The Nuggets are in relapse again from being intoxicated with talent and addicted to a past pace offense with too many isolation plays. They have almost dropped back to being the lame underperformers of last season, when they lost about half a dozen home games to lottery teams, mostly because of 4th quarter collapses. In this game, the Nuggets’ wild and clunky offense rattled and wheezed along in the 2nd half after giving the Nuggets a 61-57 lead at the half. But the Nuggets, after trailing 104-102 with 2 minutes left, scored the last 8 points of the game and did barely avoid a devastating defeat to the banged up and lottery bound Los Angeles Clippers. So the Nuggets kept their hanging by a thread playoff hopes alive with a 110-104 victory over the Clippers.
If you count Sam Cassell, who has been waived and is trying to get on the Celtics, the Clippers had 6 players who were unavailable and only 10 players who were available to play. The Nuggets, being damaged daily by the unavailability of PG Chucky Atkins and PF Nene, had 11 players in total available to play. The Clippers’ best player, PF Elton Brand, and their best PG, Shaun Livingston, have not played at all this year due to injuries. The Clippers were so banged up and out of the playoff hunt that the ESPN announcers were pointing out over and over again that the Nuggets were looking really bad by not establishing some dominance over the Clippers, especially by being lax on defense in the paint. The national TV announcers were astonished that the Nuggets could allow the Clippers to hang around in the game the way they did, and so they were amazed that they might be watching the near suicide of a basketball team.
Veteran Nuggets watchers have been watching the Nuggets shoot themselves in the foot for many, many moons, so we don’t get upset as much as we used to about the Nuggets playing with fire and allowing a lottery team to practically beat them at home. We say to ourselves “Oh, it’s just the Nuggets, in little old Denver, and they are always doing something to remind everyone that they are not the kind of rock solid basketball team that the Western Conference is loaded up with.” Don’t get me wrong, we still hate the Nuggets for playing around with fate and sharp razors all the time, we just don’t get as upset as we used to because we know it isn’t going to change until the team is blown up or until a complete new roster of coaches is brought on to the team.
So Clippers’ star SF Corey Maggette drew a Kenyon Martin shooting foul with just over 2 minutes left and he made both free throws, making it 104-102 Clippers, and the Nuggets had the razor out ready to slit their wrists again. But after Anthony Carter, apparently in favor of the Nuggets killing themselves, foolishly attempted a three, the Nuggets, who have been very lucky in close games this year on balance, were able to get the rebound. It went to Iverson who broke free and nailed a midrange jumper to tie the game.
Then SF Al Thornton, who was by far the star of the Clippers, attempted and missed a three. I think all coaches should tell their players to never attempt three point shots in extremely close games in the final 2 minutes. Then Iverson took the pass from Carter and put the Nuggets ahead for good with an 18-foot, off-balance floating jump shot with 1:23 remaining.
Then the Clippers continued to jump shoot instead of taking it to the rim with the game on the line. Maggette missed a long two, and Melo, who made 14 rebounds, secured that rebound. Anthony then sealed the deal with yet another critical and fortunate offensive rebound off another foolish Carter 3-point attempt. The Nuggets put the razor away and prepared to face the NBA’s most brutal schedule in their next half dozen games. Life is tough, brutal even sometimes, but the Nuggets knew they could not end their season this night. They knew they had to fight on even if they are doomed because they have not found the ways that allow a team to succeed in the quest for the ring.
In this game the Clippers made a huge 28 assists while the Nuggets, with Anthony Carter, Allen Iverson, and Carmelo Anthony all making 6 assists each, made 25 in total. Assists are one of the most important things in basketball. A team like the Nuggets that does not get as many assists as it should relative to it’s fast pace, is not likely to succeed big, because a lot of assists signify that a team is passing well, that players are moving without the ball, setting screens, cutting, and so forth. A lot of assists signals that a team is minimizing the number of “dead weight” or decoy only players, who are not really part of the main flow of the offense.
The Nuggets are 19th in the NBA in assist differential, which is the number of assists per game minus the number of assists by opponents per game. The poor ranking indicates that the Nuggets are overly dependent on certain players in games. Everyone knows that Iverson and Anthony are going to be by far the biggest offensive players on the Nuggets, but the Nuggets, unfortunately, have taken the reliance on those two to a dangerous extreme. Other players, such as J.R. Smith, Linas Kleiza, and Eduardo Najera, are not as integrated into the heart of the team offense as they would be under a different offensive system (or on a different team without offensive superstar players such as Iverson and Melo).
Here are the top 10 teams in the NBA with respect to moving the ball well and keeping the offense fluid, flexible, and loaded up with as many different players as possible:
TOP 10 NBA TEAMS IN ASSISTS DIFFERENTIAL 2007-08 THROUGH MAR 2
1 Phoenix Suns 7.07
2 Utah Jazz 6.27
3 Detroit Pistons 4.10
4 Boston Celtics 3.55
5 Houston Rockets 3.17
6 San Antonio Spurs 2.64
7 NJ Nets 2.24
8 Toronto Raptors 1.78
9 Dallas Mavericks 1.57
10 LA Lakers 1.37
As you can see, for the most part, these are the teams that are considered as the best teams in basketball right now. Notice that the Spurs, the Pistons, and the Rockets, who are known for excellent defending, are also very good offensive flow and optimization teams. It should also be noted too that these are the teams that game watchers like to watch the most, because most basketball watchers prefer to watch teams that have a lot of passing and a lot of assists in their offense, and/or a defense that disrupts assisting, over teams that have a lot of isolation plays, such as Denver.
Anybody who reads these reports knows that I have been becoming more and more of a nag regarding playing times. All detail oriented basketball fans and writers become critical of playing times to one extent or another; almost everyone thinks that the head coach of their team is messing up the playing times of at least a few players. Some are playing too much and some are playing too little.
And anybody who reads these reports must have wondered by now what I think the best playing time breakdown would be for the Nuggets. Well, I divided the team into two overall components, guards and forwards-centers (front court) to make sure I would never have too many guards or too many forward out there, and then I crunched the numbers based on my vast knowledge of the Nuggets. Alright, make it my substantial knowledge of the Nuggets. What follows is what I come up with as the best current playing times for Nuggets players, rounded to the nearest 5 minutes.
At first you see the times assuming that Atkins and Nene are available and returned to form following injury outs. Following this you see the times players should play if Atkins and Nene are out. Adjustment options are explained. Remember, there are 48 minutes in each game, so there are a total of 240 player-minutes to give out.
FULL ROSTER RECOMMENDED PLAYING TIMES
Best Playing times for Nuggets’ guards:
Iverson: 35 minutes, PG starter
Iverson occasionally runs out of gas at the worst possible time when he plays 40 or more minutes.
JR Smith: 30 minutes, SG starter
Pray that J.R. hits shots and does not start turning it over a lot. If he is missing shots and/or is turning it over excessively, simply sit him on the bench for the 2nd half. In that case, Smith’s 15 2nd half minutes get distributed among the other 3 guards according to how well they have played in the 1st half, and according to matchups that you will get with the opponent.
Yakhouba Diawara, off the bench: 15 minutes
He is a good 3-point shooter and good defender; make sure he gets to shoot when he is out there. The Nuggets have too many players who are considered “for defense only” or “for offense only.” You can not afford that in the NBA.
Carter or Atkins, off the bench guard option: 15 minutes
You play whoever is going to do the best against a particular opponent. But Atkins can only be played if he is back in form after his long injury out. When playing a higher scoring team that is not obsessed with defense, you want to play Atkins for 3-point shooting if at all possible. If Atkins is not available, and Iverson is running the point a lot in a game, cut Carter to 10 and increase Diawara to 20 or increase Smith to 35.
Best Playing times for Nuggets’ forwards and centers:
Carmelo Anthony: 40 minutes, SF starter
Marcus Camby: 35 minutes, C starter
Kenyon Martin: 25 minutes, PF starter
Nene, off the bench: 25 minutes
Najera or Kleiza, off the bench forward option: 20 minutes
This is your main forward option play. This depends mostly on whether more defense or more offense is needed, you go with more Kleiza for offense and with more Najera if you are in a defensive struggle, or if you need defense to stop a run, or to slow down a hot team.
The total adds to the 240 player minutes that you have in a NBA game.
If the back court is having a disaster, your main emergency option is to bring in Taurean Green for 10 or more minutes.
If the front court is having a disaster, your main emergency options are:
More Kleiza and less Najera or vice versa
More Nene and less K-Mart or vice versa
Is this biased in favor of J.R. Smith? Yes and no. It's biased in his favor in that he starts and gets the big 30 minutes that he deserves, if he hits his shots and keeps turnovers and fouls within reason. It's biased against Smith if he misses most of his shots in the 1st half or makes too many turnovers or fouls; he loses half his minutes in this case. Conclusion: it's the correct compromise regarding the inconsistent J.R. Smith.
RECOMMENDED PLAYING TIMES WITHOUT ATKINS AND NENE
If PG Atkins is not available, the adjustment is simple. You have lost your guard option, and you have to play Carter 20 minutes. But since Carter is not reliable, mostly due to Iverson encroaching on his PG duties, I would experiment with Green a few times if Atkins is a lost cause and Iverson continues to play a lot of point for the stretch playoff run.
How to adjust if Nene is not available:
You distribute Nene’s 25 minutes as follows. You increase Martin from 25 to 35 minutes. Instead of playing Najera OR Kleiza for 20, you play both of them, usually Kleiza for 20 and Najera for 15. Reverse for more defense: Najera for 20 and Kleiza for 15.
So here are the Nuggets 1 Nuggets guards playing time recommendations for the Nuggets without Atkins and without Nene:
Iverson 35 minutes
Smith 30 minutes
Carter 15 minutes
Diawara 15 minutes
If Smith is taken out for the 2nd half, go Iverson 40, Smith 15, Carter 20, and Diawara 20.
If Iverson has taken over the point and Carter is almost worthless adjust to Iverson 40 and Carter 10.
Here are the Nuggets 1 Nuggets forwards and centers playing time recommendations for the Nuggets without Atkins and without Nene:
Anthony 40 minutes
Camby 35 minutes
Martin 35 minutes
Kleiza 20 minutes
Najera 15 minutes
Again, go Najera 20 and Kleiza 15 or so when more defense is needed.
The Nuggets need to cut way down on players who play for less than 10 minutes. If a player has to come out of the game after less than 10 minutes, he should not have played at all. Since Karl takes out players after less than 10 minutes more often than most other coaches, he is either (1) Not giving the player enough time to produce or (2) Not thinking straight regarding putting the player in the game in the first place. (1) will usually be the case.
PROJECTIONS
The current odds of the Nuggets making the playoffs, according to Hollinger at ESPN’s excellent team analysis system, are 62%. The Nuggets are projected to most likely be the 8th seed in the Western Conference. The Hollinger odds don’t take into account that, most likely, neither Nene nor Atkins are going to be available in top form for the Nuggets for the stretch run, so the real odds that the Nuggets will make the playoffs are probably around 50-55% now. Flip a coin.
The Lakers, the Hornets, the Spurs, the Mavericks, the Jazz, the Suns, and the Rockets are currently considered virtual locks to make the playoffs. However, the Rockets are no longer really locks, due to the loss of Yao Ming for the season.
The Warriors are projected by the computer to have a good winning record, but to miss the postseason. The odds that the Warriors will make the playoffs are currently 55%, not all that much less than the Nuggets’ 62%.
The Rockets have just lost their best player, and one of the best players in the NBA, Yao Ming, for the rest of the season. Therefore, they may drop far below their current projection, since the projections do not take injuries into account. Therefore, it is quite possible that the Rockets will finish with the 9th seed, in which case both the Nuggets and the Warriors will make the playoffs. The Rockets are currently 3 games ahead of the Nuggets with 24 games left to play.
For the Nuggets, winning the Northwest Division is very unlikely at this point; the odds on that are at 19%. The odds that Utah will win the Northwest are 80% right now. The Nuggets would most likely have to beat the Jazz in both of their remaining games against them, both of which are in Salt Lake City, in order to have a shot at winning the Northwest.
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 Jan. 9 and underwent successful surgery on Jan. 11. He is expected to be sidelined a minimum of eight weeks. Atkins is out until at least March 10. With any luck, he will be back in the Nuggets lineup by late March.
Nene: underwent successful surgery to remove a testicular tumor on Jan. 14. A timeline for his return is still unknown. He is out until at least the first week of March, but could easily be out for the entire rest of the season.
Eduardo Najera: did not travel with the team to Seattle on 2/27 (personal reasons)
CLIPPERS PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
Chris Kaman He is dealing with nerve inflammation in his back; he may attempt to return very soon.
Elton Brand: Achilles injury in Oct. 2007. He recently had his walking boot removed and began advanced cardiovascular activities. He may be ready to return to action around the middle of March.
Tim Thomas Strained his left groin late in this game and didn't return. His Status is day-to-day.
Shaun Livingston: Knee injury December 1, 2007. The healing process of his torn MCL, ACL and PCL has gone well. He is now ready to begin the strengthening process and is targeting April 1 as a tentative return date.
Paul Davis He is out for the remainder of the season after tearing his MCL and ACL on Dec. 21.
Sam Cassell: waived from the Clippers, wants to play for the Celtics.
ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of March 1, 2008
The Nuggets are under a YELLOW ALERT, on account of the following problems.
INJURIES, ILLNESSES, SUSPENSIONS, AND LEAVES
1. Chucky Atkins injury 18 points
2. Nene illness 14 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 6 points. Either Najera should have played more, or Diawara should have played about 10 minutes or so to beef up the defending and possibly to get him back in the mode of hitting three-pointers.
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.
On defense a system is much less important than on offense. 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. More important than whether a zone or man to man defense is in effect is the quality of the actual defending.
Lack of an adequate number of offensive plays and patterns: 7 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: 50, 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
As an estimate, the Clippers’ alert status point total was in the range of 85-105 for yesterday’s game, due largely to the triple huge loss of C Chris Kaman, PF Elton Brand, and PG Shaun Livingston due to injuries, the latter two for the entire season up until now. 100 points means a BLACK alert, and the season is lost when you have a BLACK alert. Few would argue against the idea that the Clippers’ season is lost. So the Nuggets were about 2 ½ alert levels lower (better) than the Clippers, and they also had the home court advantage. For these reasons, the ESPN announcers were stressing throughout the game that the Nuggets should have more or less routed the Clippers. But the Nuggets failed to get even close to a rout and that had the announcers convinced that the Nuggets stand no chance to advance in the NBA playoffs this year and that the Nuggets might very plausibly not even make the playoffs.
Karl was stingy with Najera, very stingy with Smith, and probably could have used some Yakhouba Diawara in this game as well. The lack of any consistency in the offense to speak of did not hurt very much against the Clippers.
Both Atkins and Nene are definitely going to be out for many more days 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 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.
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 Clippers 8
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 8 Clippers 7
Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 10
Clippers Non-Starters Points: 33
Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 9
Clippers Non-Starters Rebounds: 15
Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 4
Clippers Non-Starters Assists: 5
Dan Dickau should have played more than 10 minutes for the Clippers. Clippers Coach Mike Dunleavy is the only coach among heavily experienced coaches who has a losing record, and he is probably the only heavily experienced coach who is inferior to George Karl. When you play just 7 men on the road you generally lose. Karl has been known to do this, and he has lost every time that I know of.
SF Al Thornton from off the bench at small forward led the Clippers non-starters past the Nuggets’ non-starters by wide margins in scoring and rebounding. Thornton alone had all 33 of the points and 12 of the 15 non-starters rebounds.
Neither team’s non-starters made a lot of assists. Thornton for the Clippers made 4 and Najera for the Nuggets made 3.
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-CLIPPERS PLAYER RATINGS
NUGGETS PLAYER RATINGS
Carmelo Anthony: Game 59.8 Season 39.4
Allen Iverson: Game 58.5 Season 41.4
Marcus Camby: Game 38.1 Season 33.2
Anthony Carter: Game 18.2 Season 20.8
Eduardo Najera: Game 16.7 Season 13.3
Kenyon Martin: Game 16.0 Season 22.6
Linas Kleiza: Game 2.7 Season 18.8
J.R. Smith: Game 1.5 Season 15.4
Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Nene: Did Not Play-Illness
Yakhouba Diawara: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Taurean Green: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
CLIPPERS PLAYER RATINGS
Al Thornton: Game 56.5 Season 17.0
Corey Maggette: Game 45.9 Season 32.9
Brevin Knight: Game 31.5 Season 12.7
Tim Thomas: Game 18.6 Season 23.1
Cuttino Mobley: Game 15.7 Season 21.2
Josh Powell: Game 15.6 Season 8.4
Dan Dickau: Game 8.5 Season 8.8
Quinton Ross: Game 0.0 Season 8.9
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:
This was a game in which the three Nuggets’ superstars did the vast majority of the damage to the opponent on the court. Both Anthony and Iverson were almost half again as much more productive than they usually are. Camby and Najera were slightly above average, while Carter, overshadowed by Iverson, was slightly below average.
Kenyon Martin was well below average not counting his made you miss defending, which is not measured yet. Both Kleiza and Smith, who are among the Nuggets who are a little better in real terms this year than last, did very, very little in this game.
The Nuggets frequently have one obscure player go off huge against them and in this game they had two of them. One of them was SF Al Thornton, the rookie from Florida State. Thornton is averaging 23.5 minutes this year, and a 17.0 rating. This game, he played 35 minutes and his rating more than tripled to 56.5. When a rookie is in the zone, he can really explode in a game, especially if that rookie is playing the Nuggets. Since Sam Cassell is no longer a Clipper, Brevin Knight was the starting PG, and he made 12 assists but scored only 9 points. SF Corey Maggette was half again as much more productive than usual.
Josh Powell is a sparingly used PF who is playing a lot while Chris Kaman is out. PG Dan Dickau was very productive in limited minutes.
PF Tim Thomas couldn’t play late due to a groin injury. Starting SG Cuttino Mobley could not get the ball to go in the basket much, and SG Quinton Ross did very little off the bench in 10 minutes.
.
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-CLIPPERS REAL PLAYER RATINGS
All players who played 5 minutes or more are included. Any player who played only 5-9 minutes is noted.
1. Al Thornton, LAC 1.614
2. Carmelo Anthony, Den 1.574
3. Allen Iverson, Den 1.300
4. Corey Maggette, LAC 1.148
5. Dan Dickau, LAC 1.063…Dickau played only 8 minutes.
6. Marcus Camby, Den 1.003
7. Brevin Knight, LAC 0.900
8. Eduardo Najera, Den 0.795
9. Anthony Carter, Den 0.628
10. Tim Thomas, LAC 0.531
11. Josh Powell, LAC 0.473
12. Kenyon Martin, Den 0.432
13. Cuttino Mobley, LAC 0.413
14. Linas Kleiza, Den 0.142
15. J.R. Smith, Den 0.115
16. Quinton Ross, LAC 0.000
OBSERVATIONS ON THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Rookie SF Al Thornton was a superstar-plus against the wobbly Nuggets’ defense. He was 13/22, 2/3 on 3’s, and 5/6 from the line for 33 points, and he made 12 rebounds and 4 assists. For the Nuggets, Carmelo Anthony was a superstar, and Allen Iverson was a star-plus. Dan Dickau and Corey Maggette were plain old stars for the Clippers. Among the 5 players who were stars or better, the Clippers had 3 and the Nuggets had 2, but one of the Clippers stars, Dickau, played only 8 minutes.
Knight for the Clippers and Camby for the Nuggets were outstanding.
Najera was good, and Carter was mediocre for the Nuggets.
Thomas was held back by an injury situation. Powell and Mobley for the Clippers, and Martin for the Nuggets, were very poor. But that doesn’t count Martin’s defending, which you would think would raise him up to mediocre or so.
There were 3 bona fide total disasters in this game. Ross for the Clippers was a total disaster. For the Nuggets, neither Kleiza nor Smith should have bothered to suit up when you get right down to it.
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.
Allen Iverson: +11
Marcus Camby: +9
Carmelo Anthony: +5
Anthony Carter: +4
Eduardo Najera: +3
Linas Kleiza: +2
Kenyon Martin: +0
J.R. Smith: -4
OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
Iverson had it going on as they say, and Camby was big against the hapless Clippers. Other than some defending, Martin did little. Kleiza and Smith did very little even if you combine what they did together! So these three deserved their low plus-minus scores.
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 10, Team 1, Anthony 0, Camby 2, Carter 3, Iverson 2, Kleiza 0, Martin 1, Najera 0, Smith 1
Personal Fouls: Total 19, Anthony 2, Camby 2, Carter 2, Iverson 1, Kleiza 3, Martin 4, Najera 3, Smith 2
J.R. Smith played 13 minutes and was 1/5 and 0/3 on 3’s for 2 points, and he made 1 assist and 1 rebound.
Linas Kleiza played 19 minutes and was 1/3, 0/1 on 3’s, and 1/4 from the line for 3 points, and he made 1 block and 1 rebound.
Kenyon Martin played 37 minutes and was 4/10 and 5/9 from the line for 13 points, and he made 5 rebounds and 1 assist.
Anthony Carter played 29 minutes and was 3/10 and 1/4 on 3’s for 7 points, and he made 6 assists, 6 rebounds, and 1 steal.
Eduardo Najera played 21 minutes and was 2/6, 0/3 on 3’s, and 1/1 from the line for 5 points, and he made 7 rebounds, 3 assists, and 1 block.
Marcus Camby played 38 minutes and was 5/13, 0/1 on 3’s, and 2/3 from the line for 12 points, and he made 17 rebounds, 6 blocks, 2 assists, and 1 steal.
Allen Iverson played for virtually the whole game, 45 minutes, and was 13/22, 2/6 on 3’s, and 10/11 from the line for 38 points, and he made 6 assists, 4 rebounds, and 1 steal.
Carmelo Anthony played 38 minutes and was 13/25, 0/2 on 3’s, and 4/5 from the line for 30 points, and he made 14 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 blocks, and 1 steal.
NEXT UP
The next game will be Sunday, March 2 in Houston to play the Rockets at 6 pm mountain time. Neither the Nuggets nor the Rockets will be playing on back to back nights.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Thursday, February 28, 2008
The Massive Rout, Nuggets 138 Supersonics 96, and the Massive Point Guard Blunder
The Nuggets, having dropped back into a course toward the 9th seed in the West following 3 straight losses, took out their frustrations on the tired, kind of banged up, and definitely rebuilding Seattle Supersonics. The final score of this laugher was the Nuggets 138 and the Sonics 96. But the fans, who are generous and intelligent Great Northwest types, never booed their rebuilding Sonics, and you can bet if there is any way to stop the Oklahoma guy from moving their team, the Great Northwest folks will find it and keep their Sonics where they are.
The historic blowout gave the Nuggets the highest point total of any team in any game so far this year. Also, the Nuggets set a new franchise shooting accuracy record. The Nuggets made 59/88 shots, or 67.0%, eclipsing the previous franchise record of 66.7% against New Jersey early in the 1978 season. Denver also bettered the 66.2 percent shooting of the Lakers earlier this season, the previous best in the league. The highest scoring game before Wednesday night came when the Suns scored 137. Guess which team had the 137 points scored against it? It was the Nuggets, of course. Being a fan of the Nuggets means you are going to take a ride on the biggest roller coaster in the NBA.
Anthony did not get the ball anywhere near as much as he usually does, but Anthony’s number one skill, scoring, was not needed very much in a game against a tired and banged up rebuilding team with a very poor defense. And Anthony has an informal tradition of taking it easy in obvious routs, and also of encouraging his teammates to have the kind of big offensive games that they seldom have. This is what he used to do at Syracuse University. Anthony has always been misunderstood by those who did not see him play in Syracuse as having a tendency to be selfish, or being too obsessed about scoring.
Seattle Coach P.J. Carlissimo summed up the game this way: “We didn’t defend at all.” The Nuggets know a team that is not defending when they see one. They can immediately spot one since they themselves occasionally decide to play a game where “they don’t defend at all.”
The Sonics were missing two fairly important players, PG Earl Watson and PG Luke Ridnour, who did nothing in the 1st half due to a hamstring strain and did not return for the 2nd half. The Sonics have only 2 point guards on their team right now, and since 2-2=0, the Sonics didn’t have any point guards with which to play this game.
Meanwhile, the Nuggets are overloaded with point guards, even though many fans are convinced the PG position is going to be the death of the Nuggets in the playoffs, assuming they beat out either the Warriors or the no-Yao Rockets for the 8th and final playoff slot in the West. The reason for the confusion is that, while many fans are locked into the traditional, establishment view that Allen Iverson has never been so he can never be the designated starting point guard, the truth is that Iverson is playing both of the guard positions this season, and the designated point guard, Anthony Carter, simply fades into the background and becomes almost useless whenever Iverson takes charge of much or most of the ball distribution duties.
Despite the fact that there are a large number of Nuggets fans who would rather face the headless horseman than A.I. officially at the point, Iverson has actually been the effective point guard in numerous games already this year. Even George Karl, who of course as usual is on the side opposing my view, has in fact started A.I. at the point several times this season, especially back in November after Atkins was injured and before Carter started playing for the Nuggets. Karl is not opposed to Iverson playing PG; he’s just opposed to admitting that Iverson plays a lot of PG, because then he would have to explain why the heck the Nuggets often have two point guards on the court at the same time. Karl is good at getting into technical team management mistakes as he runs the Nuggets, and he is also good at keeping them hidden and escaping having to explain them. In other words, he is good at living in falsehoods.
In games in which Iverson has made 10 or more assists, the Nuggets are 11-1. The only loss was to the Jazz in overtime on Feb. 6, despite 10 assists by Iverson. In games in which Anthony Carter has made 10 or more assists, the Nuggets are 6-1. Iverson is ahead of Carter in the number of double digit dimes games 12-7.
In games in which Iverson had made 8 or more assists, the Nuggets are 19-7. In games in which Carter had made 8 or more assists, the Nuggets are 12-3. Iverson is ahead of Carter in games of 8 or more assists, 26-15. But the Nuggets have won 80% of games in which Carter has made 8 or more assists, and only 73% of games in which Iverson has made 8 or more assists, which is the reverse of what I expected to find. But Iverson’s winning percentage with 8 or more assists is certainly not grossly lower than Carter’s.
But here is where it gets really interesting, fasten your seatbelts, please. There have been 14 games in which Carter has made more assists than Iverson, and there have been 41 games in which Iverson has made more assists than Carter. 12 of those 41 games were before Carter was brought on to the Nuggets. So while both Carter and Iverson have been on the team, Iverson has made more assists than Carter 29 times and Carter has made more assists than Iverson 14 times.
Overall so far this season, Iverson is averaging 7.3 assists per game and Carter is averaging 6.1 assists per game. With February drawing to a close, there have now been 3 full months in which both Carter and Iverson have been on the team. Of those months, there has only been one month when Carter averaged more assists per game than Iverson, which was January. In December, it was 7.1 assists per game for Iverson and 5.1 assists per game for Carter. In January, it was 7.6 assists per game for Carter and 6.5 assists per game for Iverson. And now in February, it has been 8.8 assists per game for Iverson to 5.6 assists per game for Carter.
During February, a wide gap has opened up between Iverson and Carter, and this is why I was forced to go the extent I have to explain the situation and the big mistake I have discovered that has been made by Karl and by a substantial number of fans. I used to think that the whether Iverson should start at the point debate was just one of those typical sports arguments, but then I realized I had stumbled on to a big blunder that has emerged from this situation.
Now let’s take a look at the winning and losing:
14 Games in which Carter made more assists than Iverson: Nuggets are 8-6 or 57%;
29 Games in which Iverson has made more assists than Carter: 16-13 or 55%.
Once again, I have been prevented from making a really slam dunk argument, which I would have been able to do had the Iverson winning percentage been greater than the Carter percentage. However, I have at least shown once again that it is irrational to think that Iverson can not win as many games for the Nuggets when he is the main point guard as Carter can. And just as importantly, I have exposed for the entire world to see that the Nuggets are living the George Karl lie regarding their point guard situation, because Iverson has been more of a point guard than Carter has been for two of the three months when both were starting, with the gap in February opening up wide in favor of Iverson.
When you live a lie, you usually suffer damages. For the Nuggets, during February, the damage has been that Carter has become dangerously useless on the court, at least while playing alongside Iverson, as Iverson has wisely decided to concentrate on distributing more than at almost any time in his career. Carter’s recent slump is no accident; it was a direct result of his point guard duties being partly taken over by Iverson.
So a wide gap has opened up in February, where Iverson has averaged 8.8 assists per game and Carter has averaged 5.6 assists per game. The bad news, as I already mentioned, is that Carter has become of little value out there when Iverson is also out there. The good news is only a potential, but it could be huge if the potential became reality. We can only hope that the reason Iverson is looking for more assists than ever is that he remembers the number one reason why the Nuggets lost 4 straight games to the Spurs in the playoffs last year, which was that Iverson was dribbling and shooting too much and distributing too little. In fairness to both Iverson and Karl regarding the Spurs disaster, it should be noted that the Carter role last year was being played by Steve Blake, who was a much more experienced NBA point guard than Carter is this year, so the chance that Iverson would take over actual point guard duties from Blake was never as likely as the chance that Iverson would take over actual point guard duties from Carter this year. If Iverson does continue to take over a large part of the passing for scores, the Nuggets could theoretically be setting themselves up for a first round shocker, where they would take the series to 7 games.
Before we leave this extremely important subject, let’s take a close look at last year:
2007-08 Nuggets: Iverson 7.3 assists per game; Carter 6.1 assists per game.
2006-07 Nuggets: Iverson 7.2 assists per game; Blake 6.6 assists per game.
Here we see that Iverson had almost the exact same number of assists last year as this year, while last year’s designated starting point guard made half an assist more per game than this year’s designated point guard. Now let’s take a look at the Spurs series:
IVERSON AND BLAKE ASSISTS IN THE NUGGETS/SPURS PLAYOFF SERIES
Game 1 Iverson 5 Blake 3; Nuggets 95 Spurs 89
Game 2 Iverson 5 Blake 7; Spurs 97 Nuggets 88
Game 3 Iverson 4 Blake 7; Spurs 96 Nuggets 91
Game 4 Iverson 7 Blake 4; Spurs 96 Nuggets 89
Game 5 Iverson 8 Blake 2; Spurs 93 Nuggets 78
Here we see that Iverson made more assists than did Blake in the one and only game that the Nuggets won. Overall, the Nuggets were 1-2 in games in which Iverson made more assists than Blake, and they were 0-2 in games in which Blake made more assists than Iverson. But game 5 was a rout in San Antonio after the Nuggets’ spirit was broken, and after a key player, J.R. Smith, was benched. Quite frankly, the Nuggets most likely knew in advance that they were almost certainly going to lose that game. And there was no way that the Spurs were going to lose that game at home and have to return to Denver for a game 6. So if you don’t count that hopeless game, in games in which Iverson made more assists than Blake, the Nuggets were 1-1, and they were 0-2 in games in which Blake made more assists than Iverson. Therefore, there is some evidence from the Nuggets-Spurs series in support of my theory that Iverson playing point guard and being responsible for getting the most assists of all Nuggets is better for the Nuggets then if Iverson is not playing point guard and is not responsible in that way.
I wish there had also been regular season evidence to go with this limited evidence. You can bet that I will be continuing to watch this closely in the final weeks of this season, looking for more evidence.
I am sure the truth is that the Nuggets are better off to the extent that Iverson does take over the actual point guard duties from Carter, unless Karl stubbornly continues to refuse to reduce Carter’s playing time, in which case it is probably a wash. I have proved that Iverson is at least as good as Carter with respect to basic point guard duties. Since Iverson scores at practically double the rate that Carter scores, and since he would still score a lot more than Carter does if he were the designated point guard, and since Iverson’s turnovers would be only very slightly more than now if he was the designated point guard, because he would be handling the ball hardly any more than he already does, to me it is a now a no-brainer that Iverson should be the starting point guard.
Iverson, I am starting to hope based on the February games, is smart enough to know that (1) He can’t do what he did last year in the Spurs series and expect to win and that (2) No matter what Karl and a substantial number of fans think, he can and should take over many of the point guard duties from Carter who ironically, almost everyone, including those afraid of Iverson at the point, believes will be close to a disaster in the playoffs.
In a word, it seems to me that Iverson has started to coach himself.
PROJECTIONS
The current odds of the Nuggets making the playoffs, according to Hollinger at ESPN’s excellent team analysis system, are 65%. The Nuggets are projected to be the 8th seed in the Western Conference. The Hollinger odds don’t take into account that, most likely, neither Nene nor Atkins are going to be available to and in top form for the Nuggets for the stretch run, so the real odds that the Nuggets will make the playoffs are probably around 50-55% now.
The Lakers, the Hornets, the Spurs, the Mavericks, the Jazz, the Suns, and the Rockets are currently considered virtual locks to make the playoffs.
The Warriors are projected to have a good winning record, but miss the postseason. The odds that the Warriors will make the playoffs are currently 51%, substantially less than the Nuggets’ 65%.
Meanwhile, the Rockets have just lost their best player, and one of the best players in the NBA, Yao Ming, for the rest of the season. Therefore, they may drop far below their current projection, since the projections do not take injuries into account. Therefore, it is quite possible that the Rockets will finish with the 9th seed, in which case both the Nuggets and the Warriors will make the playoffs.
For the Nuggets, winning the Northwest Division is very unlikely at this point; the odds on that are at 17%, The Nuggets would most likely have to beat the Jazz in both of their remaining games against them, both of which are in Salt Lake City, in order to have a shot at winning the Northwest.
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 Jan. 9 and underwent successful surgery on Jan. 11. He is expected to be sidelined a minimum of eight weeks. Atkins is out until at least March 10. With any luck, he will be back in the Nuggets lineup by late March.
Nene: underwent successful surgery to remove a testicular tumor on Jan. 14. A timeline for his return is still unknown. He is out until at least the first week of March, but could easily be out for the entire rest of the season.
Eduardo Najera: did not travel with the team to Seattle on 2/27 (personal reasons)
SUPERSONICS PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
Earl Watson: Sat out this game due to an unknown illness. He may miss the Sonics game vs. Miami on February 29. He is considered day to day.
Robert Swift: An MRI on the injured right knee revealed a torn meniscus. He is out for the season.
Luke Ridnour: Did not play in the second half of this game after he experienced some tightness in his right hamstring. He is considered day to day.
ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of February 28, 2008
The Nuggets are under a YELLOW ALERT, on account of the following problems.
INJURIES, ILLNESSES, SUSPENSIONS, AND LEAVES
1. Chucky Atkins injury 18 points
2. Nene illness 14 points
3. Eduardo Najera 12 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: 0 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 2 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.
On defense a system is much less important than on offense. 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. More important than whether a zone or man to man defense is in effect is the quality of the actual defending.
Lack of an adequate number of offensive plays and patterns: 7 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: 53, 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
A rough estimate of the Sonics’ alert status is that they were in high GREY or low YELLOW alert status while, as you can see, the NUGGETS were in high YELLOW alert. So the Sonics had approximately a one level advantage as far as the alert status is concerned. Obviously, that advantage was not all that much help.
In a game against a tired team with little defense available, the Nuggets’ offensive deficiencies were meaningless. J.R. Smith got to play as many minutes as he should be playing in ordinary games, thanks to garbage time, where he was sort of the leader of the pack of rarely seen Nuggets players.
Both Atkins and Nene are definitely going to be out for many more days 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 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.
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 10 Supersonics 12
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 7 Supersonics 8
Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 44
Supersonics Non-Starters Points: 39
Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 13
Supersonics Non-Starters Rebounds: 22
Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 8
Supersonics Non-Starters Assists: 8
OBSERVATIONS ON HOW THE RESERVES WERE USED AND PLAYED
Coach P.J. Carlissimo played all but one player he had available between the regular game and the garbage time. Coach George Karl of the Nuggets played every single Nugget who was available; there are only 10 Nuggets available these days.
Amazingly, the Supersonics non-starters were very close to the Nuggets in points, 39-44, and they were much better in rebounding, 22-13. Each group of non-starters made 8 assists.
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. 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-SUPERSONICS PLAYER RATINGS
NUGGETS PLAYER RATINGS
Allen Iverson: Game 51.4 Season 41.1
Marcus Camby: Game 43.5 Season 33.2
Kenyon Martin: Game 41.2 Season 22.8
Anthony Carter: Game 40.6 Season 20.9
Carmelo Anthony: Game 28.8 Season 39.0
Linas Kleiza: Game 25.2 Season 19.1
J.R. Smith: Game 23.1 Season 15.7
Yakhouba Diawara: Game 14.4 Season 5.3
Taurean Green: Game 9.1 Season 3.8
Steven Hunter: Game 8.8 Season 4.7
Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Nene: Did Not Play-Illness
Eduardo Najera: Did Not Play-Personal Leave
SUPERSONICS PLAYER RATINGS
Johan Petro: Game 28.9 Season 10.3
Mickael Gelabale: Game 26.4 Season 7.1
Kevin Durant: Game 20.5 Season 26.6
Jeff Green: Game 15.6 Season 15.3
Damien Wilkins: Game 14.4 Season 15.4
Chris Wilcox: Game 12.3 Season 22.4
Nick Collison: Game 11.9 Season 21.7
Donyell Marshall: Game 8.6 Season 6.8
Francisco Elson: Game 4.2 Season 7.2
Luke Ridnour: Game 3.6 Season 12.7
Adrian Griffin: Game 1.2 Season 4.7
Ira Newble: Game 0.6 Season 7.9
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:
Every single Nugget except one stepped up in this monumental rout. Ironically, only Anthony was below his seasonal average..
Martin was a monster on both offense and defense in this game. Neither Iverson nor Camby had any mercy for the Sonics either, as both of them were about 1/4 more productive than they usually are.
Anthony Carter took full advantage of the opportunity to come out of his slump and have a huge game. It was his 1st above normal game since the Celtics game. He was well below normal in the 3 games in between. Carter tends to do poorly when the Nuggets are going to lose, and he tends to do well when the Nuggets are going to win a game.
Kleiza and Smith were both well above normal, Smith more so than Kleiza.
Every one of the garbage time players, Diawara, Green, and Hunter, were playing as if their life depended on it. And their basketball life certainly depended on it, since they are playing for George Karl after all, who is one of the stingiest coaches in the NBA regarding playing time for reserves.
The startling thing about the Sonics is that the highest seasonal average player they had on the court in this game was G-F Kevin Durant, whose average is well under 30, at 26.6. AI and Melo are half again as much as that, and Camby is much higher as well. The Nuggets have paid a huge price to assemble this team with it’s 3 mega stars, and it is a shame that fans are sweating whether they will make the playoffs or not.
C Johan Petro and SF Mickael Gelabale came out of nowhere to lead the Sonics. Petro was almost 3 times and Gelabale was almost 4 times as productive as usual. Durant played relatively poorly, while SF Green and G-F Wilkins were dead center on their seasonal norms.
F-C Wilcox and F-C Collison were major disappointments for Seattle, which left their front court devastated.
.
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-SUPERSONICS REAL PLAYER RATINGS
All players who played 5 minutes or more are included. Any player who played only 5-9 minutes is noted.
1. Yakhouba Diawara, Den 1.600…Diawara played only 9 minutes.
2. Taurean Green, Den 1.517…Green played only 6 minutes.
3. Allen Iverson, Den 1.469
4. Steven Hunter, Den 1.467…Hunter played only 6 minutes.
5. Kenyon Martin, Den 1.329
6. Marcus Camby, Den 1.176
7. Anthony Carter, Den 1.068
8. Linas Kleiza, Den 1.050
9. J.R. Smith, Den 1.004
10. Carmelo Anthony, Den 0.960
11. Donyell Marshall, Sea 0.956…Marshall played only 9 minutes.
12. Mickael Gelabale, Sea 0.943
13. Johan Petro, Sea 0.903
14. Nick Collison, Sea 0.700
15. Francisco Elson, Sea 0.700…Elson played only 6 minutes.
16. Damien Wilkins, Sea 0.686
17. Kevin Durant, Sea 0.603
18. Jeff Green, Sea 0.473
19. Chris Wilcox, Sea 0.373
20. Luke Ridnour, Sea 0.212
21. Adrian Griffin, Sea 0.200…Griffin played only 6 minutes
22. Ira Newble, Sea 0.100…Newble played only 6 minutes.
OBSERVATIONS ON THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Can you be a star or a superstar in garbage time? Of course, I am always on the lookout for superstar performances, even in garbage time. All 3 of the Nuggets’ garbage time only players were huge, but their minutes were very limited. Diawara was a superstar plus, while Green and Hunter were superstars.
Iverson was a superstar in the regular part of the game. Martin was a star-plus, and Camby, Carter, and Kleiza were all stars. In a game so extremely lopsided that you might not see one like it anywhere in the NBA for years to come, all 8 of the stars and up players were Nuggets.
There were 5 outstanding players, C Petro, SF Gelabale, and SF Marshall in limited minutes for the Sonics, and Smith and Anthony for the Nuggets. So the Nuggets had 10 of the 13 players who were outstanding or better.
This was total, perfect domination for the Nuggets over the Sonics, because the best Sonics’ player, which was SF Marshall, or else SF Gelabale if you don’t count the small minute players, was not as good as the worst Nugget, which was Carmelo Anthony. In other words, every single Nugget was better than every single Sonic. This is something that you will very seldom, if ever, see again in your lifetime.
G-F Durant and G-F Wilkins were only mediocre. SF Green was very poor and F-C Wilcox was extremely poor. PG Ridnour was a total disaster because he had a major hamstring problem.
NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court. All Nuggets who played at least 10 minutes are shown.
J.R. Smith: +33
Anthony Carter: +32
Allen Iverson: +29
Marcus Camby: +27
Linas Kleiza: +26
Kenyon Martin: +25
Carmelo Anthony: +18
OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
The Nuggets won by 42 points, so you are almost never going to see numbers this big on the plus-minus. Only Anthony had a little mercy on the Sonics.
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 17, Team 0, Anthony 5, Camby 1, Carter 1, Diawara 0, Green 0, Hunter 0, Iverson 6, Kleiza 1, Martin 1, Smith 2
Personal Fouls: Total 16, Anthony 3, Camby 4, Carter 0, Diawara 1, Green 1, Hunter 0, Iverson 2, Kleiza 1, Martin 3, Smith 1
Carmelo Anthony played 30 minutes and was 7/13, 0/1 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 16 points, and he made 6 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, and 1 block.
J.R. Smith played 23 minutes and was 6/9 and 3/5 on 3’s for 15 points, and he made 2 rebounds, 1 assist, and 1 steal.
Linas Kleiza played 24 minutes and was 6/12, 2/4 on 3’s, and 1/2 from the line for 15 points, and he made 3 assists, 3 rebounds, and 2 steals.
Anthony Carter played 38 minutes and was 4/4, 1/1 on 3’s, and 3/4 from the line for 12 points, and he made 12 assists, 4 steals, and 4 rebounds.
Marcus Camby played 37 minutes and was 6/9 for 12 points, and he made 14 rebounds, 5 blocks, 4 assists, and 2 steals.
Kenyon Martin played 31 minutes and was 11/14 and 1/2 from the line for 23 points, and he made 7 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 steal.
Steven Hunter played 6 minutes and was 2/3 and 0/1 from the line for 4 points, and he made 3 rebounds and 1 block.
Allen Iverson played 35 minutes and was 13/18, 3/5 on 3’s, and 2/3 from the line for 31 points, and he made 6 assists, 5 rebounds, and 1 steal.
Taurean Green played 6 minutes and was 1/2 and 2/2 from the line for 4 points, and he made 3 rebounds and 1 assist.
Yakhouba Diawara played 9 minutes and was 3/4 and 0/1 on 3’s for 6 points, and he made 3 assists and 2 rebounds.
NEXT UP
The next game will be Friday, February 29 in Denver to play the Clippers at 7 pm mountain time. Neither the Nuggets nor the Clippers will be playing on back to back nights.
The historic blowout gave the Nuggets the highest point total of any team in any game so far this year. Also, the Nuggets set a new franchise shooting accuracy record. The Nuggets made 59/88 shots, or 67.0%, eclipsing the previous franchise record of 66.7% against New Jersey early in the 1978 season. Denver also bettered the 66.2 percent shooting of the Lakers earlier this season, the previous best in the league. The highest scoring game before Wednesday night came when the Suns scored 137. Guess which team had the 137 points scored against it? It was the Nuggets, of course. Being a fan of the Nuggets means you are going to take a ride on the biggest roller coaster in the NBA.
Anthony did not get the ball anywhere near as much as he usually does, but Anthony’s number one skill, scoring, was not needed very much in a game against a tired and banged up rebuilding team with a very poor defense. And Anthony has an informal tradition of taking it easy in obvious routs, and also of encouraging his teammates to have the kind of big offensive games that they seldom have. This is what he used to do at Syracuse University. Anthony has always been misunderstood by those who did not see him play in Syracuse as having a tendency to be selfish, or being too obsessed about scoring.
Seattle Coach P.J. Carlissimo summed up the game this way: “We didn’t defend at all.” The Nuggets know a team that is not defending when they see one. They can immediately spot one since they themselves occasionally decide to play a game where “they don’t defend at all.”
The Sonics were missing two fairly important players, PG Earl Watson and PG Luke Ridnour, who did nothing in the 1st half due to a hamstring strain and did not return for the 2nd half. The Sonics have only 2 point guards on their team right now, and since 2-2=0, the Sonics didn’t have any point guards with which to play this game.
Meanwhile, the Nuggets are overloaded with point guards, even though many fans are convinced the PG position is going to be the death of the Nuggets in the playoffs, assuming they beat out either the Warriors or the no-Yao Rockets for the 8th and final playoff slot in the West. The reason for the confusion is that, while many fans are locked into the traditional, establishment view that Allen Iverson has never been so he can never be the designated starting point guard, the truth is that Iverson is playing both of the guard positions this season, and the designated point guard, Anthony Carter, simply fades into the background and becomes almost useless whenever Iverson takes charge of much or most of the ball distribution duties.
Despite the fact that there are a large number of Nuggets fans who would rather face the headless horseman than A.I. officially at the point, Iverson has actually been the effective point guard in numerous games already this year. Even George Karl, who of course as usual is on the side opposing my view, has in fact started A.I. at the point several times this season, especially back in November after Atkins was injured and before Carter started playing for the Nuggets. Karl is not opposed to Iverson playing PG; he’s just opposed to admitting that Iverson plays a lot of PG, because then he would have to explain why the heck the Nuggets often have two point guards on the court at the same time. Karl is good at getting into technical team management mistakes as he runs the Nuggets, and he is also good at keeping them hidden and escaping having to explain them. In other words, he is good at living in falsehoods.
In games in which Iverson has made 10 or more assists, the Nuggets are 11-1. The only loss was to the Jazz in overtime on Feb. 6, despite 10 assists by Iverson. In games in which Anthony Carter has made 10 or more assists, the Nuggets are 6-1. Iverson is ahead of Carter in the number of double digit dimes games 12-7.
In games in which Iverson had made 8 or more assists, the Nuggets are 19-7. In games in which Carter had made 8 or more assists, the Nuggets are 12-3. Iverson is ahead of Carter in games of 8 or more assists, 26-15. But the Nuggets have won 80% of games in which Carter has made 8 or more assists, and only 73% of games in which Iverson has made 8 or more assists, which is the reverse of what I expected to find. But Iverson’s winning percentage with 8 or more assists is certainly not grossly lower than Carter’s.
But here is where it gets really interesting, fasten your seatbelts, please. There have been 14 games in which Carter has made more assists than Iverson, and there have been 41 games in which Iverson has made more assists than Carter. 12 of those 41 games were before Carter was brought on to the Nuggets. So while both Carter and Iverson have been on the team, Iverson has made more assists than Carter 29 times and Carter has made more assists than Iverson 14 times.
Overall so far this season, Iverson is averaging 7.3 assists per game and Carter is averaging 6.1 assists per game. With February drawing to a close, there have now been 3 full months in which both Carter and Iverson have been on the team. Of those months, there has only been one month when Carter averaged more assists per game than Iverson, which was January. In December, it was 7.1 assists per game for Iverson and 5.1 assists per game for Carter. In January, it was 7.6 assists per game for Carter and 6.5 assists per game for Iverson. And now in February, it has been 8.8 assists per game for Iverson to 5.6 assists per game for Carter.
During February, a wide gap has opened up between Iverson and Carter, and this is why I was forced to go the extent I have to explain the situation and the big mistake I have discovered that has been made by Karl and by a substantial number of fans. I used to think that the whether Iverson should start at the point debate was just one of those typical sports arguments, but then I realized I had stumbled on to a big blunder that has emerged from this situation.
Now let’s take a look at the winning and losing:
14 Games in which Carter made more assists than Iverson: Nuggets are 8-6 or 57%;
29 Games in which Iverson has made more assists than Carter: 16-13 or 55%.
Once again, I have been prevented from making a really slam dunk argument, which I would have been able to do had the Iverson winning percentage been greater than the Carter percentage. However, I have at least shown once again that it is irrational to think that Iverson can not win as many games for the Nuggets when he is the main point guard as Carter can. And just as importantly, I have exposed for the entire world to see that the Nuggets are living the George Karl lie regarding their point guard situation, because Iverson has been more of a point guard than Carter has been for two of the three months when both were starting, with the gap in February opening up wide in favor of Iverson.
When you live a lie, you usually suffer damages. For the Nuggets, during February, the damage has been that Carter has become dangerously useless on the court, at least while playing alongside Iverson, as Iverson has wisely decided to concentrate on distributing more than at almost any time in his career. Carter’s recent slump is no accident; it was a direct result of his point guard duties being partly taken over by Iverson.
So a wide gap has opened up in February, where Iverson has averaged 8.8 assists per game and Carter has averaged 5.6 assists per game. The bad news, as I already mentioned, is that Carter has become of little value out there when Iverson is also out there. The good news is only a potential, but it could be huge if the potential became reality. We can only hope that the reason Iverson is looking for more assists than ever is that he remembers the number one reason why the Nuggets lost 4 straight games to the Spurs in the playoffs last year, which was that Iverson was dribbling and shooting too much and distributing too little. In fairness to both Iverson and Karl regarding the Spurs disaster, it should be noted that the Carter role last year was being played by Steve Blake, who was a much more experienced NBA point guard than Carter is this year, so the chance that Iverson would take over actual point guard duties from Blake was never as likely as the chance that Iverson would take over actual point guard duties from Carter this year. If Iverson does continue to take over a large part of the passing for scores, the Nuggets could theoretically be setting themselves up for a first round shocker, where they would take the series to 7 games.
Before we leave this extremely important subject, let’s take a close look at last year:
2007-08 Nuggets: Iverson 7.3 assists per game; Carter 6.1 assists per game.
2006-07 Nuggets: Iverson 7.2 assists per game; Blake 6.6 assists per game.
Here we see that Iverson had almost the exact same number of assists last year as this year, while last year’s designated starting point guard made half an assist more per game than this year’s designated point guard. Now let’s take a look at the Spurs series:
IVERSON AND BLAKE ASSISTS IN THE NUGGETS/SPURS PLAYOFF SERIES
Game 1 Iverson 5 Blake 3; Nuggets 95 Spurs 89
Game 2 Iverson 5 Blake 7; Spurs 97 Nuggets 88
Game 3 Iverson 4 Blake 7; Spurs 96 Nuggets 91
Game 4 Iverson 7 Blake 4; Spurs 96 Nuggets 89
Game 5 Iverson 8 Blake 2; Spurs 93 Nuggets 78
Here we see that Iverson made more assists than did Blake in the one and only game that the Nuggets won. Overall, the Nuggets were 1-2 in games in which Iverson made more assists than Blake, and they were 0-2 in games in which Blake made more assists than Iverson. But game 5 was a rout in San Antonio after the Nuggets’ spirit was broken, and after a key player, J.R. Smith, was benched. Quite frankly, the Nuggets most likely knew in advance that they were almost certainly going to lose that game. And there was no way that the Spurs were going to lose that game at home and have to return to Denver for a game 6. So if you don’t count that hopeless game, in games in which Iverson made more assists than Blake, the Nuggets were 1-1, and they were 0-2 in games in which Blake made more assists than Iverson. Therefore, there is some evidence from the Nuggets-Spurs series in support of my theory that Iverson playing point guard and being responsible for getting the most assists of all Nuggets is better for the Nuggets then if Iverson is not playing point guard and is not responsible in that way.
I wish there had also been regular season evidence to go with this limited evidence. You can bet that I will be continuing to watch this closely in the final weeks of this season, looking for more evidence.
I am sure the truth is that the Nuggets are better off to the extent that Iverson does take over the actual point guard duties from Carter, unless Karl stubbornly continues to refuse to reduce Carter’s playing time, in which case it is probably a wash. I have proved that Iverson is at least as good as Carter with respect to basic point guard duties. Since Iverson scores at practically double the rate that Carter scores, and since he would still score a lot more than Carter does if he were the designated point guard, and since Iverson’s turnovers would be only very slightly more than now if he was the designated point guard, because he would be handling the ball hardly any more than he already does, to me it is a now a no-brainer that Iverson should be the starting point guard.
Iverson, I am starting to hope based on the February games, is smart enough to know that (1) He can’t do what he did last year in the Spurs series and expect to win and that (2) No matter what Karl and a substantial number of fans think, he can and should take over many of the point guard duties from Carter who ironically, almost everyone, including those afraid of Iverson at the point, believes will be close to a disaster in the playoffs.
In a word, it seems to me that Iverson has started to coach himself.
PROJECTIONS
The current odds of the Nuggets making the playoffs, according to Hollinger at ESPN’s excellent team analysis system, are 65%. The Nuggets are projected to be the 8th seed in the Western Conference. The Hollinger odds don’t take into account that, most likely, neither Nene nor Atkins are going to be available to and in top form for the Nuggets for the stretch run, so the real odds that the Nuggets will make the playoffs are probably around 50-55% now.
The Lakers, the Hornets, the Spurs, the Mavericks, the Jazz, the Suns, and the Rockets are currently considered virtual locks to make the playoffs.
The Warriors are projected to have a good winning record, but miss the postseason. The odds that the Warriors will make the playoffs are currently 51%, substantially less than the Nuggets’ 65%.
Meanwhile, the Rockets have just lost their best player, and one of the best players in the NBA, Yao Ming, for the rest of the season. Therefore, they may drop far below their current projection, since the projections do not take injuries into account. Therefore, it is quite possible that the Rockets will finish with the 9th seed, in which case both the Nuggets and the Warriors will make the playoffs.
For the Nuggets, winning the Northwest Division is very unlikely at this point; the odds on that are at 17%, The Nuggets would most likely have to beat the Jazz in both of their remaining games against them, both of which are in Salt Lake City, in order to have a shot at winning the Northwest.
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 Jan. 9 and underwent successful surgery on Jan. 11. He is expected to be sidelined a minimum of eight weeks. Atkins is out until at least March 10. With any luck, he will be back in the Nuggets lineup by late March.
Nene: underwent successful surgery to remove a testicular tumor on Jan. 14. A timeline for his return is still unknown. He is out until at least the first week of March, but could easily be out for the entire rest of the season.
Eduardo Najera: did not travel with the team to Seattle on 2/27 (personal reasons)
SUPERSONICS PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
Earl Watson: Sat out this game due to an unknown illness. He may miss the Sonics game vs. Miami on February 29. He is considered day to day.
Robert Swift: An MRI on the injured right knee revealed a torn meniscus. He is out for the season.
Luke Ridnour: Did not play in the second half of this game after he experienced some tightness in his right hamstring. He is considered day to day.
ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of February 28, 2008
The Nuggets are under a YELLOW ALERT, on account of the following problems.
INJURIES, ILLNESSES, SUSPENSIONS, AND LEAVES
1. Chucky Atkins injury 18 points
2. Nene illness 14 points
3. Eduardo Najera 12 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: 0 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 2 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.
On defense a system is much less important than on offense. 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. More important than whether a zone or man to man defense is in effect is the quality of the actual defending.
Lack of an adequate number of offensive plays and patterns: 7 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: 53, 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
A rough estimate of the Sonics’ alert status is that they were in high GREY or low YELLOW alert status while, as you can see, the NUGGETS were in high YELLOW alert. So the Sonics had approximately a one level advantage as far as the alert status is concerned. Obviously, that advantage was not all that much help.
In a game against a tired team with little defense available, the Nuggets’ offensive deficiencies were meaningless. J.R. Smith got to play as many minutes as he should be playing in ordinary games, thanks to garbage time, where he was sort of the leader of the pack of rarely seen Nuggets players.
Both Atkins and Nene are definitely going to be out for many more days 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 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.
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 10 Supersonics 12
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 7 Supersonics 8
Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 44
Supersonics Non-Starters Points: 39
Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 13
Supersonics Non-Starters Rebounds: 22
Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 8
Supersonics Non-Starters Assists: 8
OBSERVATIONS ON HOW THE RESERVES WERE USED AND PLAYED
Coach P.J. Carlissimo played all but one player he had available between the regular game and the garbage time. Coach George Karl of the Nuggets played every single Nugget who was available; there are only 10 Nuggets available these days.
Amazingly, the Supersonics non-starters were very close to the Nuggets in points, 39-44, and they were much better in rebounding, 22-13. Each group of non-starters made 8 assists.
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. 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-SUPERSONICS PLAYER RATINGS
NUGGETS PLAYER RATINGS
Allen Iverson: Game 51.4 Season 41.1
Marcus Camby: Game 43.5 Season 33.2
Kenyon Martin: Game 41.2 Season 22.8
Anthony Carter: Game 40.6 Season 20.9
Carmelo Anthony: Game 28.8 Season 39.0
Linas Kleiza: Game 25.2 Season 19.1
J.R. Smith: Game 23.1 Season 15.7
Yakhouba Diawara: Game 14.4 Season 5.3
Taurean Green: Game 9.1 Season 3.8
Steven Hunter: Game 8.8 Season 4.7
Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Nene: Did Not Play-Illness
Eduardo Najera: Did Not Play-Personal Leave
SUPERSONICS PLAYER RATINGS
Johan Petro: Game 28.9 Season 10.3
Mickael Gelabale: Game 26.4 Season 7.1
Kevin Durant: Game 20.5 Season 26.6
Jeff Green: Game 15.6 Season 15.3
Damien Wilkins: Game 14.4 Season 15.4
Chris Wilcox: Game 12.3 Season 22.4
Nick Collison: Game 11.9 Season 21.7
Donyell Marshall: Game 8.6 Season 6.8
Francisco Elson: Game 4.2 Season 7.2
Luke Ridnour: Game 3.6 Season 12.7
Adrian Griffin: Game 1.2 Season 4.7
Ira Newble: Game 0.6 Season 7.9
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:
Every single Nugget except one stepped up in this monumental rout. Ironically, only Anthony was below his seasonal average..
Martin was a monster on both offense and defense in this game. Neither Iverson nor Camby had any mercy for the Sonics either, as both of them were about 1/4 more productive than they usually are.
Anthony Carter took full advantage of the opportunity to come out of his slump and have a huge game. It was his 1st above normal game since the Celtics game. He was well below normal in the 3 games in between. Carter tends to do poorly when the Nuggets are going to lose, and he tends to do well when the Nuggets are going to win a game.
Kleiza and Smith were both well above normal, Smith more so than Kleiza.
Every one of the garbage time players, Diawara, Green, and Hunter, were playing as if their life depended on it. And their basketball life certainly depended on it, since they are playing for George Karl after all, who is one of the stingiest coaches in the NBA regarding playing time for reserves.
The startling thing about the Sonics is that the highest seasonal average player they had on the court in this game was G-F Kevin Durant, whose average is well under 30, at 26.6. AI and Melo are half again as much as that, and Camby is much higher as well. The Nuggets have paid a huge price to assemble this team with it’s 3 mega stars, and it is a shame that fans are sweating whether they will make the playoffs or not.
C Johan Petro and SF Mickael Gelabale came out of nowhere to lead the Sonics. Petro was almost 3 times and Gelabale was almost 4 times as productive as usual. Durant played relatively poorly, while SF Green and G-F Wilkins were dead center on their seasonal norms.
F-C Wilcox and F-C Collison were major disappointments for Seattle, which left their front court devastated.
.
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-SUPERSONICS REAL PLAYER RATINGS
All players who played 5 minutes or more are included. Any player who played only 5-9 minutes is noted.
1. Yakhouba Diawara, Den 1.600…Diawara played only 9 minutes.
2. Taurean Green, Den 1.517…Green played only 6 minutes.
3. Allen Iverson, Den 1.469
4. Steven Hunter, Den 1.467…Hunter played only 6 minutes.
5. Kenyon Martin, Den 1.329
6. Marcus Camby, Den 1.176
7. Anthony Carter, Den 1.068
8. Linas Kleiza, Den 1.050
9. J.R. Smith, Den 1.004
10. Carmelo Anthony, Den 0.960
11. Donyell Marshall, Sea 0.956…Marshall played only 9 minutes.
12. Mickael Gelabale, Sea 0.943
13. Johan Petro, Sea 0.903
14. Nick Collison, Sea 0.700
15. Francisco Elson, Sea 0.700…Elson played only 6 minutes.
16. Damien Wilkins, Sea 0.686
17. Kevin Durant, Sea 0.603
18. Jeff Green, Sea 0.473
19. Chris Wilcox, Sea 0.373
20. Luke Ridnour, Sea 0.212
21. Adrian Griffin, Sea 0.200…Griffin played only 6 minutes
22. Ira Newble, Sea 0.100…Newble played only 6 minutes.
OBSERVATIONS ON THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Can you be a star or a superstar in garbage time? Of course, I am always on the lookout for superstar performances, even in garbage time. All 3 of the Nuggets’ garbage time only players were huge, but their minutes were very limited. Diawara was a superstar plus, while Green and Hunter were superstars.
Iverson was a superstar in the regular part of the game. Martin was a star-plus, and Camby, Carter, and Kleiza were all stars. In a game so extremely lopsided that you might not see one like it anywhere in the NBA for years to come, all 8 of the stars and up players were Nuggets.
There were 5 outstanding players, C Petro, SF Gelabale, and SF Marshall in limited minutes for the Sonics, and Smith and Anthony for the Nuggets. So the Nuggets had 10 of the 13 players who were outstanding or better.
This was total, perfect domination for the Nuggets over the Sonics, because the best Sonics’ player, which was SF Marshall, or else SF Gelabale if you don’t count the small minute players, was not as good as the worst Nugget, which was Carmelo Anthony. In other words, every single Nugget was better than every single Sonic. This is something that you will very seldom, if ever, see again in your lifetime.
G-F Durant and G-F Wilkins were only mediocre. SF Green was very poor and F-C Wilcox was extremely poor. PG Ridnour was a total disaster because he had a major hamstring problem.
NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court. All Nuggets who played at least 10 minutes are shown.
J.R. Smith: +33
Anthony Carter: +32
Allen Iverson: +29
Marcus Camby: +27
Linas Kleiza: +26
Kenyon Martin: +25
Carmelo Anthony: +18
OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
The Nuggets won by 42 points, so you are almost never going to see numbers this big on the plus-minus. Only Anthony had a little mercy on the Sonics.
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 17, Team 0, Anthony 5, Camby 1, Carter 1, Diawara 0, Green 0, Hunter 0, Iverson 6, Kleiza 1, Martin 1, Smith 2
Personal Fouls: Total 16, Anthony 3, Camby 4, Carter 0, Diawara 1, Green 1, Hunter 0, Iverson 2, Kleiza 1, Martin 3, Smith 1
Carmelo Anthony played 30 minutes and was 7/13, 0/1 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 16 points, and he made 6 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, and 1 block.
J.R. Smith played 23 minutes and was 6/9 and 3/5 on 3’s for 15 points, and he made 2 rebounds, 1 assist, and 1 steal.
Linas Kleiza played 24 minutes and was 6/12, 2/4 on 3’s, and 1/2 from the line for 15 points, and he made 3 assists, 3 rebounds, and 2 steals.
Anthony Carter played 38 minutes and was 4/4, 1/1 on 3’s, and 3/4 from the line for 12 points, and he made 12 assists, 4 steals, and 4 rebounds.
Marcus Camby played 37 minutes and was 6/9 for 12 points, and he made 14 rebounds, 5 blocks, 4 assists, and 2 steals.
Kenyon Martin played 31 minutes and was 11/14 and 1/2 from the line for 23 points, and he made 7 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 steal.
Steven Hunter played 6 minutes and was 2/3 and 0/1 from the line for 4 points, and he made 3 rebounds and 1 block.
Allen Iverson played 35 minutes and was 13/18, 3/5 on 3’s, and 2/3 from the line for 31 points, and he made 6 assists, 5 rebounds, and 1 steal.
Taurean Green played 6 minutes and was 1/2 and 2/2 from the line for 4 points, and he made 3 rebounds and 1 assist.
Yakhouba Diawara played 9 minutes and was 3/4 and 0/1 on 3’s for 6 points, and he made 3 assists and 2 rebounds.
NEXT UP
The next game will be Friday, February 29 in Denver to play the Clippers at 7 pm mountain time. Neither the Nuggets nor the Clippers will be playing on back to back nights.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
The Nuggets' Two Point Guards Offense Fails Against the Pistons, 98-93
The Detroit Pistons’ starters played smart and tight basketball, and used lock down the paint defending and a well practiced and very well executed offense to defeat the Denver Nuggets in Denver 98-93. The Nuggets have now lost 3 in a row, and they are just 5-5 in their last 10 games, which is worse than every other contending team in the West except for the Hornets, who are also 5-5. The odds that they will make the playoffs are half and half at best, although the injury to Yao Ming might severely hurt Houston in the stretch run, to the point where they end up being the 9th seed in the West instead of the Nuggets.
Although the Nuggets executed without turning it over much, and they passed the ball around much more than during the road trip to Chicago and Milwaukee, the Pistons’ defense was enough to prevent them from shooting well enough to win. The Nuggets’ shooting was sharply limited to 36/89 or 36.0%. Why make it more complicated than it is? The Nuggets lost this game mostly because they couldn’t get the ball to go in the basket enough times.
The Nuggets at this point are in a rut where they try to correct mistakes from the previous game in the next one, which is both good and bad at the same time. It’s good, obviously, because it’s always good to correct your mistakes. But it’s bad in the sense that the capabilities and style of opponents can and did in this case radically change from one game to the next. The Pistons were the type of team that you get a lower payoff from by passing it around more, because almost every one of them is a good make you miss type of defender, and they rotate extremely well. To try to defeat a team like the Pistons, the Nuggets should have gone to the hoop more, especially Camby, Martin, and Kleiza. The Nuggets, who depend on in the paint scoring more than most teams, largely because they have poor 3-point shooting, scored just 34 of their 93 points in the paint.
The referees were not calling some of the Pistons’ fouls, and this deterred the Nuggets from driving to the hoop enough times for them to be able to win this game. However, the Nuggets overreacted to the relative lack of calls. Just because fouls are not being called as often as usual does not mean that they are not being called at all. The Pistons were called for 25 fouls, the Nuggets for only 14, and the Pistons would have been called for more fouls had the Nuggets been persistent at taking it to the rim. The additional free throws they would have gotten could have easily been enough for the Nuggets to win.
With more and more observers and fans joining Nuggets 1 and concluding that the Nuggets’ offense is not thought out well in advance, the Nuggets played their second straight game without clear direction from it’s point guards, and this was true even if you include Iverson as the effective point guard, though he was mostly playing the 2-spot. Of the Nuggets’ 25 assists, Iverson and Carter made 11, less than half.
The Nuggets get a lot of assists, because they score a lot of points, but they frequently don’t get a lot of assists when they most need them, when they are playing teams with tough defenses. Although the Nuggets passed the ball a lot and made a fairly impressive 25 assists in this game, the problem was that they were all over the map as to who was making those assists, indicating they were in effect playing more of a pick-up style and less of a professional style of basketball. At least 2 out of 3 between Martin, Camby, and Anthony should have been doing more scoring and less assisting in this game.
Think of this mess for a moment. If Iverson is really acting as the point guard out there, even when Carter and he are on the floor at the same time, the Nuggets in effect are running 2 players at the point and no one at the 2-spot. I doubt anyone in the history of basketball has ever contended that this could be good for an offense. Not only do you obviously not need two point guards, but it indicates a team that is disorganized offensively in general. Although most point guards are much better scorers than Anthony Carter is, they are rarely the best scorers on a team, so having two point guards, aside from not making any sense and from creating confusion on the offense, would also be shooting yourself in the foot on scoring.
And the Nuggets are actually practically shooting themselves in the head, because Carter is a poor scoring PG. In other words, to have Iverson and Carter on the court at the same time, while Iverson is in his point guard mode, makes Carter almost worthless out there. Yet another way to look at the mess is to point out that Iverson is, in effect, being called on to play two positions at once, PG and SG, something that even Michael Jordan was rarely if ever asked to do, simply because it doesn’t make any sense.
After the game, Iverson summed up the Nuggets’ offensive problems this way: “You can’t win in this League without team priorities.” A crucial team priority is getting it straight as to who is the main playmaker or pair of playmakers. He also said that in the last 3 games, “they wanted it more than we did.” The Nuggets will have to look themselves in the mirror to determine whether they are going to do anything about motivation. Could it be true that the Nuggets are not as motivated as they need to be, and as you would think they would be, in the quest for the ring?
In this report we will start out by showing key Nuggets’ guards performance measures, but what we are really driving for is to take a close look at the starting point guards for the best teams in the NBA, and to see how Anthony Carter and Allen Iverson match up with them.
DENVER NUGGETS GUARDS PRODUCTION PER 36 MINUTES
POINT GUARDS POINTS PER 36 MINUTES
Chucky Atkins: Career 14.6 Season 9.2
Anthony Carter: Career 9.0 Season 9.6
Taurean Green: Career 13.9 Season 13.9
SHOOTING GUARDS POINTS PER 36 MINUTES
Allen Iverson: Career 23.9 Season 22.5
J.R. Smith: Career 17.4 Season 20.3
Yakhouba Diawara: Career 8.9 Season 9.3
POINT GUARDS FIELD GOAL SHOOTING %
Chucky Atkins: Career .415 Season .228
Anthony Carter: Career .393 Season .449
Taurean Green: Career .250 Season .250
SHOOTING GUARDS FIELD GOAL SHOOTING %
Allen Iverson: Career .424 Season .442
J.R. Smith: Career .414 Season .427
Yakhouba Diawara: Career .361 Season .416
POINT GUARDS 3-POINT SHOOTING %
Chucky Atkins: Career .368 Season .244
Anthony Carter: Career .182 Season .292
Taurean Green: Career .125 Season .125
SHOOTING GUARDS 3-POINT SHOOTING %
Allen Iverson: Career .312 Season .335
J.R. Smith: Career .359 Season .389
Yakhouba Diawara: Career .302 Season .346
POINT GUARDS ASSISTS PER 36 MINUTES
Chucky Atkins: Career 5.0 Season 3.9
Anthony Carter: Career 7.1 Season 7.3
Taurean Green: Career 6.5 Season 6.5
SHOOTING GUARDS ASSISTS PER 36 MINUTES
Allen Iverson: Career 5.4 Season 6.2
J.R. Smith: Career 2.5 Season 3.1
Yakhouba Diawara: Career 1.8 Season 2.1
Despite not being the official point guard, Allen Iverson gets only 1 fewer assist per 36 minutes than does Anthony Carter, the official point guard. Also, notice that Iverson is getting almost one more assist this year than his career average, another sign that Iverson has assumed point guard duties unofficially. By not simply admitting that Iverson is the point guard, the Nuggets suffer all of the following disadvantages:
1. The staff has less leverage on Iverson, if he is a shooting guard, to criticize him if he decides to hog the ball and shoot first and look for assists later if he feels like it. Of course, it appears that this Nuggets’ coaching staff doesn’t even agree in the first place that Iverson sometimes dribbles too much, and sometimes takes too many shots himself. They would have to agree with that before they could agree that they need some leverage over Iverson’s decisions. Under the current view of the Nuggets’ coaches, Iverson can hardly do any wrong no matter what he does, which is a dangerous view to hold toward any player.
2. Since Anthony Carter is 6’2” and since Iverson is barely 6’0”, when both of them are on the court, which is common under the “Iverson is not the point guard” assumption, the Nuggets are too small in the back court to avoid having the back court be a defensive liability.
3. In any given game, the rest of the team does not know whether it is going to be mostly Carter, mostly Iverson, or both of them roughly equally who will be distributing the ball. They most likely don’t know in advance whether Iverson is going to be mostly dribbling, driving, and shooting, or whether he is in a more generous mood and is going to be looking for assist opportunities It’s like the Nuggets play with a different point guard every game or, if you prefer, it’s like the Nuggets really don’t have a designated, starting point guard. Either way you look at it, this leads to a lot of inconsistency and the occasional total breakdown of the Nuggets’ offense.
4. Since Iverson is always the shooting guard when he is out there, but he is often also at least half the point guard out there at the same time, opposing teams can do a lot of damage to the Nuggets’ offense simply by double teaming Iverson. When Iverson has assumed the point guard role even when Carter is out there, Carter becomes so much dead wood out there, and every dead wood player reduces the effectiveness of the offense substantially, even just one.
POINT GUARDS TURNOVERS PER 36 MINUTES
Chucky Atkins: Career 2.1 Season 0.7
Anthony Carter: Career 2.9 Season 2.4
Taurean Green: Career 5.7 Season 5.7
SHOOTING GUARDS TURNOVERS PER 36 MINUTES
Allen Iverson: Career 3.2 Season 2.8
J.R. Smith: Career 2.2 Season 2.9
Yakhouba Diawara: Career 1.1 Season 1.1
POINT GUARDS ASSIST/TURNOVER RATIO
Chucky Atkins: Career 2.38 Season 5.57
Anthony Carter: Career 2.45 Season 3.04
Taurean Green: Career 1.14 Season 1.14
SHOOTING GUARDS ASSIST/TURNOVER RATIO
Allen Iverson: Career 1.69 Season 2.21
J.R. Smith: Career 1.14 Season 1.07
Yakhouba Diawara: Career 1.64 Season 1.91
In one of the next game reports, probably the next one, for the Sonics game, I will discuss the Nuggets’ guards. But in this report, we take a close look at the best point guards in the NBA.
COMPARISON OF STARTING POINT GUARDS OF THE 13 BEST TEAMS IN THE NBA
Let’s compare the starting point guards for the 9 top teams of the West and the 4 top teams of the East. And let’s include Allen Iverson for discussion purposes. For each point guard, the first number is the assist/turnover ratio which coaches, definitely including George Karl, are extremely concerned about. The second or middle number is the number of assists per 36 minutes. The last number is the number of turnovers per 36 minutes. The best point guards are the ones who have the highest numbers among the first two numbers; the number of turnovers by itself is not really that critical. The point guards are first ranked according to their assist/turnover ratios:
1 Hornets Chris Paul 4.33 10.4 2.4
2 Cavaliers Eric Snow 4.17 5.0 1.2
3 Pistons Chauncey Billups 3.71 7.8 2.1
4 Nuggets Anthony Carter 3.00 7.2 2.4
5 Mavericks Jason Kidd 2.91 10.2 3.5
6 Suns Steve Nash 2.90 11.9 4.1
7 Warriors Baron Davis 2.81 7.3 2.6
8 Jazz Deron Williams 2.76 9.4 3.4
9 Celtics Rajon Rondo 2.67 5.6 2.1
10 Rockets Rafer Alston 2.57 5.9 2.3
11 Lakers Derek Fisher 2.53 3.8 1.5
12 Magic Jameer Nelson 2.46 6.9 2.8
13 Spurs Tony Parker 2.30 6.2 2.7
14 Nuggets Allen Iverson 2.21 6.2 2.8
Here you can see that Chris Paul, Eric Snow, and Chauncey Billups are the three most effective point guards in terms of getting assists without turning it over much. Carter for the Nuggets, Kidd, and Nash are at the next level, and Davis, Williams, and Rondo are not far behind them. Iverson is last, and it is certainly true that Iverson does not play conservatively, but I would not overreact to his low ratio. Carter gets a lot of the easy, safe assists for the Nuggets, whereas Iverson’s assists are often in higher risk situations, where he has decided not to take the shot himself. In many of these situations, Iverson is trying to pass for an assist out of a double team.
Now let’s rank them according to the number of assists they get per 36 minutes:
1 Suns Steve Nash 2.90 11.9 4.1
2 Hornets Chris Paul 4.33 10.4 2.4
3 Mavericks Jason Kidd 2.91 10.2 3.5
4 Jazz Deron Williams 2.76 9.4 3.4
5 Pistons Chauncey Billups 3.71 7.8 2.1
6 Warriors Baron Davis 2.81 7.3 2.6
7 Nuggets Anthony Carter 3.00 7.2 2.4
8 Magic Jameer Nelson 2.46 6.9 2.8
9 Spurs Tony Parker 2.30 6.2 2.7
10 Nuggets Allen Iverson 2.21 6.2 2.8
11 Rockets Rafer Alston 2.57 5.9 2.3
12 Celtics Rajon Rondo 2.67 5.6 2.1
13 Cavaliers Eric Snow 4.17 5.0 1.2
14 Lakers Derek Fisher 2.53 3.8 1.5
Here you can see that Nash leads the NBA in actual assisting, while Paul, Kidd, and Williams are extremely good playmakers, but are substantially behind Nash. Then, Billups, Davis, Anthony Carter for the Nuggets, and Nelson are at the next level, The less productive point guards would be Parker, Alston, Rondo, and Snow. Despite the fact he is on the team most likely to win the NBA Championship this year, Derek Fisher-Lakers gets, by far, the fewest assists among all starting point guards of the top teams. Once again, Iverson’s number should be judged while you remember that he is not actually the designated point guard.
Now let’s combine the two most important measures, assist/turnover ratio and assist rate, and rank the point guards according to how they stack up when you consider both of those performance measures at once, equally:
1 Hornets Chris Paul 4.33 10.4 2.4
2 Suns Steve Nash 2.90 11.9 4.1
3 Pistons Chauncey Billups 3.71 7.8 2.1
4 Mavericks Jason Kidd 2.91 10.2 3.5
5 Nuggets Anthony Carter 3.00 7.2 2.4
6 Jazz Deron Williams 2.76 9.4 3.4
7 Warriors Baron Davis 2.81 7.3 2.6
8 Cavaliers Eric Snow 4.17 5.0 1.2
9 Magic Jameer Nelson 2.46 6.9 2.8
10 Celtics Rajon Rondo 2.67 5.6 2.1
11 Rockets Rafer Alston 2.57 5.9 2.3
12 Spurs Tony Parker 2.30 6.2 2.7
13 Nuggets Allen Iverson 2.21 6.2 2.8
14 Lakers Derek Fisher 2.53 3.8 1.5
Now you might look at this and say “Wow, the Nuggets have a really good point guard, about the 5th best among the top teams. And you would be technically correct if you are looking at just the distribution part of a point guard’s job. But you would be wrong overall, because Carter is the worst scoring threat among all of these except for Eric Snow. Here are the points per 36 minutes for these point guards:
:
1 Nuggets Allen Iverson 22.6
2 Warriors Baron Davis 20.1
3 Hornets Chris Paul 19.9
4 Spurs Tony Parker 19.7
5 Pistons Chauncey Billups 19.0
6 Jazz Deron Williams 18.7
7 Suns Steve Nash 18.2
8 Lakers Derek Fisher 16.4
9 Magic Jameer Nelson 13.8
10 Rockets Rafer Alston 12.8
11 Celtics Rajon Rondo 12.5
12 Mavericks Jason Kidd 10.8
13 Nuggets Anthony Carter 9.5
14 Cavaliers Eric Snow 2.6
Now finally, let’s combine the assist/turnover ratio, the assist rate, and the scoring rate together. This would be about as close as we can get to coming up with the real truth regarding who are the best point guards, because things we are ignoring, such as rebounding and personal fouls, are not going to be very important or change things much with respect to point guards.
OVERALL RANKING OF POINT GUARDS BASED ON ASSIST/TURNOVER RATIOS, ASSIST RATES, AND SCORING RATES:
Here the first number is the assist/turnover ratio, the second number is the assists per 36 minutes, and the third number is points per 36 minutes.
1 Hornets Chris Paul 4.33 10.4 19.9
2 Pistons Chauncey Billups 3.71 7.8 19.0
3 Suns Steve Nash 2.90 11.9 18.2
4 Warriors Baron Davis 2.81 7.3 20.1
5 Jazz Deron Williams 2.76 9.4 18.7
6 Mavericks Jason Kidd 2.91 10.2 10.8
7 Nuggets Anthony Carter 3.00 7.2 9.5
8 Nuggets Allen Iverson 2.21 6.2 22.6
9 Spurs Tony Parker 2.30 6.2 19.7
10 Magic Jameer Nelson 2.46 6.9 13.8
11 Cavaliers Eric Snow 4.17 5.0 2.6
12 Rockets Rafer Alston 2.57 5.9 12.8
13 Celtics Rajon Rondo 2.67 5.6 12.5
14 Lakers Derek Fisher 2.53 3.8 16.4
Now let’s simplify by doing the same listing, but showing the composite rank number only. The composite rank number is simply the sum of the 3 ranks for the 3 main performance measures. Obviously, the lower the number, the better the point guard.
1 Hornets Chris Paul 6
2 Pistons Chauncey Billups 13
3 Suns Steve Nash 14
4 Warriors Baron Davis 15
5 Jazz Deron Williams 18
6 Mavericks Jason Kidd 20
7 Nuggets Anthony Carter 24
8 Nuggets Allen Iverson 25
9 Spurs Tony Parker 26
10 Magic Jameer Nelson 29
11 Cavaliers Eric Snow 29
12 Rockets Rafer Alston 31
13 Celtics Rajon Rondo 32
14 Lakers Derek Fisher 33
Now you can clearly see that Chris Paul is by far the best point guard among the top teams this year. Billups, Nash, and Davis are all excellent point guards, but not even really that close to Paul this year. Then you have Williams for the Jazz and Kidd, who is now playing for the Mavericks.
Then you have both of the Nuggets, Carter and Iverson, in the middle of the pack among point guards and almost exactly equal. But wait a minute, Iverson is not the point guard, but was included anyway. Well, now you can see why I did it. The notion of Iverson playing point guard fills a lot of people with irrational fear and dread. They just assume that since Iverson is such an aggressive scorer, that he could not possibly be a good point guard at the same time. This has been shown to be false here.
Now imagine if Iverson was actually the point guard. He would be responsible for getting even more assists then he gets now, but his turnovers would not go up very much, because he wouldn’t be handling the ball all that much more than he already does now. What happens now much of the time, of course, is that Iverson gets the ball from Carter after Carter brings it up. Or Iverson brings it up even though Carter is out there. So if Iverson were the point guard, and him and Carter were seldom on the court at the same time, Iverson’s assists would go up, hopefully by a lot, and so would his assist/turnover ratio. His scoring would go down, but knowing Iverson, he would only allow it to go down so far and no farther. If you managed it right, you could probably achieve the best of all possible worlds, a point guard who can assist and score, while keeping turnovers to a level only slightly higher than the average among other point guards.
Fearing this or assuming it would not work is irrational; I don’t see how you could lose. The worst case scenario is that Iverson’s scoring would drop more than expected, but that might not be a problem if other players, especially Anthony, Kleiza, and Smith, were able to pick up their scoring with more attempts.
This fear of Iverson at point guard reminds me of the dread that some fans and coaches have regarding J.R. Smith, whose benefits frequently but not always outweigh his costs. Could it be that Denver Nuggets fans, and maybe the coaches as well, are too timid to be able to understand and accept what is best for their team?
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 Jan. 9 and underwent successful surgery on Jan. 11. He is expected to be sidelined a minimum of eight weeks. Atkins is out until at least March 10. With any luck, he will be back in the Nuggets lineup by late March.
Nene: underwent successful surgery to remove a testicular tumor on Jan. 14. A timeline for his return is still unknown. He is out until at least the first week of March, but could easily be out for the entire rest of the season.
Steven Hunter: He missed the last several games because of soreness and inflammation in his right knee, his status is questionable for the next game.
PISTONS PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
None, all Pistons on the roster were available.
ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of February 26, 2008
The Nuggets are under an ORANGE ALERT, on account of the following problems.
INJURIES & SUSPENSIONS
1. Chucky Atkins injury 18 points
2. Nene illness 14 points
3. 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: 3 points. (He wasn’t partially benched.)
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 5 points. Najera and Kleiza should have played more than they did, and Camby and Iverson should have had more breathers than they did.
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.
On defense a system is much less important than on offense. 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. More important than whether a zone or man to man defense is in effect is the quality of the actual defending.
Lack of an adequate number of offensive plays and patterns: 14 Points
INTENSITY, HUSTLE, AND HEART
1. The Nugget’s intensity, hustle and heart are lacking: 1 Points. It’s not anywhere near as bad as some fans think it is.
TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 59, which constitutes ORANGE ALERT.
ORANGE ALERT (55-74): Moderate damage is occurring to the season. The entire season is under serious threat, and you can just about forget about beating quality teams. About 3/4 of all wins against good teams will now be losses. Beating mid-level teams is much more difficult ORANGE ALERT. About 1/2 of games against mid-level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. Even poor teams can often beat an otherwise good team that is under this alert. Close to 1/4 of games against low level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. A good team has been reduced to being a mid-level team, at best, when it is under this alert.
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 Pistons are the opposite of the Nuggets, completely healthy. In total, there were 14 Pistons ready to play in this game, while there were only 10 Nuggets. The Pistons were in either GREEN or GREY alert, while the Nuggets were in ORANGE alert, so it was rather unlikely that the Nuggets were going to win this game unless they really stepped up.
The lack of offensive consistency and the on the fly offensive style was especially glaring in this game, especially when compared with other recent games, during some of which you forgot this can be a big problem. As explained in the last report, when the Nuggets get lucky, or more precisely when enough individual Nuggets get lucky, they can prosper on offense without planned and repeated plays. However, when they play a great defense, such as the defense of the Pistons, they pay a big price for not having very many tried and true plays.
Both Atkins and Nene are definitely going to be out for many more days 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 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.
The current odds of the Nuggets making the playoffs, according to Hollinger at ESPN’s team analysis system, is 52%, only slightly better now than the low point reached before the all-star break, which was almost exactly 50%. But the Warriors have the greater odds, 56%, for getting the 8th and final playoff slot. Winning the Northwest Division is nothing more than a pipe dream at this point; the odds on that have dropped to only 7%, The Nuggets would have to beat the Jazz in both of the remaining games against them, both of which are in Salt Lake City, in order to have a shot at winning the Northwest. The Hollinger odds don’t take into account that most likely neither Nene nor Atkins are going to be available to and in top form for the Nuggets for the stretch run, so the real odds that the Nuggets will make the playoffs are probably around 40-45% now.
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 Pistons 10
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 8 Pistons 8
Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 26
Pistons Non-Starters Points: 12
Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 14
Pistons Non-Starters Rebounds: 10
Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 2
Pistons Non-Starters Assists: 4
OBSERVATIONS ON HOW THE RESERVES WERE USED AND PLAYED
The Pistons played 10 players a half a quarter or more, while the Nuggets tried only 8 players. However, both teams played 8 tried and true players for 10 minutes or more.
Led by Eduardo Najera in rebounding and by J.R. Smith in scoring, the Nuggets’ non-starters defeated the Pistons’ non-starters in rebounding 14-10 and in scoring by the wide margin of 26-12. As usual though, the opposing team’s non-starters made more assists than did the Nuggets’ non-starters, 4-2 in this case.
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-PISTONS PLAYER RATINGS
NUGGETS PLAYER RATINGS
Allen Iverson: Game 44.0 Season 41.0
Carmelo Anthony: Game 43.7 Season 39.2
Kenyon Martin: Game 18.2 Season 22.3
Marcus Camby: Game 16.5 Season 33.0
J.R. Smith: Game 15.3 Season 15.6
Eduardo Najera: Game 14.5 Season 13.2
Anthony Carter: Game 11.8 Season 20.4
Linas Kleiza: Game 9.6 Season 19.0
Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Nene: Did Not Play-Illness
Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Injury
Yakhouba Diawara: Game: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Taurean Green: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
PISTONS PLAYER RATINGS
Tayshaun Prince: Game 40.9 Season 22.8
Richard Hamilton: Game 36.9 Season 29.3
Antonio McDyess: Game 36.8 Season 22.0
Chauncey Billups: Game 35.5 Season 32.5
Rasheed Wallace: Game 19.3 Season 26.3
Rodney Stuckey: Game 10.1 Season 11.0
Jason Maxiell: Game 5.6 Season 15.2
Amir Johnson: Game 5.0 Season 9.7
Arron Afflalo: Game 1.2 Season 5.9
Jarvis Hayes: Game 1.0 Season 10.7
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:
Where Iverson and Anthony led, the other Nuggets, except for Najera to some extent, were not able to follow. Those three were the only Nuggets who stepped up against the tough Detroit defense. J.R. Smith was alright but not explosive as he can be. At least Smith did not have a massive drop-off to disaster level like he often has.
Kenyon Martin came up a little short, but made up for it with some good defending. Three Nuggets were completely throttled by the Pistons’ tough defense. Carter, Kleiza, and even Marcus Camby were all only about half as productive as they usually are. This was one of the worst games of the year for Camby, and both Carter and Kleiza are in slumps right now. Kleiza’s slump is largely caused by the ankle sprain he suffered against the Celtics on February 19, at least that is what we hope.
For the Pistons, Prince and McDyess were the big upside performers. Hamilton and Billups were as productive as they usually are, which is very productive. The Pistons had these 4 big time performers, all of whom are starters, while the Nuggets had just Melo and A.I. as power performers. Rasheed Wallace was the only Pistons starter who was off from his usual productivity, and he was not that far off. Four of five Pistons’ starters stepped up against the Nuggets, whereas only two of the Nuggets’ starters stepped up against the Pistons.
The Pistons’ non-starters didn’t do very much, but it was not a big deal for Detroit because of how well the starters played.
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 Bad Game-Near Disaster
Less 0.25 Total Disaster
NUGGETS-PISTONS REAL PLAYER RATINGS
All players who played 5 minutes or more are included. Any player who played only 5-9 minutes is noted.
1. Tayshaun Prince, Det 1.076
2. Chauncey Billups, Det 1.044
3. Antonio McDyess, Det 1.022
4. Carmelo Anthony, Den 1.016
5. Allen Iverson, Den 0.978
6. Richard Hamilton, Det 0.900
7. Eduardo Najera, Den 0.806
8. J.R. Smith, Den 0.805
9. Rodney Stuckey, Det 0.721
10. Amir Johnson, Det 0.625…Johnson played only 8 minutes.
11. Anthony Carter, Den 0.621
12. Linas Kleiza, Den 0.565
13. Rasheed Wallace, Det 0.536
14. Kenyon Martin, Den 0.479
15. Marcus Camby, Den 0.413
16. Jason Maxiell, Det 0.350
17. Arron Afflalo, Det 0.171…Afflalo played only 7 minutes
18. Jarvis Hayes, Det 0.100
OBSERVATIONS ON THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
The only star in this game was Prince for Detroit. Outstanding games were played by Hamilton, McDyess, and Billups for the Pistons, and by Iverson and Anthony for the Nuggets. So among players who were outstanding or better, the Pistons had 4 and the Nuggets had 2. Smith and Najera were very good, and there were no Pistons in that category.
Maxiell, Afflalo, and Hayes were non-factors for the Pistons. Rasheed Wallace was poor, well below his usual.
For the Nuggets at the low end, it is rare for Camby to be in the poor range, let alone the very poor range where he was in this game. Compounding this was Kenyon Martin who was also very poor, and Kleiza who was poor. Anthony Carter was mediocre, which is actually better than he has been in many recent games.
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.
Eduardo Najera: +5
Carmelo Anthony: +1
J.R. Smith: -3
Linas Kleiza: -4
Anthony Carter: -4
Allen Iverson: -5
Kenyon Martin: -7
Marcus Camby: -8
OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
Najera is frequently at or near the top in the plus-minus because of his good defending. Since this was a very defensive type of game, his skills were put to good use in it. Similarly, Carmelo Anthony made a lot of rebounds and assists in order to end up with a +1 in the loss. Martin and Camby were the two Nuggets who were most negatively affected by the tough defense and practiced offense of the Pistons.
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 8, Team 0, Anthony 1, Camby 2, Carter 0, Iverson 2, Kleiza 2, Martin 0, Najera 0, Smith 1
Personal Fouls: Total 14, Anthony 2, Camby 1, Carter 1, Iverson 2, Kleiza 4, Martin 3, Najera 0, Smith 1
Marcus Camby played for most of the game, 40 minutes, and was 1/8 and 2/2 from the line for 4 points, and he made 11 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 blocks.
Kenyon Martin played 38 minutes and was 4/10 for 8 points, and he made 4 rebounds, 4 assists, and 1 block.
Linas Kleiza played 17 minutes and was 4/7, 0/2 on 3’s, and 0/2 from the line for 8 points, and he made 3 rebounds.
Anthony Carter played 19 minutes and was 2/6 and 0/1 on 3’s for 4 points, and he made 4 assists, 2 rebounds, and 1 block.
J.R. Smith played 19 minutes and was 4/14, 3/10 on 3’s, and 2/5 from the line for 13 points, and he made 3 steals, 3 rebounds, and 1 assist.
Eduardo Najera played 18 minutes and was 2/5 and 1/2 on 3’s for 5 points, and he made 8 rebounds and 1 assist.
Allen Iverson played for virtually the whole game, 45 minutes, and was 7/19, 2/6 on 3’s, and 12/13 from the line for 28 points, and he made 7 assists, 4 rebounds, and 3 steals.
Carmelo Anthony played for most of the game, 43 minutes, and was 8/20, 1/3 on 3’s, and 6/7 from the line for 23 points, and he made 11 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 blocks, and 1 steal.
NEXT UP
The next game will be Wednesday, February 27 in Seattle to play the Supersonics at 8 pm mountain time. The Sonics will be playing on back to back nights, while the Nuggets will not be. Therefore, the Sonics’ home court advantage will be largely or totally offset by the Nuggets’ extra rest advantage.
Although the Nuggets executed without turning it over much, and they passed the ball around much more than during the road trip to Chicago and Milwaukee, the Pistons’ defense was enough to prevent them from shooting well enough to win. The Nuggets’ shooting was sharply limited to 36/89 or 36.0%. Why make it more complicated than it is? The Nuggets lost this game mostly because they couldn’t get the ball to go in the basket enough times.
The Nuggets at this point are in a rut where they try to correct mistakes from the previous game in the next one, which is both good and bad at the same time. It’s good, obviously, because it’s always good to correct your mistakes. But it’s bad in the sense that the capabilities and style of opponents can and did in this case radically change from one game to the next. The Pistons were the type of team that you get a lower payoff from by passing it around more, because almost every one of them is a good make you miss type of defender, and they rotate extremely well. To try to defeat a team like the Pistons, the Nuggets should have gone to the hoop more, especially Camby, Martin, and Kleiza. The Nuggets, who depend on in the paint scoring more than most teams, largely because they have poor 3-point shooting, scored just 34 of their 93 points in the paint.
The referees were not calling some of the Pistons’ fouls, and this deterred the Nuggets from driving to the hoop enough times for them to be able to win this game. However, the Nuggets overreacted to the relative lack of calls. Just because fouls are not being called as often as usual does not mean that they are not being called at all. The Pistons were called for 25 fouls, the Nuggets for only 14, and the Pistons would have been called for more fouls had the Nuggets been persistent at taking it to the rim. The additional free throws they would have gotten could have easily been enough for the Nuggets to win.
With more and more observers and fans joining Nuggets 1 and concluding that the Nuggets’ offense is not thought out well in advance, the Nuggets played their second straight game without clear direction from it’s point guards, and this was true even if you include Iverson as the effective point guard, though he was mostly playing the 2-spot. Of the Nuggets’ 25 assists, Iverson and Carter made 11, less than half.
The Nuggets get a lot of assists, because they score a lot of points, but they frequently don’t get a lot of assists when they most need them, when they are playing teams with tough defenses. Although the Nuggets passed the ball a lot and made a fairly impressive 25 assists in this game, the problem was that they were all over the map as to who was making those assists, indicating they were in effect playing more of a pick-up style and less of a professional style of basketball. At least 2 out of 3 between Martin, Camby, and Anthony should have been doing more scoring and less assisting in this game.
Think of this mess for a moment. If Iverson is really acting as the point guard out there, even when Carter and he are on the floor at the same time, the Nuggets in effect are running 2 players at the point and no one at the 2-spot. I doubt anyone in the history of basketball has ever contended that this could be good for an offense. Not only do you obviously not need two point guards, but it indicates a team that is disorganized offensively in general. Although most point guards are much better scorers than Anthony Carter is, they are rarely the best scorers on a team, so having two point guards, aside from not making any sense and from creating confusion on the offense, would also be shooting yourself in the foot on scoring.
And the Nuggets are actually practically shooting themselves in the head, because Carter is a poor scoring PG. In other words, to have Iverson and Carter on the court at the same time, while Iverson is in his point guard mode, makes Carter almost worthless out there. Yet another way to look at the mess is to point out that Iverson is, in effect, being called on to play two positions at once, PG and SG, something that even Michael Jordan was rarely if ever asked to do, simply because it doesn’t make any sense.
After the game, Iverson summed up the Nuggets’ offensive problems this way: “You can’t win in this League without team priorities.” A crucial team priority is getting it straight as to who is the main playmaker or pair of playmakers. He also said that in the last 3 games, “they wanted it more than we did.” The Nuggets will have to look themselves in the mirror to determine whether they are going to do anything about motivation. Could it be true that the Nuggets are not as motivated as they need to be, and as you would think they would be, in the quest for the ring?
In this report we will start out by showing key Nuggets’ guards performance measures, but what we are really driving for is to take a close look at the starting point guards for the best teams in the NBA, and to see how Anthony Carter and Allen Iverson match up with them.
DENVER NUGGETS GUARDS PRODUCTION PER 36 MINUTES
POINT GUARDS POINTS PER 36 MINUTES
Chucky Atkins: Career 14.6 Season 9.2
Anthony Carter: Career 9.0 Season 9.6
Taurean Green: Career 13.9 Season 13.9
SHOOTING GUARDS POINTS PER 36 MINUTES
Allen Iverson: Career 23.9 Season 22.5
J.R. Smith: Career 17.4 Season 20.3
Yakhouba Diawara: Career 8.9 Season 9.3
POINT GUARDS FIELD GOAL SHOOTING %
Chucky Atkins: Career .415 Season .228
Anthony Carter: Career .393 Season .449
Taurean Green: Career .250 Season .250
SHOOTING GUARDS FIELD GOAL SHOOTING %
Allen Iverson: Career .424 Season .442
J.R. Smith: Career .414 Season .427
Yakhouba Diawara: Career .361 Season .416
POINT GUARDS 3-POINT SHOOTING %
Chucky Atkins: Career .368 Season .244
Anthony Carter: Career .182 Season .292
Taurean Green: Career .125 Season .125
SHOOTING GUARDS 3-POINT SHOOTING %
Allen Iverson: Career .312 Season .335
J.R. Smith: Career .359 Season .389
Yakhouba Diawara: Career .302 Season .346
POINT GUARDS ASSISTS PER 36 MINUTES
Chucky Atkins: Career 5.0 Season 3.9
Anthony Carter: Career 7.1 Season 7.3
Taurean Green: Career 6.5 Season 6.5
SHOOTING GUARDS ASSISTS PER 36 MINUTES
Allen Iverson: Career 5.4 Season 6.2
J.R. Smith: Career 2.5 Season 3.1
Yakhouba Diawara: Career 1.8 Season 2.1
Despite not being the official point guard, Allen Iverson gets only 1 fewer assist per 36 minutes than does Anthony Carter, the official point guard. Also, notice that Iverson is getting almost one more assist this year than his career average, another sign that Iverson has assumed point guard duties unofficially. By not simply admitting that Iverson is the point guard, the Nuggets suffer all of the following disadvantages:
1. The staff has less leverage on Iverson, if he is a shooting guard, to criticize him if he decides to hog the ball and shoot first and look for assists later if he feels like it. Of course, it appears that this Nuggets’ coaching staff doesn’t even agree in the first place that Iverson sometimes dribbles too much, and sometimes takes too many shots himself. They would have to agree with that before they could agree that they need some leverage over Iverson’s decisions. Under the current view of the Nuggets’ coaches, Iverson can hardly do any wrong no matter what he does, which is a dangerous view to hold toward any player.
2. Since Anthony Carter is 6’2” and since Iverson is barely 6’0”, when both of them are on the court, which is common under the “Iverson is not the point guard” assumption, the Nuggets are too small in the back court to avoid having the back court be a defensive liability.
3. In any given game, the rest of the team does not know whether it is going to be mostly Carter, mostly Iverson, or both of them roughly equally who will be distributing the ball. They most likely don’t know in advance whether Iverson is going to be mostly dribbling, driving, and shooting, or whether he is in a more generous mood and is going to be looking for assist opportunities It’s like the Nuggets play with a different point guard every game or, if you prefer, it’s like the Nuggets really don’t have a designated, starting point guard. Either way you look at it, this leads to a lot of inconsistency and the occasional total breakdown of the Nuggets’ offense.
4. Since Iverson is always the shooting guard when he is out there, but he is often also at least half the point guard out there at the same time, opposing teams can do a lot of damage to the Nuggets’ offense simply by double teaming Iverson. When Iverson has assumed the point guard role even when Carter is out there, Carter becomes so much dead wood out there, and every dead wood player reduces the effectiveness of the offense substantially, even just one.
POINT GUARDS TURNOVERS PER 36 MINUTES
Chucky Atkins: Career 2.1 Season 0.7
Anthony Carter: Career 2.9 Season 2.4
Taurean Green: Career 5.7 Season 5.7
SHOOTING GUARDS TURNOVERS PER 36 MINUTES
Allen Iverson: Career 3.2 Season 2.8
J.R. Smith: Career 2.2 Season 2.9
Yakhouba Diawara: Career 1.1 Season 1.1
POINT GUARDS ASSIST/TURNOVER RATIO
Chucky Atkins: Career 2.38 Season 5.57
Anthony Carter: Career 2.45 Season 3.04
Taurean Green: Career 1.14 Season 1.14
SHOOTING GUARDS ASSIST/TURNOVER RATIO
Allen Iverson: Career 1.69 Season 2.21
J.R. Smith: Career 1.14 Season 1.07
Yakhouba Diawara: Career 1.64 Season 1.91
In one of the next game reports, probably the next one, for the Sonics game, I will discuss the Nuggets’ guards. But in this report, we take a close look at the best point guards in the NBA.
COMPARISON OF STARTING POINT GUARDS OF THE 13 BEST TEAMS IN THE NBA
Let’s compare the starting point guards for the 9 top teams of the West and the 4 top teams of the East. And let’s include Allen Iverson for discussion purposes. For each point guard, the first number is the assist/turnover ratio which coaches, definitely including George Karl, are extremely concerned about. The second or middle number is the number of assists per 36 minutes. The last number is the number of turnovers per 36 minutes. The best point guards are the ones who have the highest numbers among the first two numbers; the number of turnovers by itself is not really that critical. The point guards are first ranked according to their assist/turnover ratios:
1 Hornets Chris Paul 4.33 10.4 2.4
2 Cavaliers Eric Snow 4.17 5.0 1.2
3 Pistons Chauncey Billups 3.71 7.8 2.1
4 Nuggets Anthony Carter 3.00 7.2 2.4
5 Mavericks Jason Kidd 2.91 10.2 3.5
6 Suns Steve Nash 2.90 11.9 4.1
7 Warriors Baron Davis 2.81 7.3 2.6
8 Jazz Deron Williams 2.76 9.4 3.4
9 Celtics Rajon Rondo 2.67 5.6 2.1
10 Rockets Rafer Alston 2.57 5.9 2.3
11 Lakers Derek Fisher 2.53 3.8 1.5
12 Magic Jameer Nelson 2.46 6.9 2.8
13 Spurs Tony Parker 2.30 6.2 2.7
14 Nuggets Allen Iverson 2.21 6.2 2.8
Here you can see that Chris Paul, Eric Snow, and Chauncey Billups are the three most effective point guards in terms of getting assists without turning it over much. Carter for the Nuggets, Kidd, and Nash are at the next level, and Davis, Williams, and Rondo are not far behind them. Iverson is last, and it is certainly true that Iverson does not play conservatively, but I would not overreact to his low ratio. Carter gets a lot of the easy, safe assists for the Nuggets, whereas Iverson’s assists are often in higher risk situations, where he has decided not to take the shot himself. In many of these situations, Iverson is trying to pass for an assist out of a double team.
Now let’s rank them according to the number of assists they get per 36 minutes:
1 Suns Steve Nash 2.90 11.9 4.1
2 Hornets Chris Paul 4.33 10.4 2.4
3 Mavericks Jason Kidd 2.91 10.2 3.5
4 Jazz Deron Williams 2.76 9.4 3.4
5 Pistons Chauncey Billups 3.71 7.8 2.1
6 Warriors Baron Davis 2.81 7.3 2.6
7 Nuggets Anthony Carter 3.00 7.2 2.4
8 Magic Jameer Nelson 2.46 6.9 2.8
9 Spurs Tony Parker 2.30 6.2 2.7
10 Nuggets Allen Iverson 2.21 6.2 2.8
11 Rockets Rafer Alston 2.57 5.9 2.3
12 Celtics Rajon Rondo 2.67 5.6 2.1
13 Cavaliers Eric Snow 4.17 5.0 1.2
14 Lakers Derek Fisher 2.53 3.8 1.5
Here you can see that Nash leads the NBA in actual assisting, while Paul, Kidd, and Williams are extremely good playmakers, but are substantially behind Nash. Then, Billups, Davis, Anthony Carter for the Nuggets, and Nelson are at the next level, The less productive point guards would be Parker, Alston, Rondo, and Snow. Despite the fact he is on the team most likely to win the NBA Championship this year, Derek Fisher-Lakers gets, by far, the fewest assists among all starting point guards of the top teams. Once again, Iverson’s number should be judged while you remember that he is not actually the designated point guard.
Now let’s combine the two most important measures, assist/turnover ratio and assist rate, and rank the point guards according to how they stack up when you consider both of those performance measures at once, equally:
1 Hornets Chris Paul 4.33 10.4 2.4
2 Suns Steve Nash 2.90 11.9 4.1
3 Pistons Chauncey Billups 3.71 7.8 2.1
4 Mavericks Jason Kidd 2.91 10.2 3.5
5 Nuggets Anthony Carter 3.00 7.2 2.4
6 Jazz Deron Williams 2.76 9.4 3.4
7 Warriors Baron Davis 2.81 7.3 2.6
8 Cavaliers Eric Snow 4.17 5.0 1.2
9 Magic Jameer Nelson 2.46 6.9 2.8
10 Celtics Rajon Rondo 2.67 5.6 2.1
11 Rockets Rafer Alston 2.57 5.9 2.3
12 Spurs Tony Parker 2.30 6.2 2.7
13 Nuggets Allen Iverson 2.21 6.2 2.8
14 Lakers Derek Fisher 2.53 3.8 1.5
Now you might look at this and say “Wow, the Nuggets have a really good point guard, about the 5th best among the top teams. And you would be technically correct if you are looking at just the distribution part of a point guard’s job. But you would be wrong overall, because Carter is the worst scoring threat among all of these except for Eric Snow. Here are the points per 36 minutes for these point guards:
:
1 Nuggets Allen Iverson 22.6
2 Warriors Baron Davis 20.1
3 Hornets Chris Paul 19.9
4 Spurs Tony Parker 19.7
5 Pistons Chauncey Billups 19.0
6 Jazz Deron Williams 18.7
7 Suns Steve Nash 18.2
8 Lakers Derek Fisher 16.4
9 Magic Jameer Nelson 13.8
10 Rockets Rafer Alston 12.8
11 Celtics Rajon Rondo 12.5
12 Mavericks Jason Kidd 10.8
13 Nuggets Anthony Carter 9.5
14 Cavaliers Eric Snow 2.6
Now finally, let’s combine the assist/turnover ratio, the assist rate, and the scoring rate together. This would be about as close as we can get to coming up with the real truth regarding who are the best point guards, because things we are ignoring, such as rebounding and personal fouls, are not going to be very important or change things much with respect to point guards.
OVERALL RANKING OF POINT GUARDS BASED ON ASSIST/TURNOVER RATIOS, ASSIST RATES, AND SCORING RATES:
Here the first number is the assist/turnover ratio, the second number is the assists per 36 minutes, and the third number is points per 36 minutes.
1 Hornets Chris Paul 4.33 10.4 19.9
2 Pistons Chauncey Billups 3.71 7.8 19.0
3 Suns Steve Nash 2.90 11.9 18.2
4 Warriors Baron Davis 2.81 7.3 20.1
5 Jazz Deron Williams 2.76 9.4 18.7
6 Mavericks Jason Kidd 2.91 10.2 10.8
7 Nuggets Anthony Carter 3.00 7.2 9.5
8 Nuggets Allen Iverson 2.21 6.2 22.6
9 Spurs Tony Parker 2.30 6.2 19.7
10 Magic Jameer Nelson 2.46 6.9 13.8
11 Cavaliers Eric Snow 4.17 5.0 2.6
12 Rockets Rafer Alston 2.57 5.9 12.8
13 Celtics Rajon Rondo 2.67 5.6 12.5
14 Lakers Derek Fisher 2.53 3.8 16.4
Now let’s simplify by doing the same listing, but showing the composite rank number only. The composite rank number is simply the sum of the 3 ranks for the 3 main performance measures. Obviously, the lower the number, the better the point guard.
1 Hornets Chris Paul 6
2 Pistons Chauncey Billups 13
3 Suns Steve Nash 14
4 Warriors Baron Davis 15
5 Jazz Deron Williams 18
6 Mavericks Jason Kidd 20
7 Nuggets Anthony Carter 24
8 Nuggets Allen Iverson 25
9 Spurs Tony Parker 26
10 Magic Jameer Nelson 29
11 Cavaliers Eric Snow 29
12 Rockets Rafer Alston 31
13 Celtics Rajon Rondo 32
14 Lakers Derek Fisher 33
Now you can clearly see that Chris Paul is by far the best point guard among the top teams this year. Billups, Nash, and Davis are all excellent point guards, but not even really that close to Paul this year. Then you have Williams for the Jazz and Kidd, who is now playing for the Mavericks.
Then you have both of the Nuggets, Carter and Iverson, in the middle of the pack among point guards and almost exactly equal. But wait a minute, Iverson is not the point guard, but was included anyway. Well, now you can see why I did it. The notion of Iverson playing point guard fills a lot of people with irrational fear and dread. They just assume that since Iverson is such an aggressive scorer, that he could not possibly be a good point guard at the same time. This has been shown to be false here.
Now imagine if Iverson was actually the point guard. He would be responsible for getting even more assists then he gets now, but his turnovers would not go up very much, because he wouldn’t be handling the ball all that much more than he already does now. What happens now much of the time, of course, is that Iverson gets the ball from Carter after Carter brings it up. Or Iverson brings it up even though Carter is out there. So if Iverson were the point guard, and him and Carter were seldom on the court at the same time, Iverson’s assists would go up, hopefully by a lot, and so would his assist/turnover ratio. His scoring would go down, but knowing Iverson, he would only allow it to go down so far and no farther. If you managed it right, you could probably achieve the best of all possible worlds, a point guard who can assist and score, while keeping turnovers to a level only slightly higher than the average among other point guards.
Fearing this or assuming it would not work is irrational; I don’t see how you could lose. The worst case scenario is that Iverson’s scoring would drop more than expected, but that might not be a problem if other players, especially Anthony, Kleiza, and Smith, were able to pick up their scoring with more attempts.
This fear of Iverson at point guard reminds me of the dread that some fans and coaches have regarding J.R. Smith, whose benefits frequently but not always outweigh his costs. Could it be that Denver Nuggets fans, and maybe the coaches as well, are too timid to be able to understand and accept what is best for their team?
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 Jan. 9 and underwent successful surgery on Jan. 11. He is expected to be sidelined a minimum of eight weeks. Atkins is out until at least March 10. With any luck, he will be back in the Nuggets lineup by late March.
Nene: underwent successful surgery to remove a testicular tumor on Jan. 14. A timeline for his return is still unknown. He is out until at least the first week of March, but could easily be out for the entire rest of the season.
Steven Hunter: He missed the last several games because of soreness and inflammation in his right knee, his status is questionable for the next game.
PISTONS PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
None, all Pistons on the roster were available.
ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of February 26, 2008
The Nuggets are under an ORANGE ALERT, on account of the following problems.
INJURIES & SUSPENSIONS
1. Chucky Atkins injury 18 points
2. Nene illness 14 points
3. 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: 3 points. (He wasn’t partially benched.)
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 5 points. Najera and Kleiza should have played more than they did, and Camby and Iverson should have had more breathers than they did.
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.
On defense a system is much less important than on offense. 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. More important than whether a zone or man to man defense is in effect is the quality of the actual defending.
Lack of an adequate number of offensive plays and patterns: 14 Points
INTENSITY, HUSTLE, AND HEART
1. The Nugget’s intensity, hustle and heart are lacking: 1 Points. It’s not anywhere near as bad as some fans think it is.
TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 59, which constitutes ORANGE ALERT.
ORANGE ALERT (55-74): Moderate damage is occurring to the season. The entire season is under serious threat, and you can just about forget about beating quality teams. About 3/4 of all wins against good teams will now be losses. Beating mid-level teams is much more difficult ORANGE ALERT. About 1/2 of games against mid-level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. Even poor teams can often beat an otherwise good team that is under this alert. Close to 1/4 of games against low level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. A good team has been reduced to being a mid-level team, at best, when it is under this alert.
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 Pistons are the opposite of the Nuggets, completely healthy. In total, there were 14 Pistons ready to play in this game, while there were only 10 Nuggets. The Pistons were in either GREEN or GREY alert, while the Nuggets were in ORANGE alert, so it was rather unlikely that the Nuggets were going to win this game unless they really stepped up.
The lack of offensive consistency and the on the fly offensive style was especially glaring in this game, especially when compared with other recent games, during some of which you forgot this can be a big problem. As explained in the last report, when the Nuggets get lucky, or more precisely when enough individual Nuggets get lucky, they can prosper on offense without planned and repeated plays. However, when they play a great defense, such as the defense of the Pistons, they pay a big price for not having very many tried and true plays.
Both Atkins and Nene are definitely going to be out for many more days 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 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.
The current odds of the Nuggets making the playoffs, according to Hollinger at ESPN’s team analysis system, is 52%, only slightly better now than the low point reached before the all-star break, which was almost exactly 50%. But the Warriors have the greater odds, 56%, for getting the 8th and final playoff slot. Winning the Northwest Division is nothing more than a pipe dream at this point; the odds on that have dropped to only 7%, The Nuggets would have to beat the Jazz in both of the remaining games against them, both of which are in Salt Lake City, in order to have a shot at winning the Northwest. The Hollinger odds don’t take into account that most likely neither Nene nor Atkins are going to be available to and in top form for the Nuggets for the stretch run, so the real odds that the Nuggets will make the playoffs are probably around 40-45% now.
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 Pistons 10
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 8 Pistons 8
Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 26
Pistons Non-Starters Points: 12
Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 14
Pistons Non-Starters Rebounds: 10
Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 2
Pistons Non-Starters Assists: 4
OBSERVATIONS ON HOW THE RESERVES WERE USED AND PLAYED
The Pistons played 10 players a half a quarter or more, while the Nuggets tried only 8 players. However, both teams played 8 tried and true players for 10 minutes or more.
Led by Eduardo Najera in rebounding and by J.R. Smith in scoring, the Nuggets’ non-starters defeated the Pistons’ non-starters in rebounding 14-10 and in scoring by the wide margin of 26-12. As usual though, the opposing team’s non-starters made more assists than did the Nuggets’ non-starters, 4-2 in this case.
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-PISTONS PLAYER RATINGS
NUGGETS PLAYER RATINGS
Allen Iverson: Game 44.0 Season 41.0
Carmelo Anthony: Game 43.7 Season 39.2
Kenyon Martin: Game 18.2 Season 22.3
Marcus Camby: Game 16.5 Season 33.0
J.R. Smith: Game 15.3 Season 15.6
Eduardo Najera: Game 14.5 Season 13.2
Anthony Carter: Game 11.8 Season 20.4
Linas Kleiza: Game 9.6 Season 19.0
Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Nene: Did Not Play-Illness
Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Injury
Yakhouba Diawara: Game: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Taurean Green: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
PISTONS PLAYER RATINGS
Tayshaun Prince: Game 40.9 Season 22.8
Richard Hamilton: Game 36.9 Season 29.3
Antonio McDyess: Game 36.8 Season 22.0
Chauncey Billups: Game 35.5 Season 32.5
Rasheed Wallace: Game 19.3 Season 26.3
Rodney Stuckey: Game 10.1 Season 11.0
Jason Maxiell: Game 5.6 Season 15.2
Amir Johnson: Game 5.0 Season 9.7
Arron Afflalo: Game 1.2 Season 5.9
Jarvis Hayes: Game 1.0 Season 10.7
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:
Where Iverson and Anthony led, the other Nuggets, except for Najera to some extent, were not able to follow. Those three were the only Nuggets who stepped up against the tough Detroit defense. J.R. Smith was alright but not explosive as he can be. At least Smith did not have a massive drop-off to disaster level like he often has.
Kenyon Martin came up a little short, but made up for it with some good defending. Three Nuggets were completely throttled by the Pistons’ tough defense. Carter, Kleiza, and even Marcus Camby were all only about half as productive as they usually are. This was one of the worst games of the year for Camby, and both Carter and Kleiza are in slumps right now. Kleiza’s slump is largely caused by the ankle sprain he suffered against the Celtics on February 19, at least that is what we hope.
For the Pistons, Prince and McDyess were the big upside performers. Hamilton and Billups were as productive as they usually are, which is very productive. The Pistons had these 4 big time performers, all of whom are starters, while the Nuggets had just Melo and A.I. as power performers. Rasheed Wallace was the only Pistons starter who was off from his usual productivity, and he was not that far off. Four of five Pistons’ starters stepped up against the Nuggets, whereas only two of the Nuggets’ starters stepped up against the Pistons.
The Pistons’ non-starters didn’t do very much, but it was not a big deal for Detroit because of how well the starters played.
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 Bad Game-Near Disaster
Less 0.25 Total Disaster
NUGGETS-PISTONS REAL PLAYER RATINGS
All players who played 5 minutes or more are included. Any player who played only 5-9 minutes is noted.
1. Tayshaun Prince, Det 1.076
2. Chauncey Billups, Det 1.044
3. Antonio McDyess, Det 1.022
4. Carmelo Anthony, Den 1.016
5. Allen Iverson, Den 0.978
6. Richard Hamilton, Det 0.900
7. Eduardo Najera, Den 0.806
8. J.R. Smith, Den 0.805
9. Rodney Stuckey, Det 0.721
10. Amir Johnson, Det 0.625…Johnson played only 8 minutes.
11. Anthony Carter, Den 0.621
12. Linas Kleiza, Den 0.565
13. Rasheed Wallace, Det 0.536
14. Kenyon Martin, Den 0.479
15. Marcus Camby, Den 0.413
16. Jason Maxiell, Det 0.350
17. Arron Afflalo, Det 0.171…Afflalo played only 7 minutes
18. Jarvis Hayes, Det 0.100
OBSERVATIONS ON THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
The only star in this game was Prince for Detroit. Outstanding games were played by Hamilton, McDyess, and Billups for the Pistons, and by Iverson and Anthony for the Nuggets. So among players who were outstanding or better, the Pistons had 4 and the Nuggets had 2. Smith and Najera were very good, and there were no Pistons in that category.
Maxiell, Afflalo, and Hayes were non-factors for the Pistons. Rasheed Wallace was poor, well below his usual.
For the Nuggets at the low end, it is rare for Camby to be in the poor range, let alone the very poor range where he was in this game. Compounding this was Kenyon Martin who was also very poor, and Kleiza who was poor. Anthony Carter was mediocre, which is actually better than he has been in many recent games.
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.
Eduardo Najera: +5
Carmelo Anthony: +1
J.R. Smith: -3
Linas Kleiza: -4
Anthony Carter: -4
Allen Iverson: -5
Kenyon Martin: -7
Marcus Camby: -8
OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
Najera is frequently at or near the top in the plus-minus because of his good defending. Since this was a very defensive type of game, his skills were put to good use in it. Similarly, Carmelo Anthony made a lot of rebounds and assists in order to end up with a +1 in the loss. Martin and Camby were the two Nuggets who were most negatively affected by the tough defense and practiced offense of the Pistons.
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 8, Team 0, Anthony 1, Camby 2, Carter 0, Iverson 2, Kleiza 2, Martin 0, Najera 0, Smith 1
Personal Fouls: Total 14, Anthony 2, Camby 1, Carter 1, Iverson 2, Kleiza 4, Martin 3, Najera 0, Smith 1
Marcus Camby played for most of the game, 40 minutes, and was 1/8 and 2/2 from the line for 4 points, and he made 11 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 blocks.
Kenyon Martin played 38 minutes and was 4/10 for 8 points, and he made 4 rebounds, 4 assists, and 1 block.
Linas Kleiza played 17 minutes and was 4/7, 0/2 on 3’s, and 0/2 from the line for 8 points, and he made 3 rebounds.
Anthony Carter played 19 minutes and was 2/6 and 0/1 on 3’s for 4 points, and he made 4 assists, 2 rebounds, and 1 block.
J.R. Smith played 19 minutes and was 4/14, 3/10 on 3’s, and 2/5 from the line for 13 points, and he made 3 steals, 3 rebounds, and 1 assist.
Eduardo Najera played 18 minutes and was 2/5 and 1/2 on 3’s for 5 points, and he made 8 rebounds and 1 assist.
Allen Iverson played for virtually the whole game, 45 minutes, and was 7/19, 2/6 on 3’s, and 12/13 from the line for 28 points, and he made 7 assists, 4 rebounds, and 3 steals.
Carmelo Anthony played for most of the game, 43 minutes, and was 8/20, 1/3 on 3’s, and 6/7 from the line for 23 points, and he made 11 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 blocks, and 1 steal.
NEXT UP
The next game will be Wednesday, February 27 in Seattle to play the Supersonics at 8 pm mountain time. The Sonics will be playing on back to back nights, while the Nuggets will not be. Therefore, the Sonics’ home court advantage will be largely or totally offset by the Nuggets’ extra rest advantage.
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