Step right up and see the circus that is the Nuggets. On one night, under the big top in Denver when everything was arranged in their favor for a win, Allen Iverson thrilled the crowd by scoring 51 points on 18/27 shooting. But Linas Kleiza, a solidly improved GF averaging 22 minutes and an ESPN rating of 17, hardly played (just 7 minutes). The very next night, Kleiza plays 30 minutes and is Iverson’s favorite right hand man as the Nuggets utterly destroy the Mavericks in the paint 64-36 and win the game in Dallas 122-109. The Nuggets feasted on the relatively soft defense of the Mavericks, and the error-prone Nuggets had only 7 turnovers, whereas the Mavericks had 19. Erick Dampier and Dirk Nowitzki won the battle of the boards for Dallas, but the turnover differential offset that and Iverson did everything but a lot of rebounding to lead the Nuggets to the win.
I guess the night before, Coach Karl must have had another one of his “damn, I forgot to put that guy in” moments when he realized that he had forgotten to insert Kleiza. You would think that a guy who always remembers not to insert players he has benched for no known good reason, most recently Yakhouba Diawara, would at least remember to insert into games players who have NOT been benched. But if you think that you are apparently wrong. Sometimes, Karl forgets stuff like putting Kleiza in. But why Adrian Dantley, Doug Moe, or another assistant doesn’t jog his memory on things like that is mysterious. Are those assistant coaches afraid to remind him of things he is overlooking, or are they just dense? In plain English, the Nuggets coaching staff obviously wasted Iverson’s 51 points game and blew the Lakers game.
In this game, both teams playing on back to back nights, but the game was in Dallas, and I and most other Nuggets fans had this one penciled in as a loss. The win in Dallas may at first glance seem like a consolation prize for the loss. But it’s not, because Iverson, Kleiza, Kenyon Martin, and Marcus Camby worked their tails off for this win, and the Mavericks are not intense enough on defense these days to be the dominant team that we have all grown to know in recent years. So the Nuggets should have won both games. This was no “consolation prize”. And, in any event, only teams that have little or no future in the playoffs settle for consolation prize wins anyway.
The Nuggets in general and Iverson in particular pick and choose which teams they are going to keep the ball moving on offense on. If the Nuggets are playing a team that is defending well, the Nuggets seem to throw in the towel with respect to keeping the ball moving and getting it to the man who is most open for the shot. They commit more turnovers than almost every other team, so I guess they figure keeping the ball moving is a hopeless task when they are playing a tough defensive team. When they are playing a tough defense, they generally become selfish and have a shoot first and look for an open man last approach. At the same time, several players’ shooting goes to hell in a hand basket. So the Nuggets doom themselves to lose from the start when they are playing a tough defensive team.
But when the defense is softer, they say to themselves “Ok, this defense is not very good, so we’ll play like a Championship team offensively in this game.” Does this way of thinking make any sense? No, of course not, it makes no sense whatsoever. But this is what you get when there isn’t enough confidence shown by the coaching staff and, at the same time, not enough guidance on how to play from that staff. You get players starting to pick and choose which teams they think they can beat with a free lance style and which teams they will bow in submission to. The actual style on offense tends to go from one extreme to another, depending on whether the inferiority complex that the Nuggets have toward good defensive teams kicks in or not. In other words, when you don’t have hardly any set plays or offensive schemes, and your players are free lancing, you are at risk of completely different playing styles appearing in different games. You reap what you sow, and if you don’t sow anything, who knows what wild weeds are going to come up? The Nuggets are wild and free, and also most likely doomed in my opinion, because too much freedom in a team sport is not going to get you anywhere in the playoffs.
So if you are confused about why the Nuggets lost to the Lakers and then beat the Mavericks, now you know, broadly speaking, why this crazy stuff happened. The Laker loss was entirely due to a court management failure, especially the fact that Kleiza hardly played. Then the Mavericks win was due to the Nuggets realizing that the Mavericks are not currently playing tough and intense defense, so they celebrated by kicking their offense into high gear. Had this game been against the Spurs or the Rockets, who play intense defense just about every game, it would have been the big, ugly loss that everyone was expecting. Folks assuming the Nuggets were going to lose big just didn’t realize that Avery Johnson doesn’t have his Mavericks playing defense intensively yet.
But I wouldn’t worry about whether Nowitzki and his solid supporting cast are going to be a major factor in the West playoffs this season. As PG Devin Harris said regarding the Dallas defense so far this season: “Hopefully these are growing pains we won't have later on. But this is fixable. It's all attitude. I'll bet money that Avery will make it better." If I were you, I wouldn’t bet against Avery Johnson getting his team to play better defense. He and his team live in fear of not being able to contain the Warriors in the playoffs, and that fear, if nothing else, will light a fire under their behinds to get their defense up to speed in time for the playoffs.
Memo to NBA coaches: if the Nuggets struggle and play stupidly against your team offensively, then you deserve a pat on the back for playing solid defense. But if the Nuggets pass the ball around and have a high shooting percentage, then your defense needs work. So if you want to know whether your team is up to speed defensively, don’t get lost in all the statistical mumbo-jumbo, just wait until you play the Nuggets and then you will know for sure how good your defense is by how good or bad the Nuggets offense is. Use the Nuggets to judge your defense, it’s almost sure to be an accurate indicator.
Iverson has finally exploded, for the first time as a Nugget, in the way that makes him a living legend. I was hoping and praying this would happen last year, but the truly amazing only happens rarely, and usually only after you have given up hoping for it. As a desperate Nuggets fan, I hope for anything that is shocking, anything to make up for the poor coaching, anything to shake my team out of self-defeating ways of thinking and playing. Melo is too young and too mellow to shock the Nuggets into being more confident and more consistent, so Iverson was always the only chance for that.
Now we will see if the Nuggets respond to Iverson’s shockingly confident, talented, and leave it all out there play. Could Iverson, the man without a true team, succeed in shocking his teammates into playing confidently and well? It’s only a theory that it could work. In the real world, I don’t think any player has ever actually by himself, with relatively poor coaching around him, carried his team defiantly into the depths of the playoffs. Except for Allen Iverson in 2001. So if there is anyone currently who might be able to pull it off in 2008, it’s most likely Iverson.
If Iverson fails to bring the forlorn Nuggets along the road to glory, he will still have an opportunity to get a ring by becoming some other team’s living legend following 2008-09 when his contract is up. If Iverson fails in his attempt to do the nearly impossible and moves on, and then Karl is finally gone, and then Camby is traded or retired, then the fate of the Denver franchise will be returned to Carmelo Anthony. For his sake, and for the sake of the Nuggets and all Nuggets fans, I hope Melo gets the coach he needs and has to have, if and when that cold and lonely day comes.
ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of December 7, 2007
The Nuggets are under an unusually dangerous and damaging alert status, so the following update is provided.
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 from recent years and a little inconsistent 3 Points
2. Inability of Melo and Najera to give Camby enough rebounding and defending support inside: 5 Points
BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 5-20 Points. The severity varies depending on the circumstances, mainly Karl’s beliefs and moods, and whether the other team is playing well enough to take advantage of the Nuggets playing with not enough breathers. 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 points reported are for the use, or should I say the misuse, of the reserves for the most recent games, with the most weight being given to the game being reported on here. The bad use of reserves score for this game is 9 points.
2. Lack of adequate offensive schemes: 7 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: 0 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: 43, 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
It’s under development. The complications involved explain why (a) there are no formal statistics anywhere on the internet on the subject of how much non-starters contribute to different teams and (b) why coaches are not compared statistically the way players are. There are a lot of variables that come into the use of reserves that interfere with the objective of judging their use. Statisticians call this “statistical noise,” and if you have a substantial amount of it, then what you are trying to do with your statistics becomes very difficult or next to impossible.
GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
3.0 He’s thinking seriously of and getting ready to make a break for the exits.
ESPN PLAYER RATINGS FOR THIS GAME:
You can tell how well they played at a glance. 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 8 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.
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NUGGETS
Allen Iverson: Game 62.9 Season 40.1
Marcus Camby: Game 35.5 Season 32.2
Linas Kleiza: Game 34.7 Season 17.1
Kenyon Martin: Game 29.7 Season 18.3
Carmelo Anthony: Game 23.8 Season 37.1
Anthony Carter: Game 16.4 Season 18.3
Eduardo Najera: Game 14.5 Season 14.5
J.R. Smith: Game 8.1 Season 16.9
Yakhouba Diawara: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Bobby Jones: 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
MAVERICKS
Dirk Nowitzki: Game 55.1 Season 37.2
Jerry Stackhouse: Game 42.1 Season 15.6
Josh Howard: Game 26.2 Season 33.8
DeSagana Diop: Game 17.1 Season 15.3
Jason Terry: Game 15.1 Season 27.9
Devin Harris: Game 14.4 Seasion 24.3
Erick Dampier: Game 12.3 Season 10.9
Brandon Bass: Game 6.8 Season 17.7
NOTE: these stats do not correct for the big differences in playing times. Players with small minutes would get a higher rating if they had more minutes.
OBSERVATIONS ON RATINGS:
It was Iverson and Nowitzki in a shoot-out at the Dallas corral, but it was a gunslinger named Linas Kleiza, who was out on the range somewhere instead of in the arena last night in Denver, who provided the surprising needed supplement to Iverson’s 35 points on 12/19 shooting. Kleiza was there to make up for another relatively poor outing for the young deputy Carmelo Anthony. Kleiza’s ESPN rating has jumped from about 12 to about 17 from last season to this. Meanwhile, the sheriffs, big men Kenyon Martin and Marcus Camby, finally got some jump shots to fall. (Note, the night before in Denver, against the Lakers, Kleiza was benched by George Karl for no known good reason, he wasn’t really out on the range.)
As for the Mavericks, it seems that having both their starting guards have off nights, combined with their relatively soft defense, did them in this time against Iverson and the wild bunch.
NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court. All Nuggets who played at least 8 minutes are shown.
Linas Kleiza: +22
Eduardo Najera: +21
Allen Iverson: +16
Marcus Camby: +9
J.R. Smith: +7
Carmelo Anthony: +3
Anthony Carter: -5
Kenyon Martin: -8
OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
Smith didn’t produce in this game and has now actually dropped below Kleiza for the season, but at least the Nuggets didn’t get killed while he was out there. Kleiza and Iverson complement each other well, with this game being just one of many examples. Najera is having a surprisingly good season so far, while Carmelo Anthony is stuck in dullsville, for the most part.
NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
All Nuggets who played at least 8 minutes are shown.
Eduardo Najera played 25 minutes and was 2/4, 1/1, and 0/1 from the line for 5 points, and he made 7 rebounds, 1 assist, and 1 steal.
Anthony Carter played 23 minutes and was 3/5 and 1/3 from the line for 7 points, and he made 4 assists, 3 rebounds, and 1 block.
J.R. Smith played 15 minutes and was 1/3 and 1/2 on 3’s for 3 points, and he made 3 assists, and 1 steal.
Linas Kleiza played 30 minutes and was 8/14, 3/5 on 3’s, and 4/4 from the line for 23 points, and he made 4 rebounds and 2 steals.
Kenyon Martin played 35 minutes and was 8/12, 0/1 on 3’s, and 2/4 from the line for 18 points, and he made 7 rebounds and 1 steal.
Marcus Camby played 33 minutes and was 3/4 and 2/2 from the line for 8 points, and he made 14 rebounds, 5 blocks, 2 assists, and 1 steal.
Carmelo Anthony played 37 minutes and was 9/30, 0/1 on 3’s, and 5/9 from the line for 23 points, and he made 6 rebounds, 3 assists, and 1 steal.
Allen Iverson played 43 minutes and was 12/19, and 11/13 from the line 35 points, and he made 12 assists, 6 steals, and 1 rebound.
NEXT UP
The next game will be Saturday, December 8 in Denver to play the Kings at 7 pm mountain time. The Kings will be playing on back to back nights, while the Nuggets will not. So the Nuggets will enjoy both the home court and the extra rest advantages.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Allen Iverson, the Man Without a Team, Scores 51, But the Nuggets Lose to the Lakers 111-107
The Nuggets were out foxed by Phil Jackson, Kobe Bryant, and the other Lakers in the 4th quarter, for the second time in a week, and lost at home 111-107, despite 51 points by Allen Iverson, and I can’t believe I just had to write that because it’s like a Greek tragedy and I can not stand Greek tragedies because I don’t understand how the people in them can be so stupid. One of your players scores 51 points at home and you didn’t have a way to win. Are you both crazy and stupid, just crazy, or just stupid? Iverson made 14 of 21 jump shots, mostly midrange and from the left side. Iverson's 51 points are the most by a Nuggets player since Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf had 51 at Utah on Dec. 7, 1995. The Nuggets' franchise record for points in a game is held by David Thompson, who had 73 against Detroit on April 9, 1978.
Don’t be fooled by popular misconceptions. Many think that the Nuggets are a running team but they are not, as I have discussed in several recent reports. Many think they are a team where Carmelo Anthony and Allen Iverson are depended on to win games, but they are not, because there is no system in place for that and, for that matter, George Karl wants the possessions and touches to be shared in the approach to scoring, though his player rotations and lack of offensive planning doom that from the start. And many think the Nuggets can’t beat good teams because they are terrible at defending, and that is not true either. The Nuggets are just about average in defending talent wise, although they are below average in desire to defend. But their offense is so inconsistent that they give up a lot of points in transition. Keep in mind that the Nuggets have more turnovers than just about any team in the NBA.
I’m going to be honest with you, I am really, really mad at the Nuggets not having done squat in the off season to improve on their almost nonexistent offensive schemes and strategies. Too many players don’t have a clue as to what is going to happen from one Nuggets possession to the next. Is Iverson in the do it all himself mode, as he was for 3 quarters in this game, before the Lakers shut the party down by ramping up the intensity of the double teams, or is he going to start looking for who is open and who is cutting? Only Iverson knows at any given time. There is no planning in advance and, more importantly, there is little consistency from one game to the next, from one quarter to the next, and from one play to the next. There are no role players on the Nuggets, because no one knows what their role is.
Allen Iverson has scored 21,298 points and Kobe Bryant has scored 19,811, but Bryant has won three rings and Iverson has been stuck with teams that don’t know what they’re doing, so all his fantastic scoring games, unlike those of Bryant, have been for the player records only and not for any championships. Iverson’s career ESPN rating is 40.23, whereas Bryant’s is 38.05. But Iverson has always been the man without a team, and I’ll be damned if he doesn’t remain that today, because the Nuggets are not really a team at all. They are just a bunch of expensive free lancers. They don’t come correct with the right moves that a team makes if it wants to maximize the chances of winning. For example, they don’t have the right players in at the right times, and they don’t do squat for offensive planning. The extent to which they make it up as they go along puts the Nuggets in a League of their own, maybe even a Universe of their own.
I’m embarrassed to be a Nuggets fan and to see Iverson just about as wasted on the Nuggets as he was on the 76er’s. I’m sorry, but I warned you that I would be a major grinch if the Nuggets lost to the Lakers despite having what I call a double home court advantage. They had the actual home court advantage, plus the advantage of playing after two nights off, whereas the Lakers were playing on back to back nights.
I told you recently that Iverson’s minutes are a key indicator of how little confidence George Karl has in the Nuggets, and probably also how little confidence he has in his own abilities to coach. The greater the number of minutes Iverson plays, the more broken down Karl’s confidence is in the rest of the team. So since Iverson played literally the entire 48 minutes (isn’t there a union rule against that?) you can conclude that Karl has lost all confidence, and so he has no where near enough confidence to be qualified to coach a professional basketball team. If you are the coach and you don’t think a team that some respected experts have said has the potential to be in the West final or even the NBA Championship this year, it’s time to leave. Retire now before the Nuggets, who are always teetering on the brink of total collapse under Karl, do in fact collapse.
So I warned everybody in advance that there would be hell to pay if the Nuggets lost this game, and I certainly am not in a position to back down from that after Iverson’s historic game. Always take my advance warnings seriously, because I can see losses that should have been wins from miles away. The only way to get hell paid is for Karl to go. Don’t look at me, I have nothing the devil wants.
Because Iverson is a living legend, he is the only player that Karl can not claim has a bad personality, one not suited for NBA playoff basketball. Karl’s inaccurate analysis of the connection between personality and athletic performance torments him and, obviously, damages his ability to coach a team. But he feels a little bit of peace with how he looks at Iverson, because Iverson is untouchable, since Iverson took his team to the finals and competed with the heart of a champion. Notice I didn’t say “personality of a champion.” Sorry George, it was Iverson’s heart, talent, and hard work, and not his personality, that had the 76ers in the 2001 NBA Championship.
The bottom line is that George Karl is one of the most negative and least confident coaches in the NBA today, and also one of the most negative and least confident of all time.
It was a disgrace to the Nuggets and a crime against Iverson that only 6 players played along side Iverson, who scored 51 points on 18/27 shooting. It was an absolute and total disgrace that Iverson was too tired in the 4th to overcome the double teams and win the game while making it up as he went. Yakhouba Diawara, the defensive specialist and the 20th most accurate 3-point shooter in the NBA, was benched for no known good reason. GF Linas Kleiza, in his 3rd year, vastly improved in shot selection, and improved defensively, was almost entirely benched. As usual, when I saw the ridiculously low 7 minutes that he played, I searched and searched for how he was injured. But there was no injury, and Kleiza was benched for no known good reason. Bobby Jones, with raw offensive and defensive talent that will, if nothing else, disrupt the best laid plans a little of masterminds such as Phil Jackson, was benched for no known good reason. I would have been happy if two of the three between Diawara, Kleiza, and Jones were given 25 minutes in total. But no, they were all kept out of action and unable to help Iverson out by the guy who sees a bad personality everywhere he looks.
The way Karl runs the team, the Nuggets are more like a circus than a basketball team. The entertainment value is high but the Championship potential is rock bottom. Is this the Denver owner Stan Kroenke’s real objective in paying all the huge salaries on the Nuggets, and in paying the luxury tax, and in having Karl as the Coach: to provide great entertainment, but not a fully competitive team? Maybe this whole Nuggets thing is nothing more than a huge experiment to see how many tickets and how much merchandise can be sold if the team is run as if it was a circus, for maximum entertainment. Running it that way is, of course, inconsistent with running the team as a Championship seeking basketball squad. I’m just speculating, but this whole Nuggets odyssey sure is suspicious, isn’t it?
ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of December 5, 2007
The Nuggets are under an unusually dangerous and damaging alert status, so the following update is provided.
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 from recent years and a little inconsistent 2 Points
2. Inability of Melo and Najera to give Camby enough rebounding and defending support inside: 5 Points
BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 5-20 Points. The severity varies depending on the circumstances, mainly Karl’s beliefs and moods, and whether the other team is playing well enough to take advantage of the Nuggets playing with not enough breathers. 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 points reported are for the use, or should I say the misuse, of the reserves for the most recent games, with the most weight being given to the game being reported on here. The bad use of reserves score for this game is 12 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: 0 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: 49, 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
It’s under development. The complications involved explain why (a) there are no formal statistics anywhere on the internet on the subject of how much non-starters contribute to different teams and (b) why coaches are not compared statistically the way players are. There are a lot of variables that come into the use of reserves that interfere with the objective of judging their use. Statisticians call this “statistical noise,” and if you have a substantial amount of it, then what you are trying to do with your statistics becomes very difficult or next to impossible.
GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
3.0 He’s thinking seriously of and getting ready to make a break for the exits.
ESPN PLAYER RATINGS FOR THIS GAME:
You Can Tell How Well They Played at a Glance.
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 8 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
Allen Iverson: Game 73.9 Season 38.9
Carmelo Anthony: Game 40.4 Season 37.7
Eduardo Najera: Game 24.9 Season 14.5
Marcus Camby: Game 18.1 Season 32.0
Kenyon Martin: Game 15.8 Season 17.6
Anthony Carter: Game 8.6 Season 18.6
J.R. Smith: Game 1.9 Season 17.5
Linas Kleiza: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Yakhouba Diawara: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Bobby Jones: 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
LAKERS
Kobe Bryant: Game 46.0 Season 42.9
Derek Fisher: Game 35.8 Season 20.0
Vladimir Radmanovic: Game 33.5 Season 15.7
Lamar Odom: Game 25.2 Season 23.3
Luke Walton: Game 15.7 Season 16.1
Andrew Bynum: Game 15.4 Season 25.7
Chris Mihm: Game 14.2 Season 8.7
Jordan Farmar: Game 12.9 Season 18.2
Trevor Ariza: Game 9.7 Season 8.1
Sasha Vujacic: Game 4.0 Season 9.8
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:
The thing that jumps out the most besides Iverson's off the charts rating is the fact that the Lakers had 10 players out there, giving them 10 chances for a player to help his team to victory, whereas Coach Scrooge for the Nuggets fielded only 7 players.
NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court. All Nuggets who played at least 8 minutes is shown.
Carmelo Anthony: +1
Marcus Camby: -8
Allen Iverson: -4
Anthony Carter: +2
Kenyon Martin: -5
Eduardo Najera: +5
J.R. Smith: -11
NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
All Nuggets who played at least 8 minutes are shown.
Eduardo Najera played 23 minutes and was ¾, 2/3 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line 10 points, and he made 7 rebounds and 3 assists.
Anthony Carter played 23 minutes and was ¼, 0/1 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 4 points, and he made 3 assists, 1 steal, and 1 rebound.
J.R. Smith played 21 minutes and was 1/10, 0/5 on 3’s, and 5/6 friom the line for 7 points, and he made 1 steal and 1 rebound.
Kenyon Martin played 34 minutes and was 2/8 and 2/6 from the line for 6 points, and he made 8 rebounds, 3 blocks, 2 assists, and 1 steal.
Marcus Camby played 39 minutes and was 0/3 and 0/2 from the line for 0 points, and he made 20 rebounds, 1 block, and 1 assist.
Carmelo Anthony played 44 minutes and was 10/23, 0/3 on 3’s, and 6/7 from the line for 26 points, and he made 8 rebounds, 4 assists, and 4 steals.
Allen Iverson played literally the entire game, 48 minutes, and was 18/27, 0/1 on 3’s, and 15/18 from the line for 51 points, and he made 8 assists, 2 rebounds, and 1 steal.
NEXT UP
The next game will be Thursday, December 6 in Dallas to play the Mavericks at 6 pm mountain time. Both the Mavericks and the Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights.
Don’t be fooled by popular misconceptions. Many think that the Nuggets are a running team but they are not, as I have discussed in several recent reports. Many think they are a team where Carmelo Anthony and Allen Iverson are depended on to win games, but they are not, because there is no system in place for that and, for that matter, George Karl wants the possessions and touches to be shared in the approach to scoring, though his player rotations and lack of offensive planning doom that from the start. And many think the Nuggets can’t beat good teams because they are terrible at defending, and that is not true either. The Nuggets are just about average in defending talent wise, although they are below average in desire to defend. But their offense is so inconsistent that they give up a lot of points in transition. Keep in mind that the Nuggets have more turnovers than just about any team in the NBA.
I’m going to be honest with you, I am really, really mad at the Nuggets not having done squat in the off season to improve on their almost nonexistent offensive schemes and strategies. Too many players don’t have a clue as to what is going to happen from one Nuggets possession to the next. Is Iverson in the do it all himself mode, as he was for 3 quarters in this game, before the Lakers shut the party down by ramping up the intensity of the double teams, or is he going to start looking for who is open and who is cutting? Only Iverson knows at any given time. There is no planning in advance and, more importantly, there is little consistency from one game to the next, from one quarter to the next, and from one play to the next. There are no role players on the Nuggets, because no one knows what their role is.
Allen Iverson has scored 21,298 points and Kobe Bryant has scored 19,811, but Bryant has won three rings and Iverson has been stuck with teams that don’t know what they’re doing, so all his fantastic scoring games, unlike those of Bryant, have been for the player records only and not for any championships. Iverson’s career ESPN rating is 40.23, whereas Bryant’s is 38.05. But Iverson has always been the man without a team, and I’ll be damned if he doesn’t remain that today, because the Nuggets are not really a team at all. They are just a bunch of expensive free lancers. They don’t come correct with the right moves that a team makes if it wants to maximize the chances of winning. For example, they don’t have the right players in at the right times, and they don’t do squat for offensive planning. The extent to which they make it up as they go along puts the Nuggets in a League of their own, maybe even a Universe of their own.
I’m embarrassed to be a Nuggets fan and to see Iverson just about as wasted on the Nuggets as he was on the 76er’s. I’m sorry, but I warned you that I would be a major grinch if the Nuggets lost to the Lakers despite having what I call a double home court advantage. They had the actual home court advantage, plus the advantage of playing after two nights off, whereas the Lakers were playing on back to back nights.
I told you recently that Iverson’s minutes are a key indicator of how little confidence George Karl has in the Nuggets, and probably also how little confidence he has in his own abilities to coach. The greater the number of minutes Iverson plays, the more broken down Karl’s confidence is in the rest of the team. So since Iverson played literally the entire 48 minutes (isn’t there a union rule against that?) you can conclude that Karl has lost all confidence, and so he has no where near enough confidence to be qualified to coach a professional basketball team. If you are the coach and you don’t think a team that some respected experts have said has the potential to be in the West final or even the NBA Championship this year, it’s time to leave. Retire now before the Nuggets, who are always teetering on the brink of total collapse under Karl, do in fact collapse.
So I warned everybody in advance that there would be hell to pay if the Nuggets lost this game, and I certainly am not in a position to back down from that after Iverson’s historic game. Always take my advance warnings seriously, because I can see losses that should have been wins from miles away. The only way to get hell paid is for Karl to go. Don’t look at me, I have nothing the devil wants.
Because Iverson is a living legend, he is the only player that Karl can not claim has a bad personality, one not suited for NBA playoff basketball. Karl’s inaccurate analysis of the connection between personality and athletic performance torments him and, obviously, damages his ability to coach a team. But he feels a little bit of peace with how he looks at Iverson, because Iverson is untouchable, since Iverson took his team to the finals and competed with the heart of a champion. Notice I didn’t say “personality of a champion.” Sorry George, it was Iverson’s heart, talent, and hard work, and not his personality, that had the 76ers in the 2001 NBA Championship.
The bottom line is that George Karl is one of the most negative and least confident coaches in the NBA today, and also one of the most negative and least confident of all time.
It was a disgrace to the Nuggets and a crime against Iverson that only 6 players played along side Iverson, who scored 51 points on 18/27 shooting. It was an absolute and total disgrace that Iverson was too tired in the 4th to overcome the double teams and win the game while making it up as he went. Yakhouba Diawara, the defensive specialist and the 20th most accurate 3-point shooter in the NBA, was benched for no known good reason. GF Linas Kleiza, in his 3rd year, vastly improved in shot selection, and improved defensively, was almost entirely benched. As usual, when I saw the ridiculously low 7 minutes that he played, I searched and searched for how he was injured. But there was no injury, and Kleiza was benched for no known good reason. Bobby Jones, with raw offensive and defensive talent that will, if nothing else, disrupt the best laid plans a little of masterminds such as Phil Jackson, was benched for no known good reason. I would have been happy if two of the three between Diawara, Kleiza, and Jones were given 25 minutes in total. But no, they were all kept out of action and unable to help Iverson out by the guy who sees a bad personality everywhere he looks.
The way Karl runs the team, the Nuggets are more like a circus than a basketball team. The entertainment value is high but the Championship potential is rock bottom. Is this the Denver owner Stan Kroenke’s real objective in paying all the huge salaries on the Nuggets, and in paying the luxury tax, and in having Karl as the Coach: to provide great entertainment, but not a fully competitive team? Maybe this whole Nuggets thing is nothing more than a huge experiment to see how many tickets and how much merchandise can be sold if the team is run as if it was a circus, for maximum entertainment. Running it that way is, of course, inconsistent with running the team as a Championship seeking basketball squad. I’m just speculating, but this whole Nuggets odyssey sure is suspicious, isn’t it?
ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of December 5, 2007
The Nuggets are under an unusually dangerous and damaging alert status, so the following update is provided.
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 from recent years and a little inconsistent 2 Points
2. Inability of Melo and Najera to give Camby enough rebounding and defending support inside: 5 Points
BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 5-20 Points. The severity varies depending on the circumstances, mainly Karl’s beliefs and moods, and whether the other team is playing well enough to take advantage of the Nuggets playing with not enough breathers. 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 points reported are for the use, or should I say the misuse, of the reserves for the most recent games, with the most weight being given to the game being reported on here. The bad use of reserves score for this game is 12 points
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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: 0 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: 49, 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
It’s under development. The complications involved explain why (a) there are no formal statistics anywhere on the internet on the subject of how much non-starters contribute to different teams and (b) why coaches are not compared statistically the way players are. There are a lot of variables that come into the use of reserves that interfere with the objective of judging their use. Statisticians call this “statistical noise,” and if you have a substantial amount of it, then what you are trying to do with your statistics becomes very difficult or next to impossible.
GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
3.0 He’s thinking seriously of and getting ready to make a break for the exits.
ESPN PLAYER RATINGS FOR THIS GAME:
You Can Tell How Well They Played at a Glance.
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 8 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.
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NUGGETS
Allen Iverson: Game 73.9 Season 38.9
Carmelo Anthony: Game 40.4 Season 37.7
Eduardo Najera: Game 24.9 Season 14.5
Marcus Camby: Game 18.1 Season 32.0
Kenyon Martin: Game 15.8 Season 17.6
Anthony Carter: Game 8.6 Season 18.6
J.R. Smith: Game 1.9 Season 17.5
Linas Kleiza: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Yakhouba Diawara: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Bobby Jones: 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
LAKERS
Kobe Bryant: Game 46.0 Season 42.9
Derek Fisher: Game 35.8 Season 20.0
Vladimir Radmanovic: Game 33.5 Season 15.7
Lamar Odom: Game 25.2 Season 23.3
Luke Walton: Game 15.7 Season 16.1
Andrew Bynum: Game 15.4 Season 25.7
Chris Mihm: Game 14.2 Season 8.7
Jordan Farmar: Game 12.9 Season 18.2
Trevor Ariza: Game 9.7 Season 8.1
Sasha Vujacic: Game 4.0 Season 9.8
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:
The thing that jumps out the most besides Iverson's off the charts rating is the fact that the Lakers had 10 players out there, giving them 10 chances for a player to help his team to victory, whereas Coach Scrooge for the Nuggets fielded only 7 players.
NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court. All Nuggets who played at least 8 minutes is shown.
Carmelo Anthony: +1
Marcus Camby: -8
Allen Iverson: -4
Anthony Carter: +2
Kenyon Martin: -5
Eduardo Najera: +5
J.R. Smith: -11
NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
All Nuggets who played at least 8 minutes are shown.
Eduardo Najera played 23 minutes and was ¾, 2/3 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line 10 points, and he made 7 rebounds and 3 assists.
Anthony Carter played 23 minutes and was ¼, 0/1 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 4 points, and he made 3 assists, 1 steal, and 1 rebound.
J.R. Smith played 21 minutes and was 1/10, 0/5 on 3’s, and 5/6 friom the line for 7 points, and he made 1 steal and 1 rebound.
Kenyon Martin played 34 minutes and was 2/8 and 2/6 from the line for 6 points, and he made 8 rebounds, 3 blocks, 2 assists, and 1 steal.
Marcus Camby played 39 minutes and was 0/3 and 0/2 from the line for 0 points, and he made 20 rebounds, 1 block, and 1 assist.
Carmelo Anthony played 44 minutes and was 10/23, 0/3 on 3’s, and 6/7 from the line for 26 points, and he made 8 rebounds, 4 assists, and 4 steals.
Allen Iverson played literally the entire game, 48 minutes, and was 18/27, 0/1 on 3’s, and 15/18 from the line for 51 points, and he made 8 assists, 2 rebounds, and 1 steal.
NEXT UP
The next game will be Thursday, December 6 in Dallas to play the Mavericks at 6 pm mountain time. Both the Mavericks and the Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Denver Nuggets Mix Video-Alright Now, That's a Good One
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
Yakhouba Diawara Highlights Video
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
LeBron James & Carmelo Anthony in a High School Game Video
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
LeBron James is #23 in the Green and Carmelo Anthony is #22 in the yellow.
LeBron James is #23 in the Green and Carmelo Anthony is #22 in the yellow.
Allen Iverson Video: Warriors Never Give Up
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
Monday, December 3, 2007
Videos: Nuggets 115 Heat 89
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 same video with two different music tracks to choose from... I liked them both so I posted them both.
The same video with two different music tracks to choose from... I liked them both so I posted them both.
The Nuggets Rout Yet Another Troubled Team in Denver, the Heat, 115-89
The Nuggets led from start to finish and the outcome was never in any doubt, as the hurting Heat had no chance in this game. The final score was 115-89. The Miami Heat looks like a has been team of aging veterans mixed with inexperienced young players. Both Shaquille O’Neal and Dwyane Wade are bothered by the lingering effects of injuries, and O’Neal seems to have the same problem that Nene has had: he’s overweight. Pat Riley is one of the best coaches in the NBA, but he will almost certainly be unable to turn his team around this year to any big extent.
Wade’s minutes per game are down from 27.4 ppg to 20.0 ppg, and his shooting percentage is down from .491 to .446 from last year to this. This drop off is so large, that Wade this season is scoring at a lower level than his overall career average. Furthermore, he is getting just 3.5 rebounds per game this season versus a career average of 4.9 rpg and 4.7 rpg last year. And he is making 5.4 assists per game versus a 6.3 apg career average and 7.5 apg last year. So his production is down 15-20% from his career averages, and since he is Miami’s most important scorer, the Heat are in deep trouble. In this particular game, between the heavy garbage time and committing 3 fouls in the 1st quarter, Wade played only 19 minutes. So he didn’t have a full opportunity to have a break out game.
I’ve been complaining about Carmelo Anthony being down a little in points and accuracy from last year to this, but fortunately his drop off is a walk in the park compared with Wade’s. Despite the small drop off in points and shooting accuracy from last year to this, he is still above his overall career averages in everything except rebounds. In accuracy, Melo so far this season is .469, versus .476 last season, but versus .456 career. In points per game, Melo so far this season is 25.3, versus 28.9 last season, but versus 24.2 for the career. So Melo is down about the same number of points per game that Wade is down by, but Melo’s level is 5 ppg higher, and Melo, unlike Wade, remains above his career averages in accuracy and points. So Denver has not been hurt by the Melo drop off as much as Miami has been hurt by the Wade drop off. However, the Nuggets are going to be hurt a lot more by the Melo decline in scoring when they meet the quality teams in the NBA, as we have already started to see with the disasters at Houston and Los Angeles.
In assisting, at 4.3 a game, Melo is well above both last year, 3.8 apg, and the career average, 3.0 apg. In rebounding, at 4.9 this season, Melo is below both last season, 6.0 rpg, and his career average, 5.6 rpg. This is why I have been calling Melo a little too mellow so far this season. He has not been as aggressive as he could and should be on the boards. Melo has been a card carrying member of the “let Camby take care of the rebounding” club. This club is responsible for 2-3 Nuggets losses already and should be disbanded and made illegal as soon as possible.
And now, time out for a Nene update: Nene has lost a substantial amount of weight and appears to have his weight down to the optimum, so that he will be able to hustle and maneuver as well as he can in the paint without being too thin, which would sacrifice the defensive power that comes from bulk alone. The Denver trainers have to work their heads off with this squad, but they appear to have done the job again. Without Nene, the Nuggets are all Camby all the time in rebounding, which is just not enough to compete with the good rebounding and penetrating teams.
A series of really troubled basketball teams have been appearing at the Pepsi Center in Denver over the last month, and the Nuggets have been feasting on them. To their great credit, they have taken every cream puff team the schedule coughed up for them in the season’s first month and pounded them into dust in the Mile High City. These routs have been every bit as large as or larger than corresponding routs done by teams like the Spurs and the Suns on these hurting teams.
But guess which team in the NBA has had the easiest schedule so far? You guessed it, the Nuggets. The Nuggets are in for quite a shock if they don’t know that the level of their opponents is going to be far higher in the weeks ahead than it has been during the first 5 weeks of the season.
As I write this, it is my sad duty to report that the Nuggets have not beaten a single winning team yet. Not even one. The Cavaliers, due to the sprained index finger of LeBron James, have dropped to 9-9, which is also the record of the Pacers whom the Nuggets beat with a massive 2nd half rally in Indianapolis. The Wizards, who briefly had a winning record, have dropped to 8-9. So it is really true, the Nuggets have not beaten any winning teams yet. And, although they have had some nice routs against losing teams, they have lost to two losing teams, the Clippers and the Knicks though, fortunately, both of these eggs were laid on the road.
Against winning teams, the Nuggets are 0-3 so far. Now this Wednesday, December 5, in Denver, the Nuggets have a golden opportunity to get their first win against a good, winning team, the Los Angeles Lakers. Not only will the Nuggets have home court, they will also be playing after two nights, whereas the Lakers will be playing on back to back nights. So if you think I am a grinch already, wait until you see me if the Nuggets lose this game. I think I will have turned into a real grinch at that point. But don’t worry, if I do become a real grinch, I’ll keep to myself for the holidays so I don’t disturb anyone’s festive cheer.
On a major forum I fleshed out my criticism of the benching of Yakhouba Diawara, and it’s too good not to put it out here at home:
Yak has gone from starting and playing 20-25 minutes a game to not playing at all except in garbage time. This is 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. Yak is now the 20th most accurate 3-point shooter in the NBA! Only J.R. Smith is better on the Nuggets, and the margin between the two is very, very small. 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.
Yak 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?
And how about having some real justification for completely benching a player? What I saw in the Denver Post was that Karl benched Yak because he didn't produce offensively for 3 games. That's false. In his last 20 minute game before he was benched, Yak had 7 points in 21 minutes, at Houston, on 50% shooting. Yak's main crime was that he didn't take enough shots in the minutes he was given in the games before his benching. And those minutes were slip sliding away as it was.
You can not win with Karl and his policies are contradictory. If you jack up shots aggressively you will get benched and very possibly criticized in the media if even a small percentage of those shots are considered poor. But if you play it conservatively as Yak has and avoid taking any off balance and well contested shots, and you don't get the ball enough due to shrinking minutes and the lack of sets where the ball is passed around, you end up benched because of the sheer lack of points.
The bottom line is that there is a common denominator here: the reserves can't win whether they improve or not, and whether they do what has been requested or not. So at the same time, the Nuggets can not win a series against any of the top 6-7 teams of the West unless the game and roster management improves. Justice is served.
ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of December 3, 2007
The Nuggets are under an unusually dangerous and damaging alert status, so the following update is provided.
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 2 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 average 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: 0 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: 46, 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
This feature is suspended and is under review. The only purpose for it is to prove mathematically that George Karl is an inferior Coach, but that should be obvious to close watchers of basketball without fancy statistical proof. The problem with it is that a lot of time is involved to produce a complex set of statistics that are no where else, for each game. About 30 minutes, to be exact. This might reduce the quality of these reports a little in other respects. The other problem with it is that it is even more complicated then I let on when I introduced it. I had to make some background calculations that I didn’t bore the reader with. And anyone without a good understanding of basic math and intermediate statistics will not understand the technicalities behind the system no matter how much I try to explain it, so they probably will not trust it. Furthermore, the technicalities are boring compared to basketball, let’s face it.
So in the days ahead, I will be thinking about how to compromise between the simple Reserve Watch that was done for a few games, which was quite honestly too simple to show how bad a Coach Karl is, and the much more complex Reserve Watch that was recently introduced and is now suspended. Once I have a good compromise between the too simple and the too complicated system, I’ll roll it out, hopefully before the end of the year.
Sorry to any reader who was gung ho for the complicated approach. Unless I can get the time to produce it cut down, I won’t be able to proceed with it. But now that I think of it, I might bring the full, complex system back for the playoffs, assuming the Nuggets make it to them.
George Karl’s relative incompetence drove me to develop it, but like so much that Karl generates, I fear the cost of it is greater than the benefit. I have to be careful, because if I don’t keep my guard up, just being indirectly associated with Karl is going to start to negatively affect my performance as a fan and a writer. In other words, I fear I may become yet another dude being jerked around something fierce by Karl’s inexplicable moves. To say that Karl is depressing is an understatement. It’s time for me to get another inoculation shot against becoming demoralized by his sorry performance.
GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
3.0 He’s thinking seriously of and getting ready to make a break for the exits.
ESPN PLAYER RATINGS FOR THIS GAME:
You Can Tell How Well They Played at a Glance!
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.
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NUGGETS
Carmelo Anthony: Game 48.1 Season 37.6
Kenyon Martin: Game 41.1 Season 17.8
Marcus Camby: Game 35.3 Season 32.8
Allen Iverson: Game 30.3 Season 36.9
Eduardo Najera: Game 21.0 Season 14.0
Anthony Carter: Game 19.4 Season 20.2
J.R. Smith: Game 16.7 Season 18.6
Linas Kleiza: Game 8.6 Season 16.8
Yakhouba Diawara: Game 0.7 Season 7.9
Bobby Jones: 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
HEAT
Dwyane Wade: Game 19.9 Season 30.8
Alonzo Mourning: Game 18.9 Season 12.0
Dorell Wright: Game 17.3 Season 11.2
Jason Williams: Game 16.9 Season 20.0
Udonis Haslem: Game 16.1 Season 23.9
Chris Quinn: Game 14.1 Season 4.4
Alexander Johnson: Game 13.4 Season 3.4
Shaquille O’Neal: Game 12.4 Season 27.5
Ricky Davis: Game 10.1 Season 22.6
Daequan Cook: Game 9.5 Season 14.3
Anfernee Hardaway: Game 0.8 Season 9.5
Mark Blount: Game 0.7 Season 5.6
NOTE: these stats do not correct for the big differences in playing times. Players with small minutes would get a higher rating if they had more minutes.
COMMENTS ON RATINGS: Melo and especially Kenyon Martin kicked it into high hear. Kleiza was off. Yakhouba Diawara’s rating was partly due to the fact that he played limited minutes in garbage time. As for the Heat, holy jeepers! This will undoubtedly be one of the worst games of the season for them. It was the nightmare to end all nightmares. It is a testimony to how good a coach Pat Riley is that the game was not even more of a rout. Riley was able to get decent performances from Dorell Wright, Chris Quinn, and Alexander Johnson to partly offset Dwyane Wade, Shaquille O’Neal, Udonis Haslem, and Ricky Davis being so far below normal.
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.
Carmelo Anthony: +32
Marcus Camby: +30
Allen Iverson: +29
Anthony Carter: +22
Kenyon Martin: +16
Eduardo Najera: +10
Linas Kleiza: +10
J.R. Smith: +2
Yakhouba Diawara: -6
It was another downer on the J.R. Smith rollercoaster. Keep your seatbelts fastened at all times when you are watching this dude play. .
NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
Linas Kleiza played 19 minutes and was 3/7, 0/1 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 8 points, and he made 1 rebound and 1 assist.
Eduardo Najera played 22 minutes and was 3/6, 2/3 on 3’s, and 2/4 from the line for 10 points, and he made 5 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 steals.
Anthony Carter played 28 minutes and was 3/6 for 6 points. He also made 7 assists, 2 rebounds, and a steal.
Kenyon Martin played 25 minutes and was 9/13 and 2/3 from the line for 20 points, and he made 8 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, and a block.
J.R. Smith played 29 minutes and was 4/11, 0/4 on 3’s, and 3/3 from the line for 11 points, and he made 3 assists and 3 rebounds.
Marcus Camby played 31 minutes and was 1/7 and 5/8 from the line for 7 points, and he made 21 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 blocks, and a steal.
Allen Iverson played 36 minutes and was 9/19 and 2/3 on 3’s for 20 points, and he made 5 assists, 1 steal, and 1 rebound.
Carmelo Anthony played 27 minutes and was 12/19, 2/2 on 3’s, and 4/5 from the line for 30 points, and he made 6 rebounds, 3 assists, and a steal.
NEXT UP
The next game will be Wednesday, December 5, in Denver to play the Lakers at 7 pm mountain time. The Lakers will be playing on back to back nights, while the Nuggets will be not be. So the Nuggets will enjoy both the home court and the rest advantages.
Wade’s minutes per game are down from 27.4 ppg to 20.0 ppg, and his shooting percentage is down from .491 to .446 from last year to this. This drop off is so large, that Wade this season is scoring at a lower level than his overall career average. Furthermore, he is getting just 3.5 rebounds per game this season versus a career average of 4.9 rpg and 4.7 rpg last year. And he is making 5.4 assists per game versus a 6.3 apg career average and 7.5 apg last year. So his production is down 15-20% from his career averages, and since he is Miami’s most important scorer, the Heat are in deep trouble. In this particular game, between the heavy garbage time and committing 3 fouls in the 1st quarter, Wade played only 19 minutes. So he didn’t have a full opportunity to have a break out game.
I’ve been complaining about Carmelo Anthony being down a little in points and accuracy from last year to this, but fortunately his drop off is a walk in the park compared with Wade’s. Despite the small drop off in points and shooting accuracy from last year to this, he is still above his overall career averages in everything except rebounds. In accuracy, Melo so far this season is .469, versus .476 last season, but versus .456 career. In points per game, Melo so far this season is 25.3, versus 28.9 last season, but versus 24.2 for the career. So Melo is down about the same number of points per game that Wade is down by, but Melo’s level is 5 ppg higher, and Melo, unlike Wade, remains above his career averages in accuracy and points. So Denver has not been hurt by the Melo drop off as much as Miami has been hurt by the Wade drop off. However, the Nuggets are going to be hurt a lot more by the Melo decline in scoring when they meet the quality teams in the NBA, as we have already started to see with the disasters at Houston and Los Angeles.
In assisting, at 4.3 a game, Melo is well above both last year, 3.8 apg, and the career average, 3.0 apg. In rebounding, at 4.9 this season, Melo is below both last season, 6.0 rpg, and his career average, 5.6 rpg. This is why I have been calling Melo a little too mellow so far this season. He has not been as aggressive as he could and should be on the boards. Melo has been a card carrying member of the “let Camby take care of the rebounding” club. This club is responsible for 2-3 Nuggets losses already and should be disbanded and made illegal as soon as possible.
And now, time out for a Nene update: Nene has lost a substantial amount of weight and appears to have his weight down to the optimum, so that he will be able to hustle and maneuver as well as he can in the paint without being too thin, which would sacrifice the defensive power that comes from bulk alone. The Denver trainers have to work their heads off with this squad, but they appear to have done the job again. Without Nene, the Nuggets are all Camby all the time in rebounding, which is just not enough to compete with the good rebounding and penetrating teams.
A series of really troubled basketball teams have been appearing at the Pepsi Center in Denver over the last month, and the Nuggets have been feasting on them. To their great credit, they have taken every cream puff team the schedule coughed up for them in the season’s first month and pounded them into dust in the Mile High City. These routs have been every bit as large as or larger than corresponding routs done by teams like the Spurs and the Suns on these hurting teams.
But guess which team in the NBA has had the easiest schedule so far? You guessed it, the Nuggets. The Nuggets are in for quite a shock if they don’t know that the level of their opponents is going to be far higher in the weeks ahead than it has been during the first 5 weeks of the season.
As I write this, it is my sad duty to report that the Nuggets have not beaten a single winning team yet. Not even one. The Cavaliers, due to the sprained index finger of LeBron James, have dropped to 9-9, which is also the record of the Pacers whom the Nuggets beat with a massive 2nd half rally in Indianapolis. The Wizards, who briefly had a winning record, have dropped to 8-9. So it is really true, the Nuggets have not beaten any winning teams yet. And, although they have had some nice routs against losing teams, they have lost to two losing teams, the Clippers and the Knicks though, fortunately, both of these eggs were laid on the road.
Against winning teams, the Nuggets are 0-3 so far. Now this Wednesday, December 5, in Denver, the Nuggets have a golden opportunity to get their first win against a good, winning team, the Los Angeles Lakers. Not only will the Nuggets have home court, they will also be playing after two nights, whereas the Lakers will be playing on back to back nights. So if you think I am a grinch already, wait until you see me if the Nuggets lose this game. I think I will have turned into a real grinch at that point. But don’t worry, if I do become a real grinch, I’ll keep to myself for the holidays so I don’t disturb anyone’s festive cheer.
On a major forum I fleshed out my criticism of the benching of Yakhouba Diawara, and it’s too good not to put it out here at home:
Yak has gone from starting and playing 20-25 minutes a game to not playing at all except in garbage time. This is 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. Yak is now the 20th most accurate 3-point shooter in the NBA! Only J.R. Smith is better on the Nuggets, and the margin between the two is very, very small. 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.
Yak 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?
And how about having some real justification for completely benching a player? What I saw in the Denver Post was that Karl benched Yak because he didn't produce offensively for 3 games. That's false. In his last 20 minute game before he was benched, Yak had 7 points in 21 minutes, at Houston, on 50% shooting. Yak's main crime was that he didn't take enough shots in the minutes he was given in the games before his benching. And those minutes were slip sliding away as it was.
You can not win with Karl and his policies are contradictory. If you jack up shots aggressively you will get benched and very possibly criticized in the media if even a small percentage of those shots are considered poor. But if you play it conservatively as Yak has and avoid taking any off balance and well contested shots, and you don't get the ball enough due to shrinking minutes and the lack of sets where the ball is passed around, you end up benched because of the sheer lack of points.
The bottom line is that there is a common denominator here: the reserves can't win whether they improve or not, and whether they do what has been requested or not. So at the same time, the Nuggets can not win a series against any of the top 6-7 teams of the West unless the game and roster management improves. Justice is served.
ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of December 3, 2007
The Nuggets are under an unusually dangerous and damaging alert status, so the following update is provided.
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 2 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 average 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: 0 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: 46, 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
This feature is suspended and is under review. The only purpose for it is to prove mathematically that George Karl is an inferior Coach, but that should be obvious to close watchers of basketball without fancy statistical proof. The problem with it is that a lot of time is involved to produce a complex set of statistics that are no where else, for each game. About 30 minutes, to be exact. This might reduce the quality of these reports a little in other respects. The other problem with it is that it is even more complicated then I let on when I introduced it. I had to make some background calculations that I didn’t bore the reader with. And anyone without a good understanding of basic math and intermediate statistics will not understand the technicalities behind the system no matter how much I try to explain it, so they probably will not trust it. Furthermore, the technicalities are boring compared to basketball, let’s face it.
So in the days ahead, I will be thinking about how to compromise between the simple Reserve Watch that was done for a few games, which was quite honestly too simple to show how bad a Coach Karl is, and the much more complex Reserve Watch that was recently introduced and is now suspended. Once I have a good compromise between the too simple and the too complicated system, I’ll roll it out, hopefully before the end of the year.
Sorry to any reader who was gung ho for the complicated approach. Unless I can get the time to produce it cut down, I won’t be able to proceed with it. But now that I think of it, I might bring the full, complex system back for the playoffs, assuming the Nuggets make it to them.
George Karl’s relative incompetence drove me to develop it, but like so much that Karl generates, I fear the cost of it is greater than the benefit. I have to be careful, because if I don’t keep my guard up, just being indirectly associated with Karl is going to start to negatively affect my performance as a fan and a writer. In other words, I fear I may become yet another dude being jerked around something fierce by Karl’s inexplicable moves. To say that Karl is depressing is an understatement. It’s time for me to get another inoculation shot against becoming demoralized by his sorry performance.
GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
3.0 He’s thinking seriously of and getting ready to make a break for the exits.
ESPN PLAYER RATINGS FOR THIS GAME:
You Can Tell How Well They Played at a Glance!
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 48.1 Season 37.6
Kenyon Martin: Game 41.1 Season 17.8
Marcus Camby: Game 35.3 Season 32.8
Allen Iverson: Game 30.3 Season 36.9
Eduardo Najera: Game 21.0 Season 14.0
Anthony Carter: Game 19.4 Season 20.2
J.R. Smith: Game 16.7 Season 18.6
Linas Kleiza: Game 8.6 Season 16.8
Yakhouba Diawara: Game 0.7 Season 7.9
Bobby Jones: 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
HEAT
Dwyane Wade: Game 19.9 Season 30.8
Alonzo Mourning: Game 18.9 Season 12.0
Dorell Wright: Game 17.3 Season 11.2
Jason Williams: Game 16.9 Season 20.0
Udonis Haslem: Game 16.1 Season 23.9
Chris Quinn: Game 14.1 Season 4.4
Alexander Johnson: Game 13.4 Season 3.4
Shaquille O’Neal: Game 12.4 Season 27.5
Ricky Davis: Game 10.1 Season 22.6
Daequan Cook: Game 9.5 Season 14.3
Anfernee Hardaway: Game 0.8 Season 9.5
Mark Blount: Game 0.7 Season 5.6
NOTE: these stats do not correct for the big differences in playing times. Players with small minutes would get a higher rating if they had more minutes.
COMMENTS ON RATINGS: Melo and especially Kenyon Martin kicked it into high hear. Kleiza was off. Yakhouba Diawara’s rating was partly due to the fact that he played limited minutes in garbage time. As for the Heat, holy jeepers! This will undoubtedly be one of the worst games of the season for them. It was the nightmare to end all nightmares. It is a testimony to how good a coach Pat Riley is that the game was not even more of a rout. Riley was able to get decent performances from Dorell Wright, Chris Quinn, and Alexander Johnson to partly offset Dwyane Wade, Shaquille O’Neal, Udonis Haslem, and Ricky Davis being so far below normal.
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.
Carmelo Anthony: +32
Marcus Camby: +30
Allen Iverson: +29
Anthony Carter: +22
Kenyon Martin: +16
Eduardo Najera: +10
Linas Kleiza: +10
J.R. Smith: +2
Yakhouba Diawara: -6
It was another downer on the J.R. Smith rollercoaster. Keep your seatbelts fastened at all times when you are watching this dude play. .
NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
Linas Kleiza played 19 minutes and was 3/7, 0/1 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 8 points, and he made 1 rebound and 1 assist.
Eduardo Najera played 22 minutes and was 3/6, 2/3 on 3’s, and 2/4 from the line for 10 points, and he made 5 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 steals.
Anthony Carter played 28 minutes and was 3/6 for 6 points. He also made 7 assists, 2 rebounds, and a steal.
Kenyon Martin played 25 minutes and was 9/13 and 2/3 from the line for 20 points, and he made 8 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, and a block.
J.R. Smith played 29 minutes and was 4/11, 0/4 on 3’s, and 3/3 from the line for 11 points, and he made 3 assists and 3 rebounds.
Marcus Camby played 31 minutes and was 1/7 and 5/8 from the line for 7 points, and he made 21 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 blocks, and a steal.
Allen Iverson played 36 minutes and was 9/19 and 2/3 on 3’s for 20 points, and he made 5 assists, 1 steal, and 1 rebound.
Carmelo Anthony played 27 minutes and was 12/19, 2/2 on 3’s, and 4/5 from the line for 30 points, and he made 6 rebounds, 3 assists, and a steal.
NEXT UP
The next game will be Wednesday, December 5, in Denver to play the Lakers at 7 pm mountain time. The Lakers will be playing on back to back nights, while the Nuggets will be not be. So the Nuggets will enjoy both the home court and the rest advantages.
Nuggets Shots: December 2 Versus Heat
ALLEN IVERSON AND CARMELO ANTHONY
CARMELO ANTHONY
CARMELO ANTHONY
ALLEN IVERSON
J.R. SMITH
MARCUS CAMBY
KENYON MARTIN
CARMELO ANTHONY
CARMELO ANTHONY
ALLEN IVERSON
J.R. SMITH
MARCUS CAMBY
KENYON MARTIN
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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.
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LAKERS SIGN IN HOLLYWOOD
The Nuggets are scary, but Lakers fans can breathe a sigh of relief when they think of who coaches them!
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