The Nuggets Lose to the Bobcats 119-116 Despite a Huge Marcus Camby Game

This Bobcats game was a repeat of the December 5 in Denver versus the Lakers, where Iverson scored 51 points on 18/27 shooting and with 8 assists, but the Coaches forgot to put Kleiza in the game, and Kobe Bryant and his strong cast of co-stars used the Kobe Bryant Offense to outfox the Nuggets and to steal the game. The Nuggets make it up as we go offense sputtered to a stall out in the 4th quarter in both that game and again in this Bobcats game. In the Lakers game, Iverson and Kobe were both superstars, but the Nuggets were at home and rested, while the Lakers were not. That was a game that was lost largely due to the lack of set plays that you can rely on to keep turnovers down and to prevent scoring from drying up completely, especially in the 4th quarter. Iverson’s game, which may end up being his very best this season, was squandered by the Nuggets with their soft, wishful thinking coaching, poor closing skills, and general lack of intelligence and strategy.

Fast forward to this Bobcats game, and you find that nothing has changed in the past month. In this one, Marcus Camby was the superstar and even more than that, with 23 rebounds, 6 blocks, and 6 assists, to go with 20 points on 7/14 shooting, with 6/6 from the line to boot in a year when he has been missing a lot of free throws. But the Nuggets squandered this once or twice a season type of game from Camby. Last time it was Kleiza due to coaching error and this time the key player missing was Nene, due to his health problem. Nene has had some type of tumor removed and is awaiting results of tests to see whether or not the tumor was malignant. Since George Karl did play J.R. Smith to some extent, this game was not lost due to any huge rotation blunders. But the lack of anything resembling an offensive system was again a huge factor in this loss, as the Nugget’s offense dissolved away into a morass of aimlessness and futility in the 4th quarter. The Nuggets led by 3 going into the 4th and after scoring just 17 points in the period, lost the game 119-116 to a Bobcats team that lacks all-star or superstar caliber players at the moment.

So it was if the Nuggets said to the Bobcats: “we have better players, and Camby is playing one of his very best games of the year tonight, but heck, we don’t really know what we are doing on offense, so why don’t you have this game, it will make your fans feel better anyway.” If a team could talk, this is what the Nuggets were saying, and it is sure a farce, isn’t it? If I’m Iverson or Camby, and my team lost the game I put everything I had on the court, am I going to have the maximum motivation needed for an encore in a more important game in the future? Very possibly not, so when you lose a game like this, you are paving the way for more losses that could have been wins in the future.

There is no excuse for squandering performances such as Iverson’s versus the Lakers and Camby’s in this game. If a player leaves it all out on the court and his team is a very talented, ambitious, and reasonably hard working one, the most likely reason why the game was lost was that the coaches did not do all their work, either before the game, during the game, or most likely both.

I hate to preach, but I have to in this case, and heck, this game was played in the Bible belt, so you will have to excuse me for doing a Baptist style game report. You never, ever want to lose a game like this, where your best players have played better than their best players, and you obviously could have won the game if you knew what you were doing on the basketball court. Gerald Wallace had a massive game, but it was offset by Camby’s massive game. Jason Richardson was no more than J.R. Smith on steroids. And Emeka Okafur was fouling and turning it over in the 4th quarter rather than scoring and blocking. Neither of them was in a position to actually win this game for the Bobcats, so the Nuggets had to blow the game offensively in order to lose, which is exactly what they did. The Bobcats are a decent team, but the Nuggets have more than enough talent to beat a team like the Bobcats, but they didn’t use the talent in a smart way at the critical time. Teams like the Spurs, Suns, Mavericks, and Lakers lose winnable games on occasion, but not at least they do so without an embarrassing lack of offensive style consistency.

Both teams were very shorthanded for this game, as the Injury Summary, a new feature whose time has definitely come, shows in detail. Starting with this report, the Injury Summary will be the first feature following the article part of the game report.

J.R. Smith, the best 3-point shooter for the Nuggets, should have played the whole 4th quarter, because the Nuggets were getting killed by the three-point shot and their offense was broken down, but he played only 8 minutes of it. Carter and Iverson were a combined 1/7 from downtown in this game. I’m afraid that it is nothing more than a pipe dream to think that Carter, who has been surprising from long range so far, can be a dependable three point shooter for the balance of the season, and especially in the playoffs.

The Bobcats dominated the 3-point shooting in this game and it is tough to win any game with the amount of dominance they had with these big money shots. Gerald Wallace, for the first time in his career, has a three point shot, which along with the arrival this year of Jason Richardson, who is one of the best 3-point shooters, has helped to make the Bobcats a decent 3-point shooting team, which is a big improvement from last year. The other two Bobcats on their “3-point squad” are SG Raymond Felton, who is working on his three, and Matt Carroll, who is already very good with his. The Bobcats were 10/26 or 38.5% from long range, whereas the Nuggets were a very poor 4/21, or 19.0%. J.R. Smith led the Nuggets on threes, and even he was just 2/6.

That’s a good lead-in to move on to The J.R. Smith Fiasco, Part 3. In part 1, which was in the Nuggets 118 Timberwolves 107 game report, I showed that the benching of J.R. Smith as of the 1st of the year was more obnoxious than most of George Karl’s benchings, many of which are very obnoxious, since Smith played extremely well in limited minutes in the last 4 games before his benching. I then went on to explain the most likely motivation of Karl for not giving Smith significant playing time, that he wants him to be traded to another team, against the wishes of the Denver front office and against the wishes of Smith himself. I then made a big attempt to explain many possible reasons why Karl has come to hate J.R. Smith to the point where he refuses to teach him or to play him in significant minutes.

In part 2, which was in the Nuggets 109 76’ers 96 game report, I showed, using just 2007-08 per time performance measures, including turnovers by the way, that Smith is one of the better players on the Nuggets despite his turnovers, even while being jerked around on playing time and being the only Nugget under a lot of pressure to try to get more playing time. Here is a quick summary of those:

Points: Smith is 3rd of all Nuggets
Points: Smith is 38th of all NBA players
Assists: Smith is 4th of all Nuggets
Steals: Smith is 4th of all Nuggets
Rebounds: Smith is 10th of all Nuggets
Turnovers: Smith is 13th of all Nuggets
Assist/Turnover Ratio: Smith is 8th of all Nuggets

Now in part 3, I explain why the Nuggets are extremely likely to lose in the 1st round of the playoffs unless Smith plays. First I will show a couple of advanced performance measures, where the individual things are combined together to give overall ratings and rankings.

From an advanced statistics site, here is an advanced but relatively simple per time performance measure called productivity.

Productivity = (Points +Rebounds + Assists + Blocks + Steals - Turnovers) / Minute

NUGGETS PRODUCTIVITY (PER 48 Minutes.)
1 Anthony 44.2
2 Iverson 41.3
3 Camby 41.3
4 Martin 34.1
5 Smith 34.1
6 Nene 33.6
7 Kleiza 32.6
8 Carter 28.3
9 Najera 27.4
10 Diawara 19.7
11 Hunter 19.7
12 Atkins 19.2
13 Wafer 14.9

Even though turnovers are included in this, Smith still comes out very high: 5th.

But what about missed shots? Last year, Smith was .441 in overall accuracy, but this year, he's .424, a substantial drop. But his 3-point accuracy has remained almost exactly the same, at a very high .390.

If you subtract missed shots and missed free throws from the productivity stat above, you get another per time performance measure called efficiency.

NUGGETS EFFICIENCY PER 48 MINUTES
Through the first 34 games of the season
1 Camby 33.9
2 Anthony 28.0
3 Iverson 27.6
4 Martin 24.0
5 Kleiza 22.6
6 Carter 22.2
7 Nene 21.8
8 Smith 21.6
9 Najera 20.3
10 Diawara 13.1
11 Hunter 9.9
12 Atkins 6.1
13 Wafer 1.4

Smith drops to 8th. Carter, Kleiza, and Martin move ahead of Smith when missed shots are added to the basic productivity performance measure.

Smith's decline in non-3-point shooting from last season to this, while small, has given Coach Karl another justification for the benching. The huge dilemma for the Nuggets, though, is that you can't win a Western Conference playoff series without at rock bottom an average 3-point shooting squad, and Smith is the best 3-point shooter on a poor 3-point shooting team.

The Nuggets will not win a playoff series unless J.R. Smith is ready to and allowed to, in substantial playoff minutes, sink threes while keeping his missed shots and turnovers at a rate no worse than his average since he came on to the Nuggets. But Smith will not be ready unless he gets regular playing time, with about 18 minutes a game the safe minimum. The Nuggets will be easy to defeat in the playoff unless George Karl becomes less hostile toward J.R. Smith.

Even forgetting about the crucial 3-point scoring aspect, and after missed shots are factored in, Smith is still the 8th most efficient Nugget, only slightly behind Kleiza, Carter, and Nene, and still ahead of Najera. So even if you forget about the 3-point shooting aspect, (which is a heavy bias against Smith) but include all the missed shots, Smith's efficiency tells you that he should definitely never ever be deep benched unless the team wants another team to pick him up.

The problem is, and it's a whopper, is that the Nuggets are a bad three-point shooting team without J.R. Smith, pure and simple. Does anyone think, for example, after the Suns recently schooled the Nuggets with long range shooting that they will not do exactly the same thing if they meet up with the Nuggets in the playoffs?

If Smith is held out, the Nuggets will be the only bad 3-point shooting team in the Western Conference playoffs, with the possible exception of the Jazz. And the Jazz have acquired Kyle Korver to try to avoid the fate that faces the Nuggets without Smith. They knew it would have been futile to go up against the Spurs or Suns this year without a better 3-point shooting squad.

If I were you, I wouldn't put much hope on Najera and Carter sinking the necessary threes under heavy playoff pressure. Nor would I put much hope even on Kleiza or Iverson for that matter. They can hit some, but they can't get enough of them.

As for Carmelo Anthony, he had an outstanding 3-point shot for Team USA, but the distance of the three is slightly less in international basketball. But still, his drop-off in long range shooting from international to NBA ball is huge and makes no sense. So along with playing Smith, the Nuggets desperately need to get Melo to attempt and to hit more threes.

Every playoff team in the West needs solid 3-point shooters. I just checked the current list of the top 120 3-point shooters in the NBA ranked by percentage made. Since there are 30 teams in the NBA, the average team should have 4 players on this list. But as you would suspect, many of the West Conference playoff teams have 5 or even, in the case of the Warriors, 6 capable 3-point shooters.

The Nuggets have 5 to start with. Smith is the best 3-point shooter on the Nuggets. If you take him out, you are left with just 4, so you are short 1 against most of the good teams you might play in the playoffs.

More importantly, check the ranks of the Nugget's five good three point shooters, within the group of 120:

Smith is #34
Najera is #69
Iverson is #90
Kleiza is #105
Anthony is #114

As you can see, the Nuggets are bunched near the bottom of the ranked list of 3-point shooters. The Nuggets have exactly one among the top 60, and barely 3 among the top 90.

If you remove the Nugget's best, Smith, from this lineup, you have done very heavy damage to the 3-point capability of the team. What do you have left? The worst 3-point shooting playoff team, and by a wide margin against everyone except maybe the Jazz even with Korver.

Here are the solid 3-point shooters on the other potential playoff teams.

# of SOLID THREE POINT SHOOTERS BY % ACCURACY BY TEAM
Spurs: Barry, Bowen, Bonner, Ginobili, Finley
Lakers: Fisher, Farmar, Radnamovic, Bryant
Suns: Nash, Bell, Barbosa, Hill, Marion
Mavericks: Terry, Howard, Nowitzki, Stackhouse
Jazz: Williams, Okur, Korver
Warriors: Harrington, Azubuike, Peitrus, Davis, Barnes, Jackson
Trailblazers: Jones, Blake, Webster, Jack, Roy
Hornets: Stojakovic, Peterson, Paul, Butler, Jackson
Rockets: Head, Battier, McGrady, Alston
Nuggets: Smith, Najera, Iverson, Kleiza, Anthony

Can anyone name any player on this list other than Smith, who is benched now, or who has a good chance of being benched for the playoffs? Seriously, for real, is there even one?

Why should the Nuggets be the only team that disarms before it goes into battle?

INJURY SUMMARY: PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE

NUGGETS
Chucky Atkins: He was diagnosed with a right groin/abdominal strain (Sports Hernia) on 1/9 and underwent successful surgery on 1/11. He is expected to be sidelined a minimum of eight weeks.
Nene: He has taken an indefinite leave to tend to a tumor growth.
Eduardo Najera: A right elbow hyper-extension. The sore elbow is affecting his shooting.

BOBCATS
Sean May: He will miss the season after undergoing microfracture knee surgery in early October.
Adam Morrison: He had season-ending surgery on his left knee to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament.
Othello Harrington: He has a knee injury, and will probably miss the rest of the season.
Derek Anderson: Bruised knee.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of January 15, 2008

The Nuggets are under an ORANGE ALERT, on account of the following problems.

INJURIES & SUSPENSIONS
1. Chucky Atkins injury 18 points
2. Nene illness 14 points
3. Eduardo Najera injury 10 points

SEVERE AND UNEXPECTED PLAYER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
There are none at this time.

BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl has completely benched one or more players who should not be benched due to his incompetence, hatred of the player, and/or his having the ulterior motive of forcing the player off the team. The problem points would be the points you would have if the player were injured.

No one is currently completely benched who should not be: 0 points.

2. One or more players are partially benched; their minutes are being artificially limited due to abstract and subjective factors that the Denver Coaches believe are more important than performance on the court.

J.R. Smith was partially benched: 6 points.

2. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 1-12 Points. The severity varies depending on the circumstances, mainly Karl’s beliefs and moods, and whether the other team is playing well enough to take advantage of the Nuggets playing with not enough breathers, with too many fouls, and so forth. 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 3 points.

3. The Nuggets have extreme inconsistency and a truly excessive number of turnovers because they have neither a system nor even a partial system on offense. The damage caused by this would be up to 20 points, except that Iverson reduces the damage. In broad terms, 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 games. If it were neither, I call the name of that strategy the "share the wealth" strategy. More specifically, the Nuggets lack enough tried and tested offensive plays that they can run game after game, perfecting them as they go, and having everyone automatically on the same page for those plays.

Lack of an adequate number of offensive plays and schemes: 8 Points

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

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 59, which constitutes ORANGE 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. 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.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE ALERT STATUS
Injury disaster has once again struck the Nuggets, with Chucky Atkins, Nene, and Eduardo Najera out. The loss to Charlotte of what would have been an easily won game had the alert status been green or grey illustrates the accuracy of the alert system.

RESERVE WATCH
Number of Players Who Played at Least 6 Minutes: Nuggets 8 Bobcats 8
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 8 Bobcats 7

Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 19
Bobcats Non-Starters Points: 34

Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 12
Bobcats Non-Starters Rebounds: 10

Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 4
Bobcats Non-Starters Assists: 3

This feature is under development, and it will be gradually expanded. The complications involved explain why there are no formal statistics anywhere on the internet on the subject of how much non-starters contribute to different teams, and also 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: He's hiding under his seat on the sidelines

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

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

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

NUGGETS PLAYER RATINGS
Marcus Camby: Game 61.3 Season 32.9
Carmelo Anthony: Game 48.1 Season 39.0
Allen Iverson: Game 34.4 Season 41.1
Kenyon Martin: Game 25.3 Season 19.8
J.R. Smith: Game 18.2 Season 15.2
Linas Kleiza: Game 10.0 Season 17.3
Anthony Carter: Game 9.8 Season 20.9
Yakhouba Diawara: Game 8.2 Season 5.6

Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Nene: Did Not Play-Injury
Eduardo Najera: Did Not Play-Injury

Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Von Wafer: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision

BOBCATS PLAYER RATINGS
Gerald Wallace: Game 61.4 Season 34.5
Emeka Okafur: Game 40.6 Season 26.9
Matt Carroll: Game 27.9 Season 13.1
Jason Richardson: Game 26.6 Season 31.4
Raymond Felton: Game 26.3 Season 25.5
Nazr Mohammed: Game 16.6 Season 14.8
Jeff McInnis: Game 13.3 Season 10.4
Jared Dudley: Game 9.7 Season 7.7

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:
Whoever gets the most points wins the game, something which, like when you ignore the forest for the trees, gets overlooked a little sometimes in thinking about and discussing players and games. The Bobcat’s three best three-point shooters, Wallace, Carroll, and Richardson, were all deadly from beyond the arc in this game, and aside from making a big impact toward winning a game, hitting a bunch of threes does wonders for your player rating, as it should.

Camby exactly matched Wallace, as both stormed their way to what will be one of their very biggest games of the year.

On the downside, the Nuggets had Kleiza and Carter playing much less productively than usual, while the Bobcats had everyone playing close to normal or better, so it is no surprise they won this game.

NUGGETS REAL PLAYER RATINGS—EXPLANATION
The Real Player Rating reflects reality better than the gross player rating, since it washes out differences in playing times among the players. The straight up player rankings are obviously heavily affected by how many playing minutes the various players get. With many teams, you can rely on the coach to give his various players roughly the playing time that makes the most sense for his team. Unfortunately, some coaches bring other factors besides actual performance into their rotation decisions. Therefore, it makes good sense to introduce a new and extremely important statistic that Nuggets 1 calls the Real Per Minute Player Rating. As the name implies, this is the gross ESPN player rating divided by the number of minutes. The statistic is called Real Player Rating for short.

This statistic allows anyone to see whether or not players who play only a small number of minutes are doing better than their low gross rating will indicate. You can spot diamond in the rough players who are not getting all the respect and playing time due to them. At the same time, it will allow anyone to see whether players with a lot of minutes are playing worse than, as well as, or better than their gross rating shows.

In summary, the Real Player Rating allows the reader, at a glance, to see exactly how well each player is doing without regard to playing time, which is subject to coaching error and subjective and less important factors such as a player's personality. The Real Player Rating provides the real truth-pure knowledge not available anywhere else.

SCALE FOR THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
1.60 More Rare Superstar Plus-Above Normal Even For Michael Jordan
1.40 1.60 Superstar Performance Plus-A Michael Jordan Type Game
1.20 1.40 Spectacular Performance-Star Plus
1.05 1.20 Star Performance
0.90 1.05 Outstanding Game
0.80 0.90 Very Good Game
0.70 0.80 Good Game
0.60 0.70 Mediocre Game
0.50 0.60 Poor Game
0.40 0.50 Very Poor Game
0.25 0.40 Bad Game-Near Disaster
Less 0.25 Total Disaster

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

1. Marcus Camby, Den 1.572
2. Gerald Wallace, Cha 1.364
3. Carmelo Anthony, Den 1.203
4. Emeka Okafor, Cha 1.160
5. Jared Dudley, Cha 1.078…Dudley played just 9 minutes.
6. Matt Carroll, Cha 1.033
7. J.R. Smith, Den 0.958
8. Jason Richardson, Cha 0.887
9. Allen Iverson, Den 0.782
10. Kenyon Martin, Den 0.723
11. Nazr Mohammed, Cha 0.722
12. Raymond Felton, Cha 0.658
13. Yakhouba Diawara, Den 0.586
14. Jeff McInnis, Cha 0.532
15. Linas Kleiza, Den 0.526
16. Anthony Carter, Den 0.327

OBSERVATIONS ON THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Marcus Camby was the one superstar of this game, and he continues to lead the NBA by a wide margin in blocks. And he is second only to Dwight Howard of the Magic in rebounding, with 1 rebound fewer than Howard per game so far. To say that Camby is on course to be the defensive player of the year again would be an understatement.

PF Gerald Wallace and Carmelo Anthony were spectacular, but C Omeka Okafur and SF Jared Dudley, in limited minutes off the bench, were stars for the Bobcats. Two backup shooting guards were outstanding in this game: Matt Carroll for the Bobcats and J.R. Smith for the Nuggets.

Iverson was not as outstanding as usual, and Kleiza was off, while Anthony Carter disappeared from the radar screen as soon as I jinxed him by calling him Iverson #2 and singing his praises after his spectacular game against the Magic. Unlike last year’s Iverson #2, Earl Boykins, this one is not consistently good, which is a huge signal that the Nuggets are going to be in great difficulty at the point guard position for the playoffs, unless one of the sick men, Chucky Atkins, is able to storm back into shape. Atkins is no Kidd, Paul, or Nash, but if he ever gets back into form, at least you know the bottom is not going to fall out of his game just because he’s up against a monster team like the Spurs or the Suns. Unfortunately, you do know that the bottom is likely to fall out in the case of Carter.

NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court. All Nuggets who played at least 10 minutes are shown.

J.R. Smith: +9
Linas Kleiza: +7
Yakhouba Diawara: +6
Carmelo Anthony: -1
Anthony Carter: -4
Marcus Camby: -4
Allen Iverson: -12
Kenyon Martin: -16

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
There are right now undoubtedly general managers who are scheming up ways they might take advantage of the rift between Smith and his Coach in order to extract Smith from the Nuggets and onto their team with the least amount of expense possible. In other words, they are going to try to see whether they can get the Nuggets to part with Smith for less than what he is worth. Here you see one snapshot of the value of Smith. One thing he can do often is keep you in a game where your defense leaves a lot to be desired, due to a major injury for example. Someone else may have to win it for you, but Smith can put you into position to win a high scoring game. Diawara played well defensively, and it was a tough night for Kenyon Martin, who hit a few shots but did not seem to play at anywhere near his usual explosive level.

NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
All Nuggets who played at least 5 minutes are shown. The order is from lowest to highest in real player rating.

Anthony Carter played 30 minutes and was 3/9 and 1/5 on 3’s for 7 points, and he made 4 assists and 2 rebounds.

Linas Kleiza played 19 minutes and was 1/5, 1/4 on 3’s, and 2/4 from the line for 5 points, and he made 4 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 steal.

Yakhouba Diawara played 14 minutes and was 1/3 and 0/1 on 3’s for 2 points, and he made 4 rebounds and 2 assists.

Kenyon Martin played 35 minutes and was 6/10 for 12 points, and he made 6 rebounds, 3 assists, and 1 steal.

Allen Iverson played for virtually the whole game, 44 minutes, and was 9/20, 0/3 on 3’s, and 5/6 from the line for 23 points, and he made 6 assists, 2 rebounds, and 1 steal.

J.R. Smith played 19 minutes and was 5/9, 2/6 on 3’s, and 0/2 from the line for 12 points, and he made 4 rebounds and 1 steal.

Carmelo Anthony played most of the game, 40 minutes, and was 12/19, 0/1 on 3’s, and 11/17 from the line for 35 points, and he made 7 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 steal, and 1 block.

Marcus Camby played 39 minutes and was 7/14 and 6/6 from the line for 20 points, and he made 23 rebounds, 6 blocks, and 6 assists.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Tuesday, January 15 in Atlanta to play the Hawks at 5 pm mountain time. The Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights, while the Hawks will not be.