Marcus Camby and Allen Iverson are Superstars as the Denver Nuggets Romp over the Toronto Raptors 137-105

The Raptors are in the middle of the pack as far as pace-adjusted defending is concerned. But take away PF Chris Bosh, the best player on the team, who missed the 8th straight game with a sore right knee, and they fall from there substantially. Put the Bosh-less Raptors in the high altitude Nuggets’ building on a Friday night with a loud crowd, and the Raptors’ defense falls down still more. Put the Bosh-less Raptors up against the Nuggets, who are desperate for wins to keep up with the Warriors for the last playoff spot, and the Raptors are now reduced to hardly any defense at all.

So the Nuggets again did what they have done so often this year, they got a rout win at home against a team that was unable to defend well. The Nuggets totally dismantled and embarrassed the Raptors 137-105 although ironically, it is the Raptors and not the Nuggets who are comfortably on track for a slot in the post season festivities. I guess the Nuggets want to make sure there is absolutely no doubt that they are supposed to be an elite team, even though they have not been able to actually become one.

Silly Nuggets, optical illusions are for web advertisers. You can not be an elite team, Nuggets, unless you rise above all of George Karl’s inferiority complexes, mathematical errors, logical errors, biases, obsessions with dubious psychological theories, and foregone conclusions. You have to join J.R. Smith in the quest to make Karl look like a fool if you want to become an elite team, because Karl thinks you will never be an elite team, and he manages accordingly, creating a self fulfilling prophesy. I’m not saying you have to disrespect Mr. Karl, I’m just saying you should ignore many of his beliefs as you go about your business.

The Nuggets scored 79 points in the first half, the most Toronto has allowed for a half in franchise history. The Raptors also allowed a team-record 44 points in the first quarter. The Nuggets were blown out last year in Toronto in a similar fashion, so this was a kind of returning the favor kind of thing. Had Bosh played, this would have been closer, but the Nuggets still would have won very convincingly.

Last year’s Coach of the Year, Raptors Coach Sam Mitchell, was not happy about how the Raptors gave in to their circumstances. “We’re not guarding anybody, and if you’re not guarding anybody, you’re going to come out of the game.” Notice that his threat applies to anyone on the Raptors, not just to non-starters. And notice that the penalty is being taken out of the game, not being benched for future games. If it were Karl, the threat would apply only to non-starters, and the penalty for any non-starter caught not guarding would be a benching for an unknown number of games in the future. So Karl has bigger penalties, and yet he lowers the boom only on certain players. The fact that Mitchell’s approach to getting players to do what is needed is so much more logical, effective, and reasonable than Karl’s is one of an undoubtedly large number of reasons why Mitchell was the NBA Coach of the Year last year, while Karl was never considered for a moment for that honor.

For the second Friday night in a row, the Nuggets were in a pumped up, take no prisoners mood at the Pepsi Center in Denver, in front of their enthusiastic, thank god it’s Friday type crowd. Unlike last year, the Nuggets this year have learned to feed off their crowd to help them stay pumped up for games. Allen Iverson was always an expert at doing this in Philadelphia, so the Nuggets have finally learned from him how to get the crowd pumped up, and then how to feed off that to get yourself and your teammates pumped up. You play pumped up, which gets the crowd pumped up, and then you can feed off the pumped up crowd to stay pumped up. Iverson’s logic is on point. And Denver may not be a basketball town in general, but March is in between football and baseball, so it is sort of a basketball town in March.

Once the Nuggets started feeding off the crowd and once they understood that the Raptors were not going to keep their disorganized but extremely energetic and athletic offense in check, they just let loose with their athletic talent. They scored 33 fast break points. The only question was how many stars and superstars there would be. The Nuggets ended up with 2 superstars, 3 star-plus players, and one star, Yakhouba Diawara who, however, played just 10 minutes. So the Nuggets had 6 players who were stars or better, whereas the Raptors had 4: Kris Humphries, Rasho Nesterovic, Maceo Baston, and Carlos Delfino.

As the Real Player Ratings show, Marcus Camby was a superstar in this game, He scored 17 points on 6/8 shooting, and he made 10 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 steals and a block. This was Camby’s 24th double-double of the season. Camby is so far ahead of the competition that he has already effectively clinched the race for the most blocks of any player. In the rebounding race, Camby is 2nd in the League, with 13.8 rebounds per game, while Dwight Howard of the Magic is first with 14.4 rebounds per game. Howard has just about nailed that race down, but not quite.

The Nuggets’ other superstar was Allen Iverson, who scored 28 points on 9/12 from the field and 10/10 from the line, and who also made 5 assists, 2 steals and a block. Iverson quadrupled his output from his disaster game two nights earlier. Iverson finished more than 10% above his already sky high normal.

A week earlier in the Spurs game, Iverson fractured his right ring finger, but he has been playing despite the injury. He has to put a brace on it except while he is playing. The fracture is not going to finish healing until this summer. Were Iverson to not play the rest of the season, the Nuggets would be toast and all of this drama about how Karl will end up “holding the bag” as coach of the best team in the history of the NBA to not make the playoffs would be much reduced.

The Nuggets, remember, are not only a basketball team; they are also one of the best drama movies you have ever seen. In the Nuggets drama, Iverson is the guy who naïve people think is a bad guy, but is really a good guy. Karl is the guy who naïve people think is a good guy, but is really a bad guy. Carmelo Anthony is the happy go lucky guy who doesn’t allow dramatic things to affect him much, yet he is the one with the most to lose. It’s really a fascinating story, and Nuggets 1 is covering every plot twist.

For the second game in a row, Chucky Atkins provided evidence that the Denver front office may have been right about acquiring him after all. Atkins has suddenly gone from being a liability to being right up there with Iverson and J.R. Smith as the best guards on the team almost overnight. Atkins made five threes and scored a total of 17 points on 5/10 from the field, and 5/8 from long range. He also made 7 rebounds and 4 assists and he did all of these things in just 24 minutes. So Atkins was a star-plus in this game.

He’s a pro,” George Karl said after the game. “He knows how to play, has a sense for the game.” Thank God Atkins has a personality and a brain that Karl accepts.

Another star-plus player was J.R. Smith, who is a regular in the high ratings, but whose brain is not accepted by Karl. He just about tripled his output from the Grizzlies game two nights earlier, and he was almost half again more productive than normal. He crammed in a little of everything in just 17 minutes. He was 5/9 from the field, 2/6 on 3’s, and he made 3 assists, 3 rebounds, a steal and a block. His negatives included 2 turnovers and 3 personal fouls. Before Smith became one of the best 2-guards in the League recently, this was the kind of game that Karl, with his huge anti-Smith bias, would have used to bolster his incorrect calculation that Smith’s negatives exceed his positives. Then he might have benched Smith for the next few games. These days, Karl doesn’t dare bench Smith, although he may be conniving to get most of the minutes that Atkins needs from Smith’s minutes rather than from Anthony Carter’s minutes.

The other star-plus Nugget was Carmelo Anthony, who scored 22 points on 9/17 and 4/5 from the line. He added 6 assists, 3 rebounds and 1 block. When the Nuggets go into super drive mode against a team that is not defending well, all thoughts of making sure that Iverson and Melo get the majority of the shot attempts go out the window. Anyone can take as many shots as they want as long as they get at least halfway open, and as long as they are not contested or off-balance threes, which Karl hates with a passion. So aside from Iverson with 28 points and Anthony with 22, Camby and Atkins scored 17 each, Smith and Carter scored 12 each, and four other Nuggets scored between 5-8 points. So there were 10 Nuggets who scored 5 or more points in this display of how an unstructured offense can be better than a lightly structured one against a team that is not defending well.

Notice I used the term “lightly structured.” I wanted to make the point, in case people who have been reading my reports have gotten the wrong impression, that when I complain about the Nuggets being unstructured, I don’t mean that they should be running planned plays most of the time. Or even half of the time. Even the Spurs don’t run a called play half of the time or more, so far as I know. I would settle for about 1/4 or even 1/5 of the time. If you run a called play every 4th or 5th time down, and you have about a dozen plays in your arsenal, with 3 plays ready for scoring superstars such as Iverson and Melo, then you not only become outstanding at executing those particular plays, but you also have something to fall back on when the shot clock is starting to run down and a great defense is shutting down your on the fly offense. In other words, running plays some of the time has spillover benefits for the rest of the time. And in general you become more confident on offense, so you attempt fewer poor choice shots. Ironically, if only Karl or his assistants would cough up a small number of planned plays, they would get less upset about wild shots, because there would be fewer of them.

PROJECTIONS

Nuggets 1 Current odds, to the nearest 5%, of the Nuggets making the playoffs: 45%
Nuggets 1 Current odds, to the nearest 5%, that the Nuggets and their suffering fans will be stuck with George Karl for next season: 70%

The current odds of the Nuggets making the playoffs, according to Hollinger at ESPN’s excellent team analysis system, are 57%. However, and I know this is a little confusing, the Nuggets are projected to most likely be the 9th seed in the Western Conference, meaning that they will not make the playoffs because only 8 teams qualify in each Conference. It seems right now that the Suns, the Warriors, and the Nuggets will be battling it out for the last 2 playoff spots in the West. All three of them are considered likely to make the playoffs, in statistical terms, but not all three are going to make it. Nuggets 1 agrees with Hollinger’s system, which is saying that the Suns and the Warriors are favored in this race. The Suns’ victory over the Spurs on March 9 and their victory over the Warriors on March 13 gave them a major boost over the Warriors and the Nuggets.

The Hollinger odds don’t take into account that, most likely, Nene is not going to be available in top form for the Nuggets for the stretch run. Also, there may not be enough time for Atkins to get back to good condition. It’s still unknown whether Atkins can help to rescue the Nuggets from not making the playoffs. If the Hollinger system adjusted for the Atkins and the Nene situations, it would show a lower percentage chance than 57% for the Nuggets to make the playoffs.

The Lakers, the Rockets, the Hornets, the Spurs, the Jazz, and the Mavericks are currently considered locks to make the playoffs. However, the Rockets are no longer really total locks, due to the loss of Yao Ming for the season. But I think they are still near locks. The Suns are in some trouble, due to their terrible trade, which was Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks for Shaquille O’Neal, but they are in less trouble after their key wins at home over the Spurs and the Warriors.

PLAYOFF TEAMS PROJECTED FINAL RECORDS-HOLLINGER-ESPN
1. Lakers 58-24
2. Rockets 56-26
3. Jazz 55-27
4. Hornets 54-28
5. Spurs 54-28
6. Mavericks 53-29
7. Suns 52-30
8. Warriors 50-32

NON-PLAYOFF TEAMS PROJECTED FINAL RECORDS-HOLLINGER-ESPN
9. Nuggets 49-33

The Rockets have lost their best player, and one of the best players in the NBA, Yao Ming, for the rest of the season. Therefore, they will probably drop below their current projection, since the projections do not take injuries into account. The Suns will probably drop a little also, because they made a bad trade when they gave up “The Matrix,” Shawn Marion. At this time, however, Nuggets 1 does not believe that either the Rockets or the Suns will fail to win at least 50 games, so they will most likely finish ahead of the Nuggets despite their difficulties.

The Warriors are now 1 1/2 game ahead of the Nuggets for the last playoff spot. The schedules of the two teams are roughly equal difficulty from here on out. If the Nuggets make up the 1 1/2 games, so that the Warriors and the Nuggets finish with identical records, and the season series between them ends up tied 2-2, the Warriors are likely to get the playoff spot rather than the Nuggets, because it is likely that the Warriors will finish at least 1 game ahead of the Nuggets in Conference record, which would be the tie-breaker if the Warriors and the Nuggets split their 4 head to head games. The Nuggets and Warriors have each won one game in the head to head series so far.

Now that the Nuggets are 1 1/2 games behind the Warriors, the two remaining Nuggets-Warriors games are more important than ever. If the Warriors win both games, the Nuggets are almost certainly out of the playoffs. If each team wins one game, the Warriors remain more likely to make the playoffs than the Nuggets. If the Nuggets win both games, then the Nuggets are about even with the Warriors in the race. The Nuggets-Warriors games are on Saturday, March 29 in Denver and on Thursday, April 10 in Oakland. Neither the Warriors nor the Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights in either of those games.

WARRIORS REMAINING SCHEDULE, All times, EDT
Sat, Mar 15 Memphis 10:30 PM
Tue, Mar 18 @ Sacramento 10:00 PM
Wed, Mar 19 @ LA Clippers 10:30 PM
Fri, Mar 21 Houston 10:30 PM
Sun, Mar 23 @ LA Lakers 9:30 PM
Mon, Mar 24 LA Lakers 10:30 PM
Thu, Mar 27 Portland 10:30 PM
Sat, Mar 29 @ Denver 9:00 PM
Sun, Mar 30 Dallas 9:00 PM
Tue, Apr 1 @ San Antonio 8:30 PM
Wed, Apr 2 @ Dallas 9:30 PM
Fri, Apr 4 @ Memphis 8:00 PM
Sun, Apr 6 @ New Orleans 7:00 PM
Tue, Apr 8 Sacramento 10:30 PM
Thu, Apr 10 Denver 8:00 PM
Sat, Apr 12 LA Clippers 10:30 PM
Mon, Apr 14 @ Phoenix 10:00 PM
Wed, Apr 16 Seattle 10:30 PM

NUGGETS REMAINING SCHEDULE, All times EDT
Sun, Mar 16 Seattle 9:00 PM
Tue, Mar 18 @ Detroit 7:30 PM
Wed, Mar 19 @ Philadelphia 7:00 PM
Fri, Mar 21 @ New Jersey 7:30 PM
Sun, Mar 23 @ Toronto 3:30 PM
Mon, Mar 24 @ Memphis 8:00 PM
Thu, Mar 27 Dallas 10:30 PM
Sat, Mar 29 Golden State 9:00 PM
Mon, Mar 31 @ Phoenix 10:00 PM
Tue, Apr 1 Phoenix 9:00 PM
Sat, Apr 5 Sacramento 9:00 PM
Sun, Apr 6 @ Seattle 9:00 PM
Tue, Apr 8 @ LA Clippers 10:30 PM
Thu, Apr 10 @ Golden State 8:00 PM
Sat, Apr 12 @ Utah 9:00 PM
Sun, Apr 13 Houston 9:00 PM
Wed, Apr 16 Memphis 9:00 PM

So overall, Nuggets 1 agrees with the Hollinger system; as of now, we think the Nuggets will fail to make the playoffs. But it will probably be a very close call, and it still could go either way. We think that the Warriors will finish with either 49 or 50 wins. The Nuggets would need to finish 11-6 to reach 50 wins. This is realistically the minimum they must do to have a decent chance of making the playoffs. 10-7 will probably not be good enough, and 9-8 will definitely not be good enough. To be almost guaranteed a playoff spot, the Nuggets must go 12-5.

If you win a division you get into the playoffs regardless of how poor your record is. For the Nuggets, winning the Northwest Division is very unlikely at this point; the odds on that are at 6%. The odds that Utah will win the Northwest are 94% right now. The Nuggets would have to beat the Jazz in their remaining game against them, and they would also have to hope that the Jazz stumble down the stretch.

NUGGETS INJURY REPORT FOR PLAYERS WHO PLAYED IN THIS GAME
Allen Iverson: suffered a non-displaced fracture on the end of his right ring finger vs. San Antonio on 3/7. X-rays were negative, and he remains probable for the Supersonics game on March 16.
Marcus Camby: suffered a right hip contusion at San Antonio on March 10, and he is probable for the Supersonics game on March 16.

PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
NUGGETS PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
Nene: He underwent successful surgery to remove a testicular tumor on Jan. 14. A timeline for his return is still unknown. He has now missed 29 straight games. He is out until at least the middle of March, but could easily be out for the entire rest of the season. CBS Sportsline says Nene is most likely out for the rest of the season.

RAPTORS PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
Jorge Garbajosa: Ankle and leg injury; out for the season.
Chris Bosh: Suffered a knee injury on March 4, questionable for March 16 game at Sacramento

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of March 15, 2008

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

NUGGETS INJURIES, ILLNESSES, SUSPENSIONS, AND PERSONAL LEAVES
1. Nene illness 14 points

SEVERE AND UNEXPECTED CRUCIAL PLAYER SLUMPS
Chucky Atkins, 1 point

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: 2 points. Smith was about 5 minutes short of the absolute minimum number of minutes reasonable for him.

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 2 points. The rotations were mostly reasonable.

4. The Nuggets have extreme offensive inconsistency and an excessive number of turnovers because they have neither a system nor even a good partial system on offense. They over rely on fast pace and on isolation plays, especially isolation plays by Anthony and Iverson. The damage caused by this would be up to 20 points, except that Iverson’s intelligence in recognizing different situations in different games, and responding appropriately, usually reduces the damage. But Iverson does not control everything, of course, and the lack of any real consistency in how the offense is run leads to damaging problems that can appear at any time. But these problems are much more likely to appear just when the Nuggets can least afford them, when they are playing one of the best teams in the NBA.

At one time earlier this season, Iverson and Carter were marginalizing Carmelo Anthony to some extent and Anthony, one of the top two scorers on the team, was not getting the ball enough. That problem went away when Anthony ramped up his rebounding. But the problem has shown signs of coming back again lately. If that problem appears when the Nuggets are playing an elite team, the Nuggets’ chances of winning the game go down substantially.

And another big problem has developed due to a combination of the unstructured offense and the Karl lineup, and it is not going to go away anytime soon. That would be the double point guard problem. The Nuggets don’t know in advance who is going to be the main playmakers in the game: Iverson, Carter, Atkins, or some combination. More importantly, it is foolish to have two point guards in the game for more than a small number of minutes. If Iverson has decided to run the point, as he always does to one extent or another, he counts as a point guard whether he is labeled one by the coaching staff or not.

In general, and as always in the Karl era, 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. True, they have plays they commonly run on the fly, but the players seldom know in advance when they will be running one of those. It’s almost all an unscripted, recreation department style offense.

On defense a system is much less important than on offense. How good your defense is is determined much more by effort and skill than by strategy. On defense, the main strategic decision is whether you are playing zone or man to man defense. The choice varies during each game, and usually depends on a gut feeling of the coach and/or the defensive floor leader, as to which is better at a particular point in the game, and with a particular opposing lineup on the court. At least as important as whether a zone or a man to man defense is in effect is the quality of the actual defending.

Lack of an adequate number of offensive plays and patterns: 2 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 think it is.

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 24, which constitutes GREEN ALERT.

GREEN ALERT (20-29): There are minor problems whose total impact is very small. There is very little effect on the team’s ability to win games against teams from any level.

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT ALERT STATUS
All teams, of course, have an alert status, and the key thing that can swing games is not so much the actual status of the two teams, but the difference in the two statuses. The difference in the alert status is a third outside factor that impacts a game, joining home court advantage and extra rest advantage, if any.

IMPACT OF OUTSIDE FACTORS, INCLUDING ALERT STATUS, ON THIS GAME
The alert status system is still relatively new, but a preliminary estimate of what the point differential will be for each 1 level difference in the alert status has been made, and that estimate is 3-5 points. The Home court advantage has also been estimated to be 3-5 points, and we use 4 points for it. The extra rest advantage is very uncertain, and would differ a little from team to team, but it must be at least as much as the home court advantage. For now, until we can study it more, we will use 4 points for the extra rest advantage.

The Raptors were most likely in a YELLOW alert, due mostly to the injury to their best player, Chris Bosh. So the Nuggets had a 2 level advantage over the Raptors in alert status, which translates into a 6-10 points advantage. Neither team was playing on back to back nights. The Nuggets were at home. The total Nuggets advantage, counting all external factors, was 10-14 points. The actual victory margin for the Nuggets was 32 points, but after you adjust for the outside factors, the real victory margin for the Nuggets was in the 18-22 points range. In other words, even it Bosh had played, the Nuggets would probably still have won this game in a rout.

George Karl has been doing better with the rotations lately, which has helped to push the alert status to GREEN.

Atkins, in his fifth outing since coming back, played a second fantastic game in a row, so his alert points were slashed to a tiny number. One more decent or better game from Atkins, and we will declare Atkins back in good condition for the stretch run. This is major good news for the Nuggets and is the most important reason why the Nuggets have reached and maintained for more than 1 game a GREEN alert status for the first time this season.

The Nuggets have been unable to issue any prediction about when or whether Nene is going to return to the court. There was a rumor recently that he was going to return by mid-March, but there is no sign that that will become a reality yet. CBS Sportsline is saying that, most likely, Nene will not return to the court at all this season, including for the playoffs. If Nene in fact never returns, and Atkins continues to be a lost cause, and Karl goes back to making his usual mistakes, and if Carter starts to reassert himself at point guard, the Nuggets will range between YELLOW and ORANGE alert status for the rest of the season, and that right there may cost the Nuggets a playoff spot.

And don’t expect George Karl to pull a few offensive set plays out of a hat any time soon.

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 11 Raptors 12
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 10 Raptors 11

Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 53
Raptors Non-Starters Points: 55

Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 20
Raptors Non-Starters Rebounds: 21

Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 10
Raptors Non-Starters Assists: 16

THE NON-STARTERS IN THIS GAME
Yakhouba Diawara who played 10 minutes and Steven Hunter who played 6 minutes played only in garbage time. Had the game not been a rout, neither of these two would have played. George Karl’s real plan was to play 9 Nuggets for 10 minutes or more and the same 9 Nuggets for 6 minutes or more. The Raptors had 1 player who played only garbage time and who would not have played had the game not been a rout. So Coach Sam Mitchell’s real game plan was for 10 players to play 10 or more minutes and for 11 players to play 6 or more minutes. So Mitchell’s plan featured two more players, and two more chances for a surprise huge game, than did Karl’s plan.

If you wonder how Mitchell won last season’s coach of the year award, that is a big reason right there; he is able to effectively use a bigger fraction of his roster than most other coaches can. Coach Karl of the Nuggets is at the low end of the NBA in terms of to what extent he effectively uses non-starters in games. Karl overestimates the gap between the top players and the lower players on his teams.

It is very unusual for Karl to play 9 players for 10 or more minutes. Right now he is forced to, because pushing J.R. Smith below 10 minutes is out of the question the way he is playing, and there is a huge mess at PG which requires Karl to play 2 official point guards for much more than 10 minutes each. Anthony Carter took over the PG position for the bulk of the season when Chucky Atkins went out for 2 months with hernia surgery. Atkins was poor in limited games before he went out. Carter has been better than expected, but apparently Karl agrees with most fans that Atkins will be eaten alive if the Nuggets make the playoffs and so Atkins, who has far more experience, including playoff experience, may be the Nuggets’ only hope at the position in the playoffs, and in the stretch run to make the playoffs, for that matter. So Karl has to give Atkins playing time in a last chance desperate bid to get Atkins up to speed. But since Atkins is inconsistent so far, Atkins minutes have to be limited, and so Carter has to play a lot of minutes also.

Despite losing the game in a rout, the Raptors’ non-starters ended up slightly better than the Nuggets’ non-starters in points 55-53, and in rebounds 21-20. In assisting, the Raptors’ non-starters were much superior to the Nuggets 16-10.

I hope to develop the reserve watch feature further in the future, because I want to try to expand what I already have in terms of a game coaching evaluation system. But 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. While some are biased in favor of offensive players, such as the efficiency measure at the NBA site, 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, which I think is a very good balance between offense and defense:

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-RAPTORS PLAYER RATINGS
NUGGETS PLAYER RATINGS
Allen Iverson: Game 46.1 Season 41.0
Marcus Camby: Game 43.1 Season 32.5
Carmelo Anthony: Game 37.6 Season 38.9
Chucky Atkins: Game 32.9 Season 9.2
J.R. Smith: Game 23.0 Season 16.3
Anthony Carter: Game 21.7 Season 20.2
Kenyon Martin: Game 18.2 Season 22.4
Linas Kleiza: Game 13.6 Season 18.2
Eduardo Najera: Game 12.0 Season 13.3
Yakhouba Diawara: Game 11.9 Season 5.2
Steven Hunter: Game 3.6 Season 4.1
Taurean Green: Game -0.4 Season 2.6

Nene: Did Not Play-Illness

RAPTORS PLAYER RATINGS
Anthony Parker: Game 33.3 Season 21.8
Carlos Delfino: Game 31.9 Season 17.4
Rasho Nesterovic: Game 27.4 Season 12.4
Chris Humphries: Game 24.4 Season 10.7
Jamario Moon: Game 22.0 Season 19.4
Maceo Baston: Game 15.7 Season 6.2
Jose Calderon: Game 13.0 Season 29.3
T.J. Ford: Game 10.2 Season 22.9
Joey Graham: Game 10.1 Season 5.7
Jason Kapono: Game 9.0 Season 11.3
Andrea Bargnani: Game 7.5 Season 16.4
Primoz Brezec: Game -0.2 Season 4.1

NOTE 1: 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.
NOTE 2: This performance measure does NOT include the quality and quantity of each player’s defending, including the number of shots that the player prevented from going in the basket. The best Nuggets defenders, which are the ones who consistently make the extra effort and have the strength and defensive talent to make that effort pay off, are Camby, Martin, Nene, Najera, and Diawara.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE PLAYER RATINGS:
After most of the season was lost, Chucky Atkins has almost overnight finally started playing as if he has a future in Denver after all. J.R. Smith was almost half again better than normal. Camby was almost 1/3 better than normal, which is at least as impressive as Smith, considering Camby’s normal is so high.

Following a miserable game two nights earlier, Iverson turned things completely around, and was about 1/10 better than normal.

Carmelo Anthony, Carter, and Najera all played games that are typical for them.

Martin was about 80% as good as usual and Kleiza was about 3/4 as good as usual.

Among players who played limited minutes, Diawara was by far the best, Hunter was in the middle, and Green was unproductive.

The Raptors had a crazy game in the sense that almost all of their players were either way above or way below normal. There were huge players and there were huge disappointments for them. C Humphreys stepped up big time, but in relatively limited minutes, in the absence of PF Chris Bosh. So did PF Nesterovic in 21 minutes. Both of these players were twice as productive as usual and then some.

Similarly, both of the Raptors’ shooting guards played huge games, so don’t blame this rout on them. Delfino was not far from twice as productive as usual and Parker was half again as productive as his usual.

PF Baston was huge in place of Bosh in 14 minutes; he was about 2 ½ times as productive as usual, with his minutes being almost double his average minutes.

SF Moon was a little above normal. SF Graham was about 40% more productive than usual in 13 minutes.

SF Kapono played 25 minutes, but barely made 3/4 of his normal, which is based on only 19 minutes per game.

By far the biggest disappointments for the Raptors were the point guards Calderon and Ford; both of them were a little less than half as productive as usual.

Doing less damage to the Raptors because of fewer minutes, but still extremely disappointing in the relative sense, was Center Bargnani. Finally, in very limited minutes, Center Brezec was extremely unproductive.

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 1.80 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 Extremely Poor-Near Disaster
Less 0.25 Total Disaster

NUGGETS-RAPTOR5 REAL PLAYER RATINGS
All players who played 5 minutes or more are included. Any player who played only 5-9 minutes is noted.

1. Kris Humphries, Tor 1.627
2. Marcus Camby, Den 1.539
3. Allen Iverson, Den 1.441
4. Chucky Atkins, Den 1.371
5. J.R. Smith, Den 1.353
6. Rasho Nesterovic, Tor 1.305
7. Carmelo Anthony, Den 1.253
8. Yakhouba Diawara, Den 1.190
9. Maceo Baston, Tor 1.121
10. Carlos Delfino, Tor 1.100
11. Anthony Parker, Tor 1.041
12. Anthony Carter, Den 0.986
13. Jamario Moon, Tor 0.917
14. Eduardo Najera, Den 0.857
15. Joey Graham, Tor 0.777
16. Kenyon Martin, Den 0.628
17. Linas Kleiza, Den 0.618
18. Steven Hunter, Den 0.600…Hunter played only 6 minutes.
19. Andrea Bargnani, Tor 0.577
20. Jose Calderon, Tor 0.565
21. T.J. Ford, Tor 0.408
22. Jason Kapono, Tor 0.360
23. Primoz Brezec, Tor -0.033…Brezec played only 6 minutes.
24. Taurean Green, Den -0.080…Green played only 5 minutes.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
The Raptors were a team of extremes; some Raptors played extremely well while others were playing extremely poorly; there was little in between. The best player on the court was Kris Humphreys of the Raptors, and he was a superstar-plus. There were two plain superstars and both of them were Nuggets: Marcus Camby and Allen Iverson.

The Nuggets also had not one, not two, but three star-plus players, Chucky Atkins, J.R. Smith, and Carmelo Anthony. The Raptors had one star-plus player, Rasho Nesterovic.

Carlos Delfino and Maceo Baston were star players for Toronto and Yakhouba Diawara was a star in 10 minutes for the Nuggets.

In total there were 10 players who were stars or better, a number of stars that you seldom see. Of these, 6 were Nuggets and 4 were Raptors.

Moon and Parker were outstanding for the Raptors and Carter was outstanding for the Nuggets.

Najera was very good for the Nuggets, while Graham was good for the Raptors.

Martin, Kleiza, and Hunter were mediocre for the Nuggets, not counting made you miss type defending.

The Raptors had 4 important players who played poorly to one extent or another. Bargnani and Calderon were poor, while Ford was very poor. Kapono of the Raptors was extremely poor.

Two players who played very limited minutes did almost nothing: Brezec for the Raptors and Green for the Nuggets.

Among the half dozen players who were poor or worse, the Raptors had 5 of them while the Nuggets had only 1 of them.

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.
Carmelo Anthony: +28
Allen Iverson: +27
Marcus Camby: +25
Anthony Carter: +20
Linas Kleiza: +16
Kenyon Martin: +15
Eduardo Najera: +13
J.R. Smith: +7
Chucky Atkins: +3
Yakhouba Diawara: +3

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
This was a classic Nuggets rout in the sense that the three best Nuggets, Anthony, Iverson, and Camby, had huge plus-minus numbers and they had by far the best numbers of the team. From their surprisingly low numbers, you can make an educated guess that neither Smith nor Atkins played very good defense in this game.

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: NBA Average: 14, Nuggets’ Total 10, Team , Anthony 0, Atkins 1, Camby 0, Carter 1, Diawara 0, Green 0, Hunter 1, Iverson 2, Kleiza 1, Martin 1, Najera 1, Smith 2

Personal Fouls: NBA Average: 21, Nuggets’ Total 25, Anthony 1, Atkins 3, Camby 4, Carter 1, Diawara 0, Green 0, Hunter 1, Iverson 2, Kleiza 4, Martin 3, Najera 3, Smith 3

Taurean Green played 5 minutes and was 0/1 and 1/2 from the line for 1 point.

Steven Hunter played 6 minutes and was 1/1 and 1/1 from the line for 3 points.

Linas Kleiza played 22 minutes and was 1/6, 0/2 on 3’s, and 6/6 from the line for 8 points, and he made 4 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 steal.

Kenyon Martin played 29 minutes and was 2/4 and 1/2 from the line for 5 points, and he made 7 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 blocks.

Eduardo Najera played 14 minutes and was 2/4, 0/1 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 6 points, and he made 2 rebounds, 1 block, 1 assist, and 1 steal.

Anthony Carter played 22 minutes and was 5/9 and 2/5 on 3’s for 12 points, and he made 4 assists, 1 steal, and 1 rebound.

Yakhouba Diawara played 10 minutes and was 2/4, 0/1 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 6 points, and he made 4 rebounds and 1 steal.

Carmelo Anthony played 30 minutes and was 9/17, 0/1 on 3’s, and 4/5 from the line for 22 points, and he made 6 assists, 3 rebounds, and 1 block.

J.R. Smith played 17 minutes and was 5/9 and 2/6 on 3’s for 12 points, and he made 3 assists, 3 rebounds, 1 steal, and 1 block.

Chucky Atkins played 24 minutes and was 5/10, 5/8 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 17 points, and he made 7 rebounds and 4 assists.

Allen Iverson played 32 minutes and was 9/12, 0/1 on 3’s, and 10/10 from the line for 28 points, and he made 5 assists, 2 steals, and 1 block.

Marcus Camby played 28 minutes and was 6/8, 1/2 on 3’s, and 4/6 from the line for 17 points, and he made 10 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 steals, and 1 block.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Sunday, March 16 in Denver to play the Supersonics at 7 pm mountain time. Neither the Nuggets nor the Supersonics will be playing on back to back nights.