer performances than the lowest Laker, Radmanovic. J.R. Smith, Anthony Carter, Kenyon Martin, and Eduardo Najera all produced substantially less than the least productive of the 9 Lakers. Now that is dismal fact for you if you are a Nuggets fan.
To have 9 players with ratings of 14.1 and up is heavy duty evidence of the extreme quality of Phil Jackson’s coaching. You have to wonder how many fewer rings Michael Jordan would have won had he not enjoyed Phil Jackson as his coach. It would have been fewer, that’s for sure.
NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court.
Camby: -4
Kleiza: -8
Jones: -9
Najera: -12
Smith: -12
Iverson: -14
Martin: -16
Carter: -25
Anthony: -30
NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
Eduardo Najera played 25 minutes and was 0/4, 0/3 on 3’s, and 1/2 from the line for 1 point, and he made 6 rebounds, 2 steals, and 1 assist.
Linas Kleiza played 20 minutes and was 6/12, 1/3 on 3's, and 2/2 from the line for 15 points, and he made 4 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 steal.
Anthony Carter played 30 minutes and was 2/6 and 1/2 on 3’s for 5 points, and he made 4 assists and 3 rebounds.
Kenyon Martin played 22 minutes and was 1/5 for 2 points, and he made 6 rebounds, 2 blocks, 1 steal, and 1 assist.
J.R. Smith played 24 minutes and was 4/12, 1/2 on 3’s, and 2/4 from the line for 11 points, and he made 3 rebounds, 1 steal, and 1 assist.
Marcus Camby played 31 minutes and was 4/10 and 3/3 from the line for 11 points, and he made 9 rebounds, 3 blocks, 2 steals, and 1 assist.
Allen Iverson played 37 minutes and was 8/18, 0/1 on 3’s, and 5/10 from the line for 21 points, and he made 6 assists, 3 steals, and 4 rebounds.
Carmelo Anthony played 35 minutes and was 11/15, 0/1 on 3’s, and 1/1 from the line for 23 points, and he made 4 rebounds, 2 assists, and 2 steals.
NEXT UP
The next game will be Friday, November 30 in Denver to play the Clippers at 8:30 pm mountain time. The Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights, but the Clippers will not be. But the Nugget's home court advantage should roughly offset the no rest disadvantage.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Game Preview: Nov. 29: Nuggets at Lakers: Will Everyone Please Stop Getting Injured
CURRENT PROBABILITIES (rounded to the nearest 5%):
Percent Chance the Nuggets will win this game: 30%
Percent Chance the Nuggets will make the playoffs: 65%
Percent Chance the Nuggets will win a playoff series: 15%
Percent Chance the Nuggets will win 2 playoff series and reach the West finals: 0%
Percent Chance that George Karl will be fired or will retire no later than the end of this season: 40%
CURRENT ALERT STATUS: ORANGE ALERT
ORANGE ALERT description: Moderate damage is occurring to the season. The entire season is under serious threat, and you can just about forget about beating quality teams. Beating mid-level teams is difficult but not impossible under an ORANGE ALERT. About 2/3 of games against mid-level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. Even poor teams can sometimes beat an otherwise good team that is under this alert. Close to 1/3 of games against low level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. A good team has been reduced to something between a mid-level and a poor team when it is under this alert.
KEY FOR STARTERS
Position Number Name
Height Weight
PPG RPG APG FG% (Points, Rebounds, & Assists Per Game, Field Goal Shooting %)
Recent Highlights
NUGGETS PROBABLE STARTERS
Small Forward 15 Carmelo Anthony
6-8, 230
2007-08: 25.2 5.0 4.5 .446
Has scored 20+ points in all but two of the Nuggets 15 games so far this season. Collected a season-high-tying three steals (2nd time) in 34 minutes during the Nuggets loss at Houston on 11/24. With his 24 points at L.A. Clippers on 11/21, he has now scored 20+ in 11 of the Nuggets 12 games this season.
Power Forward #43 Linas Kleiza
6-8 245
2007-08: 10.5 3.9 1.1 .477
With his 14 points vs. Indiana on 11/27, he has now topped the 10-point mark seven times in 13 appearances.
Center #23 Marcus Camby
6-11, 235
2007-08: 9.6 14.8 3.3 .480
Currently leads the NBA in rebounds at 14.8 rpg and ranks second in blocks at 3.53 bpg. Is currently the only center in the NBA who is averaging at least 3.0 assists (Yao Ming is the next closest at 2.6). Scored a season-high 18 points to go along with 18 rebounds and three blocks at L.A. Clippers on 11/21.
Shooting Guard #5 Yakhouba Diawara
6-7, 225
2007-08: 4.4 1.7 1.1 .462
Denver is 7-2 (.778) this season when Diawara plays 14 or more minutes during a game (just 2-4 otherwise).
Point Guard #3 Allen Iverson
6-0, 165
2007-08: 23.7 3.1 7.3 .436
Pulled down a season-high seven rebounds vs. Indiana on 11/27, while it is the most he has had as a Nugget. With his two steals at Houston on 11/24, he has now had at least two steals in 10 of the Nuggets first 14 games. Led the Nuggets with 29 points (11-19 FG), nine assists and three steals in the loss at L.A. Clippers on 11/21.
NUGGET'S KEY OFF THE BENCH PLAYER
Shooting Guard #1 J.R. Smith
6-6 220
2007-08: 11.2 2.7 2.6 .410
Smith has been scoring solidly with multiple treys and multiple steals since he has re-earned a spot in the rotation, and since he has been spending more time at the point, he is also averaging four assists per over the last six games.
LAKERS PROBABLE STARTERS
Small Forward #10 Vladimir Radmanovic
6-10 235
2007-08: 9.4 2.6 1.5 .415
LAST GAME: Tallied 2 points and 2 rebounds in 14 minutes 11/27 vs. SEA.
NOTES: Ranks among league leaders in 3-point FG% (17th/.444) … Has posted 20 career
double-doubles and 33 career 20-plus point games … As a Laker, has scored in double-figures 21 times (one 20-plus point game), posted one double-double and led the team in scoring once.
Power Forward #7 Lamar Odom
6-10 230
2007-08: 13.2 7.4 1.7 .511
LAST GAME: Scored 20 points and grabbed 8 rebounds in 39 minutes 11/27 vs. SEA.
NOTES: Ranks among league leaders in minutes (37th/35.6) … Has posted 11 career tripledoubles and 186 career double-doubles … Owns 144 career 20-plus point games and 21 career 10-plus assist games … In 2005-06, was the only player in the NBA to average better than 14 points, 9 rebounds and 5 assists.
Center #17 Andrew Bynum
7-0 285
2007-08: 11.1 10.1 1.4 .585
LAST GAME: Recorded his 8th double-double of the season with 12 points (5-of-7 FG) and a team-high 10 rebounds in 26 minutes 11/27 vs. SEA.
NOTES: Ranks among league leaders in rebounds (12th/10.1), FG% (5th/.585) and blocks
(25th/1.43) … Has posted 18 career double-doubles … Became youngest Laker to ever record a double-double (19 years, 11 days) 11/7/06 vs. MIN (20 points, 14 rebounds), beating out Magic Johnson (20 years, 75 days) … Has posted 37 career double-figure scoring games (one 20-plus), 21 career 10-plus rebound games while leading the team in rebounds 35 times and in points once.
Shooting Guard #24 Kobe Bryant
6-6 205
2007-08: 27.9 6.3 4.9 .455
LAST GAME: Passed Bernard King for 32nd on the NBA’s all-time scoring list with a game-high 35 points while adding 8 rebounds and 6 assists in 35 minutes 11/27 vs. SEA.
NOTES: Ranks among league leaders in points (2nd/27.9), assists (29th/4.9), FT% (26 th/.860), steals (11th/1.93) and minutes (20th/37.4) … Youngest player ever to score 10,000 – 19,000 career points … Scored a career-high 81 points (55 in second half) 1/22/06, second highest game and half point totals in NBA History … 21 career 50-plus point games ranks third all-time behind Chamberlain (118) and Jordan (31) … Has 86 career 40-plus point games, 108 career doubledoubles and 14 career triple-doubles.
Point Guard #2 Derek Fisher
6-1 210
2007-08: 12.3 2.1 2.9 .527
LAST GAME: Tallied 14 points on 3-of-4 shooting (8-of-8 FT), 4 rebounds and a game-high 8 assists in 31 minutes 11/27 vs. SEA.
NOTES: Ranks among league leaders in FG% (17th/.527) and FT% (3rd/.957) … Has posted 9 career double-doubles … Has scored 20-plus points 42 times in his career … Owns 13 career 10- plus assist games … Has pulled down 10-plus rebounds once in his career (3/12/98 @ LAC).
PACER'S KEY OFF THE BENCH PLAYER
Point Guard #5 Jordan Farmar
6-2 180
2007-08: 9.4 2.6 2.9 .485
For someone who has a great 3-point shot, Farmar has a high overall shooting average. His points per 48 minutes are impressive.
KEY MATCHUP 1: SMALL FORWARD
Carmelo Anthony
DENVER
Vladimir Radmanovic
LOS ANGELES
KEY MATCHUP 2: SHOOTING GUARD
J.R. Smith
DENVER
Kobe Bryant
LOS ANGELES
KEY MATCHUP 3: POINT GUARD
Allen Iverson
DENVER
Derek Fisher
LOS ANGELES
TEAM RECORDS COMPARED
LAKERS...............................NUGGETS
8-6 Win-Loss Record................9-6
.571 Winning Percentage..........600
5-3 Home Win-Loss Record........6-2
3-3 Road Win-Loss Record.........3-4
3-3 East Conf. Win-Loss Record...5-3
5-3 West Conf. Win-Loss Record..4-3
1-0 Division Win-Loss Record......4-0
w 1 Streak, L=loss, W=win..........L 2
TEAM STATS COMPARED
This is the Best Statistical Preview You Will find anywhere!
Definitions:
Offensive efficiency: Points scored per 100 possessions.
Defensive efficiency: Points allowed per 100 possessions.
Points Per Shot: Total Points/# of Field Goals Attempted
Adjusted Field Goal Percentage: Adjusted FG Percentage = [(Points - Free Throws Made)/Field Goals Attempted]/2.
ADJ FG% measures shooting efficiency by taking into account the total points a player produces through his field goal attempts. The intention of this adjustment is largely to evaluate the impact of three-point shooting.
LAKERS...................................NUGGETS
105.2 Points scored....................... 105.5
100.8 Points allowed...................... 100.3
111.0 Offensive Efficiency................106.6
105.4 Defensive Efficiency................100.1
1.33 Points Per Shot.......................1.26
.51 Adjusted Field Goal Percentage.......49
.467 FG% own............................. .449
.433 FG% opposition...................... .439
.355 3PT% own............................ .344
.347 3PT% opposition.................... .336
44.7 Total Rebounds per game...........44.7
41.4 Opposition Total Rebounds/game..47.9
10.7 Offensive Rebounds/game..........11.0
11.6 Opposition Offensive Reb/game...13.7
8.6 Steals Per Game.......................10.4
8.1 Opposition Steals Per Game..........9.3
4.4 Blocked Shots Per Game..............6.3
4.6 Opposition Blocked Shots/Game.....4.6
22.1 Assists Per Game....................23.0
23.6 Opposition Assists Per Game.......23.9
15.8 Turnovers Per Game.................16.7
13.6 Opposition Turnovers Per Game...18.8
1.40 Assist/Turnover Ratio.............. 1.38
22.0 Fouls Per Game...................... 22.0
23.8 Opposition Fouls Per Game.........24.7
NUGGETS INJURY REPORT
OUT: Chucky Atkins suffered a severe right groin strain at Phoenix on 10/25 and is expected to miss 6-8 weeks.
OUT: Nene suffered a torn ulner collateral ligament in his left thumb at Boston on 11/7 and underwent successful surgery on 11/9. He is expected to miss six weeks.
OUT: Steven Hunter underwent successful arthroscopic surgery on his right knee on 11/16 and is expected to miss six weeks.
DOUBTFUL: Kenyon Martin did not dress vs. Indiana on 11/27 due to a right knee
bone bruise suffered at Houston on 11/24. He is questionable for tonight’s game.
PROBABLE: Linas Kleiza returned to the lineup vs. Indiana on 11/27 after missing two straight games due to a sprained left ankle. He is considered probable for tonight’s game.
LAKERS INJURY REPORT:
OUT: Kwame Brown (moderate ankle and knee sprains)
ON THE AIR:
Tonight’s game will be televised nationally on TNT with Kevin Harlan calling the action, Doug Collins providing analysis and Cheryl Miller reporting from the sideline. The game will also be broadcast on KKFN AM 950, with Jerry Schemmel doing the play-by-play and Jason Kosmicki hosting the studio courtside.
NUGGET'S KEYS TO VICTORY
Stay cool and confident. George Karl has lost all his confidence again so he is violating this key to victory. That makes it all the more important that the players stay confident. I’m going to keep including this key until the Nugget's players and coaches maintain their confidence more consistently. They also need to avoid the drama from having criticism and dirty laundry in the newspapers. And they need to avoid ugly off-court incidents. Yeah, I'm looking at you when I say that, J.R. Smith.
Carmelo Anthony, Linas Kleiza, and Eduardo Najera need to defensively rebound like hell. Camby needs help, obviously. The Nuggets are shorthanded at power forward and center due to injuries to Kenyon Martin, Nene, and Steven Hunter. Unless Martin makes a miracle appearance, 2 of 3 power forwards and one of the two centers will not be available for this game. Unless Anthony, Kleiza and Najera hit the boards big time, the Nuggets are probably toast in this game. Against Indiana, Iverson and Anthony Carter helped out big time on the boards, but you can't expect your guards to do that kind of rebounding on a nightly basis.
Play somebody. George Karl is going into his shell again, afraid that his players will do who knows what and dishonor the sport of basketball. In this game, it is very likely that Kleiza and Najera will get good playing time again. Unless at least two players among Yakhouba Diawara, Bobby Jones, and J.R. Smith get at least 18 minutes, the Nuggets are limiting their chances to win by having too few players out there who might surprise. The Nuggets keep getting surprised by reserves, so why the heck are they denying themselves the same chance that one of their reserves will have a surprise game?
LAKER'S KEYS TO VICTORY
Double team Melo or Iverson, usually Melo. There is a reason most teams do this. You want to double Melo unless Iverson is killing you, in which case you probably should start doubling Iverson and going for steals off him. Also, you should always try to get Melo into foul trouble, because the reward is huge if you succeed.
Penetrate the paint for what should be easy scores. With just Camby and Kleiza available among power forwards and centers, the Nuggets are a team that is ripe for the pickings inside if there ever was one.
Offensively rebound like hell. This goes nicely with key to victory #2, and should be very achievable due to the Nuggets being devastated with big man injuries. Even before the injury to Kenyon Martin, the Nuggets were gradually getting more and more slack in defensive rebounding, and now it might be almost as easy as taking candy from a baby unless Melo, Kleiza, and Najera rise to the occasion on the boards.
PREDICTIONS
The Nuggets right now have the worst front court in basketball even though they have Marcus Camby. Iverson and Anthony Carter helped keep the Nuggets in the game against Indiana by crashing the boards. The more they can repeat that the better, but Najera, Kleiza, Diawara (if he is playing), Jones (if he is playing) and especially Carmelo Anthony are going to have to rebound more.
Phil Jackson has once again produced more from less. In sharp contrast to Karl, he has several reserves in top notch form. Jackson has, for example, an 11 minutes a game guard from Yugoslavia named Sasha Vujacic who can hit 3's and makes, along with PG Derek Fisher, almost every single free throw. More likely to surprise the Nuggets, though, is PG Jordan Farmar or PF Ronnie Turiaf. Fortunately for the Nuggets, SF Radmanovic is not a good rebounder. But if PF Lamar Odom, C Andrew Bynum, and Turiaf get into gear, the Nuggets will most likely succumb to second chance Laker scores while being denied numerous second chance scores of their own.
DON'T TICK ME OFF MORE THAN USUAL GK
Call at least one early, unscheduled time out in response to a Laker run. I'm just asking for one.
Percent Chance the Nuggets will win this game: 30%
Percent Chance the Nuggets will make the playoffs: 65%
Percent Chance the Nuggets will win a playoff series: 15%
Percent Chance the Nuggets will win 2 playoff series and reach the West finals: 0%
Percent Chance that George Karl will be fired or will retire no later than the end of this season: 40%
CURRENT ALERT STATUS: ORANGE ALERT
ORANGE ALERT description: Moderate damage is occurring to the season. The entire season is under serious threat, and you can just about forget about beating quality teams. Beating mid-level teams is difficult but not impossible under an ORANGE ALERT. About 2/3 of games against mid-level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. Even poor teams can sometimes beat an otherwise good team that is under this alert. Close to 1/3 of games against low level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. A good team has been reduced to something between a mid-level and a poor team when it is under this alert.
KEY FOR STARTERS
Position Number Name
Height Weight
PPG RPG APG FG% (Points, Rebounds, & Assists Per Game, Field Goal Shooting %)
Recent Highlights
NUGGETS PROBABLE STARTERS
Small Forward 15 Carmelo Anthony
6-8, 230
2007-08: 25.2 5.0 4.5 .446
Has scored 20+ points in all but two of the Nuggets 15 games so far this season. Collected a season-high-tying three steals (2nd time) in 34 minutes during the Nuggets loss at Houston on 11/24. With his 24 points at L.A. Clippers on 11/21, he has now scored 20+ in 11 of the Nuggets 12 games this season.
Power Forward #43 Linas Kleiza
6-8 245
2007-08: 10.5 3.9 1.1 .477
With his 14 points vs. Indiana on 11/27, he has now topped the 10-point mark seven times in 13 appearances.
Center #23 Marcus Camby
6-11, 235
2007-08: 9.6 14.8 3.3 .480
Currently leads the NBA in rebounds at 14.8 rpg and ranks second in blocks at 3.53 bpg. Is currently the only center in the NBA who is averaging at least 3.0 assists (Yao Ming is the next closest at 2.6). Scored a season-high 18 points to go along with 18 rebounds and three blocks at L.A. Clippers on 11/21.
Shooting Guard #5 Yakhouba Diawara
6-7, 225
2007-08: 4.4 1.7 1.1 .462
Denver is 7-2 (.778) this season when Diawara plays 14 or more minutes during a game (just 2-4 otherwise).
Point Guard #3 Allen Iverson
6-0, 165
2007-08: 23.7 3.1 7.3 .436
Pulled down a season-high seven rebounds vs. Indiana on 11/27, while it is the most he has had as a Nugget. With his two steals at Houston on 11/24, he has now had at least two steals in 10 of the Nuggets first 14 games. Led the Nuggets with 29 points (11-19 FG), nine assists and three steals in the loss at L.A. Clippers on 11/21.
NUGGET'S KEY OFF THE BENCH PLAYER
Shooting Guard #1 J.R. Smith
6-6 220
2007-08: 11.2 2.7 2.6 .410
Smith has been scoring solidly with multiple treys and multiple steals since he has re-earned a spot in the rotation, and since he has been spending more time at the point, he is also averaging four assists per over the last six games.
LAKERS PROBABLE STARTERS
Small Forward #10 Vladimir Radmanovic
6-10 235
2007-08: 9.4 2.6 1.5 .415
LAST GAME: Tallied 2 points and 2 rebounds in 14 minutes 11/27 vs. SEA.
NOTES: Ranks among league leaders in 3-point FG% (17th/.444) … Has posted 20 career
double-doubles and 33 career 20-plus point games … As a Laker, has scored in double-figures 21 times (one 20-plus point game), posted one double-double and led the team in scoring once.
Power Forward #7 Lamar Odom
6-10 230
2007-08: 13.2 7.4 1.7 .511
LAST GAME: Scored 20 points and grabbed 8 rebounds in 39 minutes 11/27 vs. SEA.
NOTES: Ranks among league leaders in minutes (37th/35.6) … Has posted 11 career tripledoubles and 186 career double-doubles … Owns 144 career 20-plus point games and 21 career 10-plus assist games … In 2005-06, was the only player in the NBA to average better than 14 points, 9 rebounds and 5 assists.
Center #17 Andrew Bynum
7-0 285
2007-08: 11.1 10.1 1.4 .585
LAST GAME: Recorded his 8th double-double of the season with 12 points (5-of-7 FG) and a team-high 10 rebounds in 26 minutes 11/27 vs. SEA.
NOTES: Ranks among league leaders in rebounds (12th/10.1), FG% (5th/.585) and blocks
(25th/1.43) … Has posted 18 career double-doubles … Became youngest Laker to ever record a double-double (19 years, 11 days) 11/7/06 vs. MIN (20 points, 14 rebounds), beating out Magic Johnson (20 years, 75 days) … Has posted 37 career double-figure scoring games (one 20-plus), 21 career 10-plus rebound games while leading the team in rebounds 35 times and in points once.
Shooting Guard #24 Kobe Bryant
6-6 205
2007-08: 27.9 6.3 4.9 .455
LAST GAME: Passed Bernard King for 32nd on the NBA’s all-time scoring list with a game-high 35 points while adding 8 rebounds and 6 assists in 35 minutes 11/27 vs. SEA.
NOTES: Ranks among league leaders in points (2nd/27.9), assists (29th/4.9), FT% (26 th/.860), steals (11th/1.93) and minutes (20th/37.4) … Youngest player ever to score 10,000 – 19,000 career points … Scored a career-high 81 points (55 in second half) 1/22/06, second highest game and half point totals in NBA History … 21 career 50-plus point games ranks third all-time behind Chamberlain (118) and Jordan (31) … Has 86 career 40-plus point games, 108 career doubledoubles and 14 career triple-doubles.
Point Guard #2 Derek Fisher
6-1 210
2007-08: 12.3 2.1 2.9 .527
LAST GAME: Tallied 14 points on 3-of-4 shooting (8-of-8 FT), 4 rebounds and a game-high 8 assists in 31 minutes 11/27 vs. SEA.
NOTES: Ranks among league leaders in FG% (17th/.527) and FT% (3rd/.957) … Has posted 9 career double-doubles … Has scored 20-plus points 42 times in his career … Owns 13 career 10- plus assist games … Has pulled down 10-plus rebounds once in his career (3/12/98 @ LAC).
PACER'S KEY OFF THE BENCH PLAYER
Point Guard #5 Jordan Farmar
6-2 180
2007-08: 9.4 2.6 2.9 .485
For someone who has a great 3-point shot, Farmar has a high overall shooting average. His points per 48 minutes are impressive.
KEY MATCHUP 1: SMALL FORWARD
Carmelo Anthony
DENVER
Vladimir Radmanovic
LOS ANGELES
KEY MATCHUP 2: SHOOTING GUARD
J.R. Smith
DENVER
Kobe Bryant
LOS ANGELES
KEY MATCHUP 3: POINT GUARD
Allen Iverson
DENVER
Derek Fisher
LOS ANGELES
TEAM RECORDS COMPARED
LAKERS...............................NUGGETS
8-6 Win-Loss Record................9-6
.571 Winning Percentage..........600
5-3 Home Win-Loss Record........6-2
3-3 Road Win-Loss Record.........3-4
3-3 East Conf. Win-Loss Record...5-3
5-3 West Conf. Win-Loss Record..4-3
1-0 Division Win-Loss Record......4-0
w 1 Streak, L=loss, W=win..........L 2
TEAM STATS COMPARED
This is the Best Statistical Preview You Will find anywhere!
Definitions:
Offensive efficiency: Points scored per 100 possessions.
Defensive efficiency: Points allowed per 100 possessions.
Points Per Shot: Total Points/# of Field Goals Attempted
Adjusted Field Goal Percentage: Adjusted FG Percentage = [(Points - Free Throws Made)/Field Goals Attempted]/2.
ADJ FG% measures shooting efficiency by taking into account the total points a player produces through his field goal attempts. The intention of this adjustment is largely to evaluate the impact of three-point shooting.
LAKERS...................................NUGGETS
105.2 Points scored....................... 105.5
100.8 Points allowed...................... 100.3
111.0 Offensive Efficiency................106.6
105.4 Defensive Efficiency................100.1
1.33 Points Per Shot.......................1.26
.51 Adjusted Field Goal Percentage.......49
.467 FG% own............................. .449
.433 FG% opposition...................... .439
.355 3PT% own............................ .344
.347 3PT% opposition.................... .336
44.7 Total Rebounds per game...........44.7
41.4 Opposition Total Rebounds/game..47.9
10.7 Offensive Rebounds/game..........11.0
11.6 Opposition Offensive Reb/game...13.7
8.6 Steals Per Game.......................10.4
8.1 Opposition Steals Per Game..........9.3
4.4 Blocked Shots Per Game..............6.3
4.6 Opposition Blocked Shots/Game.....4.6
22.1 Assists Per Game....................23.0
23.6 Opposition Assists Per Game.......23.9
15.8 Turnovers Per Game.................16.7
13.6 Opposition Turnovers Per Game...18.8
1.40 Assist/Turnover Ratio.............. 1.38
22.0 Fouls Per Game...................... 22.0
23.8 Opposition Fouls Per Game.........24.7
NUGGETS INJURY REPORT
OUT: Chucky Atkins suffered a severe right groin strain at Phoenix on 10/25 and is expected to miss 6-8 weeks.
OUT: Nene suffered a torn ulner collateral ligament in his left thumb at Boston on 11/7 and underwent successful surgery on 11/9. He is expected to miss six weeks.
OUT: Steven Hunter underwent successful arthroscopic surgery on his right knee on 11/16 and is expected to miss six weeks.
DOUBTFUL: Kenyon Martin did not dress vs. Indiana on 11/27 due to a right knee
bone bruise suffered at Houston on 11/24. He is questionable for tonight’s game.
PROBABLE: Linas Kleiza returned to the lineup vs. Indiana on 11/27 after missing two straight games due to a sprained left ankle. He is considered probable for tonight’s game.
LAKERS INJURY REPORT:
OUT: Kwame Brown (moderate ankle and knee sprains)
ON THE AIR:
Tonight’s game will be televised nationally on TNT with Kevin Harlan calling the action, Doug Collins providing analysis and Cheryl Miller reporting from the sideline. The game will also be broadcast on KKFN AM 950, with Jerry Schemmel doing the play-by-play and Jason Kosmicki hosting the studio courtside.
NUGGET'S KEYS TO VICTORY
Stay cool and confident. George Karl has lost all his confidence again so he is violating this key to victory. That makes it all the more important that the players stay confident. I’m going to keep including this key until the Nugget's players and coaches maintain their confidence more consistently. They also need to avoid the drama from having criticism and dirty laundry in the newspapers. And they need to avoid ugly off-court incidents. Yeah, I'm looking at you when I say that, J.R. Smith.
Carmelo Anthony, Linas Kleiza, and Eduardo Najera need to defensively rebound like hell. Camby needs help, obviously. The Nuggets are shorthanded at power forward and center due to injuries to Kenyon Martin, Nene, and Steven Hunter. Unless Martin makes a miracle appearance, 2 of 3 power forwards and one of the two centers will not be available for this game. Unless Anthony, Kleiza and Najera hit the boards big time, the Nuggets are probably toast in this game. Against Indiana, Iverson and Anthony Carter helped out big time on the boards, but you can't expect your guards to do that kind of rebounding on a nightly basis.
Play somebody. George Karl is going into his shell again, afraid that his players will do who knows what and dishonor the sport of basketball. In this game, it is very likely that Kleiza and Najera will get good playing time again. Unless at least two players among Yakhouba Diawara, Bobby Jones, and J.R. Smith get at least 18 minutes, the Nuggets are limiting their chances to win by having too few players out there who might surprise. The Nuggets keep getting surprised by reserves, so why the heck are they denying themselves the same chance that one of their reserves will have a surprise game?
LAKER'S KEYS TO VICTORY
Double team Melo or Iverson, usually Melo. There is a reason most teams do this. You want to double Melo unless Iverson is killing you, in which case you probably should start doubling Iverson and going for steals off him. Also, you should always try to get Melo into foul trouble, because the reward is huge if you succeed.
Penetrate the paint for what should be easy scores. With just Camby and Kleiza available among power forwards and centers, the Nuggets are a team that is ripe for the pickings inside if there ever was one.
Offensively rebound like hell. This goes nicely with key to victory #2, and should be very achievable due to the Nuggets being devastated with big man injuries. Even before the injury to Kenyon Martin, the Nuggets were gradually getting more and more slack in defensive rebounding, and now it might be almost as easy as taking candy from a baby unless Melo, Kleiza, and Najera rise to the occasion on the boards.
PREDICTIONS
The Nuggets right now have the worst front court in basketball even though they have Marcus Camby. Iverson and Anthony Carter helped keep the Nuggets in the game against Indiana by crashing the boards. The more they can repeat that the better, but Najera, Kleiza, Diawara (if he is playing), Jones (if he is playing) and especially Carmelo Anthony are going to have to rebound more.
Phil Jackson has once again produced more from less. In sharp contrast to Karl, he has several reserves in top notch form. Jackson has, for example, an 11 minutes a game guard from Yugoslavia named Sasha Vujacic who can hit 3's and makes, along with PG Derek Fisher, almost every single free throw. More likely to surprise the Nuggets, though, is PG Jordan Farmar or PF Ronnie Turiaf. Fortunately for the Nuggets, SF Radmanovic is not a good rebounder. But if PF Lamar Odom, C Andrew Bynum, and Turiaf get into gear, the Nuggets will most likely succumb to second chance Laker scores while being denied numerous second chance scores of their own.
DON'T TICK ME OFF MORE THAN USUAL GK
Call at least one early, unscheduled time out in response to a Laker run. I'm just asking for one.
The Nuggets, Very Shorthanded Due to Injuries, Lose to the Pacers 112-110
With PF Kenyon Martin still out from a right knee bone bruise, with PF Nene out until late December with a torn ulner collateral ligament in his left thumb, with C Steven Hunter out from arthroscopic surgery on his right knee until late December, with F-G Linas Kleiza still suffering the residual effects of an ankle sprain, and with Marcus Camby a little bit tired and drowsy from the effects of a stomach flu and/or the medicine taken for it, the Nuggets were essentially doomed in this game. It was a royal flush for injuries: the entire power forward and center roster was injured, slightly injured (Kleiza), or sick (Camby). So I predicted the Nuggets would lose and they did, 112-110, to the Indiana Pacers. Indiana was leading 106-97 with 57 seconds to go, but the Nuggets made it interesting by hitting some threes and watching Jamaal Tinsley miss two free throws and Shawne Williams miss one of them off intentional fouls. But J.R. Smith missed the last of three free throws off a behind the arc shooting foul that the Pacers to the last man swore was a bad call anyway. So the Nuggets lost their first game at home to what may be a lottery team, something that happened way to much last year.
The Pacers could have eliminated any chance they had to blow the game had they pounded the paint even more than they did. They out rebounded the Nuggets 59-47, but as the Rockets showed the other night, they could have made it even more lopsided if they had really tried.
I said in the preview that Melo and Najera had to get an absolute minimum of 8 rebounds each to stand a chance in this game, but they only made 7 and 5 rebounds, respectively. Melo is doing well this season, obviously, which he can do without a huge effort, but he’s not yet going the extra mile on the boards, or hitting that extra jump shot, or driving that extra drive to get the extra layup and/or the extra trip to the line.
As for Camby, he was fighting off a stomach flu. He wasn’t the same Camby, as some rebounds he normally grabs easily were taken away from him. Camby played 41 minutes despite the flu problem (GK the genius at work again), and he made 12 rebounds and 5 blocks. So now Camby can truthfully say he is a better rebounder and blocker with the flu than most of the other Centers in the NBA are without the flu.
I have been researching many of the sources for “advanced statistics” on the internet and they are all in agreement that Carmelo Anthony is doing very well, but not as well as he did last year so far. He is only ranked as the 5th best small forward in the NBA right now, instead of 1st or 2nd. Fortunately, it’s very early in the season, and there is more than enough time for Melo to rise to the extremely high level that he is capable of. He’s been concentrating on his passing and assisting too much, in my opinion, and should go back to being so dedicated to putting points on the scoreboard that he is ready to drive to the hoop more.
But I can remember that it was the same thing last year. Early in the season Melo was all about jump shooting and didn’t want to drive too much. But as the season went along, he became more and more willing to take it to the hoop. And Melo’s team is a MASH unit, so everybody should understand it if he is reluctant to do a lot of banging in the paint this early in the season, for fear that he will become just another injury to add to the huge list of them. If this team were to lose Melo, Iverson, or Camby to injury, on top of all the other injuries they already have, there would not be a single team in the NBA left that they could beat. Well, maybe the Wolves and the Sonics.
Furthermore, this huge list of injuries is making most of the team, Iverson excepted of course, at least a little more careful about how much and how high they drive, jump, and rebound. So you have a double whammy: the injuries themselves and the impact seeing all those injuries has on the intensity of play of the players who are not injured.
For the second straight game, the Nuggets started out looking like a D League team, turning it over, not hustling back on defense, and looking like the team with very few set tactics on offense that they are. They fell behind by 21-3 in the first half of the 1st quarter.
Karl panicked after just 4 minutes of play regarding Diawara and the still injury-impacted Kleiza. Realizing that he made a mistake in starting Kleiza instead of Najera, and just plain panicking about his Diawara project, he pulled both of those starters after just 4 minutes in favor of Najera and Anthony Carter. Diawara was to return very little; he ended up with just 7 minutes and 0 points, and the Nuggets were outscored by the Pacers by 20 points while he was in. Kleiza ended up with 14 points in 31 minutes, but with just 3 rebounds and 1 assist. The Nuggets were outscored by 26 points while Kleiza was in.
Meanwhile Carter was huge, and Najera was solid against the Pacers. In the case of both Carter and Najera, the Nuggets outscored the Pacers by slightly more than 10 points while they were on the court. So at least Karl’s Plan B worked out to some extent, except that a few of Kleiza’s and Najera’s minutes should have been shared with Bobby Jones.
There are many ways to tell that George Karl is distressed about his team these days. One easy and quick way is to check Allen Iverson’s minutes. The more above 40 they are, the more distress GK is under, because Iverson is the only player besides Camby on the team who fully meets Karl’s obscure and seemingly odd standards as full and complete basketball personalities and players. Keep in mind that with GK the personalities are more important than the actual performance. Iverson’s minutes have been creeping up since the incredibly easy home stand when the easiest to beat teams in the league came to town one by one. (No offense LeBron, but your team was a pushover the night you played in Denver.) What little confidence the Nugget’s Coach had in his team, assuming he ever had any at all, was gone by the 4th quarter of the loss to the Clippers in L.A. November 21. So Karl has gone back to keeping Iverson, Camby, and Melo out on the court for virtually the entire game, as he did more and more as the season went along last year.
He didn’t play Bobby Jones at all in the Indiana loss, despite the obvious need for another forward in the game. The Nuggets were totally destroyed in the paint 56-28, so I ask you, how could Bobby Jones, who I admit is no cure all, possibly have made things any worse? Karl should have at least waited for the return of Kenyon Martin before benching the fast but unpolished and a little erratic forward out of Washington who had some very nice games earlier in November. Even though Pacers C-F Jermaine O'Neal (sore left knee) sat out his fourth straight game, it’s obvious that the Nuggets were hopelessly outgunned up front. Any forward with any chance at all to produce should have played in that situation, including Jones. What was GK thinking, that Iverson was going to get 40 points on 14/24? Apparently so.
Overall, GK played just 7 players and Diawara for 7 minutes, which is more clear evidence that Karl has so little confidence in his team that he doesn’t even load the court with enough players to (a) effectively compete with the opponent and (b) maximize the chance that a player will be feeling it and produce much above his average, in which case you extend that player’s minutes. But how do you know whether a player is capable of producing much better than usual if he never appears on the court?
The Nuggets are under an unusually dangerous and damaging alert status, so the following update is provided.
ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of November 29, 2007
INJURIES
1. Nene injury 10 Points
2. Chucky Atkins injury 7 Points
3. Kenyon Martin injury 15 Points
4. Steven Hunter injury 3 Points
UNEXPECTED STAR PLAYER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
1. Carmelo Anthony a little off and a little inconsistent 4 Points
2. Inability of Melo and Najera to give Camby enough support inside 7 Points
BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the reserves enough: 5-15 Points, it varies depending on the circumstances. A conservative value of 7 is used for the alert calculation.
2. Lack of adequate offensive schemes: 10 Points. This would be up to 15 points, except that Iverson reduces the damage.
INTENSITY, HUSTLE, AND HEART
1. The Nugget’s intensity, hustle and heart is lacking: 3 Points. It’s not anywhere near bad as some fans who are panicking think it is. This is a relatively small problem.
TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 66, which constitutes ORANGE ALERT.
ORANGE ALERT description: Moderate damage is occurring to the season. The entire season is under serious threat, and you can just about forget about beating quality teams. Beating mid-level teams is difficult but not impossible under an ORANGE ALERT. About 2/3 of games against mid-level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. Even poor teams can sometimes beat an otherwise good team that is under this alert. Close to 1/3 of games against low level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. A good team has been reduced to something between a mid-level and a poor team when it is under this alert.
RESERVE WATCH
Keeping Tabs on George Karl’s Frequent Inability to Get Enough Bench Performance
Safe range for total reserve minutes: 82-94
Actual minutes for the reserves in this game (see note below): 70
Minimum points needed from the reserves to make victory very likely: 33
Minimum points needed from the reserves to avoid being very likely to lose: 22
Actual points scored by the reserves in this game: 27
Minimum rebounds needed from the reserves to make victory very likely: 14
Minimum rebounds needed from the reserves to avoid being very likely to lose: 10
Actual rebounds by the reserves in this game: 13
Karl’s Grade: C- Had Karl played Bobby Jones for just 10 minutes, he could have earned at least a C+ ! Anthony Carter playing even better than Melo saved Karl from the F in this one. Don’t worry, an F is coming sooner or later.
NOTE: J.R. Smith is considered a starter and Yakhouba Diawara is considered a reserve for this calculation. George “I have no confidence in anyone except Iverson, Melo, and Camby” Karl refuses to start Smith under any circumstances. No matter how many more minutes Smith gets than Yakhouba when all is said and done, Smith can not officially start. This is a distortion of the usual relation between starters and reserves. So if and only if Diawara, or any one else who is starting instead of Smith, gets more minutes than Smith, will that player be considered the real starter instead of Smith. In other words, if Smith gets substantially more playing time than the official starter, he is going to be considered the true starter at the 2-spot for the reserve watch calculation.
GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
2.0 –He’s running for the exits.
ESPN PLAYER RATINGS FOR THIS GAME
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 6 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.
Allen Iverson: Game 42.9 Season 37.9
Anthony Carter: Game 41.0 Season 21.4
Carmelo Anthony: Game 32.4 Season 36.8
Marcus Camby: Game 27.1 Season 33.7
Linas Kleiza: Game: 19.7 Season 16.8
Eduardo Najera: Game 16.6 Season 13.8
J.R. Smith: Game 15.7 Season 17.9
Yakhouba Diawara: Game -2.3 Season 8.3
Bobby Jones: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Mike Wilks: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Kenyon Martin: Did Not Play-Injury
Nene: Did Not Play-Injury
Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Injury
PACERS
Mike Dunleavy: Game 43.6 Season 27.9
Jamaal Tinsley: Game 39.7 Season 28.8
Shawne Williams: Game 38.5 Season 16.5
Marquis Daniels: Game 29.1 Season 14.4
Troy Murphy: Game 24.4 Season 21.3
Jeff Foster: Game 16.9 Season 19.5
Danny Granger: Game 16.2 Season 29.9
David Harrison: Game 9.4 Season 9.4
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.
NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court.
Anthony: +13
Najera: +12
Carter: +11
Camby: +5
Smith: +0
Iverson: -5
Diawara: -20
Kleiza: -26
NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
Eduardo Najera played 30 minutes and was 3/11, 2/6 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 10 points, and he made 5 rebounds and 3 assists.
Linas Kleiza played 31 minutes and was 5/13, 0/3 on 3’s, and 4/4 from the line for 14 points, and he made 3 rebounds, 1 block, 1 assist, and 1 steal.
Anthony Carter played 34 minutes and was 7/12, ½ on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 17 points, and he made 8 rebounds, 6 assists, and 5 steals.
J.R. Smith played 17 minutes and was 3/10, 3/3 on 3’s, and 4/5 from the line for 13 points, and he made 5 rebounds.
Marcus Camby played 41 minutes and was 2/7 and ½ from the line for 5 points, and he made 12 rebounds, 5 blocks, and 5 assists.
Carmelo Anthony played 35 minutes and was 9/21, 1/3 on 3’s, and 6/9 from the line for 25 points, and he made 7 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 block.
A.I. played 46 minutes, virtually the whole game, and was 6/21, 2/4, and 12/14 from the line for 26 points, and he made 8 assists, 7 rebounds, 3 steals, and a block.
NEXT UP
The next game will be Thursday, November 29 in Los Angeles to play the Lakers at 8:30 pm mountain time. Neither the Lakers nor the Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights.
The Pacers could have eliminated any chance they had to blow the game had they pounded the paint even more than they did. They out rebounded the Nuggets 59-47, but as the Rockets showed the other night, they could have made it even more lopsided if they had really tried.
I said in the preview that Melo and Najera had to get an absolute minimum of 8 rebounds each to stand a chance in this game, but they only made 7 and 5 rebounds, respectively. Melo is doing well this season, obviously, which he can do without a huge effort, but he’s not yet going the extra mile on the boards, or hitting that extra jump shot, or driving that extra drive to get the extra layup and/or the extra trip to the line.
As for Camby, he was fighting off a stomach flu. He wasn’t the same Camby, as some rebounds he normally grabs easily were taken away from him. Camby played 41 minutes despite the flu problem (GK the genius at work again), and he made 12 rebounds and 5 blocks. So now Camby can truthfully say he is a better rebounder and blocker with the flu than most of the other Centers in the NBA are without the flu.
I have been researching many of the sources for “advanced statistics” on the internet and they are all in agreement that Carmelo Anthony is doing very well, but not as well as he did last year so far. He is only ranked as the 5th best small forward in the NBA right now, instead of 1st or 2nd. Fortunately, it’s very early in the season, and there is more than enough time for Melo to rise to the extremely high level that he is capable of. He’s been concentrating on his passing and assisting too much, in my opinion, and should go back to being so dedicated to putting points on the scoreboard that he is ready to drive to the hoop more.
But I can remember that it was the same thing last year. Early in the season Melo was all about jump shooting and didn’t want to drive too much. But as the season went along, he became more and more willing to take it to the hoop. And Melo’s team is a MASH unit, so everybody should understand it if he is reluctant to do a lot of banging in the paint this early in the season, for fear that he will become just another injury to add to the huge list of them. If this team were to lose Melo, Iverson, or Camby to injury, on top of all the other injuries they already have, there would not be a single team in the NBA left that they could beat. Well, maybe the Wolves and the Sonics.
Furthermore, this huge list of injuries is making most of the team, Iverson excepted of course, at least a little more careful about how much and how high they drive, jump, and rebound. So you have a double whammy: the injuries themselves and the impact seeing all those injuries has on the intensity of play of the players who are not injured.
For the second straight game, the Nuggets started out looking like a D League team, turning it over, not hustling back on defense, and looking like the team with very few set tactics on offense that they are. They fell behind by 21-3 in the first half of the 1st quarter.
Karl panicked after just 4 minutes of play regarding Diawara and the still injury-impacted Kleiza. Realizing that he made a mistake in starting Kleiza instead of Najera, and just plain panicking about his Diawara project, he pulled both of those starters after just 4 minutes in favor of Najera and Anthony Carter. Diawara was to return very little; he ended up with just 7 minutes and 0 points, and the Nuggets were outscored by the Pacers by 20 points while he was in. Kleiza ended up with 14 points in 31 minutes, but with just 3 rebounds and 1 assist. The Nuggets were outscored by 26 points while Kleiza was in.
Meanwhile Carter was huge, and Najera was solid against the Pacers. In the case of both Carter and Najera, the Nuggets outscored the Pacers by slightly more than 10 points while they were on the court. So at least Karl’s Plan B worked out to some extent, except that a few of Kleiza’s and Najera’s minutes should have been shared with Bobby Jones.
There are many ways to tell that George Karl is distressed about his team these days. One easy and quick way is to check Allen Iverson’s minutes. The more above 40 they are, the more distress GK is under, because Iverson is the only player besides Camby on the team who fully meets Karl’s obscure and seemingly odd standards as full and complete basketball personalities and players. Keep in mind that with GK the personalities are more important than the actual performance. Iverson’s minutes have been creeping up since the incredibly easy home stand when the easiest to beat teams in the league came to town one by one. (No offense LeBron, but your team was a pushover the night you played in Denver.) What little confidence the Nugget’s Coach had in his team, assuming he ever had any at all, was gone by the 4th quarter of the loss to the Clippers in L.A. November 21. So Karl has gone back to keeping Iverson, Camby, and Melo out on the court for virtually the entire game, as he did more and more as the season went along last year.
He didn’t play Bobby Jones at all in the Indiana loss, despite the obvious need for another forward in the game. The Nuggets were totally destroyed in the paint 56-28, so I ask you, how could Bobby Jones, who I admit is no cure all, possibly have made things any worse? Karl should have at least waited for the return of Kenyon Martin before benching the fast but unpolished and a little erratic forward out of Washington who had some very nice games earlier in November. Even though Pacers C-F Jermaine O'Neal (sore left knee) sat out his fourth straight game, it’s obvious that the Nuggets were hopelessly outgunned up front. Any forward with any chance at all to produce should have played in that situation, including Jones. What was GK thinking, that Iverson was going to get 40 points on 14/24? Apparently so.
Overall, GK played just 7 players and Diawara for 7 minutes, which is more clear evidence that Karl has so little confidence in his team that he doesn’t even load the court with enough players to (a) effectively compete with the opponent and (b) maximize the chance that a player will be feeling it and produce much above his average, in which case you extend that player’s minutes. But how do you know whether a player is capable of producing much better than usual if he never appears on the court?
The Nuggets are under an unusually dangerous and damaging alert status, so the following update is provided.
ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of November 29, 2007
INJURIES
1. Nene injury 10 Points
2. Chucky Atkins injury 7 Points
3. Kenyon Martin injury 15 Points
4. Steven Hunter injury 3 Points
UNEXPECTED STAR PLAYER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
1. Carmelo Anthony a little off and a little inconsistent 4 Points
2. Inability of Melo and Najera to give Camby enough support inside 7 Points
BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the reserves enough: 5-15 Points, it varies depending on the circumstances. A conservative value of 7 is used for the alert calculation.
2. Lack of adequate offensive schemes: 10 Points. This would be up to 15 points, except that Iverson reduces the damage.
INTENSITY, HUSTLE, AND HEART
1. The Nugget’s intensity, hustle and heart is lacking: 3 Points. It’s not anywhere near bad as some fans who are panicking think it is. This is a relatively small problem.
TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 66, which constitutes ORANGE ALERT.
ORANGE ALERT description: Moderate damage is occurring to the season. The entire season is under serious threat, and you can just about forget about beating quality teams. Beating mid-level teams is difficult but not impossible under an ORANGE ALERT. About 2/3 of games against mid-level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. Even poor teams can sometimes beat an otherwise good team that is under this alert. Close to 1/3 of games against low level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. A good team has been reduced to something between a mid-level and a poor team when it is under this alert.
RESERVE WATCH
Keeping Tabs on George Karl’s Frequent Inability to Get Enough Bench Performance
Safe range for total reserve minutes: 82-94
Actual minutes for the reserves in this game (see note below): 70
Minimum points needed from the reserves to make victory very likely: 33
Minimum points needed from the reserves to avoid being very likely to lose: 22
Actual points scored by the reserves in this game: 27
Minimum rebounds needed from the reserves to make victory very likely: 14
Minimum rebounds needed from the reserves to avoid being very likely to lose: 10
Actual rebounds by the reserves in this game: 13
Karl’s Grade: C- Had Karl played Bobby Jones for just 10 minutes, he could have earned at least a C+ ! Anthony Carter playing even better than Melo saved Karl from the F in this one. Don’t worry, an F is coming sooner or later.
NOTE: J.R. Smith is considered a starter and Yakhouba Diawara is considered a reserve for this calculation. George “I have no confidence in anyone except Iverson, Melo, and Camby” Karl refuses to start Smith under any circumstances. No matter how many more minutes Smith gets than Yakhouba when all is said and done, Smith can not officially start. This is a distortion of the usual relation between starters and reserves. So if and only if Diawara, or any one else who is starting instead of Smith, gets more minutes than Smith, will that player be considered the real starter instead of Smith. In other words, if Smith gets substantially more playing time than the official starter, he is going to be considered the true starter at the 2-spot for the reserve watch calculation.
GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
2.0 –He’s running for the exits.
ESPN PLAYER RATINGS FOR THIS GAME
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 6 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.
Allen Iverson: Game 42.9 Season 37.9
Anthony Carter: Game 41.0 Season 21.4
Carmelo Anthony: Game 32.4 Season 36.8
Marcus Camby: Game 27.1 Season 33.7
Linas Kleiza: Game: 19.7 Season 16.8
Eduardo Najera: Game 16.6 Season 13.8
J.R. Smith: Game 15.7 Season 17.9
Yakhouba Diawara: Game -2.3 Season 8.3
Bobby Jones: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Mike Wilks: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Kenyon Martin: Did Not Play-Injury
Nene: Did Not Play-Injury
Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Injury
PACERS
Mike Dunleavy: Game 43.6 Season 27.9
Jamaal Tinsley: Game 39.7 Season 28.8
Shawne Williams: Game 38.5 Season 16.5
Marquis Daniels: Game 29.1 Season 14.4
Troy Murphy: Game 24.4 Season 21.3
Jeff Foster: Game 16.9 Season 19.5
Danny Granger: Game 16.2 Season 29.9
David Harrison: Game 9.4 Season 9.4
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.
NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court.
Anthony: +13
Najera: +12
Carter: +11
Camby: +5
Smith: +0
Iverson: -5
Diawara: -20
Kleiza: -26
NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
Eduardo Najera played 30 minutes and was 3/11, 2/6 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 10 points, and he made 5 rebounds and 3 assists.
Linas Kleiza played 31 minutes and was 5/13, 0/3 on 3’s, and 4/4 from the line for 14 points, and he made 3 rebounds, 1 block, 1 assist, and 1 steal.
Anthony Carter played 34 minutes and was 7/12, ½ on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 17 points, and he made 8 rebounds, 6 assists, and 5 steals.
J.R. Smith played 17 minutes and was 3/10, 3/3 on 3’s, and 4/5 from the line for 13 points, and he made 5 rebounds.
Marcus Camby played 41 minutes and was 2/7 and ½ from the line for 5 points, and he made 12 rebounds, 5 blocks, and 5 assists.
Carmelo Anthony played 35 minutes and was 9/21, 1/3 on 3’s, and 6/9 from the line for 25 points, and he made 7 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 block.
A.I. played 46 minutes, virtually the whole game, and was 6/21, 2/4, and 12/14 from the line for 26 points, and he made 8 assists, 7 rebounds, 3 steals, and a block.
NEXT UP
The next game will be Thursday, November 29 in Los Angeles to play the Lakers at 8:30 pm mountain time. Neither the Lakers nor the Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Monday, November 26, 2007
Game Preview: Nov. 27: Pacers at Nuggets: The Injuries Have Now Reached the Point of Devastation
CURRENT PROBABILITIES (rounded to the nearest 5%):
Percent Chance the Nuggets will win this game: 35%
Percent Chance the Nuggets will make the playoffs: 70%
Percent Chance the Nuggets will win a playoff series: 15%
Percent Chance the Nuggets will win 2 playoff series and reach the West finals: 0%
Percent Chance that George Karl will be fired or will retire no later than the end of this season: 40%
CURRENT ALERT STATUS: ORANGE ALERT
EXPLANATION OF THE ALERT SYSTEM
KEY FOR STARTERS
Position Number Name
Height Weight
PPG RPG APG FG% (Points, Rebounds, & Assists Per Game, Field Goal Shooting %)
Recent Highlights
NUGGETS PROBABLE STARTERS
Small Forward 15 Carmelo Anthony
6-8, 230
2007-08: 25.2 4.9 4.6 .447
Collected a season-high-tying three steals (2nd time) in 34 minutes during the Nuggets loss at Houston on 11/24. With his 24 points at L.A. Clippers on 11/21, he has now scored 20+ in 11 of the Nuggets 12 games this season. Averaging 27.0 ppg on .526 shooting during the Nuggets five-game win streak, while playing just 33.5 mpg.
Power Forward #21 Eduardo Najera
6-8 235
2007-08: 6.3 4.6 0.8 .500
The Nuggets are devastated by injuries at power forward and center, which will likely give Najera the start unless Kleiza, who is questionalble, or Martin, who is doubtful, are available. Najera will probably get the start over Kleiza if he is available.
Center #23 Marcus Camby
6-11, 235
2007-08: 9.9 15.0 3.1 .491
Is currently the only center in the NBA who is averaging at least 3.0 assists (Yao Ming is the next closest at 2.6). Scored a season-high 18 points to go along with 18 rebounds and three blocks at L.A. Clippers on 11/21. Registered his third 20+ rebounding game of the season with 20 boards in 29 minutes vs. New York on 11/17.
Shooting Guard #5 Yakhouba Diawara
6-7, 225
2007-08: 4.7 1.8 1.2 .480
Denver is 7-2 (.778) this season when Diawara plays 14 or more minutes during a game (just 2-3 otherwise). Denver is now 8-2 (.800) this season with Diawara in the starting lineup, as well as 16-13 (.552) all-time.
Point Guard #3 Allen Iverson
6-0, 165
2007-08: 23.6 2.9 7.2 .450
With his two steals at Houston on 11/24, he has now had at least two steals in 10 of the Nuggets first 14 games. Led the Nuggets with 29 points (11-19 FG), nine assists and three steals in the loss at L.A. Clippers on 11/21.
NUGGET'S KEY OFF THE BENCH PLAYER
Shooting Guard #1 J.R. Smith
6-6 220
2007-08: 11.0 2.5 2.8 .422
Smith has been scoring solidly with multiple treys and multiple steals since he has re-earned a spot in the rotation, and since he has been spending more time at the point, he is also averaging four assists per over the last six games.
PACERS PROBABLE STARTERS
Small Forward #33 Danny Granger
6-9 228
2007-08: 18.8 6.1 2.0 .467
Scoring 20+ points for the third game in a row, and the seventh time this season, he connected on 7-15 FGS, 1-4 3-pt FGS and 6-8 FTS for his 21 points that accompany four rebounds and three assists vs. Cleveland, 11/25.
Power Forward #3 Troy Murphy
6-11 250
2007-08: 12.6 6.7 1.9 .382
Hitting just 1-10 FGS and 1-2 FTS, he had three points to go along with three rebounds, one assist and steal in 24 minutes without a turnover vs. Cleveland, 11/25.
Center #10 Jeff Foster
6-11 250
2007-08: 6.9 9.0 1.2 .507
Topping the Pacers in rebounds for the sixth straight game, he had nine rebounds to go with nine points, one assist, one steal and one blocked shot in 35 minutes vs. Cleveland, 11/25.
Shooting Guard #17 Mike Dunleavey
6-9 230
2007-08: 15.4 5.9 2.3 .456
Including five in the first period, he totaled eight points with four rebounds and one assist in 31 minutes without a turnover against the Cavs, 11/25. He started 2-2 from the floor vs. Cleveland, but finished 3-5 FGS for the game.
Point Guard #11 Jamaal Tinsley
6-3 185
2007-08: 13.7 4.2 8.1 .386
He fell one rebound short of a triple-double with 24 points, 10 assists and nine boards vs. Cleveland, 11/25. He also had one assist and a blocked shot vs. the Cavs.
PACER'S KEY OFF THE BENCH PLAYER
Small Forward #4 Shawne Williams
6-9 225
2007-08: 9.3 3.3 0.9 .487
Williams scored a career-high 24 points on 8-of-11 shooting Tuesday November 20.
KEY MATCHUP 1: SMALL FORWARD
Carmelo Anthony
DENVER
Danny Granger
INDIANA
KEY MATCHUP 2: CENTER
Marcus Camby
DENVER
Jeff Foster
INDIANA
KEY MATCHUP 3: POINT GUARD
Allen Iverson
DENVER
Jamaal Tinsley
INDIANA
TEAM RECORDS COMPARED
PACERS...............................NUGGETS
6-8 Win-Loss Record................9-5
.429 Winning Percentage..........643
4-5 Home Win-Loss Record........6-1
2-3 Road Win-Loss Record.........3-4
2-5 East Conf. Win-Loss Record...5-2
4-3 West Conf. Win-Loss Record..4-3
0-1 Division Win-Loss Record......4-0
L 1 Streak, L=loss, W=win..........L 1
TEAM STATS COMPARED
This is the Best Statistical Preview You Will find anywhere!
Definitions:
Offensive efficiency: Points scored per 100 possessions.
Defensive efficiency: Points allowed per 100 possessions.
Points Per Shot: Total Points/# of Field Goals Attempted
Adjusted Field Goal Percentage: Adjusted FG Percentage = [(Points - Free Throws Made)/Field Goals Attempted]/2.
ADJ FG% measures shooting efficiency by taking into account the total points a player produces through his field goal attempts. The intention of this adjustment is largely to evaluate the impact of three-point shooting.
PACERS...................................NUGGETS
102.8 Points scored....................... 105.1
105.4 Points allowed...................... 99.5
106.0 Offensive Efficiency................107.1
107.5 Defensive Efficiency................100.0
1.19 Points Per Shot.......................1.28
.48 Adjusted Field Goal Percentage........50
.435 FG% own............................. .457
.441 FG% opposition...................... .436
.344 3PT% own............................ .339
.384 3PT% opposition.................... .339
44.8 Total Rebounds per game...........44.5
45.4 Opposition Total Rebounds/game..47.1
12.9 Offensive Rebounds/game..........10.7
11.0 Opposition Offensive Reb/game...13.9
7.4 Steals Per Game.......................10.5
7.7 Opposition Steals Per Game..........9.6
5.2 Blocked Shots Per Game..............6.2
5.4 Opposition Blocked Shots/Game.....4.4
21.7 Assists Per Game....................22.9
20.4 Opposition Assists Per Game.......23.4
15.1 Turnovers Per Game................16.8
16.1 Opposition Turnovers Per Game...18.4
1.44 Assist/Turnover Ratio.............. 1.36
26.0 Fouls Per Game...................... 22.0
22.9 Opposition Fouls Per Game.........24.4
NUGGETS INJURY REPORT
OUT: Chucky Atkins suffered a severe right groin strain at Phoenix on 10/25 and is expected to miss 6-8 weeks.
OUT: Nene suffered a torn ulner collateral ligament in his left thumb at Boston on 11/7 and underwent successful surgery on 11/9. He is expected to miss six weeks.
OUT: Steven Hunter underwent successful arthroscopic surgery on his right knee on 11/16 and is expected to miss six weeks.
DOUBTFUL: Kenyon Martin suffered a right knee strain in the second quarter at Houston on 11/24. He will have an MRI done on 11/26, after which his status will be determined.
QUESTIONABLE/DAY TO DAY: Linas Kleiza has missed two-straight games due to a sprained left ankle suffered at L.A. Clippers on 11/21 and is considered questionable for tonight’s game.
PACERS INJURY REPORT:
OUT: Ike Diogu, torn left calf muscle
QUESTIONABLE/DAY TO DAY: Jermaine O'Neal, sore left knee, day-to-day
ON THE AIR:
Tonight’s game will be televised on Altitude with Chris Marlowe calling the action and Scott Hastings providing analysis. The game will also be broadcast on KKFN AM 950, with Jerry Schemmel doing the play-by-play and Jason Kosmicki hosting the studio courtside.
NUGGET'S KEYS TO VICTORY
Stay cool and confident. I’m going to have to keep including this key until the Nugget's players and coaches maintain their confidence more consistently. They also need to avoid the drama from having criticism and dirty laundry in the newspapers. And they need to avoid ugly off-court incidents. Yeah, I'm looking at you when I say that, J.R. Smith.
Carmelo Anthony and Eduardo Najera need to defensively rebound like hell. The Nuggets are devastated with injuries now, and it appears that all 3 power forwards and 1 of the two centers will not be available for this game. Unless Anthony and Najera hit the boards big time, the Nuggets are probably toast in this game.
Keep the ball moving. The assists completely dried up in Houston. The Nuggets have to keep the ball moving so that they are not making it too easy on the defenses of their opponents.
PACER'S KEYS TO VICTORY
Double team Melo or Iverson, usually Melo. There is a reason most teams do this. You want to double Melo unless Iverson is killing you, in which case you probably should start doubling Iverson and going for steals off him. Also, you should always try to get Melo into foul trouble, because the reward is huge if you succeed.
Penetrate the paint for what should be easy scores. With no power forwards and only 1 center, the Nuggets are a team that is ripe for the pickings inside if there ever was one.
Offensively rebound like hell. This goes nicely with key to victory #2, and should be very achievable due to the Nuggets being devastated with big man injuries. The Nuggets have been getting more and more vulnerable to second chance scores and now it might be almost as easy as taking candy from a baby unless Melo and Najera rise to the occasion.
PREDICTIONS
The Nuggets may have no power forwards and only 1 center available for this game! With this kind of devastation, it actually becomes pretty simple to figure out what must happen if the Nuggets are to have a chance. To have any chance to win the game, both Melo and Najera have to get 8-12 rebounds each. Yakhouba Diawara and Bobby Jones will have to be active rebounders as well. It goes without saying that Camby will have to be huge.
Bobby Jones will have to play at least 30 minutes and keep his personal foul and turnover counts within reason. Also, the Nuggets in general and Allen Iverson and J.R. Smith in particular are most likely going to need to get a really good number of steals.
DON'T TICK ME OFF MORE THAN USUAL GK
For once during a game in which the Nuggets are being routed, and this game will be threatening to become a rout even if it actually doesn't become one, call a couple of early time outs during big Pacer runs and try to rally the troops. Don't wait until the usual time out scheduled time comes along. This works wonders for other Coaches.
Percent Chance the Nuggets will win this game: 35%
Percent Chance the Nuggets will make the playoffs: 70%
Percent Chance the Nuggets will win a playoff series: 15%
Percent Chance the Nuggets will win 2 playoff series and reach the West finals: 0%
Percent Chance that George Karl will be fired or will retire no later than the end of this season: 40%
CURRENT ALERT STATUS: ORANGE ALERT
EXPLANATION OF THE ALERT SYSTEM
KEY FOR STARTERS
Position Number Name
Height Weight
PPG RPG APG FG% (Points, Rebounds, & Assists Per Game, Field Goal Shooting %)
Recent Highlights
NUGGETS PROBABLE STARTERS
Small Forward 15 Carmelo Anthony
6-8, 230
2007-08: 25.2 4.9 4.6 .447
Collected a season-high-tying three steals (2nd time) in 34 minutes during the Nuggets loss at Houston on 11/24. With his 24 points at L.A. Clippers on 11/21, he has now scored 20+ in 11 of the Nuggets 12 games this season. Averaging 27.0 ppg on .526 shooting during the Nuggets five-game win streak, while playing just 33.5 mpg.
Power Forward #21 Eduardo Najera
6-8 235
2007-08: 6.3 4.6 0.8 .500
The Nuggets are devastated by injuries at power forward and center, which will likely give Najera the start unless Kleiza, who is questionalble, or Martin, who is doubtful, are available. Najera will probably get the start over Kleiza if he is available.
Center #23 Marcus Camby
6-11, 235
2007-08: 9.9 15.0 3.1 .491
Is currently the only center in the NBA who is averaging at least 3.0 assists (Yao Ming is the next closest at 2.6). Scored a season-high 18 points to go along with 18 rebounds and three blocks at L.A. Clippers on 11/21. Registered his third 20+ rebounding game of the season with 20 boards in 29 minutes vs. New York on 11/17.
Shooting Guard #5 Yakhouba Diawara
6-7, 225
2007-08: 4.7 1.8 1.2 .480
Denver is 7-2 (.778) this season when Diawara plays 14 or more minutes during a game (just 2-3 otherwise). Denver is now 8-2 (.800) this season with Diawara in the starting lineup, as well as 16-13 (.552) all-time.
Point Guard #3 Allen Iverson
6-0, 165
2007-08: 23.6 2.9 7.2 .450
With his two steals at Houston on 11/24, he has now had at least two steals in 10 of the Nuggets first 14 games. Led the Nuggets with 29 points (11-19 FG), nine assists and three steals in the loss at L.A. Clippers on 11/21.
NUGGET'S KEY OFF THE BENCH PLAYER
Shooting Guard #1 J.R. Smith
6-6 220
2007-08: 11.0 2.5 2.8 .422
Smith has been scoring solidly with multiple treys and multiple steals since he has re-earned a spot in the rotation, and since he has been spending more time at the point, he is also averaging four assists per over the last six games.
PACERS PROBABLE STARTERS
Small Forward #33 Danny Granger
6-9 228
2007-08: 18.8 6.1 2.0 .467
Scoring 20+ points for the third game in a row, and the seventh time this season, he connected on 7-15 FGS, 1-4 3-pt FGS and 6-8 FTS for his 21 points that accompany four rebounds and three assists vs. Cleveland, 11/25.
Power Forward #3 Troy Murphy
6-11 250
2007-08: 12.6 6.7 1.9 .382
Hitting just 1-10 FGS and 1-2 FTS, he had three points to go along with three rebounds, one assist and steal in 24 minutes without a turnover vs. Cleveland, 11/25.
Center #10 Jeff Foster
6-11 250
2007-08: 6.9 9.0 1.2 .507
Topping the Pacers in rebounds for the sixth straight game, he had nine rebounds to go with nine points, one assist, one steal and one blocked shot in 35 minutes vs. Cleveland, 11/25.
Shooting Guard #17 Mike Dunleavey
6-9 230
2007-08: 15.4 5.9 2.3 .456
Including five in the first period, he totaled eight points with four rebounds and one assist in 31 minutes without a turnover against the Cavs, 11/25. He started 2-2 from the floor vs. Cleveland, but finished 3-5 FGS for the game.
Point Guard #11 Jamaal Tinsley
6-3 185
2007-08: 13.7 4.2 8.1 .386
He fell one rebound short of a triple-double with 24 points, 10 assists and nine boards vs. Cleveland, 11/25. He also had one assist and a blocked shot vs. the Cavs.
PACER'S KEY OFF THE BENCH PLAYER
Small Forward #4 Shawne Williams
6-9 225
2007-08: 9.3 3.3 0.9 .487
Williams scored a career-high 24 points on 8-of-11 shooting Tuesday November 20.
KEY MATCHUP 1: SMALL FORWARD
Carmelo Anthony
DENVER
Danny Granger
INDIANA
KEY MATCHUP 2: CENTER
Marcus Camby
DENVER
Jeff Foster
INDIANA
KEY MATCHUP 3: POINT GUARD
Allen Iverson
DENVER
Jamaal Tinsley
INDIANA
TEAM RECORDS COMPARED
PACERS...............................NUGGETS
6-8 Win-Loss Record................9-5
.429 Winning Percentage..........643
4-5 Home Win-Loss Record........6-1
2-3 Road Win-Loss Record.........3-4
2-5 East Conf. Win-Loss Record...5-2
4-3 West Conf. Win-Loss Record..4-3
0-1 Division Win-Loss Record......4-0
L 1 Streak, L=loss, W=win..........L 1
TEAM STATS COMPARED
This is the Best Statistical Preview You Will find anywhere!
Definitions:
Offensive efficiency: Points scored per 100 possessions.
Defensive efficiency: Points allowed per 100 possessions.
Points Per Shot: Total Points/# of Field Goals Attempted
Adjusted Field Goal Percentage: Adjusted FG Percentage = [(Points - Free Throws Made)/Field Goals Attempted]/2.
ADJ FG% measures shooting efficiency by taking into account the total points a player produces through his field goal attempts. The intention of this adjustment is largely to evaluate the impact of three-point shooting.
PACERS...................................NUGGETS
102.8 Points scored....................... 105.1
105.4 Points allowed...................... 99.5
106.0 Offensive Efficiency................107.1
107.5 Defensive Efficiency................100.0
1.19 Points Per Shot.......................1.28
.48 Adjusted Field Goal Percentage........50
.435 FG% own............................. .457
.441 FG% opposition...................... .436
.344 3PT% own............................ .339
.384 3PT% opposition.................... .339
44.8 Total Rebounds per game...........44.5
45.4 Opposition Total Rebounds/game..47.1
12.9 Offensive Rebounds/game..........10.7
11.0 Opposition Offensive Reb/game...13.9
7.4 Steals Per Game.......................10.5
7.7 Opposition Steals Per Game..........9.6
5.2 Blocked Shots Per Game..............6.2
5.4 Opposition Blocked Shots/Game.....4.4
21.7 Assists Per Game....................22.9
20.4 Opposition Assists Per Game.......23.4
15.1 Turnovers Per Game................16.8
16.1 Opposition Turnovers Per Game...18.4
1.44 Assist/Turnover Ratio.............. 1.36
26.0 Fouls Per Game...................... 22.0
22.9 Opposition Fouls Per Game.........24.4
NUGGETS INJURY REPORT
OUT: Chucky Atkins suffered a severe right groin strain at Phoenix on 10/25 and is expected to miss 6-8 weeks.
OUT: Nene suffered a torn ulner collateral ligament in his left thumb at Boston on 11/7 and underwent successful surgery on 11/9. He is expected to miss six weeks.
OUT: Steven Hunter underwent successful arthroscopic surgery on his right knee on 11/16 and is expected to miss six weeks.
DOUBTFUL: Kenyon Martin suffered a right knee strain in the second quarter at Houston on 11/24. He will have an MRI done on 11/26, after which his status will be determined.
QUESTIONABLE/DAY TO DAY: Linas Kleiza has missed two-straight games due to a sprained left ankle suffered at L.A. Clippers on 11/21 and is considered questionable for tonight’s game.
PACERS INJURY REPORT:
OUT: Ike Diogu, torn left calf muscle
QUESTIONABLE/DAY TO DAY: Jermaine O'Neal, sore left knee, day-to-day
ON THE AIR:
Tonight’s game will be televised on Altitude with Chris Marlowe calling the action and Scott Hastings providing analysis. The game will also be broadcast on KKFN AM 950, with Jerry Schemmel doing the play-by-play and Jason Kosmicki hosting the studio courtside.
NUGGET'S KEYS TO VICTORY
Stay cool and confident. I’m going to have to keep including this key until the Nugget's players and coaches maintain their confidence more consistently. They also need to avoid the drama from having criticism and dirty laundry in the newspapers. And they need to avoid ugly off-court incidents. Yeah, I'm looking at you when I say that, J.R. Smith.
Carmelo Anthony and Eduardo Najera need to defensively rebound like hell. The Nuggets are devastated with injuries now, and it appears that all 3 power forwards and 1 of the two centers will not be available for this game. Unless Anthony and Najera hit the boards big time, the Nuggets are probably toast in this game.
Keep the ball moving. The assists completely dried up in Houston. The Nuggets have to keep the ball moving so that they are not making it too easy on the defenses of their opponents.
PACER'S KEYS TO VICTORY
Double team Melo or Iverson, usually Melo. There is a reason most teams do this. You want to double Melo unless Iverson is killing you, in which case you probably should start doubling Iverson and going for steals off him. Also, you should always try to get Melo into foul trouble, because the reward is huge if you succeed.
Penetrate the paint for what should be easy scores. With no power forwards and only 1 center, the Nuggets are a team that is ripe for the pickings inside if there ever was one.
Offensively rebound like hell. This goes nicely with key to victory #2, and should be very achievable due to the Nuggets being devastated with big man injuries. The Nuggets have been getting more and more vulnerable to second chance scores and now it might be almost as easy as taking candy from a baby unless Melo and Najera rise to the occasion.
PREDICTIONS
The Nuggets may have no power forwards and only 1 center available for this game! With this kind of devastation, it actually becomes pretty simple to figure out what must happen if the Nuggets are to have a chance. To have any chance to win the game, both Melo and Najera have to get 8-12 rebounds each. Yakhouba Diawara and Bobby Jones will have to be active rebounders as well. It goes without saying that Camby will have to be huge.
Bobby Jones will have to play at least 30 minutes and keep his personal foul and turnover counts within reason. Also, the Nuggets in general and Allen Iverson and J.R. Smith in particular are most likely going to need to get a really good number of steals.
DON'T TICK ME OFF MORE THAN USUAL GK
For once during a game in which the Nuggets are being routed, and this game will be threatening to become a rout even if it actually doesn't become one, call a couple of early time outs during big Pacer runs and try to rally the troops. Don't wait until the usual time out scheduled time comes along. This works wonders for other Coaches.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Video: Rockets 109 Nuggets 81
More videos can be found below all the posts on this page, and there is a huge selection of videos on the +Nuggets 1 Videos page
The Nuggets are Crushed by the Rockets 109-81 and Are Now Under an Orange Alert
The Nuggets were just about blown out in the 1st quarter in Houston. They played the Rockets more or less equal the rest of the game, but had no chance to make up for the huge 1st quarter deficit. One reason was that Kenyon Martin was unable to rebound and then unable to play at all due to an aggravation of one of his rehabbed knees. Tracy McGrady is no LeBron James, and not even a Carmelo Anthony usually, but in this game he went off for 35 points on 13/23 in 34 minutes.
New Rockets Coach Rick Adelman has introduced a balanced offense intended to remove some of the scoring burden on McGrady. So the Rockets won by doing what the Nuggets have been able to do only against teams with serious losing records so far. They spread the wealth. Although McGrady was big, he was supplemented by a balanced attack from players such as PF Chuck Hayes and veteran SG Steve Francis. "We said we have to get back to playing the type of offense we played in the beginning of the season and that's what we did," McGrady said after the game. Great, teams are now treating the Nuggets as the perfect opportunity to get back on track offensively. If offensively challenged Houston can explode on the Nuggets, who can’t, other than maybe the Wolves and Sonics?
This 109-81 rout was even worse than the Celtics rout a half month ago. The Nuggets made only a pathetic 8 assists, and Iverson failed to get even 1 assist. Carmelo Anthony failed to get to the line even once. Kenyon Martin failed to get a single rebound. PG Anthony Carter failed to get a single point in 24 minutes of action. You rarely see a team out rebounded as badly as the Nuggets were last night, 57-38. Only three Nuggets played as well as normal or a little better: J.R. Smith, Yakhouba Diawara, and Mike Wilks. As routs go, this was as ugly as it gets. I don’t think it gets any worse than this unless a team has totally packed it in for the year and they know the Coach is history or something.
PG Anthony Carter is back, but went 0/3 from the field and had 5 turnovers against 3 assists, so the Nuggets would have been just as well off in this game if he was still out and Mike Wilks in. Mike Wilks was cut way back in favor of Carter, and the Nuggets suffered in this game from that. I’m not sure who would make a better point guard over the remainder of the season, but for this game, Wilks would have been a big upgrade over Carter. The more polished veteran point guard, Chucky Atkins, remains out for several more weeks. When he comes back, Atkins will most likely not flame out like Carter did in this game.
It is now ORANGE alert for the Nuggets, as a result of Kenyon Martin’s straining his knee badly to go along with all of the other injuries. The injuries alone would just about constitute a YELLOW alert, but the continuing lack of offensive schemes, inconsistent player rotations, and inconsistency even from Melo makes this an ORANGE alert. An ORANGE alert means that the entire season is under a serious threat until and unless some of the problems are relieved, so that the condition is improved to a YELLOW alert or better.
With the Nuggets rollercoaster more wild this year than last, and with fans turning downright hostile as a result of the Nuggets looking so bad in the last 3 games, it is time to introduce a new “alert system” to let fans know just how bad the situation really is.
The alert system is a way to sum up the overall damage caused by all of the injuries and problems that exist at a given point in time. The amount of damage determines to what extent the season as a whole is damaged or even ruined. The level of damage also determines the likelihood of winning or losing individual games against teams that are placed in three levels: good or quality teams, medium or mid-level teams, and poor or low level teams.
So here is the alert system for the Nuggets: The numbers refer to “problem points,” which will be explained further and listed below. All teams in the NBA have problems, and the question is how many and how severe they are. Here are the definitions for the different alert levels:
NO ALERT (0-19): There are virtually no problems. Teams like the Spurs are in this category from time to time.
GREEN ALERT (20-29): A set of minor problems whose total impact is very small. There is very little effect on the team’s ability to win games against teams from any level.
GREY ALERT (30-39): There are relatively minor problems leading to a small threat against the success of the entire season. It is still possible to beat quality teams, but it will be more unusual to beat a quality team, because about 1/4 of what would have been wins against good teams will now be losses when there is a GREY 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.
ORANGE ALERT (55-74): Moderate damage is occurring to the season. The entire season is under serious threat, and you can just about forget about beating quality teams. About 3/4 of all wins against good teams will now be losses. Beating mid-level teams is much more difficult ORANGE ALERT. About 1/2 of games against mid-level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. Even poor teams can often beat an otherwise good team that is under this alert. Close to 1/4 of games against low level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. A good team has been reduced to being a mid-level team, at best, when it is under this alert.
RED ALERT (75-99): Serious damage to the season is occurring now. Beating quality teams is almost impossible. Beating mid-level teams is extremely difficult and will be unusual. About 3/4 of games against mid-level teams that would have been won will be lost if there is a RED ALERT. The result against low-level teams is on a case by case basis. Close to 1/2 of games against low level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. Essentially, a RED ALERT means that an otherwise good team has been reduced to being a poor or low level team.
BLACK ALERT (100+): The season is lost and, under normal circumstances, the Coach is going to be fired no later than the end of the season. The Coach almost always gets fired when a season is lost during what was supposed to be a good season, regardless of how much of the blame actually is due the coach for the problems that led to the loss of the season. Under a BLACK ALERT, the team has become one of the worst teams in the League, and will lose most of it's games.
George Karl, for reasons that have been discussed extensively in many game reports, has had the Nuggets in a GREY alert or worse since he arrived in Denver. Last season, with the suspensions, J.R. Smith injury, and inability of the reserves to contribute, the team was in YELLOW alert or ORANGE alert all season. When J.R. Smith was benched for the Spurs series, the situation became RED alert. It was no longer possible to defeat a team like the Spurs.
This season, the Nuggets started off in GREY alert and then went to a YELLOW alert on November 6 when Nene was injured. These alerts (or problems) have been mostly hidden because the Nuggets have had the easiest schedule in the NBA. They have 9 wins, but 7 of those wins were against the very worst teams in the NBA. Another one of those wins was against the Pacers, an average team at best. The 9th win was against the Cavaliers. Although the Cavaliers are a good team, they played the Nuggets with no rest on the last day of their Western road trip, while the Nuggets were rested. It wasn’t really a fair fight. The conclusion is nerve racking: the Nuggets really haven’t beaten anybody yet. Ouch.
Now the Nuggets have gone from YELLOW alert to a dangerous ORANGE alert status, due to the Kenyon Martin re-injury of his knee. In order for a situation to be counted toward alert status, it must be an injury, an unexpected key player performance problem, a clear case of bad or lacking coaching of the team, or the team not playing with heart and intensity, which is required to turn talent into results.
ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of November 25, 2007
INJURIES
1. Nene injury 10 Points
2. Chucky Atkins injury 6 Points
3. Kenyon Martin injury 15 Points
4. Linas Kleiza injury 6 Points
UNEXPECTED KEY PLAYER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
1. Carmelo Anthony a little inconsistent 4 Points
2. Inability of Melo and Najera to give Camby enough support inside 7 Points
BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the reserves enough: 7 Points, but varies up to as many as 13 Points in certain games.
2. Lack of adequate offensive schemes: 10 Points. This would be up to 15 points, except that Iverson reduces the damage.
INTENSITY AND HEART
1. The Nugget’s intensity and heart is lacking: 2 Points. It’s not anywhere near bad as some fans who are panicking think it is. This is the least of the problems.
TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 67, which constitutes ORANGE ALERT.
The Kenyon Martin knee aggravation last night in Houston increases the alert from YELLOW to ORANGE. If Martin were to be declared out for the rest of the season, the problem points would rise, because although the points mostly reflect the current situation, they are modified downward somewhat if it is early in the season to reflect that the problems are likely to go away or be corrected long before the season is over. In other words, as the season goes along, the points for a particular problem gradually go up. The objective is to come out with a total point score that accurately reflects the threat level at the particular point in the season you are at.
It is relatively difficult to get to any worse than YELLOW ALERT early in the season, so the Nuggets are in really bad shape right now.
In terms of points, if you hit 100 points, your season is ruined. It is possible to partly rescue a ruined season, but only if two requirements are met. One, the 100 points is reached no later than the middle of the season, so that there is enough time for a recovery. And two, the number of games for which the BLACK ALERT and 100 or more points of problems are in effect is limited enough so that the damage (the losses) do not become excessive.
I will be refining and tweaking this alert system a little from here on out, but I am sure I have it pretty much on point already.
RESERVE WATCH
There is no Reserve Watch for the Rockets game due to extensive garbage time, where starters were pulled intentionally very early in the 4th quarter because the game was decided.
NUGGETS ESPN RATINGS FOR THIS GAME
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
The first number is the player’s rating for the game and the other number with the + or – in front of it tells you how much above or below that player’s season player rating his performance in this game was.
Carmelo Anthony 26.2 -11.8
Allen Iverson 18.5 -20.5
J.R. Smith 18.3 +0.1
Yakhouba Diawara 14.2 +5.5
Marcus Camby 14.1 -21.6
Mike Wilks: 10.9 +5.7
Kenyon Martin 7.4 -10.2
Bobby Jones: 6.4 -1.0
Anthony Carter 5.1 -12.9
Eduardo Najera 4.0 -10.3
Nene: Did Not Play-Injury
Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Linas Kleiza Did Not Play-Injury
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.
ROCKETS BEST
Tracy McGrady: 49 1 +10.6
Yao Ming: 37.7 -2.6
Steve Francis: 21.4 +11.5
Sean Battier: 19.2 +2.0
Chuck Hayes: 18.1 +5.5
Mike Wilks played 10 minutes and was 2/4 and 1/1 on 3’s for 5 points, and he made 3 rebounds and 2 steals. Anthony Carter played 24 minutes and was 0/3 and 0/1 on 3’s for 0 points, and he made 3 assists, 3 steals, 2 blocks, and 1 rebound.
Eduardo Najera played 24 minutes and was 1/8 and 0/3 on 3’s for 2 points, and he made 7 rebounds and 1 steal. Bobby Jones played 15 minutes and was ¼, 0/1 on 3’s, and 5/6 from the line for 7 points, and he made 1 rebound.
Kenyon Martin played 15 minutes and was 2/4 and ¾ from the line for 7 points.
J.R. Smith played 26 minutes and was 4/10, 2/5 on 3’s, and ¾ from the line for 13 points, and he made 3 rebounds and 2 assists.
Marcus Camby played 32 minutes and was 1/3, 0/1 on 3’s, and ¾ from the line for 5 points, and he made 9 rebounds and 2 blocks.
Allen Iverson played 35 minutes and was 7/18 and 4/6 from the line for 18 points, and he made 3 rebounds and 2 steals.
Carmelo Anthony played 34 minutes and was 8/20 and ¼ on 3’s for 17 points, and he made 8 rebounds, 3 steals, and 1 assist.
The next game will be Tuesday, November 27 in Denver to play the Pacers at 7 pm mountain time. Neither the Pacers nor the Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights.
New Rockets Coach Rick Adelman has introduced a balanced offense intended to remove some of the scoring burden on McGrady. So the Rockets won by doing what the Nuggets have been able to do only against teams with serious losing records so far. They spread the wealth. Although McGrady was big, he was supplemented by a balanced attack from players such as PF Chuck Hayes and veteran SG Steve Francis. "We said we have to get back to playing the type of offense we played in the beginning of the season and that's what we did," McGrady said after the game. Great, teams are now treating the Nuggets as the perfect opportunity to get back on track offensively. If offensively challenged Houston can explode on the Nuggets, who can’t, other than maybe the Wolves and Sonics?
This 109-81 rout was even worse than the Celtics rout a half month ago. The Nuggets made only a pathetic 8 assists, and Iverson failed to get even 1 assist. Carmelo Anthony failed to get to the line even once. Kenyon Martin failed to get a single rebound. PG Anthony Carter failed to get a single point in 24 minutes of action. You rarely see a team out rebounded as badly as the Nuggets were last night, 57-38. Only three Nuggets played as well as normal or a little better: J.R. Smith, Yakhouba Diawara, and Mike Wilks. As routs go, this was as ugly as it gets. I don’t think it gets any worse than this unless a team has totally packed it in for the year and they know the Coach is history or something.
PG Anthony Carter is back, but went 0/3 from the field and had 5 turnovers against 3 assists, so the Nuggets would have been just as well off in this game if he was still out and Mike Wilks in. Mike Wilks was cut way back in favor of Carter, and the Nuggets suffered in this game from that. I’m not sure who would make a better point guard over the remainder of the season, but for this game, Wilks would have been a big upgrade over Carter. The more polished veteran point guard, Chucky Atkins, remains out for several more weeks. When he comes back, Atkins will most likely not flame out like Carter did in this game.
It is now ORANGE alert for the Nuggets, as a result of Kenyon Martin’s straining his knee badly to go along with all of the other injuries. The injuries alone would just about constitute a YELLOW alert, but the continuing lack of offensive schemes, inconsistent player rotations, and inconsistency even from Melo makes this an ORANGE alert. An ORANGE alert means that the entire season is under a serious threat until and unless some of the problems are relieved, so that the condition is improved to a YELLOW alert or better.
With the Nuggets rollercoaster more wild this year than last, and with fans turning downright hostile as a result of the Nuggets looking so bad in the last 3 games, it is time to introduce a new “alert system” to let fans know just how bad the situation really is.
The alert system is a way to sum up the overall damage caused by all of the injuries and problems that exist at a given point in time. The amount of damage determines to what extent the season as a whole is damaged or even ruined. The level of damage also determines the likelihood of winning or losing individual games against teams that are placed in three levels: good or quality teams, medium or mid-level teams, and poor or low level teams.
So here is the alert system for the Nuggets: The numbers refer to “problem points,” which will be explained further and listed below. All teams in the NBA have problems, and the question is how many and how severe they are. Here are the definitions for the different alert levels:
NO ALERT (0-19): There are virtually no problems. Teams like the Spurs are in this category from time to time.
GREEN ALERT (20-29): A set of minor problems whose total impact is very small. There is very little effect on the team’s ability to win games against teams from any level.
GREY ALERT (30-39): There are relatively minor problems leading to a small threat against the success of the entire season. It is still possible to beat quality teams, but it will be more unusual to beat a quality team, because about 1/4 of what would have been wins against good teams will now be losses when there is a GREY 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.
ORANGE ALERT (55-74): Moderate damage is occurring to the season. The entire season is under serious threat, and you can just about forget about beating quality teams. About 3/4 of all wins against good teams will now be losses. Beating mid-level teams is much more difficult ORANGE ALERT. About 1/2 of games against mid-level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. Even poor teams can often beat an otherwise good team that is under this alert. Close to 1/4 of games against low level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. A good team has been reduced to being a mid-level team, at best, when it is under this alert.
RED ALERT (75-99): Serious damage to the season is occurring now. Beating quality teams is almost impossible. Beating mid-level teams is extremely difficult and will be unusual. About 3/4 of games against mid-level teams that would have been won will be lost if there is a RED ALERT. The result against low-level teams is on a case by case basis. Close to 1/2 of games against low level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. Essentially, a RED ALERT means that an otherwise good team has been reduced to being a poor or low level team.
BLACK ALERT (100+): The season is lost and, under normal circumstances, the Coach is going to be fired no later than the end of the season. The Coach almost always gets fired when a season is lost during what was supposed to be a good season, regardless of how much of the blame actually is due the coach for the problems that led to the loss of the season. Under a BLACK ALERT, the team has become one of the worst teams in the League, and will lose most of it's games.
George Karl, for reasons that have been discussed extensively in many game reports, has had the Nuggets in a GREY alert or worse since he arrived in Denver. Last season, with the suspensions, J.R. Smith injury, and inability of the reserves to contribute, the team was in YELLOW alert or ORANGE alert all season. When J.R. Smith was benched for the Spurs series, the situation became RED alert. It was no longer possible to defeat a team like the Spurs.
This season, the Nuggets started off in GREY alert and then went to a YELLOW alert on November 6 when Nene was injured. These alerts (or problems) have been mostly hidden because the Nuggets have had the easiest schedule in the NBA. They have 9 wins, but 7 of those wins were against the very worst teams in the NBA. Another one of those wins was against the Pacers, an average team at best. The 9th win was against the Cavaliers. Although the Cavaliers are a good team, they played the Nuggets with no rest on the last day of their Western road trip, while the Nuggets were rested. It wasn’t really a fair fight. The conclusion is nerve racking: the Nuggets really haven’t beaten anybody yet. Ouch.
Now the Nuggets have gone from YELLOW alert to a dangerous ORANGE alert status, due to the Kenyon Martin re-injury of his knee. In order for a situation to be counted toward alert status, it must be an injury, an unexpected key player performance problem, a clear case of bad or lacking coaching of the team, or the team not playing with heart and intensity, which is required to turn talent into results.
ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of November 25, 2007
INJURIES
1. Nene injury 10 Points
2. Chucky Atkins injury 6 Points
3. Kenyon Martin injury 15 Points
4. Linas Kleiza injury 6 Points
UNEXPECTED KEY PLAYER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
1. Carmelo Anthony a little inconsistent 4 Points
2. Inability of Melo and Najera to give Camby enough support inside 7 Points
BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the reserves enough: 7 Points, but varies up to as many as 13 Points in certain games.
2. Lack of adequate offensive schemes: 10 Points. This would be up to 15 points, except that Iverson reduces the damage.
INTENSITY AND HEART
1. The Nugget’s intensity and heart is lacking: 2 Points. It’s not anywhere near bad as some fans who are panicking think it is. This is the least of the problems.
TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 67, which constitutes ORANGE ALERT.
The Kenyon Martin knee aggravation last night in Houston increases the alert from YELLOW to ORANGE. If Martin were to be declared out for the rest of the season, the problem points would rise, because although the points mostly reflect the current situation, they are modified downward somewhat if it is early in the season to reflect that the problems are likely to go away or be corrected long before the season is over. In other words, as the season goes along, the points for a particular problem gradually go up. The objective is to come out with a total point score that accurately reflects the threat level at the particular point in the season you are at.
It is relatively difficult to get to any worse than YELLOW ALERT early in the season, so the Nuggets are in really bad shape right now.
In terms of points, if you hit 100 points, your season is ruined. It is possible to partly rescue a ruined season, but only if two requirements are met. One, the 100 points is reached no later than the middle of the season, so that there is enough time for a recovery. And two, the number of games for which the BLACK ALERT and 100 or more points of problems are in effect is limited enough so that the damage (the losses) do not become excessive.
I will be refining and tweaking this alert system a little from here on out, but I am sure I have it pretty much on point already.
RESERVE WATCH
There is no Reserve Watch for the Rockets game due to extensive garbage time, where starters were pulled intentionally very early in the 4th quarter because the game was decided.
NUGGETS ESPN RATINGS FOR THIS GAME
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
The first number is the player’s rating for the game and the other number with the + or – in front of it tells you how much above or below that player’s season player rating his performance in this game was.
Carmelo Anthony 26.2 -11.8
Allen Iverson 18.5 -20.5
J.R. Smith 18.3 +0.1
Yakhouba Diawara 14.2 +5.5
Marcus Camby 14.1 -21.6
Mike Wilks: 10.9 +5.7
Kenyon Martin 7.4 -10.2
Bobby Jones: 6.4 -1.0
Anthony Carter 5.1 -12.9
Eduardo Najera 4.0 -10.3
Nene: Did Not Play-Injury
Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Linas Kleiza Did Not Play-Injury
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.
ROCKETS BEST
Tracy McGrady: 49 1 +10.6
Yao Ming: 37.7 -2.6
Steve Francis: 21.4 +11.5
Sean Battier: 19.2 +2.0
Chuck Hayes: 18.1 +5.5
Mike Wilks played 10 minutes and was 2/4 and 1/1 on 3’s for 5 points, and he made 3 rebounds and 2 steals. Anthony Carter played 24 minutes and was 0/3 and 0/1 on 3’s for 0 points, and he made 3 assists, 3 steals, 2 blocks, and 1 rebound.
Eduardo Najera played 24 minutes and was 1/8 and 0/3 on 3’s for 2 points, and he made 7 rebounds and 1 steal. Bobby Jones played 15 minutes and was ¼, 0/1 on 3’s, and 5/6 from the line for 7 points, and he made 1 rebound.
Kenyon Martin played 15 minutes and was 2/4 and ¾ from the line for 7 points.
J.R. Smith played 26 minutes and was 4/10, 2/5 on 3’s, and ¾ from the line for 13 points, and he made 3 rebounds and 2 assists.
Marcus Camby played 32 minutes and was 1/3, 0/1 on 3’s, and ¾ from the line for 5 points, and he made 9 rebounds and 2 blocks.
Allen Iverson played 35 minutes and was 7/18 and 4/6 from the line for 18 points, and he made 3 rebounds and 2 steals.
Carmelo Anthony played 34 minutes and was 8/20 and ¼ on 3’s for 17 points, and he made 8 rebounds, 3 steals, and 1 assist.
The next game will be Tuesday, November 27 in Denver to play the Pacers at 7 pm mountain time. Neither the Pacers nor the Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights.
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Here are some quick links that you can use to find a place where you might post a link to Quest and/or to Quest content.
HOLD MOUSE HERE TO EXPAND THIS MENU OF PLACES ON WHICH YOU CAN POST A LINK TO QUEST:
BASKETBALL SITES THAT ARE OPEN FOR CONTENT FROM ANYONE
Note: Beware of "layered" sites. None of the following are layered sites, which are sites that allow contributions from the public only in hard to find, low traffic areas, while the main areas are off limits for public input and are only for a chosen few. All of the following have at least some notable traffic, and all of them allow relatively equal and open participation. The order is from most recommended to least recommended, based on about half a dozen factors.
Bleacher Report Open Posting Site
Inside Hoops NBA Forum
Real GM NBA and Team Forums
Pro Sports Daily NBA Forum
Basketball Forum NBA Forum
Sporting News NBA Forum
Hoops Hype NBA Forum
Armchair GM Open Posting Site
SportsTwo NBA Forum
NBA Dimensions NBA Forum
OTR Basketball Forums NBA Forum
NBA Boards NBA Forum
NBA Wire NBA Forum
KFFL NBA Forum
Note: there are other forums, but they are all very low traffic and activity compared to the ones above.
MESSAGE BOARDS AT HUGE COROPORATIONS
The Fox NBA board is very low traffic, and the MSNBC NBA board doesn't exist anymore. The CBS Sports NBA Message Board is a layered site; you can NOT post topics nor expect to be considered seriously there until you have spent a few years posting there. We do not recommend CBS Sports. So the only real, fully open NBA forum hosted by a big corporation is the ESPN message board. Be forewarned though that the ESPN board is dominated by very young fans who make very short comments. On the other hand, it is a high traffic site, so we won't stop you from posting a Quest link at ESPN if you want to.
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SEARCH THE QUEST FOR THE RING--THE EQUIVALENT OF MORE THAN 15 BOOKS ABOUT BASKETBALL
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SEARCH THE 15 BOOKS / 1.5 MILLION WORDSSTAT COUNTER IS THE PRIMARY QUEST TRAFFIC COUNTER SINCE IT IS TRULY EXCELLENT
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THE QUEST FOR THE RING FEED
