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BOOKMARK OR THERE WON'T BE A LATER

Google shows mostly pre-2000, well advertised, big staff, and big corporation sites in search results. Mostly the same old, often stale sites are shown, sites that editorially only go so far and no farther. This site is about the opposite of what is shown in search results. The vast majority of those who return to this Site use a bookmark since using Google Search to find it is more difficult to do. If you do not bookmark this page in some way, you will probably not be able to find it again. If you are a first time visitor, here is your Welcome and Introduction.

SCROLL DOWN for specific articles you are following a link to..........ALL QUEST PAGES FULLY LOAD in about 10 seconds or less on cable broadband.

Choose and click on a report and your tab will reload with that report showing about 1/10 the way down the page, below the two title listing panels just below here.

There are actually many more ways to choose and read Reports. For a complete description of all options, see this User Guide article.

REPORTS--#21 THROUGH #40


Thursday, December 11, 2008

Lands Where the Quest Was Won

LANDS THAT WON THE QUEST
2008 Boston, Massachussetts
2007 San Antonio, Texas
2006 Miami, Florida
2005 San Antonio, Texas
2004 Detroit, Michigan
2003 San Antonio, Texas
2002 Los Angeles, California
2001 Los Angeles, California
2000 Los Angeles, California
1999 San Antonio, Texas
1998 Chicago, Illinois
1997 Chicago, Illinois
1996 Chicago, Illinois
1995 Houston, Texas
1994 Houston, Texas
1993 Chicago, Illinois
1992 Chicago, Illinois
1991 Chicago, Illinois
1990 Detroit, Michigan
1989 Detroit, Michigan
1988 Los Angeles, California
1987 Los Angeles, California
1986 Boston, Massachussetts
1985 Los Angeles, California
1984 Boston, Massachussetts
1983 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1982 Los Angeles, California
1981 Boston Celtics
1980 Los Angeles, California
1979 Seattle, Washington
1978 Washington, D.C.
1977 Portland, Oregon
1976 Boston Celtics
1975 Oakland-San Francisco, California
1974 Boston, Massachussetts
1973 New York, New York
1972 Los Angeles, California
1971 Milwaukee, Wisconsin
1970 New York, New York
1969 Boston, Massachussetts
1968 Boston, Massachussetts
1967 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1966 Boston, Massachussetts
1965 Boston, Massachussetts
1964 Boston, Massachussetts
1963 Boston, Massachussetts
1962 Boston, Massachussetts
1961 Boston, Massachussetts
1960 Boston, Massachussetts
1959 Boston, Massachussetts
1958 St. Louis, Missouri
1957 Boston, Massachussetts
1956 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1955 Syracuse, New York
1954 Minneapolis, Minnesota
1953 Minneapolis, Minnesota
1952 Minneapolis, Minnesota
1951 Rochester, New York
1950 Minneapolis, Minnesota

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players: Pistons 89 Spurs 77 in San Antonio Dec. 2 2008

REAL PLAYER RATINGS (QUALITY) FOR THIS GAME
DETROIT PISTONS QUALITY
Jason Maxiell, PF 1.000
Amir Johnson, PF 0.873
Tayshaun Prince, SF 0.856
Rodney Stuckey, PG 0.777
Allen Iverson, SG 0.745
Richard Hamilton, SG 0.563
Rasheed Wallace, C 0.510
Arron Afflalo, SG 0.369
Kwame Brown, C 0.162

SAN ANTONIO SPURS QUALITY
Tim Duncan, PF 0.816
Bruce Bowen, SF 0.803
Tony Parker, PG 0.607
Manu Ginobili, SG 0.541
Matt Bonner, C 0.330
Michael Finley, SG 0.235
Fabricio Oberto, C 0.221
Roger Mason, SG -0.119

SCALE FOR RPR (QUALITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
Historic Superstar for this game 1.400 and more
Superstar 1.050 to 1.399
Star/Outstanding 0.800 to 1.050
Very Good 0.650 to 0.799
Major Role Player 0.525 to 0.649
Role Player 0.450 to 0.524
Minor Role Player 0.400 to 0.449
Very Minor Role Player or Very Important Defender 0.350 to 0.399
Poor Game or Extremely Importand Defender 0.275 to 0.349
Very Poor Game Regardless of Defending 0.200 to 0.274
Disaster Game Regardless of Defending minus infinity to 0.199

****************************************************
REAL PLAYER PRODUCTION (QUANTITY) IN THIS GAME
DETROIT PISTONS QUANTITY
Tayshaun Prince, SF 35.10
Allen Iverson, SG 31.30
Rodney Stuckey, PG 24.10
Rasheed Wallace, C 19.90
Richard Hamilton, SG 15.20
Amir Johnson, PF 11.35
Jason Maxiell, PF 7.00
Arron Afflalo, SG 6.65
Kwame Brown, C 3.40

SAN ANTONIO SPURS QUANTITY
Tim Duncan, PF 32.65
Tony Parker, PG 21.85
Manu Ginobili, SG 15.15
Bruce Bowen, SF 12.85
Matt Bonner, C 8.25
Michael Finley, SG 8.00
Fabricio Oberto, C 3.10
Roger Mason, SG -3.70

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 40.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 36.0 to 39.9
Huge Game 32.0 to 35.9
Very Big Game 28.0 to 31.9
Big Game 24.0 to 27.9
Typical Average Game 20.0 to 23.9
Somewhat Below Average Game 16.0 to 19.9
Way Below Average Game 12.0 to 15.9
Bad Game 9.0 to 11.9
Really Bad Game 5.0 to 8.9
Total Disaster minus infinity to 4.9

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR NON-STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Non-Starters Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 33.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 29.0 to 32.9
Huge Game 25.0 to 28.9
Very Big Game 21.0 to 24.9
Big Game 17.0 to 20.9
Typical Non-Starter Game 12.0 to 16.9
Below Average Even For a Non-Starter 9.0 to 11.9
Way Below Average Even For a Non-Starter or Limited Minutes 6.0 to 8.9
Bad Game Even for a Non-Starter or Very Limited Minutes 3.0 to 5.9
Disaster: Nothing Much to Report minus infinity to 1.9

THE HIGHEST QUALITY PLAYERS IN THIS GAME







DETROIT PISTONS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Superstar during minutes on the court: Jason Maxiell
Star/Outstanding during minutes on the court: Amir Johnson
Star/Outstanding during minutes on the court: Tayshaun Prince
Very Good during minutes on the court: Rodney Stuckey
Very Good during minutes on the court: Allen Iverson








SAN ANTONIO SPURS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Star/Outstanding during minutes on the court: Tim Duncan
Star/Outstanding during minutes on the court: Bruce Bowen

THE GREATEST POWER PERFORMERS OF THIS GAME







DETROIT PISTONS POWER PERFORMERS
Huge Game: Tayshaun Prince
Very Big Game: Allen Iverson
Very Big Game: Rodney Stuckey








SAN ANTONIO SPURS POWER PERFORMERS
Huge Game: Tim Duncan

USER GUIDE FOR THIS TYPE OF REPORT(Last updated December 8 2008)
EDITING AND PUBLISHING PLAN-MAIN DETAILS
This is a "just the important facts please, and give them to me quick" type of report. I will in some cases do a very limited amount of commentary at the bottom of this type of report, but it will really be just notes for commentary that will be elsewhere in the near future. In some cases there will be no comments at all.

Most of the commentaries I do are in "Game/Team/League Reports" and in Fast Breaks". Game/Team/League reports are, with any luck, going to be produced for about 20 Nuggets and for about 20 Pistons games this season. Ultimate Game Breakdowns: Players, such as the one here, will be done for those same games. Plus there will be about 10 more Nuggets and 10 more Pistons Game Breakdowns for games for which there will be no article report. There will be a few other "wildcard" Game Breakdowns.

So in total, at least 70 of these relatively easy to produce but very informative Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players reports are scheduled for the regular season. At least 40 Game/Team/League Reports are planned.

Ultimate Game Breakdown-Coaching reports are done for every game that has a Game/Team/League Report.

More of every type of report will come out during playoffs season; I won't bore you with those details.

The games that get the full treatment have been very carefully chosen to be the most important games, which are generally the games against the best teams. Full treatment including the kitchen sink report games have been chosen from among only games where neither team is at a disadvantage due to playing on back to back nights. Other internet basketball "experts" are really wasting their time to some extent when they report on a game where one team was playing on back to back nights and the other team was not, because the great majority of those games are almost automatically won by the team that has more rest. I used to do those stupid games, but I'm not doing them anymore, because I keep trying to get better and better at understanding and teaching basketball, so I make changes such as this.

ULTIMATE GAME BREAKDOWN--PLAYERS REPORT EXPLAINED
With an Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players report, you can see very rapidly who was most responsible for the winning or the losing of the game. Then someone like me can easily write a separate game report which explains how things might have worked out better for a team, or why things worked out just about as well as possible, as the case may be.

The Real Player Ratings formula has been very carefully and accurately tweaked again and is currently as follows:

POSITIVE FACTORS
Points 1.00 (at par)
Number of 3-Pt FGs Made 1.00
Number of 2-Pt FGs Made 0.60
Number of FTs Made 0.00

Assists 1.75

Offensive Rebounds 1.15
Defensive Rebounds 1.25
Blocks 1.60
Steals 2.15

NEGATIVE FACTORS
3-Pt FGs Missed -1.00
2-Pt FGs Missed -0.85
FTs Missed -0.85

Turnovers -2.00
Personal Fouls -0.80

ACTUAL COMBINED AWARD OR PENALTY BY TYPE OF SHOT
3-Pointer Made 4.00
2-Pointer Made 2.60
Free Throw Made 1.00
3-Pointer Missed -1.00
2-Pointer Missed -0.85
Free Throw Missed -0.85

ZERO POINTS: PERCENTAGES BELOW WHICH THERE IS A NEGATIVE NET RESULT
3-Pointer 0 score % 0.200
2-Pointer 0 score % 0.246
1-Pointer 0 score % 0.459

ASSISTS VERSUS TURNOVERS ZERO POINT
Assist/Turnover Ratio That Yields 0 Net Points: 1.143

QUALITY (RPR) AND QUANTITY (RPP)-AN EXPLANATION
RPR game reports show for each player the RPR (Real Player Rating) which tells you how good a player did (all the good things minus all the bad things) out on the court per unit of time. The RPP (Real Player Production) report tells you how much in total (the sum of the of the good things minus the sum of the bad things) a player did out on the court.

Many and maybe most sports watchers and an unknown but probably disturbingly large number of sports managers make the mistakes of exaggerating the importance of quantity and overlooking to some extent quality. These reports allow you to expand your horizons. These reports put quantity and quality side by side, which is extremely valuable, because both are roughly equally important in explaining accurately why and how the game turned out the way it did.

Players who over many games consistently have higher RPR (quality) but lower RPP (quantity) results are in many cases not getting enough playing time. Players that over many games consistently have lower RPR (quality) but higher RPP (quantity) results are in many cases getting too much playing time.

The exceptional cases are very often going to be players who are either truly outstanding defenders or truly bad defenders. This is because the one and only thing that is not counted, because it is impossible to calculate it, is the number of shots that a player prevents from being scores. Investigation has to date revealed that, apparently, no one has even attempted, for the NBA, rough estimates of the actual value of each player's defending, in terms of number or percentage of scores prevented, or in terms of number or percentage of possessions made worthless.

Over the coming year, I am going to be working to see if it is possible to use some combination of advanced statistics that are tracked on certain internet sites as an accurate proxy for the number of shots and/or for the number of possessions ruined by a defender.

Another exception. where it is really alright when it looks like a player is playing too much, will be if a team has a point guard who has many more turnovers than the average point guard has. Because the point guard is so important, a good coach has to play his best guard who can make plays at the position for a full set of minutes every game, pretty much regardless of how many turnovers that player makes. If you take out your designated point guard due to "too many turnovers," it's most often going to be sort of like cutting your foot off because you have a bad case of athletes foot!

Ultimate Game Breakdown:Players: Nuggets 132 Raptors 93 in Denver Dec. 2, 2008

REAL PLAYER RATINGS (QUALITY) FOR THIS GAME
TORONTO RAPTORS QUALITY
Chris Bosh, PF 1.320
Kris Humphries, PF 0.868
Roko Ukic, PG 0.822
Jose Calderon, PG 0.589
Andrea Bargnani, PF 0.509
Will Solomon, PG 0.477
Jermaine O'Neal, C 0.458
Joey Graham, SF 0.268
Anthony Parker, SG 0.188
Jamario Moon, SF 0.130
Hassan Adams, SF 0.082
Jason Kapono, SF -0.081

DENVER NUGGETS QUALITY
Cheikh Samb, C 1.794
Chauncey Billups, PG 1.661
Nene, C 1.537
Chris Andersen, PF 1.243
Carmelo Anthony, SF 1.035
J.R. Smith, SG 0.983
Dahntay Jones, SG 0.685
Linas Kleiza, SF 0.657
Anthony Carter, PG 0.600
Renaldo Balkman, SF 0.477
Kenyon Martin, PF 0.424
Chucky Atkins, PG 0.418

SCALE FOR RPR (QUALITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
Historic Superstar for this game 1.400 and more
Superstar 1.050 to 1.399
Star/Outstanding 0.800 to 1.050
Very Good 0.650 to 0.799
Major Role Player 0.525 to 0.649
Role Player 0.450 to 0.524
Minor Role Player 0.400 to 0.449
Very Minor Role Player or Very Important Defender 0.350 to 0.399
Poor Game or Extremely Importand Defender 0.275 to 0.349
Very Poor Game Regardless of Defending 0.200 to 0.274
Disaster Game Regardless of Defending minus infinity to 0.199

****************************************************
REAL PLAYER PRODUCTION (QUANTITY) IN THIS GAME
TORONTO RAPTORS QUANTITY
Chris Bosh, PF 42.25
Jose Calderon, PG 18.85
Kris Humphries, PF 14.75
Roko Ukic, PG 13.15
Andrea Bargnani, PF 11.70
Jermaine O'Neal, C 8.70
Joey Graham, SF 7.50
Will Solomon, PG 7.15
Anthony Parker, SG 3.95
Jamario Moon, SF 1.30
Hassan Adams, SF 0.90
Jason Kapono, SF -1.30

DENVER NUGGETS QUANTITY
Chauncey Billups, PG 53.15
Nene, C 41.50
Carmelo Anthony, SF 31.05
J.R. Smith, SG 22.60
Chris Andersen, PF 18.65
Dahntay Jones, SG 15.75
Linas Kleiza, SF 15.10
Cheikh Samb, C 14.35
Kenyon Martin, PF 11.45
Renaldo Balkman, SF 6.20
Anthony Carter, PG 5.40
Chucky Atkins, PG 4.60

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 40.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 36.0 to 39.9
Huge Game 32.0 to 35.9
Very Big Game 28.0 to 31.9
Big Game 24.0 to 27.9
Typical Average Game 20.0 to 23.9
Somewhat Below Average Game 16.0 to 19.9
Way Below Average Game 12.0 to 15.9
Bad Game 9.0 to 11.9
Really Bad Game 5.0 to 8.9
Total Disaster minus infinity to 4.9

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR NON-STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Non-Starters Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 33.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 29.0 to 32.9
Huge Game 25.0 to 28.9
Very Big Game 21.0 to 24.9
Big Game 17.0 to 20.9
Typical Non-Starter Game 12.0 to 16.9
Below Average Even For a Non-Starter 9.0 to 11.9
Way Below Average Even For a Non-Starter or Limited Minutes 6.0 to 8.9
Bad Game Even for a Non-Starter or Very Limited Minutes 3.0 to 5.9
Disaster: Nothing Much to Report minus infinity to 1.9

THE HIGHEST QUALITY PLAYERS IN THIS GAME







RAPTORS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Superstar during minutes on the court: Chris Bosh
Star/Outstanding during minutes on the court: Kris Humphries
Very Good during minutes on the court: Roko Ukic









NUGGETS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Historic Superstar during minutes on the court: Cheikh Samb
Historic Superstar during minutes on the court: Chauncey Billups
Historic Superstar during minutes on the court: Nene
Superstar during minutes on the court: Chris Andersen

Star/Outstanding during minutes on the court: Carmelo Anthony
Star/Outstanding during minutes on the court: J.R. Smith
Very Good during minutes on the court: Dahntay Jones

THE GREATEST POWER PERFORMERS OF THIS GAME







TORONTO RAPTORS POWER PERFORMERS
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High: Chris Bosh
Big Game: Kris Humphries









DENVER NUGGETS POWER PERFORMERS
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High, Chauncey Billups
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High: Nene
Huge Game: Carmelo Anthony
Very Big Game: J.R. Smith
Big Game: Chris Andersen

USER GUIDE FOR THIS TYPE OF REPORT(Last updated December 8 2008)
EDITING AND PUBLISHING PLAN-MAIN DETAILS
This is a "just the important facts please, and give them to me quick" type of report. I will in some cases do a very limited amount of commentary at the bottom of this type of report, but it will really be just notes for commentary that will be elsewhere in the near future. In some cases there will be no comments at all.

Most of the commentaries I do are in "Game/Team/League Reports" and in Fast Breaks". Game/Team/League reports are, with any luck, going to be produced for about 20 Nuggets and for about 20 Pistons games this season. Ultimate Game Breakdowns: Players, such as the one here, will be done for those same games. Plus there will be about 10 more Nuggets and 10 more Pistons Game Breakdowns for games for which there will be no article report. There will be a few other "wildcard" Game Breakdowns.

So in total, at least 70 of these relatively easy to produce but very informative Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players reports are scheduled for the regular season. At least 40 Game/Team/League Reports are planned.

Ultimate Game Breakdown-Coaching reports are done for every game that has a Game/Team/League Report.

More of every type of report will come out during playoffs season; I won't bore you with those details.

The games that get the full treatment have been very carefully chosen to be the most important games, which are generally the games against the best teams. Full treatment including the kitchen sink report games have been chosen from among only games where neither team is at a disadvantage due to playing on back to back nights. Other internet basketball "experts" are really wasting their time to some extent when they report on a game where one team was playing on back to back nights and the other team was not, because the great majority of those games are almost automatically won by the team that has more rest. I used to do those stupid games, but I'm not doing them anymore, because I keep trying to get better and better at understanding and teaching basketball, so I make changes such as this.

ULTIMATE GAME BREAKDOWN--PLAYERS REPORT EXPLAINED
With an Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players report, you can see very rapidly who was most responsible for the winning or the losing of the game. Then someone like me can easily write a separate game report which explains how things might have worked out better for a team, or why things worked out just about as well as possible, as the case may be.

The Real Player Ratings formula has been very carefully and accurately tweaked again and is currently as follows:

POSITIVE FACTORS
Points 1.00 (at par)
Number of 3-Pt FGs Made 1.00
Number of 2-Pt FGs Made 0.60
Number of FTs Made 0.00

Assists 1.75

Offensive Rebounds 1.15
Defensive Rebounds 1.25
Blocks 1.60
Steals 2.15

NEGATIVE FACTORS
3-Pt FGs Missed -1.00
2-Pt FGs Missed -0.85
FTs Missed -0.85

Turnovers -2.00
Personal Fouls -0.80

ACTUAL COMBINED AWARD OR PENALTY BY TYPE OF SHOT
3-Pointer Made 4.00
2-Pointer Made 2.60
Free Throw Made 1.00
3-Pointer Missed -1.00
2-Pointer Missed -0.85
Free Throw Missed -0.85

ZERO POINTS: PERCENTAGES BELOW WHICH THERE IS A NEGATIVE NET RESULT
3-Pointer 0 score % 0.200
2-Pointer 0 score % 0.246
1-Pointer 0 score % 0.459

ASSISTS VERSUS TURNOVERS ZERO POINT
Assist/Turnover Ratio That Yields 0 Net Points: 1.143

QUALITY (RPR) AND QUANTITY (RPP)-AN EXPLANATION
RPR game reports show for each player the RPR (Real Player Rating) which tells you how good a player did (all the good things minus all the bad things) out on the court per unit of time. The RPP (Real Player Production) report tells you how much in total (the sum of the of the good things minus the sum of the bad things) a player did out on the court.

Many and maybe most sports watchers and an unknown but probably disturbingly large number of sports managers make the mistakes of exaggerating the importance of quantity and overlooking to some extent quality. These reports allow you to expand your horizons. These reports put quantity and quality side by side, which is extremely valuable, because both are roughly equally important in explaining accurately why and how the game turned out the way it did.

Players who over many games consistently have higher RPR (quality) but lower RPP (quantity) results are in many cases not getting enough playing time. Players that over many games consistently have lower RPR (quality) but higher RPP (quantity) results are in many cases getting too much playing time.

The exceptional cases are very often going to be players who are either truly outstanding defenders or truly bad defenders. This is because the one and only thing that is not counted, because it is impossible to calculate it, is the number of shots that a player prevents from being scores. Investigation has to date revealed that, apparently, no one has even attempted, for the NBA, rough estimates of the actual value of each player's defending, in terms of number or percentage of scores prevented, or in terms of number or percentage of possessions made worthless.

Over the coming year, I am going to be working to see if it is possible to use some combination of advanced statistics that are tracked on certain internet sites as an accurate proxy for the number of shots and/or for the number of possessions ruined by a defender.

Another exception. where it is really alright when it looks like a player is playing too much, will be if a team has a point guard who has many more turnovers than the average point guard has. Because the point guard is so important, a good coach has to play his best guard who can make plays at the position for a full set of minutes every game, pretty much regardless of how many turnovers that player makes. If you take out your designated point guard due to "too many turnovers," it's most often going to be sort of like cutting your foot off because you have a bad case of athletes foot!

Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players: Trailblazers 96 Pistons 85 in Detroit Nov. 30 2008

REAL PLAYER RATINGS (QUALITY) FOR THIS GAME
PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS QUALITY
LaMarcus Aldridge, PF 0.979
Greg Oden, C 0.898
Brandon Roy, SG 0.868
Nicolas Batum, SF 0.639
Steve Blake, PG 0.508
Joel Przybilla, C 0.238
Sergio Rodriguez, PG 0.229
Travis Outlaw, SF 0.076
Rudy Fernandez, SG 0.062

DETROIT PISTONS QUALITY
Jason Maxiell, PF 1.420
Richard Hamilton, SG 0.703
Rodney Stuckey, PG 0.675
Tayshaun Prince, SF 0.636
Amir Johnson, PF 0.572
Rasheed Wallace, C 0.390
Allen Iverson, SG 0.264
Kwame Brown, C 0.260
Arron Afflalo, SG 0.183
Walter Herrmann, PF 0.175

SCALE FOR RPR (QUALITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
Historic Superstar for this game 1.400 and more
Superstar 1.050 to 1.399
Star/Outstanding 0.800 to 1.050
Very Good 0.650 to 0.799
Major Role Player 0.525 to 0.649
Role Player 0.450 to 0.524
Minor Role Player 0.400 to 0.449
Very Minor Role Player or Very Important Defender 0.350 to 0.399
Poor Game or Extremely Importand Defender 0.275 to 0.349
Very Poor Game Regardless of Defending 0.200 to 0.274
Disaster Game Regardless of Defending minus infinity to 0.199

****************************************************
REAL PLAYER PRODUCTION (QUANTITY) IN THIS GAME
PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS QUANTITY
LaMarcus Aldridge, PF 39.15
Brandon Roy, SG 28.65
Greg Oden, C 27.85
Nicolas Batum, SF 19.80
Steve Blake, PG 18.30
Joel Przybilla, C 4.05
Sergio Rodriguez, PG 2.75
Travis Outlaw, SF 1.30
Rudy Fernandez, SG 1.05

DETROIT PISTONS QUANTITY
Richard Hamilton, SG 23.90
Rodney Stuckey, PG 17.55
Rasheed Wallace, C 15.20
Jason Maxiell, PF 14.20
Tayshaun Prince, SF 14.00
Amir Johnson, PF 13.15
Allen Iverson, SG 8.45
Kwame Brown, C 5.20
Arron Afflalo, SG 3.65
Walter Herrmann, PF 2.45

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 40.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 36.0 to 39.9
Huge Game 32.0 to 35.9
Very Big Game 28.0 to 31.9
Big Game 24.0 to 27.9
Typical Average Game 20.0 to 23.9
Somewhat Below Average Game 16.0 to 19.9
Way Below Average Game 12.0 to 15.9
Bad Game 9.0 to 11.9
Really Bad Game 5.0 to 8.9
Total Disaster minus infinity to 4.9

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR NON-STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Non-Starters Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 33.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 29.0 to 32.9
Huge Game 25.0 to 28.9
Very Big Game 21.0 to 24.9
Big Game 17.0 to 20.9
Typical Non-Starter Game 12.0 to 16.9
Below Average Even For a Non-Starter 9.0 to 11.9
Way Below Average Even For a Non-Starter or Limited Minutes 6.0 to 8.9
Bad Game Even for a Non-Starter or Very Limited Minutes 3.0 to 5.9
Disaster: Nothing Much to Report minus infinity to 1.9

THE HIGHEST QUALITY PLAYERS IN THIS GAME







TRAILBLAZERSS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Superstar during minutes on the Court: LaMarcus Aldridge
Star/Outstanding during minutes on the court: Greg Oden
Star/Outstanding during minutes on the court: Brandon Roy
Very Good during minutes on the court: Nicolas Batum








PISTONS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Historic Superstar during minutes on the Court: Jason Maxiell
Very Good during minutes on the court: Richard Hamilton
Very Good during minutes on the court: Rodney Stuckey
Very Good during minutes on the court: Tayshaun Prince

THE GREATEST POWER PERFORMERS OF THIS GAME







TRAILBLAZERS POWER PERFORMERS
Massive and Memorable Game: LaMarcus Aldridge
Very Big Game: Brandon Roy
Very Big Game: Greg Oden









PISTONS POWER PERFORMERS
Big Game: Rodney Stuckey
Big Game: Jason Maxiell

USER GUIDE FOR THIS TYPE OF REPORT (Last updated November 8 2008)
EDITING AND PUBLISHING PLAN-MAIN DETAILS
This is a "just the important facts please, and give them to me quick" type of report. I will in some cases do a very limited amount of commentary at the bottom of this type of report, but it will really be just notes for commentary that will be elsewhere in the near future. In some cases there will be no comments at all.

Most of the commentaries I do are in "Game/Team/League Reports" and in Fast Breaks". Game/Team/League reports are, with any luck, going to be produced for 26 Nuggets and for 23 games of other teams this season. Originally I was planning to cover the Raptors but now the thinking is that I should concentrate on the Pistons, so those 23 will be mostly or only on the Pistons. Ultimate Game Breakdowns: Players, such as the one here, will be done for the 26 key Nuggets games, for 8 other Nuggets games, for the 23 key Pistons games, and for 17 other games which could be Pistons games or any other NBA games.

So in total, 74 of these relatively easy to produce but very informative Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players reports are scheduled for the regular season. 49 Game/Team/League Reports are planned.

Ultimate Game Breakdown-Coaching reports are done for every game that has a Game/Team/League Report (for 26 Nuggets and 23 Pistons games).

More of every type of report will come out during playoffs season; I won't bore you with those details.

The games that get the full treatment have been very carefully chosen to be the most important games, which are generally the games against the best teams. Full treatment including the kitchen sink report games have been chosen from among only games where neither team is at a disadvantage due to playing on back to back nights. Other internet basketball "experts" are really wasting their time to some extent when they report on a game where one team was playing on back to back nights and the other team was not, because the great majority of those games are almost automatically won by the team that has more rest. I used to do those stupid games, but I'm not doing them anymore, because I keep trying to get better and better at understanding and teaching basketball, so I make changes such as this.

ULTIMATE GAME BREAKDOWN--PLAYERS REPORT EXPLAINED
With an Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players report, you can see very rapidly who was most responsible for the winning or the losing of the game. Then someone like me can easily write a separate game report which explains how things might have worked out better for a team, or why things worked out just about as well as possible, as the case may be.

The Real Player Ratings formula has been very carefully and accurately tweaked again and is currently as follows:

POSITIVE FACTORS
Points 1.00 (at par)
Number of 3-Pt FGs Made 1.00
Number of 2-Pt FGs Made 0.60
Number of FTs Made 0.00

Assists 1.75

Offensive Rebounds 1.15
Defensive Rebounds 1.25
Blocks 1.60
Steals 2.15

NEGATIVE FACTORS
3-Pt FGs Missed -1.00
2-Pt FGs Missed -0.85
FTs Missed -0.85

Turnovers -2.00
Personal Fouls -0.80

ACTUAL COMBINED AWARD OR PENALTY BY TYPE OF SHOT
3-Pointer Made 4.00
2-Pointer Made 2.60
Free Throw Made 1.00
3-Pointer Missed -1.00
2-Pointer Missed -0.85
Free Throw Missed -0.85

ZERO POINTS: PERCENTAGES BELOW WHICH THERE IS A NEGATIVE NET RESULT
3-Pointer 0 score % 0.200
2-Pointer 0 score % 0.246
1-Pointer 0 score % 0.459

ASSISTS VERSUS TURNOVERS ZERO POINT
Assist/Turnover Ratio That Yields 0 Net Points: 1.143

QUALITY (RPR) AND QUANTITY (RPP)-AN EXPLANATION
RPR game reports show for each player the RPR (Real Player Rating) which tells you how good a player did (all the good things minus all the bad things) out on the court per unit of time. The RPP (Real Player Production) report tells you how much in total (the sum of the of the good things minus the sum of the bad things) a player did out on the court.

Many and maybe most sports watchers and an unknown but probably disturbingly large number of sports managers make the mistakes of exaggerating the importance of quantity and overlooking to some extent quality. These reports allow you to expand your horizons. These reports put quantity and quality side by side, which is extremely valuable, because both are roughly equally important in explaining accurately why and how the game turned out the way it did.

Players who over many games consistently have higher RPR (quality) but lower RPP (quantity) results are in many cases not getting enough playing time. Players that over many games consistently have lower RPR (quality) but higher RPP (quantity) results are in many cases getting too much playing time.

The exceptional cases are very often going to be players who are either truly outstanding defenders or truly bad defenders. This is because the one and only thing that is not counted, because it is impossible to calculate it, is the number of shots that a player prevents from being scores. Investigation has to date revealed that, apparently, no one has even attempted, for the NBA, rough estimates of the actual value of each player's defending, in terms of number or percentage of scores prevented, or in terms of number or percentage of possessions made worthless.

Over the coming year, I am going to be working to see if it is possible to use some combination of advanced statistics that are tracked on certain internet sites as an accurate proxy for the number of shots and/or for the number of possessions ruined by a defender.

Another exception. where it is really alright when it looks like a player is playing too much, will be if a team has a point guard who has many more turnovers than the average point guard has. Because the point guard is so important, a good coach has to play his best guard who can make plays at the position for a full set of minutes every game, pretty much regardless of how many turnovers that player makes. If you take out your designated point guard due to "too many turnovers," it's most often going to be sort of like cutting your foot off because you have a bad case of athletes foot!

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players For Nuggets 106 Clippers 105 in Los Angeles Nov. 26 2008

REAL PLAYER RATINGS (QUALITY) FOR THIS GAME
DENVER NUGGETS QUALITY
Kenyon Martin, PF 0.939
Carmelo Anthony, SF 0.803
Nene, C 0.780
Anthony Carter, PG 0.730
Linas Kleiza, SF 0.548
Chauncey Billups, PG 0.345
Dahntay Jones, SG 0.057
Renaldo Balkman, SF -0.050


LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS QUALITY
Eric Gordon, SG 0.976
Marcus Camby, F 0.886
Paul Davis, C 0.804
Mike Taylor, PG 0.800
Baron Davis, PG 0.680
Chris Kaman, C 0.525
Al Thornton, SF 0.475
Steve Novak, SF 0.461
Zach Randolph, PF 0.169
Mardy Collins, PG -0.286
DeAndre Jordan, C -0.360


SCALE FOR RPR (QUALITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
Historic Superstar for this game 1.400 and more
Superstar 1.050 to 1.399
Star/Outstanding 0.800 to 1.050
Very Good 0.650 to 0.799
Major Role Player 0.525 to 0.649
Role Player 0.450 to 0.524
Minor Role Player 0.400 to 0.449
Very Minor Role Player or Very Important Defender 0.350 to 0.399
Poor Game or Extremely Importand Defender 0.275 to 0.349
Very Poor Game Regardless of Defending 0.200 to 0.274
Disaster Game Regardless of Defending minus infinity to 0.199

****************************************************
REAL PLAYER PRODUCTION (QUANTITY) IN THIS GAME
DENVER NUGGETS QUANTITY
Kenyon Martin, PF 34.75
Carmelo Anthony, SF 28.90
Nene, C 25.75
Anthony Carter, PG 24.10
Linas Kleiza, SF 14.80
Chauncey Billups, PG 13.10
Dahntay Jones, SG 1.30
Renaldo Balkman, SF -0.65

LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS QUANTITY
Eric Gordon, SG 41.00
Marcus Camby, F 33.65
Baron Davis, PG 28.55
Al Thornton, SF 13.30
Mike Taylor, PG 11.20
Paul Davis, C 9.65
Chris Kaman, C 6.30
Zach Randolph, PF 4.40
Steve Novak, SF 4.15
Mardy Collins, PG -2.00
DeAndre Jordan, C -3.60

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 40.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 36.0 to 39.9
Huge Game 32.0 to 35.9
Very Big Game 28.0 to 31.9
Big Game 24.0 to 27.9
Typical Average Game 20.0 to 23.9
Somewhat Below Average Game 16.0 to 19.9
Way Below Average Game 12.0 to 15.9
Bad Game 9.0 to 11.9
Really Bad Game 5.0 to 8.9
Total Disaster minus infinity to 4.9

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR NON-STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Non-Starters Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 33.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 29.0 to 32.9
Huge Game 25.0 to 28.9
Very Big Game 21.0 to 24.9
Big Game 17.0 to 20.9
Typical Non-Starter Game 12.0 to 16.9
Below Average Even For a Non-Starter 9.0 to 11.9
Way Below Average Even For a Non-Starter or Limited Minutes 6.0 to 8.9
Bad Game Even for a Non-Starter or Very Limited Minutes 3.0 to 5.9
Disaster: Nothing Much to Report minus infinity to 1.9

THE HIGHEST QUALITY PLAYERS IN THIS GAME









NUGGETS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Star/Outstanding during minutes on the court: Kenyon Martin
Very Good during minutes on the court: Nene
Very Good during minutes on the court: Carmelo Anthony
Very Good during minutes on the court: Anthony Carter









CLIPPERS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Star/Outstanding during minutes on the court: Eric Gordon
Star/Outstanding during minutes on the court: Marcus Camby
Star/Outstanding during minutes on the court: Paul Davis
Very Good during minutes on the court: Mike Taylor
Very Good during minutes on the court: Baron Davis

THE GREATEST POWER PERFORMERS OF THIS GAME








DENVER NUGGETS POWER PERFORMERS
Huge Game: Kenyon Martin
Very Big Game: Carmelo Anthony
Very Big Game: Anthony Carter
Big Game: Nene








LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS POWER PERFORMERS
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High, and Not Very Often: Eric Gordon
Huge Game: Marcus Camby
Very Big Game: Baron Davis

USER GUIDE FOR THIS TYPE OF REPORT (Last updated Nov. 8)
EDITING AND PUBLISHING PLAN-MAIN DETAILS
This is a "just the important facts please, and give them to me quick" type of report. I will in some cases do a very limited amount of commentary at the bottom of this type of report, but it will really be just notes for commentary that will be elsewhere in the near future. In some cases there will be no comments at all.

Most of the commentaries I do are in "Game/Team/League Reports" and in Fast Breaks". Game/Team/League reports are, with any luck, going to be produced for 26 Nuggets and for 23 games of other teams this season. Originally I was planning to cover the Raptors but now the thinking is that I should concentrate on the Pistons, so those 23 will be mostly or only on the Pistons. Ultimate Game Breakdowns: Players, such as the one here, will be done for the 26 key Nuggets games, for 8 other Nuggets games, for the 23 key Pistons games, and for 17 other games which could be Pistons games or any other NBA games.

So in total, 74 of these relatively easy to produce but very informative Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players reports are scheduled for the regular season. 49 Game/Team/League Reports are planned.

Ultimate Game Breakdown-Coaching reports are done for every game that has a Game/Team/League Report (for 26 Nuggets and 23 Pistons games).

More of every type of report will come out during playoffs season; I won't bore you with those details.

The games that get the full treatment have been very carefully chosen to be the most important games, which are generally the games against the best teams. Full treatment including the kitchen sink report games have been chosen from among only games where neither team is at a disadvantage due to playing on back to back nights. Other internet basketball "experts" are really wasting their time to some extent when they report on a game where one team was playing on back to back nights and the other team was not, because the great majority of those games are almost automatically won by the team that has more rest. I used to do those stupid games, but I'm not doing them anymore, because I keep trying to get better and better at understanding and teaching basketball, so I make changes such as this.

ULTIMATE GAME BREAKDOWN--PLAYERS REPORT EXPLAINED
With an Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players report, you can see very rapidly who was most responsible for the winning or the losing of the game. Then someone like me can easily write a separate game report which explains how things might have worked out better for a team, or why things worked out just about as well as possible, as the case may be.

The Real Player Ratings formula has been very carefully and accurately tweaked again and is currently as follows:

POSITIVE FACTORS
Points 1.00 (at par)
Number of 3-Pt FGs Made 1.00
Number of 2-Pt FGs Made 0.60
Number of FTs Made 0.00

Assists 1.75

Offensive Rebounds 1.15
Defensive Rebounds 1.25
Blocks 1.60
Steals 2.15

NEGATIVE FACTORS
3-Pt FGs Missed -1.00
2-Pt FGs Missed -0.85
FTs Missed -0.85

Turnovers -2.00
Personal Fouls -0.80

ACTUAL COMBINED AWARD OR PENALTY BY TYPE OF SHOT
3-Pointer Made 4.00
2-Pointer Made 2.60
Free Throw Made 1.00
3-Pointer Missed -1.00
2-Pointer Missed -0.85
Free Throw Missed -0.85

ZERO POINTS: PERCENTAGES BELOW WHICH THERE IS A NEGATIVE NET RESULT
3-Pointer 0 score % 0.200
2-Pointer 0 score % 0.246
1-Pointer 0 score % 0.459

ASSISTS VERSUS TURNOVERS ZERO POINT
Assist/Turnover Ratio That Yields 0 Net Points: 1.143

QUALITY (RPR) AND QUANTITY (RPP)-AN EXPLANATION
RPR game reports show for each player the RPR (Real Player Rating) which tells you how good a player did (all the good things minus all the bad things) out on the court per unit of time. The RPP (Real Player Production) report tells you how much in total (the sum of the of the good things minus the sum of the bad things) a player did out on the court.

Many and maybe most sports watchers and an unknown but probably disturbingly large number of sports managers make the mistakes of exaggerating the importance of quantity and overlooking to some extent quality. These reports allow you to expand your horizons. These reports put quantity and quality side by side, which is extremely valuable, because both are roughly equally important in explaining accurately why and how the game turned out the way it did.

Players who over many games consistently have higher RPR (quality) but lower RPP (quantity) results are in many cases not getting enough playing time. Players that over many games consistently have lower RPR (quality) but higher RPP (quantity) results are in many cases getting too much playing time.

The exceptional cases are very often going to be players who are either truly outstanding defenders or truly bad defenders. This is because the one and only thing that is not counted, because it is impossible to calculate it, is the number of shots that a player prevents from being scores. Investigation has to date revealed that, apparently, no one has even attempted, for the NBA, rough estimates of the actual value of each player's defending, in terms of number or percentage of scores prevented, or in terms of number or percentage of possessions made worthless.

Over the coming year, I am going to be working to see if it is possible to use some combination of advanced statistics that are tracked on certain internet sites as an accurate proxy for the number of shots and/or for the number of possessions ruined by a defender.

Another exception. where it is really alright when it looks like a player is playing too much, will be if a team has a point guard who has many more turnovers than the average point guard has. Because the point guard is so important, a good coach has to play his best guard who can make plays at the position for a full set of minutes every game, pretty much regardless of how many turnovers that player makes. If you take out your designated point guard due to "too many turnovers," it's most often going to be sort of like cutting your foot off because you have a bad case of athletes foot!

Fast Break: The Nuggets Are For Real--Well, Sort Of

Yes, I am aware that my early November prediction that the Nuggets would not make the playoffs looks goofy right now. And flat out wrong. The lesson is to never make any predictions in early November! I fell right into that big hole in the ground. The Warriors and the Clippers are both wretched compared to what people were thinking.

It now appears obvious that it is unlikely that the Warriors are going to make the playoffs with Baron Davis gone and with Monta Ellis missing for 1/3 of the season. So scratch them out. The Clippers, despite having a great mix of dependable veterans and great young players, are turning out to be an incredible disaster. (Could this possibly be largely Mike Dunleavy's fault?).

But that still leaves nine teams going for eight positions: Lakers, Rockets, Hornets, Nuggets, Mavericks, Spurs, Suns, Jazz, Trailblazers. So there is still hope for folks who can't stand the Nuggets for their fronting and for their massive wastage of money: there is still a chance they will not make the playoffs. If Oden and company can upgrade the currently terrible Trailblazers defense, they might eventually overtake the Nuggets for the last spot.

Of course, I am jumping way ahead since currently the Nuggets are the third best team in the West! But come on, is there anyone besides a couple of Nuggets bloggers who think that the Nuggets can possibly keep their "we built this team from scrap iron, good fastening wire, and some glue and we are winning in some previously undiscovered way" act up when we get into the coming months, each of which is more intense than the month before on the hardwood?

The Nuggets are definitely for real right now. They have so far made the best of a very bad situation they put themselves in. But on the other hand, we are not even very far into December yet. So as someone who has predicted the Nuggets to be a .500 team at best, I am not yet really worried that my prediction will be completely wrong. But I do admit that it seems as of now that the Nuggets will probably get at least the 8th seed in a downscaled West. Unless Greg Oden and LaMarcus Aldridge and Nate McMillan can get together and figure out post defense and start to zone up when.....
____________________________________________
Editorial Notes: A "Fast Break" is a short and quick preview of some of the topics that will be explored and proved in more detail in upcoming regular reports. Fast Breaks will often reappear in full reports with only minor reediting, but there will be more important details, more evidence, and more implications and explanations in the full reports. Moreover, there will be topics that never appear in any Fast Break in a full Report.

Fast Breaks are especially useful for the first few days after major news breaks. They are also very useful for people who will seldom or never have enough time to read a full Game/Team/League Report. Fast Breaks are the type of article that more typical web logs feature almost all or all of the time.

Help is on the Way: Antonio McDyess is Returning to Detroit

Denver has been thinking for god only knows how many years that if they could just make enough nifty trades so they could just get enough older, quality veterans, they would be able to win. Come on, give me a break. Does that sound like it's enough to build a winning franchise? What about drafting? What about having a scheme or two or three? And what about working the star players into winning schemes that make sense? What about making sure those veterans don't end up like lone wolves the way Iverson was left to be? What about making sure they are fully integrated into the team?

Antonio McDyess was supposed to be included along with Chauncey Billups and Chiekh Samb in the trade for Allen Iverson. But McDyess refused to become a Nugget. You see, McDyess knows that Denver does not know what it's doing and that Denver wants to blame any lack of winning on player styles and personalities and he wants no part of that. I wouldn't either.

I just want to add here for any Pistons fan especially that Pistons' General Manager Joe Dumars must have known that McDyess would never play for Denver, and would probably end up back in Detroit. Whether or not Denver knew that McDyess would never play, it is obvious that the Nuggets are gradually self destructing and ultimately heading in the direction of the bottom of the West. Don't be fooled by the surprising start.

The owner, Stanley Kroenke, and his wife are ultra rich, but they are big in real estate, retail, and the investing business, and these days they can be losing millions of dollars a day. They are clearly in a financial panic that is probably even more of a panic than other owners are going through. They don't give a damn what happens to the Nuggets these days compared with what happens to their vast investment holdings.

On the streets they would say that the Nuggets "got played" by the Pistons. Long term, they did indeed, and they may be aware of that and not care. From my vantage point, the Nuggets are going to eventually end up paying a huge penalty for not knowing how to work Iverson into their team. While the Pistons, by working Iverson in correctly, have a golden opportunity to demonstrate a big difference between a top tier franchise and an also ran franchise: the top tier franchises do what it takes to make sure every superstar has a good scheme for success and the other franchises don't.
___________________________________________
Editorial Notes: A "Fast Break" is a short and quick preview of some of the topics that will be explored and proved in more detail in upcoming regular reports. Fast Breaks will often reappear in full reports with only minor reediting, but there will be more important details, more evidence, and more implications and explanations in the full reports. Moreover, there will be topics that never appear in any Fast Break in a full Report.

Fast Breaks are especially useful for the first few days after major news breaks. They are also very useful for people who will seldom or never have enough time to read a full Game/Team/League Report. Fast Breaks are the type of article that more typical web logs feature almost all or all of the time.

Fast Break: A Reminder of How Coach Karl is Backwards With Respect to Timing J.R. Smith

It is so simple yet Karl can not come to strategies like the following. What you do is start J.R. Smith every game and find out how he's doing in each particular game. If he's terrible, don't play him at all in the 2nd half. If he's alright or great, you do give him more minutes in the 2nd half. But no matter how outstanding Smith is playing, do not have him in very close games in the last 2-3 minutes: he's not mature enough yet for last minute game in the balance decisions.

Karl pretty much has it backwards: he does not want to ever start JR Smith, but then for some strange reason he wants to have him in a very close game in the last couple minutes. This doesn't make any sense to me.
___________________________________________
Editorial Notes: A "Fast Break" is a short and quick preview of some of the topics that will be explored and proved in more detail in upcoming regular reports. Fast Breaks will often reappear in full reports with only minor reediting, but there will be more important details, more evidence, and more implications and explanations in the full reports. Moreover, there will be topics that never appear in any Fast Break in a full Report.

Fast Breaks are especially useful for the first few days after major news breaks. They are also very useful for people who will seldom or never have enough time to read a full Game/Team/League Report. Fast Breaks are the type of article that more typical web logs feature almost all or all of the time.

Summary Evaluation of the Nuggets 2008 Off Season

Editorial Note: I'm very, very close to completing the importation of material that was posted elsewhere but was not posted until now on my own site! From now on everything gets posted here first, with no exceptions. The following was written in late August, 2008.

There are many mistakes the Nuggets have made on and off the basketball court, so many that it would be easy to get lost in the trees and not be aware any longer of the forest. How about mentioning just two whoppers? The Nuggets with just two big mistakes alone, namely, not owning up to their George Karl mistake, and giving away Camby for nothing while cutting and running from the luxury tax in panic mode, have proven that they are not a front line NBA organization. They are an organization that has hoisted the white flag with respect to any chance at all of winning the Championship for the foreseeable future. To a big extent, the Nuggets still have a "we are an inferior organization coming from the ABA, so we can't really compete with franchises such as the Celtics and the Lakers" mentality.

If Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke was subject to suddenly cutting and running from paying the luxury tax, then the Nuggets had no business paying a big luxury tax in the first place. That means that the Nuggets went about building their now dismantled 2007-08 squad in the wrong way. Instead of searching out opportunistic trades for and free agent acquisitions of expensive veterans, the Nuggets should have been much more into developing younger players via the draft. This could not have done with Karl as the coach, however, because he is hopelessly biased in favor of the “tried and true” expensive veterans.

But since the Nuggets did spend the big bucks, but then did not have the stomach to follow that strategy through, or even to make a graceful exit from it, and since the Nuggets have most definitely not been developing younger players into a coherent system, they are now one of the few franchises without any credible overall development and improvement strategy at all.

They have been reduced to acquisitions that are opportunistic but marginal, such as the Balkman acquisition. It’s almost as if the Nuggets are the hyenas of the NBA now, living off the scraps that the main organizations have no use for for some odd reason or another.

Kroenke went from one extreme to another: from paying a hefty luxury tax to demanding a sudden and total elimination of his luxury tax liability. Roughly 99 times out of 100, when you go from one extreme to another financially, you are either admitting you made a huge management mistake that you are now correcting, or you are making a huge mistake with the big financial change itself. Specifically, the Nuggets have pled guilty to at least two and probably to all three of the following:

1. They should not have spent the big bucks in the first place because spending big bucks on “tried and true” veterans and “stars and superstars in the making” while mostly ignoring the development of young, inexpensive players, is not a good strategy. It’s better to concentrate more on developing a critical mass of younger and far cheaper players and to, while not ignoring them, more or less allow the big money veteran pieces to fall into place without any gambles or ultra expensive wheeling and dealing.

To be specific, under this charge, the Nuggets were in the wrong for picking up the massive Iverson contract when they already had the huge Anthony, Martin, Nene, and Camby contracts on the books.

2. The Nuggets did not have the coaching staff, and/or they did not have the basketball system, with which to get a good return form their investment.

3. The Nuggets in general and Mr. Kroenke in particular panicked in the 2008 off season, and by cutting and running from the luxury tax, they abandoned managing their investment before it could earn a substantial return. For one thing, the return on spending big money for good and great veterans is supposed to be lasting respect for the franchise among the best players and managers of pro basketball. Such respect results in said players and managers gravitating to your franchise at reasonable salaries. With what the Nuggets have done, they are reaping the opposite of respect. Players such as Ron Artest will not be very interested in playing for the Nuggets at reasonable rates any time soon.

So how anyone can be sanguine in this situation is beyond me. Admitting defeat is the worst thing that can happen in sports. And that’s exactly what the Nuggets franchise did in the 2008 off season. They admitted they screwed up, admitted they were defeated in the quest for the ring, and then proceeded to make even more mistakes. There is a perverse logic to it: if you are admitting you don't know what you are doing and that you are defeated because of that, you are giving yourself a license to make new, fresh mistakes.

This whole sorry Nuggets episode has taught me the folly of watching and writing about just one NBA team. Now I am trying to figure out whether I should write about the entire NBA as a whole, switch to a big market franchise that will never have a financial or managerial panic, or compromise by picking 2-4 teams to cover at a time.

Denver Nuggets 2007-08 Real Player Ratings Updated to RPR 2.0

Keep in mind that the basic Real Player Ratings (RPR) do not include an adjustment for estimated missed shots forced. Therefore, it somewhat underestimates the the value of players who force the most misses, and overestimates the value of players who force the fewest misses.

DENVER NUGGETS 2007-08 REGULAR SEASON REAL PLAYER RATINGS 2.0B
Carmelo Anthony 0.782
Marcus Camby 0.777
Allen Iverson 0.755
J.R. Smith 0.669
Kenyon Martin 0.588
Anthony Carter 0.570
Linas Kleiza 0.547
Nene 0.485
Eduardo Najera 0.480
Chucky Atkins 0.439
Bobby Jones 0.370
Yakhouba Diawara 0.342

Here you see that Anthony, Camby, and Iverson were all but tied, while JR Smith trailed them by about 13-14%. When these are adjusted for missed shots forced (later to appear here) Martin moves a little ahead of Smith.

With RPR 2.0, because of his careful shooting and ball handling, Anthony Carter moved very slightly ahead of Linas Kleiza. If you are willing to settle for a point guard who is careful with respect to both shooting and handling the rock, but who has never in history scored in volume, you could do a lot worse than Carter actually. Trouble is, Carter is alright for the regular season but will become a fairly large liability in the playoffs. But since no one else was ready to cover the PG position for the Lakers series, Carter should have been the PG for the duration of the series. Had Karl not made the boneheaded decision to abandon Carter, the Nuggets could have won a game, at least, as they did in the previous several years. That would have been better than the no wins at all that Karl left them with.

Notice that Jones and Diawara are less than half as productive as Anthony/Camby/Iverson. That mark (half the rating of the top 1-3 players on the team) is going to generally be the doomsday mark for players: if they are below it, they are usually going to be waived.

Here are the ratings under the legacy RPR:

DENVER NUGGETS 2007-08 REGULAR SEASON REAL PLAYER RATINGS 1.0B
For comparison; once again, there are no adjustments for made them miss defending here.

Carmelo Anthony, Den SF 1.091
Allen Iverson, Den SG 0.979
J.R. Smith, Den SG 0.938
Marcus Camby, Den C 0.914
Kenyon Martin, Den PF 0.777
Linas Kleiza, Den SF 0.762
Nene Hilario, Den PF 0.723
Anthony Carter, Den PG 0.704
Eduardo Najera, Den PF 0.636
Bobby Jones, Den SG 0.607
Chucky Atkins, Den PG 0.575
Yakhouba Diawara, Den SG 0.495

CHANGE IN RPR FROM RPR 1.0 TO RPR 2.0 AS SHOWN BY RPR 2.0B / RPR 1.0B

Carmelo Anthony, Den SF 0.717
Allen Iverson, Den SG 0.771
J.R. Smith, Den SG 0.713
Marcus Camby, Den C 0.850
Kenyon Martin, Den PF 0.757
Linas Kleiza, Den SF 0.719
Nene Hilario, Den PF 0.632
Anthony Carter, Den PG 0.809
Eduardo Najera, Den PF 0.755
Bobby Jones, Den SG 0.610
Chucky Atkins, Den PG 0.763
Yakhouba Diawara, Den SG 0.691

From this last list, you can see that Marcus Camby and Anthony Carter had the smallest reductions in their rating numbers, whereas Bobby Jones and Nene had the biggest drops. Camby's missed jump shots, which have been bitterly criticized, turn out to be no big deal, not only because there were not as many of them as critics have imagined, but also because Camby commits very few fouls and relatively few turnovers, which gave him a boost in the new rating system.

Camby and Carter represent a group that you might call the more careful type of bball player. Coaches generally like this type of player, while some fans who think style is important usually dislike the style of such players to one extent or another. Fans who focus on style prefer more aggressive or devil may care types of players, although ironically, they will be the first to pounce on anyone who goes over the "line" and is seen to be reckless and impulsive rather than aggressive and hustling.

The difference between coaches and fans in how they look at the "careful" players is an interesting discrepancy. So what really is the best way to look at such players? A complete answer is beyond the scope here, but the most important trick is to on the one hand to never get hung up on style per se, but on the other hand, to never forget that even RPR 2.0 does not tell you for sure whether a player such as Marcus Camby fits into what you are doing or not doing offensively and defensively. Camby actually did fit the Nuggets fast break system very well, which is another reason why the Nuggets may be a losing team in 2008-09.

With the RPR 2.0, a much larger gap has appeared between Camby and Nene, though it must be remembered that health problems reduced the potential of Nene to one extent or another. Regardless of the health issues, the fact that Nene has played remarkably little over the last several seasons relative to his pay grade, and his amazingly low RPR 2.0 rating, makes it nothing less than a riverboat gamble for the Nuggets to try to rely on him as their starting center. They will have to get very lucky to have Nene at center work out well.

Steven Hunter would also be a riverboat gamble. In limited minutes, his RPR 2.0B is only .334!

The JR Smith reduction was about the same as the Kleiza and the C Anthony reductions, another sign that he is not the reckless and dangerous player that is in the mind of George Karl.

Denver Nuggets Theme Song: Bob Dylan: Like a Rolling Stone

During the Lakers series, Mr. Karl was "miked up," and so he could be heard begging his team to pass the ball more. The Nuggets offense was being choked by the Lakers in the LA games, largely because Karl had blundered the management of the team so badly, that for all practical purposes, there was no point guard.

Then after the series, at his post 4-game sweep news conference, Mr. Karl effectively admitted that he did not know how to win in the playoffs, using the phrase "we have not learned how to conquer that yet," with "that" referring to winning in the playoffs.

At least Mr. Karl is honest in most of his statements to the public.

During the off season, Mr. Karl lost two of his favorites, the hustling defensive specialist, the veteran Eduardo Najera, and the steady and dependable high quality star center, the veteran Marcus Camby, which made his already insecure psyche even more perturbed than usual.

But the Nuggets surprisingly good start has been just what Mr. Karl needed to come out of his shell a little and have at least a little bit of confidence. Why, he has even been observed standing up along the sidelines and working the refs a little in recent games, something that was rare during 2006-07 and 2007-08.

Ultimately though, what is to become of Mr. Karl in 2008-09, as his coaching contract is now in it's final stage, and now that the team has been partly dismantled? The most likely outcome at the moment is, you guessed it, yet another first round exit from the playoffs.

Do not be fooled by the surprisingly fast start this year. With respect to actually contending for the Western Conference crown, the Nuggets following their very large budget cuts have effectively raised the white flag for at least the next 2 seasons. So when Mr. Karl returns next year, in 2009-10, for his final contract year, the Nuggets once again will not be in a position to contend for top dawg of the West. So Karl will have to get a new contract for there to be a theoretical possibility that he will appear in the Western Conference final best of 7 series as Head Coach of the Denver Nuggets.

So during the summer of 2008 I nnounced that the 2008-09 theme song for the Nuggets would be "Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan, which is one of the all time rock music classic songs. This song was selected during the summer, before the Nuggets amazing start. But since the Nuggets are almost certainly not going to be able to win a playoff series regardless of how well they do in the regular season, the song is still considered appropriate, though the fit is not as good as it was before this amazing, winning start. I'm too stubborn in general and too skeptical about how long the Nuggets can keep this winning up to look for another theme song right now.

Although the song is the theme song for the Nuggets, it is at least as much a second theme song for George Karl.

Like the lady referred to in the song, Karl has fallen far from his "high society" days with the Supersonics. Like the lady in the song, Karl has been and still is largely blind to his downfall, and so he is unable to adjust what he does to reflect what he has really turned out to be, and to reflect what place he has come to. So now he is just a no name "rolling stone" with "no direction home".

How does it feel to be like a rolling stone, Mr. Karl?

LYRICS
Once upon a time
You dressed so fine,
You threw the bums a dime,
In your prime,
Didn’t you?

People’d call,
Say, “Beware doll,
You’re bound to fall.”
You thought they were all
Kiddin’ you.

You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin’ out.
Now you don’t
talk so loud.
Now you don’t
seem so proud
About having to be scrounging
for your next meal.

How does it feel?
How does it feel,
To be without a home,
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You’ve gone to the finest school
All right, Miss Lonely,
But you know you only
Used to get
Juiced in it.

And nobody has ever taught you
How to live on the street
And now you find out
You’re gonna have to get
Used to it.

You said you’d never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He’s not selling any alibis,
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to
Make a deal?

How does it feel?
How does it feel
To be on your own,
With no direction home,
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You never turned around
To see the frowns
On the jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down
And did tricks for you.

You never understood
That it ain’t no good,
You shouldn’t let
Other people get
Your kicks for you.

You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat,
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat.
Ain’t it hard when you discover that
He really wasn’t where it’s at,
After he took from you everything
He could steal?

How does it feel?
How does it feel,
To be on your own,
With no direction home,
Like a complete unknown,
Like a rolling stone?

Princess on the steeple
And all the pretty people,
They’re drinkin’, thinkin’
That they
Got it made.

Exchanging all
Precious gifts,
But you’d better
Take your diamond ring, you’d better
Pawn it, babe.

You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used.
Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse.
When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets
To conceal.

How does it feel?
How does it feel,
To be on your own,
With no direction home,
Like a complete unknown,
Like a rolling stone?

Post your response to anything on Quest HERE

GIVE US THE JUICE TO PRODUCE REPORTS MORE QUICKLY

Although there is a guaranteed minimum rate of Report production regardless of traffic, IT IS IN YOUR POWER to help double or triple the number of and frequency of Reports. Simply take two or three minutes as often as you can to recommend Quest and post links to Quest on your favorite sports and other sites. The resulting automatic increase of traffic will in turn increase the resources that go in to producing Quest, which in turn speeds up reporting. If you want, e-mail how you helped (include the url of where you posted a link to Quest) and we will throw some Internet love back to where you tell us on the Internet. Thank you.

Here are some quick links that you can use to find a place where you might post a link to Quest and/or to Quest content.

Share/Bookmark


HOLD MOUSE HERE TO EXPAND THIS MENU OF PLACES ON WHICH YOU CAN POST A LINK TO QUEST:


BASKETBALL SITES THAT ARE OPEN FOR CONTENT FROM ANYONE
Note: Beware of "layered" sites. None of the following are layered sites, which are sites that allow contributions from the public only in hard to find, low traffic areas, while the main areas are off limits for public input and are only for a chosen few. All of the following have at least some notable traffic, and all of them allow relatively equal and open participation. The order is from most recommended to least recommended, based on about half a dozen factors.

Bleacher Report Open Posting Site
Inside Hoops NBA Forum
Real GM NBA and Team Forums
Pro Sports Daily NBA Forum
Basketball Forum NBA Forum
Sporting News NBA Forum
Hoops Hype NBA Forum
Armchair GM Open Posting Site
SportsTwo NBA Forum
NBA Dimensions NBA Forum
OTR Basketball Forums NBA Forum
NBA Boards NBA Forum
NBA Wire NBA Forum
KFFL NBA Forum

Note: there are other forums, but they are all very low traffic and activity compared to the ones above.

MESSAGE BOARDS AT HUGE COROPORATIONS
The Fox NBA board is very low traffic, and the MSNBC NBA board doesn't exist anymore. The CBS Sports NBA Message Board is a layered site; you can NOT post topics nor expect to be considered seriously there until you have spent a few years posting there. We do not recommend CBS Sports. So the only real, fully open NBA forum hosted by a big corporation is the ESPN message board. Be forewarned though that the ESPN board is dominated by very young fans who make very short comments. On the other hand, it is a high traffic site, so we won't stop you from posting a Quest link at ESPN if you want to.

ESPN NBA Message Board

LAKERS SIGN IN HOLLYWOOD

LAKERS SIGN IN HOLLYWOOD
The Nuggets are scary, but Lakers fans can breathe a sigh of relief when they think of who coaches them!

>>>I WANT TO STICK WITH THE WAY OTHER SITES PRESENT POSTS
Due to the number of, uniqueness of, and importance of the many other home page features we have, only one Report loads at a time, currently the one just above. To see the next Report (which would be the one that came out just before the one above) on this home page, click "Older Posts" that is at the very bottom of the Report showing above, just above the section header "Your Ball: Take Your Best Shot".

>>ALTERNATIVE HOME PAGES
There are three home pages, all of which have all of the Reports but which have completely different features appearing on the sidebar and below the one Report that is shown at a time. These pages have been designed so that they fully load in about 10 seconds (no more super long load times we used to be known for.)

HOME PAGE A: ALL REPORTS, READERS CONTAINING REPORTS 1-100, AND UNIQUE FEATURES
HOME PAGE B: ALL REPORTS, READERS CONTAINING REPORTS 1-100, AND UNIQUE FEATURES
HOME PAGE C: ALL REPORTS, READERS CONTAINING REPORTS 1-100, AND UNIQUE FEATURES

>>REPORT READERS: Complete freedom to rapidly choose and read what you need or want to read. The latest 40 Reports are found near the top of all three of the primary home pages (linked to just above) while Reports #41-#100 are found in three separate readers placed at various points down the page on all three primary home pages.

>>EXPRESS VERSION: Every Single Report but no Features: a Fast Loading Page: Click Here

>>FAST BREAK VERSION: The Latest 100 Reports via Report Readers Only; no Features, a Fast Loading Page: Click Here

>>QUEST ARCHIVE HOME PAGES--REPORT ARCHIVES AND A SMALL NUMBER OF CLASSIC FEATURES THAT WON'T FIT ON OTHER HOME PAGES
QUEST 4: REPORTS 101-200
QUEST 5: REPORTS 201-300
QUEST 6: REPORTS 301-400
QUEST 7: REPORTS 401-500
QUEST 8: REPORTS 501-600
QUEST 9: REPORTS 601-700
QUEST 10: REPORTS 701-800

>>FEATURES ONLY HOME PAGES: NO REPORTS, JUST FEATURES THAT WE CAN'T FIT ANYWHERE ELSE
QUEST OVERTIME
QUEST CLASSIC

>>COMPLETE TITLE INDEX: : A Complete Report Title Index, with Express Version Links to all Reports

>>LATEST 25 Reports: Direct links to the latest 25 Reports (with no truncated titles as you find with the poorly designed Google archive). This is located near the very bottom of this page.

>>GOOGLE ARCHIVE you will find this, with Reports shown by week not very far below.

>>I'M NEW AND I DON'T KNOW WHERE I WANT TO GO: Welcome to the Real Zone. Simply browse the page and see for yourself what is here. You will not be disappointed.

>>OR YOU CAN DO A CUSTOM GOOGLE SEARCH OF THE 13 BOOKS AND COUNTING CONTAINED ON THIS SITE>>>>>

SEARCH THE QUEST FOR THE RING--THE EQUIVALENT OF MORE THAN 15 BOOKS ABOUT BASKETBALL

Custom Search
SEARCH THE 15 BOOKS / 1.5 MILLION WORDS

TWO WAYS TO LOOK AT HOW LONG QUEST FOR THE RING HAS BEEN KEEPING IT REAL

The above shows you in two different ways the exact amount of time since The Quest for the Ring began to completely explain how the Quest is won, while having as much fun as possible at the expense of basketball pretenders and player haters. The first panel shows how long it has been in each of seven units. The second panel shows how long it has been in the more usual "remainder" way.

QUEST FOR THE RING SOMETIMES GOES INTO HIATUS
Regardless of any temporary unavoidable absences, the Quest is in this project to explain in detail for the very long term--indefinitely, for many, many, many years ahead. At this writing we have the equivalent of 15 basketball books under our belt and we plan on doing dozens more. Count on us being right where basketball is at, which is here, actually.

Blog Archive


QUEST REPORTS #41 TO #60, GOING BACK IN TIME


QUEST IS FREE BUT ABOUT 3 MINUTES OF YOUR TIME CAN GET YOU MORE OF IT

Although there is a guaranteed minimum rate of Report production regardless of traffic, it is in your power to help increase the number of and frequency of Quest Reports. All Quest sites are developed and produced according to both superseding criteria and site traffic. Like all sites started in recent years, Quest receives very little help from Google and other search engines. The search engines mostly serve to keep the older, popular sites popular; they preserve the same old, same old status quo.

The amount of reporting and the frequency of Quest Reports could easily be double what it is were site traffic higher. If Quest obtained the traffic we know it deserves, than production would go from the equivalent of roughly three books about basketball a year to at least five and to as many as six books a year!

WE NEED A GRAND TOTAL OF ABOUT 3 MINUTES OF YOUR TIME
Please take three or four minutes every now and then to recommend Quest and post links to Quest on your favorite sports and other sites. In other words, wherever possible use us to back up what you are posting and writing. The resulting automatic increase of traffic will in turn increase the resources that go in to producing Quest home page Reports. After helping us, feel free to e-mail how you helped and we will throw some Internet love back to your Internet hangout. The email address is thequestforthering1. This is a gmail address, so you use @gmail.com after that address.

QUEST FOR THE RING USER GUIDE

QUEST FOR THE RING USER GUIDE: YOU CAN QUICKLY LOCATE AND GET THE SITE INFORMATION YOU NEED OR WANT RIGHT HERE

LATEST 25 REPORTS THREE AT A TIME -- TO LOAD THE NEXT THREE, CLICK ">" AT THE TOP ON THE RIGHT



QUEST REPORTS #61 TO #80, GOING BACK IN TIME


WORD IS BOND

WELCOME TO THE QUEST--THINGS ARE VERY DIFFERENT HERE

WELCOME TO THE QUEST FOR THE RING, ALSO KNOWN AS THE REAL ZONE
This is one of the most serious basketball sites on the internet, focusing on how and why playoff games and NBA Championships are won. We also love to take comedy and music breaks, but not every day.

WELCOME TO THE QUEST FOR THE RING. YOU HAVE LEFT THE HYPE ZONE AND HAVE ARRIVED IN THE REAL ZONE. Please check any rose colored glasses at the door. The Hype Zone is where you can find out about the personalities and the styles and how popular they are and what they are up to lately. The Real Zone is where we DO NOT think personalities and styles and how popular or unpopular they are things to waste time on just for ratings or traffic.

Instead of hype, here we post as much truth about how NBA playoff games and Championships are won as we can 365 days a year and at at any hour of the day or night. Please have a productive visit, and a nice trip back to the Hype Zone when your visit is over.


A SMALL SAMPLE OF CURRENT AND SOON TO COME QUEST FOR THE RING REAL ZONE TOPICS
--How and Why the 2010 Los Angeles Lakers, the 2010 Cleveland Cavaliers, and the 2010 Boston Celtics Win or Lose in the 2010 Playoffs
--The right "amount of" LeBron James
--How players we know deserve to win a first or second Ring can get one, highly talented players such as Chris Paul, Chris Bosh, Rajon Rondo, and Dwyane Wade.
--How and why the Denver Nuggets Franchise has repeatedly fooled the public, and possibly themselves for that matter. (No, we still have not completely finished with the Nuggets, thanks to how successful they were in 2008-09, albeit there was no chance of a Championship; Continuing, much done already)
--How and why much of what you may think you know about Allen Iverson is dead wrong (Continuing, much done already)
--How and why the playoffs are something completely different from the regular season, and why your team may be simply not prepared for them despite a lot of regular season wins

A SMALL SAMPLE OF ALREADY COMPLETED QUEST FOR THE RING REAL ZONE TOPICS
--How and why Carmelo Anthony has been downsized due to a quest for "well-roundedness," and why this is really bad
--How and why the owner of the Nuggets shortchanged and cheated his team out of a possible Championship
--How and why being physical alone can not win you a Championship
--How and why the Nuggets' high fouling defense will take them only so far
--How and why George Karl is doing more harm than good with respect to J.R. Smith
--How and why George Karl's obsession with personalities is wrong and bad for any team
--How and why George Karl and the Nuggets can not win in the playoffs (2007, 2008) or a West final (2009). If Quest commits a foul, we own up to it, as we do right here: we thought the Nuggets could not win in the playoffs in 2009. They did win 10 games before being eliminated by the Lakers in the West final, so in response we corrected our evaluation of what you can do with the Nuggets' unique 2009 approach to basketball without, however, going overboard.
--How and why George Karl cheats the fans and the franchise out of performance and development of "reserve" players
--How and why playmaking is so important, probably more than you think, and how you manage playmakers correctly.
--How and why you have probably been fooled regarding the Nuggets' 2008 off-season and their 2008-09 defense

UNIQUE SITE DESIGN
The Quest is organized in a completely different way from what you are used to on the internet. We have combined the best features of the blog and the conventional web site formats, the latter being the norm for large organizations. However, since we do not like the idea of using flash to "wow" visitors, we do not use flash except within video and other discrete components. So we are state of the art in terms of expanding the power of visitors to get exactly what they want very quickly, but we do not have the latest flash gadgetry just to "keep up with the Joneses". More broadly, you will find that Quest for the Ring never seeks to keep up with the Joneses, simply because the Joneses never had the nerve and the intelligence to do what we do.

2009: A PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATION COMES TO QUEST
Just before the 2009-10 season tipped, the very large number of features and links to important resources were strategically reorganized and placed within an easy to use and clearly labelled section system. So ended the era of the rapidly developed, sprawling and slightly disorganized Quest, and so began the era of the big but under careful control and extremely well organized and professional Quest for the Ring.

The Quest Home Page consists of numerous types of content, organized carefully into the new sections as of November 2009. Features can be any educational and / or entertaining thing you can think of, including everything from music players to videos to photos to breaking NBA news readers to top teams performance breakdown pages.

Quest for the Ring has a world class link system for those who know what they are looking for and wish to find and engage the appropriate link, But the Quest visitor does not HAVE to hunt for links to have an intelligent and entertaining experience. The Quest home page is big enough and chock loaded enough that link hunting is not absolutely necessary the way it normally is at many other basketball sites.

THERE MUST BE TEN WAYS TO READ REPORTS [PAUL SIMON LOL]
There are close to ten ways to find out about, select, and read Quest Reports! The standard, traditional blog presentation is available as one of the many ways to choose, access, and read reports. On the Home Page, only one report loads in the traditional format in order to keep this page as quick loading as possible.
See the "Total Freedom of Navigation" section for complete details about how to find, choose, and read reports.

One key place to find Older Reports is on sequentially numbered url's thequestforthering2.blogspot.com, thequestforthering3.blogspot.com, and so forth.

THE QUEST USER GUIDE VERSUS an about page
Other sites most often have undeveloped and limited in scope "about pages" which is usually all they have for what we call a "User Guide". Our User Guide material is a vast improvement, quantitatively and qualitatively, over a mere "about page" While many other sites don't help their visitors to make the best use of the content, we do. Also, the User Guide is chock loaded with invitations to visitors to participate in all kinds of ways, including for example advertising for free, link exchange, and getting a team site supported by Quest.

SEARCH THE QUEST FOR THE RING, THE EQUIVALENT OF MORE THAN 15 BOOKS ABOUT BASKETBALL

Custom Search
SEARCH THE 15 BOOKS / 1.5 MILLION WORDS

QUEST REPORTS #81 TO #100 GOING BACK IN TIME

RECOMMENDED SCHOOL--CLICK FOR DETAILS


VIDEOS

QUEST FOR THE RING VIDEOS--The primary Quest video page with video juke boxes for all 30 teams

QUEST FOR THE RING VIDEOS #2--Specially chosen video juke boxes and individual videos

QUEST FOR THE RING PRIMARY HOME PAGE B--A few key video players are here

LATEST NBA.COM NBA VIDEOS
LATEST YAHOO SPORTS NBA / BASKETBALL VIDEOS
LATEST CBS SPORTSLINE NBA VIDEOS

MOST RECENT LEAGUE WIDE REAL PLAYER RATINGS

Note: This is generally a once a year, end of season Report. For many teams and players, more recent ratings are often available.

NBA REAL PLAYER RATINGS
2009-10 REGULAR SEASON

POSITION AND TEAM CODES
In the Real Player and related ratings shown for the League, two codes follow each players' name (and before his rating). The first code tells you the players' team and the second one tells you his position.

TEAM CODES
ATLA Atlanta Hawks
BOST Boston Celtics
CHAR Charlotte Bobcats
CHIC Chicago Bulls
CLEV Cleveland Cavaliers
DALL Dallas Mavericks
DENV Denver Nuggets
DETR Detroit Pistons
GOLS Golden State Warriors
HOUS Houston Rockets
INDI Indiana Pacers
LACL Los Angeles Clippers
LALK Los Angeles Lakers
MEMP Memphis Grizzlies
MIAM Miami Heat
MILW Milwaukee Bucks
MINN Minnesota Timberwolves
NJRS New Jersey Nets
NORL New Orleans Hornets
NWYR New York Knicks
OKLA Oklahoma Thunder
ORLA Orlando Magic
PHIL Philadelphia 76'ers
PHNX Phoenix Suns
PORT Portland Trailblazers
SACR Sacramento Kings
SANA San Antonio Spurs
TORO Toronto Raptors
UTAH Utah Jazz
WASH Washington Wizards

POSITION CODES
PG Point Guard
SG Shooting Guard
SF Small Forward
PF Power Forward
C Center

SCALE FOR REGULAR SEASON REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Perfect for all Practical Purposes / Major Historic Super Star 1.100 and more
Historic Super Star 1.000 1.099
Super Star 0.900 0.999
A Star Player / A well above normal starter 0.820 0.899
Very Good Player / A solid starter 0.760 0.819
Major Role Player / Good enough to start 0.700 0.759
Good Role Player / Often a good 6th man 0.640 0.699
Satisfactory Role Player / Preferably should not start 0.580 0.639
Marginal Role Player / Generally should not start 0.520 0.579
Poor Player / Should never start 0.460 0.519
Very Poor Player 0.400 0.459
Extremely Poor Player .399 and less

NBA REAL PLAYER RATINGS
2009-10 REGULAR SEASON

--Shows the real quality of players
--Includes all tracked actions and also includes untracked or hidden defending
--The average Real Player Rating for all players who play 300 minutes or more is about .700.
--All players who have played at least 300 minutes are included here and in all other ratings to follow in coming days

MAJOR HISTORIC SUPERSTARS
1 LeBron James CLEV SF 1.382
2 Tim Duncan SANA PF 1.254
3 Chris Paul NORL PG 1.202
4 Dwight Howard ORLA C 1.121
5 Andrew Bogut MILW C 1.112

HISTORIC SUPERSTARS
6 Steve Nash PHNX PG 1.095
7 Jason Kidd DALL PG 1.092
8 Rajon Rondo BOST PG 1.084
9 Deron Williams UTAH PG 1.076
10 Dwyane Wade MIAM SG 1.075
11 Marcus Camby LACL C 1.071
12 Pau Gasol LALK PF 1.065
13 Greg Oden PORT C 1.060
14 Kevin Durant OKLA SF 1.051
15 Dirk Nowitzki DALL PF 1.034
16 Josh Smith ATLA SF 1.033
17 Kevin Garnett BOST PF 1.033
18 Manu Ginobili SANA SG 1.023
19 Kobe Bryant LALK SG 1.005

SUPERSTARS
20 Carlos Boozer UTAH PF 0.994
21 Lamar Odom LALK PF 0.982
22 Andrei Kirilenko UTAH SF 0.976
23 Chris Bosh TORO PF 0.972
24 David Lee NWYR C 0.971
25 Al Horford ATLA C 0.970
26 Marcus Camby PORT C 0.967
27 Jameer Nelson ORLA PG 0.959
28 Joakim Noah CHIC C 0.955
29 John Salmons MILW SF 0.937
30 Andrew Bynum LALK C 0.936
31 Troy Murphy INDI PF 0.934
32 Kevin Love MINN PF 0.934
33 Anderson Varejao CLEV C 0.933
34 Brendan Haywood DALL C 0.929
35 Vince Carter ORLA SG 0.928
36 Gerald Wallace CHAR SF 0.918
37 Sergio Rodriguez SACR PG 0.908
38 Tyrus Thomas CHIC PF 0.904
39 Derrick Rose CHIC PG 0.903

STARS
40 Baron Davis LACL PG 0.899
41 Russell Westbrook OKLA PG 0.897
42 Zach Randolph MEMP PF 0.885
43 Danny Granger INDI SF 0.885
44 Marc Gasol MEMP C 0.885
45 Joe Johnson ATLA SG 0.883
46 Chauncey Billups DENV PG 0.883
47 Roy Hibbert INDI C 0.880
48 Ben Wallace DETR C 0.877
49 Andre Miller PORT PG 0.874
50 Carmelo Anthony DENV SF 0.874
51 Brandon Jennings MILW PG 0.870
52 Tyrus Thomas CHAR PF 0.870
53 A.J. Price INDI PG 0.868
54 Paul Millsap UTAH PF 0.866
55 Craig Smith LACL PF 0.865
56 Samuel Dalembert PHIL C 0.864
57 Andre Iguodala PHIL SG 0.858
58 Raymond Felton CHAR PG 0.857
59 Delonte West CLEV SG 0.856
60 Al Jefferson MINN C 0.856
61 Eric Maynor OKLA PG 0.856
62 Serge Ibaka OKLA PF 0.855
63 Nene Hilario DENV C 0.852
64 Chris Andersen DENV PF 0.849
65 Shaquille O'Neal CLEV C 0.842
66 Brandon Roy PORT SG 0.842
67 Ryan Anderson ORLA PF 0.840
68 Antonio McDyess SANA PF 0.839
69 Tony Parker SANA PG 0.837
70 Paul Pierce BOST SF 0.836
71 Mo Williams CLEV PG 0.835
72 Kyle Lowry HOUS PG 0.835
73 Ersan Ilyasova MILW SF 0.828
74 Amare Stoudemire PHNX PF 0.828
75 Luke Ridnour MILW PG 0.827
76 Erick Dampier DALL C 0.826
77 Tyreke Evans SACR PG 0.825
78 Andris Biedrins GOLS C 0.825
79 Kyle Korver UTAH SG 0.824
80 Anthony Randolph GOLS PF 0.820

VERY GOOD PLAYERS / SOLID STARTERS
81 Eric Maynor UTAH PG 0.819
82 Carlos Arroyo MIAM PG 0.819
83 Antawn Jamison CLEV PF 0.819
84 Nazr Mohammed CHAR C 0.818
85 Luol Deng CHIC SF 0.817
86 Dorell Wright MIAM SG 0.817
87 LaMarcus Aldridge PORT PF 0.817
88 Carl Landry HOUS PF 0.816
89 Luis Scola HOUS PF 0.816
90 Nick Collison OKLA PF 0.812
91 Carlos Delfino MILW SG 0.809
92 Kendrick Perkins BOST C 0.807
93 Jermaine O'Neal MIAM C 0.805
94 Nate Robinson NWYR PG 0.804
95 Goran Dragic PHNX PG 0.803
96 Mike Bibby ATLA PG 0.803
97 Stephen Curry GOLS PG 0.803
98 Mehmet Okur UTAH C 0.800
99 Jose Calderon TORO PG 0.797
100 Jason Terry DALL SG 0.791
101 Ronnie Price UTAH PG 0.784
102 DeJuan Blair SANA PF 0.784
103 Chris Kaman LACL C 0.783
104 Shaun Livingston WASH PG 0.783
105 Joel Przybilla PORT C 0.782
106 David West NORL PF 0.781
107 John Salmons CHIC SF 0.776
108 Matt Barnes ORLA SF 0.775
109 Darren Collison NORL PG 0.775
110 Ronny Turiaf GOLS C 0.774
111 Udonis Haslem MIAM PF 0.774
112 Shawn Marion DALL SF 0.772
113 Jason Williams ORLA PG 0.771
114 Keyon Dooling NJRS PG 0.771
115 Andray Blatche WASH C 0.770
116 James Harden OKLA SG 0.770
117 Brook Lopez NJRS C 0.770
118 Ray Allen BOST SG 0.770
119 Amir Johnson TORO SF 0.769
120 Ty Lawson DENV PG 0.768
121 Beno Udrih SACR PG 0.768
122 Chuck Hayes HOUS PF 0.765
123 Matt Bonner SANA PF 0.763
124 Reggie Evans TORO PF 0.763
125 Gilbert Arenas WASH PG 0.760

MAJOR ROLE PLAYERS / GOOD ENOUGH TO START
126 Zydrunas Ilgauskas CLEV C 0.758
127 Rasheed Wallace BOST PF 0.757
128 Lou Williams PHIL SG 0.756
129 Stephen Jackson CHAR SF 0.754
130 Dan Gadzuric MILW C 0.754
131 Jamario Moon CLEV SF 0.754
132 Ron Artest LALK SF 0.752
133 Rodney Stuckey DETR PG 0.749
134 Shelden Williams BOST PF 0.748
135 Oleksiy Pecherov MINN C 0.748
136 Aaron Brooks HOUS PG 0.747
137 Boris Diaw CHAR PF 0.746
138 C.J. Watson GOLS PG 0.746
139 Brendan Haywood WASH C 0.744
140 Emeka Okafor NORL C 0.742
141 Taj Gibson CHIC PF 0.741
142 J.R. Smith DENV SG 0.738
143 Mike Miller WASH SF 0.732
144 Channing Frye PHNX C 0.731
145 Louis Amundson PHNX PF 0.731
146 Elton Brand PHIL PF 0.726
147 D.J. Mbenga LALK C 0.725
148 Tayshaun Prince DETR SF 0.724
149 Francisco Garcia SACR SG 0.724
150 Tyler Hansbrough INDI PF 0.724
151 Trevor Ariza HOUS SG 0.723
152 Allen Iverson PHIL SG 0.722
153 Rashard Lewis ORLA PF 0.721
154 Richard Jefferson SANA SF 0.721
155 Luc Richard Mbah a Moute MILW SF 0.721
156 Jamal Crawford ATLA SG 0.721
157 Brad Miller CHIC C 0.720
158 Josh Boone NJRS C 0.718
159 Jason Richardson PHNX SG 0.718
160 Sebastian Telfair LACL PG 0.717
161 Marvin Williams ATLA PF 0.716
162 David Andersen HOUS C 0.715
163 Caron Butler DALL SF 0.715
164 Michael Beasley MIAM PF 0.714
165 George Hill SANA PG 0.713
166 Ronnie Brewer UTAH SG 0.712
167 D.J. Augustin CHAR PG 0.712
168 Monta Ellis GOLS PG 0.711
169 Sean May SACR PF 0.710
170 Anthony Tolliver GOLS PF 0.709
171 Kenyon Martin DENV PF 0.709
172 Tyson Chandler CHAR C 0.709
173 Rodrigue Beaubois DALL PG 0.707
174 Stephen Jackson GOLS SF 0.704
175 Shane Battier HOUS SF 0.703
176 Stephen Graham CHAR SF 0.702
177 Mike Conley MEMP PG 0.702
178 Earl Watson INDI PG 0.701
179 T.J. Ford INDI PG 0.700

GOOD ROLE PLAYERS / OFTEN GOOD 6TH MAN PLAYERS
180 Ramon Sessions MINN PG 0.699
181 Corey Maggette GOLS SF 0.699
182 Marcin Gortat ORLA PF 0.698
183 Terrence Williams NJRS SG 0.698
184 Jarrett Jack TORO PG 0.698
185 James Singleton WASH SF 0.696
186 JaVale McGee WASH C 0.694
187 Jose Juan Barea DALL PG 0.694
188 Marcus Thornton NORL SG 0.693
189 Daequan Cook MIAM SG 0.691
190 Jordan Farmar LALK PG 0.689
191 Kirk Hinrich CHIC PG 0.689
192 Carl Landry SACR PF 0.689
193 Shannon Brown LALK PG 0.687
194 Anthony Carter DENV PG 0.686
195 Jason Thompson SACR PF 0.686
196 Mike Dunleavy INDI SF 0.686
197 Robin Lopez PHNX C 0.684
198 Spencer Hawes SACR C 0.680
199 Rudy Fernandez PORT SG 0.678
200 Drew Gooden LACL PF 0.678
201 Steve Blake LACL PG 0.677
202 Bobby Simmons NJRS SF 0.676
203 Larry Hughes NWYR SG 0.675
204 Jerry Stackhouse MILW SF 0.675
205 Quentin Richardson MIAM SG 0.675
206 Rudy Gay MEMP SF 0.675
207 Darko Milicic MINN C 0.674
208 Drew Gooden DALL PF 0.674
209 Reggie Williams GOLS SF 0.673
210 Ronald Murray CHAR SG 0.671
211 Grant Hill PHNX SF 0.669
212 Nate Robinson BOST PG 0.668
213 Travis Outlaw LACL SF 0.668
214 Steve Blake PORT PG 0.667
215 Devin Harris NJRS PG 0.665
216 Antawn Jamison WASH PF 0.665
217 Danilo Gallinari NWYR SF 0.664
218 Wilson Chandler NWYR SF 0.664
219 Gerald Henderson CHAR SG 0.664
220 Tony Allen BOST SG 0.663
221 Kyrylo Fesenko UTAH C 0.662
222 Anthony Morrow GOLS SG 0.661
223 Jordan Hill HOUS PF 0.661
224 Jared Dudley PHNX SF 0.660
225 Daniel Gibson CLEV PG 0.660
226 Jeff Green OKLA PF 0.659
227 Josh McRoberts INDI PF 0.659
228 Anthony Johnson ORLA PG 0.658
229 J.J. Redick ORLA SG 0.658
230 Al Harrington NWYR PF 0.655
231 Luther Head INDI PG 0.654
232 Nicolas Batum PORT SF 0.653
233 Theo Ratliff CHAR C 0.650
234 Mario Chalmers MIAM PG 0.648
235 Brandon Bass ORLA PF 0.648
236 Kris Humphries NJRS PF 0.646
237 Chris Duhon NWYR PG 0.643
238 Nenad Krstic OKLA C 0.642
239 Kris Humphries DALL PF 0.642

SATISFACTORY ROLE PLAYERS / USUALLY DO NOT START
240 Rasho Nesterovic TORO C 0.637
241 Hedo Turkoglu TORO SF 0.635
242 Johan Petro DENV C 0.635
243 Randy Foye WASH PG 0.634
244 Jrue Holiday PHIL PG 0.633
245 Mickael Pietrus ORLA SG 0.631
246 Jared Jeffries NWYR PF 0.627
247 Leandro Barbosa PHNX SG 0.626
248 Joel Anthony MIAM C 0.624
249 O.J. Mayo MEMP SG 0.622
250 Chase Budinger HOUS SF 0.621
251 Roger Mason SANA SG 0.619
252 Caron Butler WASH SF 0.617
253 Peja Stojakovic NORL SF 0.615
254 Marreese Speights PHIL PF 0.613
255 Jamaal Tinsley MEMP PG 0.613
256 Bobby Brown NORL PG 0.611
257 Jonas Jerebko DETR SF 0.610
258 Omri Casspi SACR SF 0.609
259 Kurt Thomas MILW PF 0.608
260 Thaddeus Young PHIL SF 0.607
261 Brandon Rush INDI SG 0.606
262 Hasheem Thabeet MEMP C 0.605
263 Damien Wilkins MINN SG 0.601
264 Rodney Carney PHIL SF 0.601
265 Earl Boykins WASH PG 0.599
266 J.J. Hickson CLEV PF 0.599
267 Willie Green PHIL SG 0.598
268 Anthony Parker CLEV SG 0.596
269 Jamaal Magloire MIAM C 0.594
270 Wesley Matthews UTAH SG 0.592
271 Devean George GOLS SG 0.592
272 Richard Hamilton DETR SG 0.592
273 Kevin Martin SACR SG 0.591
274 Andrea Bargnani TORO C 0.591
275 Ryan Gomes MINN SF 0.589
276 Thabo Sefolosha OKLA SF 0.589
277 Rafer Alston NJRS PG 0.589
278 Tracy McGrady NWYR SG 0.588
279 Marco Belinelli TORO SG 0.587
280 Michael Finley BOST SF 0.585
281 Marcus Williams MEMP PG 0.583
282 Martell Webster PORT SG 0.583
283 Charlie Villanueva DETR PF 0.582

MARGINAL ROLE PLAYERS / RARELY START
284 Derek Fisher LALK PG 0.578
285 Jannero Pargo CHIC PG 0.577
286 Toney Douglas NWYR PG 0.577
287 Chris Hunter GOLS PF 0.576
288 Derrick Brown CHAR SF 0.575
289 Yi Jianlian NJRS PF 0.575
290 Nathan Jawai MINN PF 0.575
291 Ime Udoka SACR SG 0.574
292 Sergio Rodriguez NWYR PG 0.574
293 Arron Afflalo DENV SG 0.573
294 Kevin Martin HOUS SG 0.572
295 Hakim Warrick MILW PF 0.571
296 Al Thornton WASH SF 0.569
297 Will Bynum DETR PG 0.568
298 Jonny Flynn MINN PG 0.568
299 James Posey NORL SF 0.564
300 Mikki Moore GOLS C 0.561
301 Darius Songaila NORL PF 0.561
302 Jerryd Bayless PORT PG 0.556
303 Jon Brockman SACR PF 0.554
304 Sasha Vujacic LALK SG 0.554
305 Dante Cunningham PORT SF 0.551
306 Michael Redd MILW SG 0.551
307 Eric Gordon LACL SG 0.550
308 C.J. Miles UTAH SF 0.549
309 Al Thornton LACL SF 0.547
310 Julian Wright NORL SF 0.545
311 Jeff Teague ATLA PG 0.544
312 Marquis Daniels BOST SG 0.543
313 Dahntay Jones INDI SG 0.542
314 Chris Douglas-Roberts NJRS SG 0.541
315 Zaza Pachulia ATLA C 0.538
316 Etan Thomas OKLA C 0.538
317 Sonny Weems TORO SG 0.537
318 Devin Brown NORL SG 0.533
319 Jason Maxiell DETR PF 0.532
320 Bill Walker NWYR SG 0.532
321 Courtney Lee NJRS SG 0.528
322 James Jones MIAM SF 0.525
323 Donte Greene SACR SF 0.524
324 Kenny Thomas SACR PF 0.523
325 Wayne Ellington MINN SG 0.521
326 Juwan Howard PORT PF 0.520

POOR PLAYERS / SHOULD NEVER START
327 Charlie Bell MILW SG 0.518
328 Corey Brewer MINN SF 0.518
329 Hakim Warrick CHIC PF 0.514
330 DeAndre Jordan LACL C 0.512
331 Rasual Butler LACL SG 0.509
332 Glen Davis BOST PF 0.508
333 Sam Young MEMP SF 0.508
334 Austin Daye DETR SF 0.507
335 Ronald Murray CHIC SG 0.504
336 Vladimir Radmanovic GOLS SF 0.494
337 Solomon Jones INDI PF 0.493
338 Ben Gordon DETR SG 0.491
339 James Johnson CHIC PF 0.487
340 Rafer Alston MIAM PG 0.482
341 Eduardo Najera DALL PF 0.482
342 Chucky Atkins DETR PG 0.477
343 Earl Clark PHNX SF 0.474
344 Joey Graham DENV SF 0.473
345 Fabricio Oberto WASH C 0.468
346 Jason Smith PHIL PF 0.466
347 Andres Nocioni SACR SF 0.464
348 Jared Jeffries HOUS PF 0.462
349 Nick Young WASH SG 0.462
350 Maurice Evans ATLA SF 0.462
351 Keith Bogans SANA SG 0.462
352 Josh Howard DALL SF 0.460

VERY POOR PLAYERS
353 Eddie House NWYR SG 0.454
354 Joe Smith ATLA PF 0.453
355 Kwame Brown DETR C 0.452
356 Antoine Wright TORO SF 0.451
357 Darrell Arthur MEMP PF 0.443
358 Jarvis Hayes NJRS SF 0.438
359 Ricky Davis LACL SF 0.437
360 Mardy Collins LACL PG 0.436
361 Malik Hairston SANA SG 0.433
362 Jeff Pendergraph PORT PF 0.432
363 Jermaine Taylor HOUS SG 0.428
364 Chris Wilcox DETR C 0.417
365 DeMar DeRozan TORO SG 0.414
366 Jodie Meeks MILW SG 0.413
367 Quinton Ross DALL SF 0.406

EXTREMELY POOR PLAYERS
368 Morris Peterson NORL SG 0.394
369 Josh Powell LALK PF 0.386
370 Jason Kapono PHIL SG 0.383
371 Jawad Williams CLEV SF 0.369
372 DeMarre Carroll MEMP SF 0.357
373 Ryan Hollins MINN C 0.351
374 Steve Novak LACL SF 0.345
375 Trenton Hassell NJRS SF 0.342
376 Brian Scalabrine BOST C 0.329
377 Michael Finley SANA SF 0.321
378 Sasha Pavlovic MINN SG 0.314
379 DeShawn Stevenson WASH SG 0.287
380 Malik Allen DENV PF 0.282
381 DaJuan Summers DETR SF 0.266

SCALE FOR REGULAR SEASON REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Perfect for all Practical Purposes / Major Historic Super Star 1.100 and more
Historic Super Star 1.000 1.099
Super Star 0.900 0.999
A Star Player / A well above normal starter 0.820 0.899
Very Good Player / A solid starter 0.760 0.819
Major Role Player / Good enough to start 0.700 0.759
Good Role Player / Often a good 6th man 0.640 0.699
Satisfactory Role Player / Usually do not start 0.580 0.639
Marginal Role Player / Rarely start 0.520 0.579
Poor Player / Should never start 0.460 0.519
Very Poor Player 0.400 0.459
Extremely Poor Player .399 and less

AVERAGE RATINGS BY POSITION
Not all positions are created equal. These are the average ratings by position among all NBA players who play 300 minutes or more. There are very few small forwards and shooting guards who are superstars. Most (but definitely not all) superstars are players who can play point guard, power forward, or center.

Point Guard .750
Shooting Guard .640
Small Forward .640
Power Forward .720
Center .750
All Positions / All Players (NBA Overall Average) .700

PLAYOFF GRADE PLAYERS
Playoff Grade Players have ratings of .560 and higher. Players with ratings below .560 should not play in the playoffs unless the team is forced to play them so that they have two players at a position and/or so that the team has at least eight players playing in the playoffs and/or because the coach is absolutely certain the low rating player will play better in the playoffs than he did in the regular season.

REGULAR SEASON STARTING PLAYERS
All starters on all teams should have ratings of .575 and higher. If a team has no player at a postion with at least a .575 rating, then it is extremely deficient at that position due to injuries or due to management incompetence.

THE ALL IMPORTANT, AWARD WINNING REAL PLAYER RATINGS USER GUIDE
The above are a few hightlights from the User Guide for Real Player Ratings. For complete details regarding how the Real Player Ratings are designed, how and why they work, and how exactly you can use them, see the User Guide. The User Guide for Real Player Ratings is a necessary reference for anyone who wants to truly understand the value of, the validity of, and the ways you can use the Real Player Rating performance measures.

Also, you should become a regular visitor to Quest for the Ring if you want to get the full advantage of reading and using Real Player Ratings Series performance measures. The more you visit and check out ratings, the more quickly and easily you will be able to evaluate what you are seeing.

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