The Nuggets Roll Over the Struggling and Inexperienced Wolves 118-107, but the J.R.Smith Problem Looms Over the Playoffs Like a Storm Cloud

The Nuggets used their explosive made up on the fly offense to relatively easily defeat the hard charging but limited Timberwolves in Minnesota, 118-107. The Timberwolves made it interesting with several runs against Denver defenders who were playing on back to back nights, and who could not fully make an adjustment from the ultra slow game against the Spurs the night before to the much faster pace that Iverson and Carter dictated for this game. Nugget’s fans have been on a roller coaster for a long time now, so I guess it’s rough justice that the Nuggets themselves are on a roller coaster from one game to the next, as they choose to use, or are forced to use, as the case may be, different offensive styles in different games. The Nuggets had 24 fast break points to just 4 for the Timberwolves.

The Nuggets went from 20 assists in the Spurs game to 30 assists in this game. But they held their turnovers in check to 12 of them, as the Wolves were not talented enough to extract more than this. Rebounding was very equal, but the Nuggets were able to go to town on Al Jefferson and company in the paint. They scored 64 points in the paint, versus 48 in the paint points for the Wolves.

The high quality Nuggets defensive core of Marcus Camby, Kenyon Martin, and Nene, was competent but by no means dominant in this game. The back to back factor, the much faster pace, and the dominance on offense of the shooting guard McCants for the Wolves were factors that reduced the importance of the Big 3 in this game as compared with the Spurs game the night before.

Aside from the emergence of the Big 3 defenders, the other great news for the Nuggets lately is that on offense, Iverson and Carter are no longer partially ignoring Anthony as they were in early and mid December. For now at least, Anthony has been brought back into the fold and has, once again, a primary role to play at the heart of the Nugget’s offense. Iverson now realizes that, given the choice between dribbling in isolation and forcing up a shot on the one hand, and passing to Melo, even if he is double teamed, on the other hand, the latter is the better thing to do in many cases. Melo can jab step off one or both defenders, he can make a shot even when double covered, he can kick out to Carter or somebody else on the perimeter, he can pass back to a cutting Iverson, and so on and so forth. He’s used to handling the ball while double team and he is good at it.

They were underestimating Melo for a while, although it was not completely stupid they were doing so, since Melo was in a slump during much of that time. But I am still wondering about a chicken and egg kind of question: did Melo’s slump cause him to be partially ignored by Iverson and Carter, or did being partially ignored by Iverson and Carter cause Melo’s slump? Or did both things contribute to the other thing happening? And what did come first anyway, the chicken or the egg?

Oh well, all I know is that I’m happy it’s over, and now all I have to do is hope that it doesn’t happen again. But that loss to the Lakers with Iverson scoring 51 points is going to be bothering me for the whole rest of the season.

J.R. Smith has been benched completely again. This benching was even more obnoxious than previous ones, since Smith played extremely well in limited minutes in the 3 games before he was benched. I am going to once and for all prove that J.R. Smith should never be benched unless he has been arrested or refuses to practice or something, because he is actually one of the best players on the Nuggets, even though you might never know it because of his inconsistency, his impulsiveness, and his turnovers, which often seem to be especially stupid compared with the turnovers of the other players.

First, with the aid of the Nuggets 1 Real Player Rating system, let’s see what Smith did in the games leading up to his benching. Let’s see if he deserved to be benched based on some slump or really bad performance he had going into the benching. Here are the real player ratings and the rank among the Nuggets that Smith had in the 8 games for which data is available leading up to the benching.

Dec. 15 vs. Spurs: 0.977; Smith was the best player among the Nuggets.
Dec. 16 vs. Trailblazers: Smith was benched.
Dec. 20 vs. Rockets: Smith was benched.
Dec. 21 vs. Trailblazers: 0.622; Smith was the 4th best player among the Nuggets.
Dec. 23 vs. Kings: 0.983; Smith was the 4th best player among the Nuggets.
Dec. 26 vs. Bucks: 1.645; Smith was the best player among the Nuggets.
Dec. 28 vs. Warriors: 1.238; Smith was the best player among the Nuggets.
Dec. 30 vs. Warriors: 1.289; Smith was the best player among the Nuggets.

So now we have caught George Karl red handed benching one of the best players on his team, for no known reason. In the last 4 games before he was benched, Smith was outstanding in 1 game, a superstar at the typical Michael Jordan regular season game level in two games, and essentially off the chart in the 4th game, in a zone that few players other than ones similar to Michael Jordan and Allen Iverson ever see. What was his reward for this onslaught of superstar performance? A total benching.

At this point, it is reasonable to speculate that Karl is purposely sabotaging Smith’s tenure in Denver, because he is too dumb to know that the Nuggets can most likely not win a playoff series without him, or because he does know that but doesn’t care that the Nuggets will not win a playoff series if Smith can not contribute.

Why would Karl play Smith enough for him to show enough flashes of outstanding play so that other teams will be very interested when Smith’s contract is up, but not play him enough to advance Smith’s current usefulness to the Nuggets? That is an easy one. Karl hates J.R. Smith, pure and simple, and is doing everything possible to make sure that Smith’s and the Denver front office’s wishes that Smith remain a Nugget are overturned.

The most likely reasons, in no particular order, that Karl hates Smith are as follows:

1. Smith has no College and Karl thinks that all pro players should have gone to College. Smith is both too young and too uneducated to be a good pro player.
2. Smith is impulsive and often makes decisions in so small a fraction of a second that they seem to be literally thoughtless decisions. Karl thinks that almost all decisions on the court should be thought out, if only for a second or two.
3. Smith can be reckless and irresponsible off the court, as his June traffic accident and his bizarre October bar incident illustrate.
4. Smith does not clearly bow to the wishes and commands of the Coaching staff. This is most likely a mostly false perception; Smith does follow instructions to some extent, but has little if any “office politics” skills with which to demonstrate and emphasize how he is following instructions from on high.
5. The specific major Smith incidents of the off season, the tragic and asinine traffic accident, and the bizarre bar incident, have left Karl convinced that Smith is some kind of a maniac, and Karl hates maniacs even more than most people do.
6. Smith is not eager to work overtime in practices, which is one of Karl’s most important yardsticks for measuring a player’s personality, which is all-important to Karl.
7. Unlike Iverson and, to a lesser extent, Carter, Smith has few if any communication or leadership skills with which to assist with leading the on the fly Nuggets offense, or with which to motivate other players to try harder.
8. As a result of his naturally aggressive offensive playing style, Smith gets more turnovers along with more points than other shooting guards. Since the Nuggets are the worst team in the NBA in turnovers, and Karl can not come up with any structure for the offense that would reduce turnovers, he goes after the easy target of Smith, thinking crudely but correctly actually that if Smith is benched, that will be 1 fewer high rent (high performance but high turnover) player on the court.
9. Karl thinks that Smith has absolutely no respect for the history or traditions of basketball. What is his evidence for this? How did he find this out, or is he just speculating that this is true? And why is it so all-fired important anyway? Is Barrack Obama going to lose an election because he doesn’t respect Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams out on the campaign trail enough? Smith may have bizarre and reckless incidents, but Karl’s thinking sometimes strikes me as bizarre also.
10. Smith is very talented, but is subject to short and nasty slumps in which he can do some damage to the chances of a Nuggets victory unless he is pulled out early. But Karl is apparently worried that he won’t be alert enough to yank Smith out of the game if he is tanking out there.

In summary, Karl has plenty of reasons to hate J.R. Smith, and so he has plenty of reasons to play him enough to advertise his abilities to other teams, while not playing him enough to get him to want to remain on the Nuggets when he has a chance to move to a better situation on another team.

In the next game report, I will conclude my report on the debacle of the J.R. Smith benching with more important statistical and other information. And I will show why it is so likely that the Nuggets will lose their first playoff series if J.R. Smith is benched, or simply not ready, due to inadequate real playing experience, to be a big factor in 3-point shooting and scoring in general.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of January 5, 2008

The Nuggets are under a GREY ALERT, on account of the following problems.

INJURIES & SUSPENSIONS
1. Steven Hunter injury 4 Points

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

BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 5-35 Points. The severity varies depending on the circumstances, mainly Karl’s beliefs and moods, and whether the other team is playing well enough to take advantage of the Nuggets playing with not enough breathers, with too many fouls, and so forth. Karl will normally be in the 5-20 range, but it could spike to as much as 35 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 15 points.

2. Lack of adequate offensive schemes: 12 Points. This would be up to 24 points, except that Iverson reduces the damage. In general 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 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.

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 sometimes think it is.

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 31, which constitutes GREY ALERT.

GREY ALERT (30-39): There are relatively minor problems leading to a small threat against the success of the entire season. It is still possible to beat quality teams, but it will be more unusual to beat a quality team, because about 1/4 of what would have been wins against good teams will now be losses when there is a GREY ALERT.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE ALERT STATUS
Praise be to the most high, if there is a most high, because the Nugget’s front court is all playing now, and no important player is having any serious slump problems, and because the Nuggets are therefore no longer in yellow alert or worse. But don’t party too hard yet. We will be back in a damaging yellow alert if and when either the injury prone Martin or the injury prone Nene go out again, and in a very damaging orange alert if they are ever both out. And as the Spurs game on January 3 showed, the Nuggets need both Martin and Nene in to make up for their offense being trashed by a quality defensive team.

Another reason not to party about the sports medicine miracles is that the alert status has moved from green alert to grey alert as a result of an increase in the actual and, more importantly, the projected damage caused by George Karl’s rotation mistakes. He has now totally removed J.R. Smith and largely removed Chucky Atkins from playing time, and that spells d-o-o-m for the playoffs, pure and simple. Carter is playing very well against lottery and mid-level teams here in the regular season, but he will be no match for the top flight guards that he will come up against in the playoffs, whereas Atkins does have some playoff experience with the Lakers. And the Nuggets will not be able to offset the very tough defending they will face in the playoffs without good 3-point shooting and, quite honestly, they have to have Smith just to be assured of being mediocre in 3-point shooting. Being good would require someone else to step up and join Smith and Kleiza on the Nugget’s 3-point shooting squad.

RESERVE WATCH

Number of Players Who Played at Least 6 Minutes: Nuggets 9 Wolves 9
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 8 Wolves 7

Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 24
Wolves Non-Starters Points: 47

Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 16
Wolves Non-Starters Rebounds: 15

Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 5
Wolves Non-Starters Assists: 6

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

Well, the Coach was at a 4 on the scale for a few hours after the win over the Spurs, but then he trembled at the thought of playing the Timberwolves on the road, and went quickly back to making decisions that reflect his lack of confidence that the Nuggets are a match for any of the top teams in the West.

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
Allen Iverson: Game 46.3 Season 41.0
Anthony Carter: Game 42.9 Season 20.7
Carmelo Anthony: Game 40.3 Season 38.0
Marcus Camby: Game 30.1 Season 32.5
Linas Kleiza: Game 25.8 Season 17.7
Kenyon Martin: Game 24.0 Season 19.6
Eduardo Najera: Game 12.7 Season 13.7
Nene Hilario: Game 9.8 Season 12.6
Yakhouba Diawara: Game 4.4 Season 5.9

J.R. Smith: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Chucky Atkins: 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

Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Injury

TIMBERWOLVES
Rashad McCants: Game 54.4 Season 20.5
Al Jefferson: Game 41.8 Season 37.6
Marko Jaric: Game 23.3 Season 17.8
Ryan Gomes: Game 23.0 Season 16.9
Antoine Walker: Game 17.9 Season 15.2
Craig Smith: Game 13.3 Season 17.5
Sebastian Telfair: Game 4.4 Season 19.1
Chris Richard: Game 2.0 Season 4.1
Corey Brewer: Game 0.5 Season 11.3

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:
SG McCants is inconsistent but clearly has a lot of potential, and this year is his golden opportunity to get better while getting a lot of burn for the understaffed Wolves. He did a whole lot of getting better in this game. Three Timberwolves forwards: Jefferson, Gomes, and Walker, played well against the Denver Big 3 defensive combination of Camby, Martin, and Nene. Marko Jaric, with 10 assists, played well, as did Sebastian Telfair for a change. As you can see, even though the Nugget’s defense is much improved from last year, games against the Nuggets are still a good opportunity for players to improve their performance averages. The reason for this is that the high octane Nuggets in charge of the offense, Iverson, Carter, and Anthony, much prefer to really let loose offensively when they are playing a poor defensive team, rather than to try to nickel and dime them to death with strong defense. When the Nuggets play a good defensive team, they lose confidence in their ability to fly high offensively very quickly. When the Nuggets play a top flight defensive team such as the Spurs, confidence becomes a mute point, because teams such as the Spurs are able to slow the unstructured Nuggets offense to a crawl.

The advent of the Big 3 is not going to change these things much because, being a brand new phenomenon, they don’t have nearly enough clout to tell Iverson to slow things down so that their blocking, defending, dunking, and so forth can be a bigger factor in winning the game. For the foreseeable future, the primary overall function of the Big 3 will be to give the Nuggets a chance to win games when their relatively easy to shut down offense is in fact shut down by any of the great defensive teams of the Western Conference.

Carter was huge, which is wonderful, but I don’t care how many fantastic games he has against poor and mid-level teams, the Nuggets are still doomed in the playoffs if he is the primary point guard. After his usual disaster against the Spurs, Kleiza had a really nice game.

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

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 Beyond Superstar Performance-Above even a Michael Jordan typical game.
1.40 1.60 Superstar Performance-Michael Jordan Typical Playoff Game
1.20 1.40 Superstar Performance-Michael Jordan Typical Regular Season Game
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 Near Disaster
Less 0.25 Total Disaster

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

1. Rashad McCants, Min 1.700
2. Anthony Carter, Den 1.300
3. Linas Kleiza, Den 1.229
4. Allen Iverson, Den 1.102
6. Carmelo Anthony, Den 1.089
7. Al Jefferson, Min 1.072
5. Kenyon Martin, Den 1.000
8. Eduardo Najera, Den 0.907
9. Marcus Camby, Den 0.885
10. Yakhouba Diawara, Den 0.733…Diawara played only 6 minutes.
11. Antoine Walker, Min 0.716
12. Ryan Gomes, Min 0.575
13. Marko Jaric, Min 0.568
14. Craig Smith, Min 0.532
15. Nene Hilario, Den 0.408
16. Chris Richard, Min 0.286…Richard played only 7 minutes.
17. Sebastian Telfair, Min 0.210
18. Corey Brewer, Min 0.071…Brewer played only 7 minutes.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE NUGGETS-WARRIORS REAL PLAYER RATINGS
After a huge effort against the Spurs, Nene more or less dropped out of sight again, while Martin technically played better in this game than he did in the Spurs game, when he made some memorable spectacular plays but struggled offensively.

The main problem for the Timberwolves, and it was a whopper, is that they were swamped by the talent and much greater experience of the determined to get a back to back road win Nuggets. The Nuggets had 7 players who played from very good to superstar level, whereas the Timberwolves had just 2: Rashad McCants and Al Jefferson. Antoine Walker was alright, but all five of the other Timberwolves had poor to disastrous games. Unfortunately for the young Wolves, the Nuggets are not fooling around with lottery teams this year like they did last year.

McCants played at a tremendous, seldom seen level. In 32 minutes, he was 12/18, 3/5 on 3’s, and 7/7 from the line for 34 points, and he made 5 rebounds and 4 assists.

Anthony Carter played extremely well but not as spectacularly as McCants. Kleiza made yet another star performance, while Iverson and Anthony were at their ordinary star levels. Kenyon Martin and Eduardo Najera were outstanding, while Camby, undoubtedly a little weary from the night before, was merely very good in this game. Watch it Marcus, at least half the Nuggets fans on the internet seem to want you traded.

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

Anthony Carter: +17
Eduardo Najera: +11
Linas Kleiza: +8
Kenyon Martin: +8
Carmelo Anthony: +5
Allen Iverson: +5
Yakhouba Diawara: +5
Nene: +3
Marcus Camby: +0

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
In this case, the plus-minus breakdown seems to be a very accurate reflection of who were the most valuable players for this game. There is no disputing that Anthony Carter was superb in this game, and that both Najera and Kleiza played extremely well. Martin, Anthony, and Iverson were outstanding or better, while Nene and Camby had a little more trouble than the other Nuggets keeping up with the fast pace of the game being played the next night after the Spurs ordeal.

NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
All Nuggets who played at least 6 minutes are shown. The order is from lowest to highest in real player rating.

Nene played 24 minutes and was 1/4 and 2/4 from the line for 4 points, and he made 7 rebounds, 2 blocks, and 1 assist.

Yakhouba Diawara played 6 minutes and was 1/1 for 2 points, and he made 1 assist.

Marcus Camby played 34 minutes and was 2/6 and 4/6 from the line for 8 points, and he made 12 rebounds, 7 blocks, and 3 assists.

Eduardo Najera played 14 minutes and was 1/2 from the line for 1 point, and he made 7 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 block, and 1 steal.

Carmelo Anthony played 37 minutes and was 11/20, 0/1 on 3’s, and 4/4 from the line for 26 points, and he made 4 rebounds, 4 assists, and 2 steals.

Kenyon Martin played 24 minutes and was 5/8 and 1/2 from the line for 11 points, and he made 5 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 block, and 1 steal.

Allen Iverson played for most of the game, 42 minutes, and was 10/21, 4/8 on 3’s, and 9/10 from the line for 33 points, and he made 4 assists and 3 rebounds.

Linas Kleiza played 21 minutes and was 7/10, 0/2 on 3’s, and 3/3 from the line for 17 points, and he made 2 rebounds and 1 assist.

Anthony Carter played 33 minutes and was 7/9 and 2/3 from the line for 16 points, and he made 11 assists, 3 steals, 2 rebounds, and 1 block.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Sunday, January 6 in Denver to play the 76’ers at 6 pm mountain time. Neither the Nuggets nor the 76’ers will be playing on back to back nights.