The Nuggets' Offense Fails to go the Distance; Magic Win 109-98

For the 15th straight time, the Orlando Magic defeated the Denver Nuggets in Orlando, by the score of 109-98, The Nuggets win streak ended at 3 games. But the Nuggets are 6-2 in their last eight games.

This week, Magic Coach Stan Van Gundy challenged superstar Center Dwight Howard, by far the Man in Orlando, to get more rebounds and defensive stops, and he came out from the tunnel locked and loaded in this game, as neither Kenyon Martin nor Marcus Camby could at first contend with his start of the game rim shaking early dunks and powerful rebounds. Howard, who will be the starting center for the East in the all-star game, was playing his 300th straight game in this one. Of those 300 games, Howard started in 299 of them. He would have started in the 300th one, but he was late to a game once when he got stuck in a traffic jam.

People might wonder why I have insisted from the start of this season that Nene is essential for the Nuggets to win in the playoffs. The reason is shown clearly by how the Nuggets were unable to adequately contain Howard in this game. Nene has the bulk necessary to use up valuable real estate in the paint, which in turn reduces the frequency that players such as Howard will be able to drive to the hoop for easy dunks and layups.

And Nene gets rebounds in certain situations where other Nuggets won’t get the rebound. Nene generally “stays home” right near the hoop, whereas Martin and Camby both frequently roam, even out to the perimeter, where of course they miss rebounding opportunities. In this game, the Magic destroyed the Nuggets in both offensive and defensive rebounding, and as a result ended up with a huge shots on goal advantage, 43 shots on goal versus just 33 for the Nuggets. This was despite the fact that the Magic are a poor rebounding team and are particularly poor in offensive rebounding. As a grim result of the 51-35 margin for the Magic in rebounding, they buried the Nuggets with 2nd chance points. For similar reasons, they also buried the Nuggets in points in the paint, 56-30.

Camby and Howard are battling to get the top rebounder in the NBA certification this year. Camby came in very slightly ahead, but in this game, Howard made 24 rebounds, while Camby made 8. So Howard overtook Camby for now; he is now getting 14.6 boards per game, whereas Camby is averaging 14.4. Furthermore, Howard is in the all-star game, while Camby is not, because Camby, while a defensive genius and one of the all time defensive stars, is even now, this late in his career, still too unpolished offensively to qualify as an all-star center.

Offensively, this was a textbook example of how an unstructured offense is not good enough in tough road games against quality opposition. Although the on the fly offense was good enough to allow the Nuggets to hang with the Magic in the first 30 minutes of the game, it faltered in the last 18 minutes and, if the Nuggets’ offense were a product, you would have to return it to the store as a defect after this failure. Dwight Howard was able to shut down almost everything Iverson, Melo, and company wanted to do in the paint, and the Nuggets, as always, had no plan B ready. And in any event Iverson was out of gas, and when Iverson is out of gas, the entire Nuggets’ offense is out of gas.

I’ll say it again, the Nuggets become very easy to defend when they are in situations where some offensive structure is needed, but they don’t have any structure available. The Nuggets are all too often sitting ducks to be hit by runs like the 18-6 run that Orlando went on late in the 3rd quarter.

Howard, although he rebounded the heck out the ball all game long, did rapidly cool down offensively after Kenyon Martin and Marcus Camby kicked into full defensive gear. Martin had enough physically to partially contain Howard, in the scoring dimension, but the Magic were able to score a lot of in the paint points anyway, something which in my opinion would have been more limited had Nene played this game.

The Nuggets started out the game with 4/16 shooting. But fortunately, they didn’t fall behind to any extent as a result of that. The Nuggets led 28-26 at the end of the 1st quarter.

The Nuggets continued to hold their own in the 2nd quarter, and it was tied at 48 at the half. It was nice to see Karl vigorously contesting an offensive foul call against Najera in the quarter. But by late in the 1st half, the Nuggets were using too much valuable energy arguing calls too much with the refs, and Martin got a technical at one point.

The Magic came out running in the 2nd half, but Kenyon Martin remained right on target and the Nuggets were actually leading, 57-56, with 8 minutes left in the 3rd quarter. And they were up 63-58 half way through the 3rd, as Iverson made 2/3 free throws off a Jameer Nelson foul on a three attempt that probably was not actually a foul, and Marcus Camby swished a long two jump shot.

But a couple of Magic threes and a Rashard Lewis layup with about 4 minutes left in the 3rd put the Magic ahead 66-65, and they would never trail again. In this game there was a different Rashard Lewis from the one seen in Denver; he slashed to the hoop enough to mix up his shots perfectly. Lewis was 5/6 at the hoop, 1/3 on 2-point midrange jumpers, and 2/5 on threes.

The Magic blitzed the Nuggets 18-6 late in the 3rd, so Orlando won the crucial 3rd quarter 28-21, and were leading 76-69 at the end of the period.

Half way through the 4th, Hedo Turkoglu buried a long three, and the Magic now had a commanding lead, 91-80. Turkoglu, in fact went on a tear throughout the fourth, and scored 12 points in the period. Orlando made a total of 3 threes in the final quarter to turn the lights out on the Nuggets. JR Smith made 4 threes in the final quarter, and scored 14 points in total, but the Nuggets offense was hopelessly disorganized and tired out overall.

Anthony was consistently effective and efficient, but there was no chance he could “take over the game” and win it because he is a forward and forwards have to have a little help from a good offensive plan in order to get the ball enough to be able to take over a game. As for Iverson, he had a great 1st half, but ran out of gas and went mostly cold in the 2nd half. For the second straight night, Martin was great offensively, not only scoring but also in passing.

Carmelo Anthony answered my plea for more 3-point attempts and more made threes. He was 3/5 from downtown. J.R. Smith was 4/9 from there, and these two Nuggets just about matched the entire Magic squad in 3-point shooting, as they were 7/19 overall whereas the Magic were 8/22.

But I noticed something negative about Anthony in this game, which is that he takes too many shots where he rises up from a crouch dribble and fires away in one uninterrupted motion. His accuracy would be even better if he always spotted up, and avoided going from dribbling to shooting in one motion unless the shot clock is going to zero. It is difficult for even an outstanding athlete such as Anthony to get the right balance needed to make a shot following a long and complex movement of a large number of body muscles. And you don’t get a bonus point if you increase the degree of difficulty over a spot up jump shot, like that. I expect that he will grow out of that kind of lower percentage shot as he gets older.

For the second straight night, Kleiza, Carter, and Najera were unproductive and largely out of the flow of the Nuggets offense. The odds of the same 3 players playing poorly 2 nights in a row in a decently run offense are very slim, so this tells you that the Nuggets’ offense is vulnerable to failing to make adequate use of certain players in certain situations. More specifically, the Nuggets have too many relatively selfish players to be able to safely run an unstructured, on the fly offense. Because those relatively selfish players, even though they are outstanding players, will sometimes by default make certain other players irrelevant, and that makes the team relatively easy to defend.

The solution is either to get less selfish players, or to get new coaches who are able to make sure that players such as Kleiza, Carter, and Najera are seldom if ever left completely out of the flow.

PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE

NUGGETS PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
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. Atkins is out until at least late March. With any luck, he will be back in the Nuggets lineup by early April.
Nene: underwent successful surgery to remove a testicular tumor on 1/14. A timeline for his return is still unknown. He is out until at least the first of March, but could easily be out for the entire rest of the season.
Steven Hunter: He missed this game, because of soreness and inflammation in his right knee.

MAGIC PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
Tony Battie: The arthroscopic surgery on his partially torn rotator cuff (part of the shoulder) will sideline him for the entire season.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of February 14, 2008

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

INJURIES & SUSPENSIONS
1. Chucky Atkins injury 18 points
2. Nene illness 14 points
3. Steven Hunter injury 4 points

SEVERE AND UNEXPECTED PLAYER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
There are none at this time: 0 points.

BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl has completely benched one or more players who should not be benched due to his incorrect calculation of the benefits and costs of that player, his 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: 5 points.

3. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 0-12 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 0 points.

4. 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: 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 has become in between a good team and a mid-level team when it is under this alert.

The damage description assumes that Nuggets opponents are in a GREY ALERT or better status. When the Nuggets play teams that are in yellow alert or worse, the damage they suffer from being in a significant alert status will be substantially reduced. In other words, opponents who are themselves in significant alert situations will obviously be more beatable, even when the Nuggets are in a significant alert situation.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE ALERT STATUS
The Magic are piling up wins and one of the reasons is that they have had few injuries and other kinds of player not available situations. And they have a coach who has been around the block a time or two, and knows how to put a coordinated team on the hardwood. The Magic enjoyed a triple advantage in this game: home court, extra rest, and lower alert status.

J.R. Smith should be playing a minimum of 25 minutes a game, and his value is about 20 points, so him playing only 20 minutes is a partial benching and is worth about 5 points in alert status terms.

Both Atkins and Nene are definitely going to be out for many more weeks and either one of them or both of them could easily be out for the entire rest of the season. And George Karl is definitely not going to pull a few offensive set plays out of a hat any time soon. Therefore, the Nuggets, unless they make a trade and/or acquire a diamond in the rough player, are doomed to be in ORANGE ALERT or YELLOW ALERT for most or all of the rest of the season, which endangers their chances of making the playoffs. Hollinger at ESPN has the odds that the Nuggets will make the playoffs at about 65% right now though, which is a big improvement from just a week ago, when the odds were about 50%. But the 65% chance is dumb with respect to the indefinite unavailability of Nene and Atkins, so the real odds could be less, around 50-55%. .

The mid January losses to the Bobcats and the Hawks, and the close calls at home against the Wolves and the Hawks in January, in games that should have and probably would have been relatively easy wins had the alert status been green, grey, or even yellow, illustrate the usefulness and accuracy of the alert system. When you reach ORANGE ALERT and especially RED ALERT, you start losing a substantial number of games that you would normally win. It’s that simple, and there is little anyone can do about it.

RESERVE WATCH
Number of Players Who Played at Least 6 Minutes: Nuggets 8 Magic 9
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 8 Magic 8

Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 20
Magic Non-Starters Points: 28

Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 9
Magic Non-Starters Rebounds: 9

Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 3
Magic Non-Starters Assists: 5

OBSERVATIONS ON HOW THE RESERVES WERE USED AND PLAYED
8 players for 10 or more is conservative, or lean and mean, if you will, but it is overly conservative if you don’t add a wildcard player who plays at least 6 minutes but less than 10 minutes. That wildcard player might be in the zone, maybe even in the best zone of his career, in which case you keep him in beyond the 10 minutes and probably win the game. Unfortunately, Karl does not seem to understand that, in order to increase the odds of winning when you are the underdog, you have to be willing and able to take modest risks, and playing a 9th player for at least 6 minutes is a perfect example of a modest risk you have to take if you are going to pull an upset. But in this game, as you can see, it was the heavily favored team that took the modest additional risk with a possible heavy reward. It was the team that didn’t have to play the 9th man to win that did, while the team that did have to play a 9th man to win, the Nuggets, did not.

Specifically, how do you know for sure that Yakhouba Diawara would not have brought enough defense and made 3-point shots to the game to possibly turn it into an upset win for the Nuggets? You don’t know, and that’s the point. You will never know, because the opportunity to have Diawara play was passed by just so that other Nuggets could get another 6-8 minutes, distributed between them, added on to their already large playing times.

The reserve watch 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 EXPLAINED
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-MAGIC PLAYER RATINGS
Carmelo Anthony: Game 40.9 Season 39.4
Kenyon Martin: Game 34.9 Season 22.3
Allen Iverson: Game 28.8 Season 40.9
Marcus Camby: Game 27.0 Season 33.0
J.R. Smith: Game 20.1 Season 14.5
Linas Kleiza: Game 9.4 Season 19.5
Anthony Carter: Game 8.7 Season 20.9
Eduardo Najera: Game 6.0 Season 13.1

Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Nene: Did Not Play-Illness
Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Injury

Yakhouba Diawara: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Von Wafer: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision

MAGIC PLAYER RATINGS
Dwight Howard: Game 51.7 Season 41.9
Rashard Lewis: Game 41.0 Season 28.7
Brian Cook: Game 29.0 Season 7.3
Hedo Turkoglu: Game 24.4 Season 32.9
Jameer Nelson: Game 23.7 Season 22.8
Keyon Dooling: Game 11.1 Season 12.5
Adonal Foyle: Game 3.0 Season 5.6
Keith Bogans: Game 2.6 Season 15.2
Maurice Evans: Game 1.8 Season 12.7

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 THE PLAYER RATINGS:
Kenyon Martin played extremely well in both Miami and Orlando this week, whereas Allen Iverson went through a little downtime in both games. J.R. Smith was only half as productive in Orlando as he was the night before in Miami, but that was still good enough to be 1/3 better than his seasonal normal.

Dwight Howard and Rashard Lewis were huge for the Magic, as was Brian Cook, who played what will definitely end up as one of his very best games of the season.

Kleiza, Carter, and Najera were largely no shows for the Nuggets.

On the other hand, the heavy weight of the Nuggets’ problems, shortcomings, and game situational disadvantages prevented the Foyle, Bogans and Evans no shows from creating a substantial risk that the Magic would lose this game.

REAL PLAYER RATINGS EXPLAINED
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
1.80 More Amazing Happens, but only certain players can ever fly this high
1.60 1.79 Superstar Plus-Above Normal Even For Michael Jordan
1.40 1.60 Superstar Performance-A Michael Jordan Type Game
1.20 1.40 Star Plus-Spectacular Performance
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-MAGIC REAL PLAYER RATINGS
All players who played 5 minutes or more are included. Any player who played only 5-9 minutes is noted.

1. Dwight Howard, Orl 1.231
2. Carmelo Anthony, Den 1.136
3. Brian Cook, Orl 1.000
4. Rashard Lewis, Orl 0.976
5. Hedo Turkoglu, Orl 0.976
6. J.R. Smith, Den 0.957
7. Kenyon Martin, Den 0.943
8. Marcus Camby, Den 0.730
9. Jameer Nelson, Orl 0.697
10. Allen Iverson, Den 0.655
11. Adonal Foyle, Orl 0.500
12. Keyon Dooling, Orl 0.463
13. Eduardo Najera, Den 0.400
14. Anthony Carter, Den 0.378
15. Linas Kleiza, Den 0.348
16. Keith Bogans, Orl 0.118
17. Maurice Evans, Orl 0.100

OBSERVATIONS ON THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
The same guys who did the best in Miami the night before were the best here for the Nuggets: Anthony, Smith, and Martin. Carmelo Anthony was the only Nuggets star; Smith and Martin were outstanding. For the Magic, Howard was star-plus. Three Magic players were outstanding: Cook, Lewis, and Turkoglu. The Magic had 4 of the 7 players who were outstanding or better.

Camby and Iverson were both short of their usual high level of court work. And, as mentioned above, the Nuggets had 3 non-factors taking up court space without enough productivity: Kleiza, Carter, and Najera, not counting, as always, what they did as far as defending is concerned. Of the three, Najera was the only one who did a substantial amount of high quality defending.

So the Nuggets had 3 players who were poor or worse, but the Magic, if you count Foyle who played 6 minutes, had 4 of their own. The Nuggets and the Magic are roughly similar teams in that there are a handful of truly outstanding stars and there is vulnerability that several players will be non-factors in any given game. This is a big reason why forecasters are so confident that both the Nuggets and the Magic will be relatively easy to beat in the playoffs.

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.

Anthony Carter: +1
Carmelo Anthony: -5
Eduardo Najera: -5
Marcus Camby: -7
Linas Kleiza: -8
Allen Iverson: -9
Kenyon Martin: -10
J.R. Smith: -12

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
Smith made only 1 turnover and 2 fouls, but the Magic did quite well when he was out there. Paradoxically, Carter contributed much less than Smith, but the Nuggets fared much better when he was out there compared with Smith. One reason was that Carter was a better defender than Smith was in this game. Another reason was sheer chance.

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

Turnovers: Total 16, Team 1, Anthony 4, Camby 2, Carter 1, Iverson 4, Kleiza 0, Martin 2, Najera 1, Smith 1

Personal Fouls: Total 23, Anthony 6, Camby 2, Carter 0, Iverson 2, Kleiza 3, Martin 4, Najera 4, Smith 2

Linas Kleiza played 27 minutes and was 1/4 and 0/1 on 3’s for 2 points, and he made 6 rebounds and 2 assists.

Anthony Carter played 23 minutes and was 1/5 and 0/2 on 3’s for 2 points, and he made 3 assists, 2 steals, 2 rebounds, and 1 block.

Eduardo Najera played 15 minutes and was 0/1, 0/1 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 2 points, and he made 3 steals and 2 rebounds.

Allen Iverson played virtually the whole game, 44 minutes, and was 5/16, 0/1 on 3’s, and 11/13 from the line for 21 points, and he made 7 assists, 1 steal, 1 block, and 1 rebound.

Marcus Camby played 37 minutes and was 3/6 for 6 points, and he made 8 rebounds, 4 blocks, 4 steals, and 3 assists.

Kenyon Martin played 37 minutes and was 8/13 and 1/2 from the line for 17 points, and he made 9 rebounds, 4 steals, 1 block, and 1 assist.

J.R. Smith played 21 minutes and was 6/11, 4/9 on 3’s, and 0/2 from the line for 16 points, and he made 1 assist and 1 rebound.

Carmelo Anthony played 36 minutes, and was 9/19, 3/5 on 3’s, and 11/14 from the line for 32 points, and he made 6 rebounds, 1 block, and 1 assist.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Tuesday, February 19 in Denver to play the Celtics at 7 pm mountain time. Neither the Nuggets nor the Celtics will be playing on back to back nights.