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
Thursday, December 11, 2008
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!
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!
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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?
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?
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