The Situation: Real Team Ratings as of March 5, 2010: the Los Angeles Lakers Regain the Lead Over Denver and Gain on the Leading Cleveland Cavaliers

REAL TEAM RATINGS
NBA 2009-10 REGULAR SEASON
AS OF MARCH 5, 2010
1 Cleveland Cavaliers 48.00
2 Los Angeles Lakers 38.20
3 Orlando Magic 33.00
4 Denver Nuggets 29.10
5 Dallas Mavericks 20.10
6 Atlanta Hawks 16.90
7 Utah Jazz 16.90
8 Boston Celtics 15.30
9 San Antonio Spurs 5.60
10 Portland Trail Blazers 5.10
11 Oklahoma City Thunder 4.70
12 Phoenix Suns -0.80
13 Charlotte Bobcats -9.30
14 Chicago Bulls -14.50
15 Miami Heat -15.00
16 Milwaukee Bucks -16.10
17 New Orleans Hornets -17.00
18 Houston Rockets -18.40
19 Memphis Grizzlies -19.70
20 Washington Wizards -30.50
21 Toronto Raptors -35.40
22 Detroit Pistons -39.20
23 Philadelphia 76ers -40.70
24 Los Angeles Clippers -43.30
25 New York Knicks -45.20
26 Indiana Pacers -48.70
27 Sacramento Kings -51.40
28 Golden State Warriors -60.20
29 Minnesota Timberwolves -70.50
30 New Jersey Nets -84.10

CONFERENCE AND LEAGUE FINALS PROJECTIONS AS OF MARCH 5, 2010
2010 NBA CHAMPIONSHIP
Los Angeles Lakers over Cleveland Cavaliers 4-3

2010 NBA WEST FINAL
Los Angeles Lakers over Denver Nuggets 4-2

2010 NBA EAST FINAL
Cleveland Cavaliers over Orlando Magic 4-2

CONTENDER BREAKDOWN
Includes links to the best team performance page available on the Internet

CURRENT MAJOR CONTENDERS
Los Angeles Lakers
Cleveland Cavaliers
Orlando Magic

CURRENT WILD CARD CONTENDERS
Denver Nuggets
Boston Celtics
Dallas Mavericks

CURRENT LONG SHOT CONTENDERS
Atlanta Hawks
San Antonio Spurs
Utah Jazz

THE EAST SITUATION: CLEVELAND HAS A GOOD LEAD OVER ORLANDO
Since about the first of the year, the Celtics have consistently disappointed while the Cavaliers have surged and while the Orlando Magic have moved steadily ahead. The Celtics have had serious injury problems, so it is certainly possible that they remain at least even with the Magic at full strength. However, we decided to bump the Magic ahead of the Celtics, at least for now, due to:

--The nightmare loss by the Celtics to the worst team in the League at home: the New Jersey Nets. Probably no NBA finalist in history has ever lost to the worst team in the League at home.

--Two days earlier, on February 25, the Celtics were buried at home by the Cavaliers themselves by 20 points.

--The Orlando lead over Boston in the Real Team Ratings (above) is now almost 18 points, which together with home court advantage would make Orlando a pretty good favorite over Boston in a series. The Celtics are also 33 points behind the Cavaliers, which unless there is a big change or a miracle means the Celtics can not beat the Cavaliers in a series this year.

Among the top Celtics, power forward and historical superstar Kevin Garnett has missed 11 out of 59 games so far this year and star and small forward Paul Pierce has missed ten games so far this year. On the other hand, superstar and point guard Rajon Rondo, solid starter and shooting guard Ray Allen and starting center Kendrick Perkins have missed only one game each.

It seems that although the Celtics have been hampered somewhat by injuries, they are falling short of Cleveland and very possibly Orlando even after adjusting for injuries. The Celtics are fooling themselves if they think that just getting injury free alone will enable them to battle the Cavaliers to the end this year. Rather, even at full strength, the Celtics can probably win only three games at the very most in a best of seven against Cleveland this year, unless they ramp it up a little.

In any event, the Celtics are injury free as of the date of this report. The Orlando Magic are also injury free. The Cleveland Cavaliers are largely injury free, but they have just lost superstar center Shaquille O'Neal until sometime during the first round of the playoffs (late April). O'Neal had surgery on his sprained right thumb and will be out eight weeks. It could have been much worse: the surgery could have been a month from now in which case O'Neal would have been lost for much of the playoffs.

Moreover, O’Neal previously missed half a dozen games but the Cavaliers had little if any trouble winning without him. The returning squad from 2008-09, especially the guards and power forward Anderson Varejao, have grown very comfortable indeed playing with LeBron James in a coordinated way. The Cavaliers know full well that if any player tries to be an alpha dog on a LeBron James team other than LeBron James himself, the net result will be bad. Put yourself under the LeBron James umbrella and do your absolute best under that umbrella and it’s all good. Realize too that O'Neal plays only about 23 minutes a game when he is not injured.

The Cavaliers did make an outstanding just before the trade deadline exchange where they received Antawn Jamison (veteran Wizards star, almost a superstar) for Zydrunas Ilgauskas (more or less replaced by Shaquille O’Neill and Anderson Varejao and fading badly from prior star status.)

The Cavaliers also picked up role player and point guard Sebastian Telfair in the just before the deadline trade. Cleveland was living dangerously with just two point guards on its roster. When starting point guard Mo Williams (solid starter and possible star) was lost to the Cavaliers for about a month starting January 21, the Cavaliers were left with only one true point guard, the very young but extremely good three-point shooter Daniel Gibson. The acquisition of Telfair increased the number of point guards on the Cavaliers from two to three. Three is enough to cover the Championship run if one of them is injured. Although LeBron James can play any position very well with the possible exception of center, you don’t want to run even a small chance that there will be only one true point guard on the team for a Championship run.

Telfair by the way has not actually played for the Cavaliers yet: he has been out since January 21 due to an injury but is due back very soon.

As for Orlando, they are proof positive that being able to hit threes and not being afraid to try a good number of them are major assets. Being able to hit threes becomes even more important come playoff time. Like it or not, the three point shot is a very important factor that you try to downplay at your own peril. There are five teams that make a greater percentage of threes this year than do the Magic, including amazingly the Nuggets, but the Magic attempt and make more threes than any other team by far.

The big success of the Magic this year proves to you that as long as you are among the better three-point shooting teams, you should strongly consider firing away from beyond the arc. If you are well above average at making them, don’t be timid about trying them; you will be heavily rewarded if you are good at making them and you are not shy about trying them. The Nuggets are technically better at making threes this year than are the Magic, but they make only two thirds as many threes due to George Karl thinking that attempting a lot of them has to be a bad thing.

Losing Hedo Turkoglu did not adversely affect either the defense or the offense of the Magic. Generally speaking, the most important positions for winning playoff games are point guard and center. The Magic happen to have one of the best point guards, Jameer Nelson, and also one of the best centers, Dwight Howard.

THE WEST SITUATION: LAKERS REGAIN THE LEAD OVER THE NUGGETS
It was quite amazing when on February 2 it was seen that the Denver Nuggets had moved ahead of the Lakers by about six points. But as you can see above, the Lakers in the last month have moved past the Nuggets again and are now nine points ahead. You will see more about the Lakers in the Championship section not far below.

Although at the beginning of this season we intended to mostly cover the Celtics and the Cavaliers, that plan was scrapped when the Nuggets pulled more rabbits out of more hats. We just can not shake these Nuggets no matter how hard we try; the Nuggets are the gift that keeps on giving for a site that has adopted explaining how basketball is won and lost as mission one. For one thing, the Nuggets keep winning a very large number of regular season games and yet they continue to have a complete inability to win the most important games in the playoffs. By figuring out and explaining why, we are making major progress in our mission.

Quite honestly, for everything we actually have time to do here at Quest, there are half a dozen or more things we pledged to do but never have time to do. The yearly Production Plan has become more and more of a joke. But at least the broad outline of the editorial plan survives the rock and roll month to month progress of our project. At least we don't ever drop our adopted focus on the playoffs and especially on the Championship. And we never will, because once you start focusing on the most important games, you don't ever want to go back to those meaningless games involving the Grizzlies or the Timberwolves, laugh out loud.

For the second straight year (or the third straight if you count acquiring Iverson in December 2007) the Nuggets produced stars or at least near stars out of thin air. This year, Arron Afflalo is playing far, far better than he did for the Pistons last year. And the Timberwolves foolishly let drafted point guard Ty Lawson (think young Allen Iverson without the drama) go to Denver for a song. Even before the arrivals of Afflalo and Lawson, the Nuggets already had superstar point guard Chauncey Billups and somewhere between good role player and superstar J.R. Smith (who knows anymore, laugh out loud). The four of those players together constitute one of the very best 4-guard rosters around this year (most probably the best) and probably the best such roster in the history of the Nuggets.

If Smith could be at the higher end of his huge possible range and if Afflalo keeps hitting threes at a miracle rate and keeps defending like there is no tomorrow, this group of four guards could be enough not only to scare the Lakers but to actually defeat them if it were not for the huge problem the Nuggets have created for themselves in the paint defensively. See any of three recent Reports for extensive details of the Nuggets' defensive mess.

Looking at it pessimistically on the other hand though, Ty Lawson at the moment is out indefinitely with a bruised shoulder. And J.R. Smith sometimes seems these days like he might at any moment become one of the worst 2-guards in history. (Contrary to popular belief, this was not always so, laugh out loud.) Further, the idea of Arron Afflalo being a 45% three point shooter in the playoffs may be nothing more than fantasy. Moreover, does Chauncey Billups run a world class pro basketball offense that has a little bit of organization to it? No he does not. For all of these reasons, even the Nuggets' "guard miracle" might fizzle out before the fat lady sings this year.

If the guard miracle does in fact fizzle, and given the Nuggets' defensive mess that George Karl refuses to even recognize let alone solve, the Nuggets could be left with a quick second or even first round exit this year. The other day I was thinking, for example, that if the Nuggets finish third seed and have to play a sixth seed Phoenix Suns, they could easily lose to the Suns who for one thing will not be at any disadvantage at all from the Nuggets' pushing the pace because they push the pace even more so than the Nuggets.

Owner Marc Cuban of the Mavericks tried at the trade deadline to give his team a major shot in the arm after they tanked badly in the second half of December and in January. They lost about as many games as they won during that time and that constitutes tanking if you are a team that really wants to and theoretically might possibly be able to go to the Championship. Marc Cuban by the way, to his credit, actively tries these days to help his team more so than any other owner, and you have to much respect that.

Five days before the deadline, the Mavericks traded Josh Howard, Drew Gooden, James Singleton, and Quinton Ross to Washington for 2-guard / small forward Caron Butler, who has generally been a star during eight seasons, center Brendan Haywood, who has been at least a solid starter and close to a star during nine seasons, and 2-guard DeShawn Stevenson, who was poor in 2008-09 but a role player the year before, and cash considerations.

Stevenson will seldom play because both Butler and Jason Terry are much better.

Butler is a very nice and very important pick-up, but Haywood may actually be more important since the Mavericks already had good guard shooting and plenty of outside shooting thanks to power forward and historical superstar Dirk Nowitzki before the trade. My opinion was always that starting center Erick Dampier was (a) overrated by the Mavericks and (b) not good enough to enable the Mavs to win a Ring, especially since Dirk Nowitzki ranges in and out of the paint both on offense and defense, creating a big need for a star, stay at home paint defender at center. Dampier is at best a solid starter and it seems unlikely he will ever be a star in the playoffs. He was badly beaten by the Nuggets last spring.

Sure enough, the Mavericks now consider Haywood to be the starting center and Dampier to be the reserve. This is a bigger upgrade for the Mavericks than many will think. But on the other hand it remains doubtful that Haywood will be good enough in the paint, in conjunction with Nowitzki, Dampier, and reserve power forwards Tim Thomas and Eduardo Najera to enable Dallas to tangle with the awesome front court of the Lakers. Beating the Nuggets in a playoff series this year, though, has once again doable for the up and down Mavericks, who are up again right now and gaining on the Nuggets.

It could end up being the Jazz instead of the Mavericks, though, who challenge the Nuggets for second in the West. Why? Because the Jazz are cranking so well that they are even winning on the road these days; maybe Jerry Sloan is not too old after all. And meanwhile the Mavericks all of a sudden have significant injury problems:

--Reserve but important power forward Tim Thomas is apparently out for the season for family reasons. Thomas has been caring for his wife who has been suffering from serious health issues. But as discussed, the Mavericks need every good paint defender they can get.

--Reserve but very important center Erick Dampier has been out since February 17 due to a finger dislocation. He is due back by mid March, however.

--Star 2-guard Jason Terry, who now along with Caron Butler forms what is probably the best 2-guard tandem in the League, took an elbow to the face March 3 against the Timberwolves but managed to return to the game. But he will soon have surgery to repair a broken orbital bone and will be out until probably late March or early April. But like with O’Neal in Cleveland, this would have been much worse if it had happened a month later.

The rest of the injury situation in the West is that the Denver Nuggets and the moving up from the outside Utah Jazz are currently injury free.

For the Lakers, as mentioned earlier, sometimes just satisfactory and sometimes good role player Sasha Vujacic has been out since February 19. Vujacic is not expected to return until late March after suffering a grade one shoulder sprain on his right shoulder. He still can't raise his right arm and isn't allowed to shoot yet. Also, Luke Walton, who is a good to major role player who backs up Ron Artest at small forward, has been out since February 19 due to a pinched nerve in the back. When Walton will return is quite uncertain, though it seems probably he will be available for the Lakers’ Championship run. His goal is still to get back for the playoffs and then after the playoffs make a decision about surgery.

All in all, the Lakers’ injury situation is not really that bad because Jordan Farmar can sub in for Vujacic quite well and because the Lakers practically don’t need Walton given how much massive firepower they have in the front court.

THE 2010 CHAMPIONSHIP
Let's first briefly summarize how this season's Championship projections have gone. For the Championship projection we are back where we started. At the beginning of the season and again right now we think the Cavaliers will meet the Lakers in the 2010 Championship and we think the Lakers will win the series 4-3. (4-2 would not be a surprise.) But the Cavaliers got off to such a stumbling start and the Boston Celtics got off to such an extremely strong start in November that we switched our prediction to Lakers 4 Celtics 2 for the 2010 Championship in December. Then the Celtics stumbled and the Cavaliers surged in the second half of December and in January, so the next change was to Cavaliers 4 Lakers 3 which was the projection from mid January until the end of February. When the Lakers vanquished the Nuggets 95-89 in an historical come from behind victory on February 28 in LA, we switched the Championship prediction to back where it started: Lakers 4 Cavaliers 3.

The Cavaliers have about a ten point Real Team Rating lead over the Los Angeles Lakers for the 2010 Championship. However, the Lakers could end up with home court advantage and they definitely have a coaching advantage that could easily be worth about 15 or even points. Lakers Coach Phil Jackson has been working very hard recently to get the Lakers tuned up for the coming playoffs. For example, Jackson recently correctly determined that the easiest way to beat the Nuggets is to over weight plays into the paint in order to take advantage of the Nuggets' poor paint defending.

Jackson and the Lakers have, at least since their second round series against the Rockets last spring, been taking their sweet time to determine and implement winning strategies against good teams they have to beat to win a Ring. But there is a big, big difference between being a little slow to figure out how to win and never being able to figure it out at all. Bet against Phil Jackson at your own risk; we think Jackson and his Lakers will be able to contain LeBron by just enough to get his 11th Ring, while Kobe Bryant will get his 5th.

Prior to now, we were thinking the Lakers would lose in the 2010 Championship because:

--The Lakers had poor guard play (other than Kobe Bryant)
--Phil Jackson didn't seem to know how to beat the Nuggets with their improbably jam packed with raw talent lineup yet
--Pau Gasol had serious injury problems
--Except for Kobe, the Lakers offense in general and passing game in particular was lagging. The defense was top notch but the offense was sagging pretty badly.

All of these things have been improving or are completely resolved with the possible exception of the first. One of the potentially better Laker guards, Sasha Vujacic, is now out indefinitely due to a sprained shoulder and that certainly does not help matters in the LA back court. But Kobe Bryant is certainly capable of making up for a back court that is poor to fair except for him. He's that good whether or not he is quite the all time best guard, which is debatable.

Remember, the Championship has a unique home court pattern. Instead of 2-2-1-1-1, the pattern is 2-3-2. This means that the team which has home court advantage can win the series at home either in game six or in game seven. The team without home court advantage in the Championship will often have to win the series on the road since the majority of Championships go for six or seven games. In order for the team that does not have home court advantage to win the series at home, they would have to win either game one or game two on the road and then win all three straight games home (games three through five). Home court advantage in the NBA playoffs is worth slightly more than home court advantage in the other series as a result of this oddity. Even if the team with the advantage loses one of the first two games, it will usually be very unlikely that it will lose three straight on the road, so at worse it will be 3-2 in favor of the other team when the series returns to the building of the team with the home court advantage. So the team with the advantage can still win the series in that scenario by winning games six and seven at home.

Should Cleveland get home court advantage, we are predicting that the Lakers will win one of the two games in Cleveland or, less likely will lose them but then win all three in LA and then win the Ring in either game six or game seven in Cleveland. Should LA get home court advantage, we are predicting that LA will win both of the first two games and then one of the three straight games in Cleveland, leaving them with the relatively easy task of winning either game six or game seven in LA. In short, we think the series is going to be close but we think the Lakers will have enough to prevail against LeBron James and the Cavaliers.

We could be wrong and this is not a guarantee of any kind. Injuries can and often do make projections such as this completely off. We just do these projections for the how the Quest is won information value of them.

THE ALL IMPORTANT, AWARD WINNING USER GUIDE
For complete details regarding how the Real Team Ratings are designed, how and why they work, and how exactly you can use them, see the User Guide.

The Denver Nuggets' 2008-09 Defense and Michael Jackson: Gone Too Soon

A Championship team needs to have a tough paint defense unless it happens to be one of the best two or three offenses in the history of basketball and even then you would not want the paint defense to be poor but close to average at the least. For one thing, easy scores in the paint tend to demoralize players (and coaches and fans) on the receiving end.

George Karl and the Nuggets are violating this clear and enduring principal this year by in effect saying they can challenge for a Ring without caring much about a leaky paint defense.

But any team serious about the Quest for the Ring needs to do everything possible to keep the points it allows in the paint at 40 or less per game. A fast paced team can maybe get away with exactly 40 paint points per game whereas a slow paced team needs to keep it below 38 or so. All teams regardless of pace that are trying to win the Ring more so with defense than offense must keep points in the paint allowed to 37.5 or less per game. All teams serious about trying to win the Quest more so with defense are going to be medium or slow paced teams; it is basically impossible to run a fast pace on offense and have a serious chance of winning a Ring more with defense than with offense. The faster the pace you run on offense, the less opportunity you have to succeed with a tough defense.

The gold standard for paint defense is 36 points given up in the paint per game (or even less). The abysmal standard is 45 points or more points given up in the paint per game. Face it: if you give up more than 45 points in the paint per game, you are not even trying to defend the paint.

Here is how the teams currently rank:

POINTS GIVEN UP IN THE PAINT PER GAME
2009-10 REGULAR SEASON
As of March 2 2010
1 Cleveland Cavaliers 35.8
2 Orlando Magic 36.1
3 Detroit Pistons 36.8
4 Milwaukee Bucks 37.6
5 Boston Celtics 37.8
6 Miami Heat 37.9
7 Indiana Pacers 38.3
8 Chicago Bulls 39.5
9 Charlotte Bobcats 39.6
10 Utah Jazz 39.8
11 Washington Wizards 40.5
12 Los Angeles Lakers 40.7
13 Dallas Mavericks 41.3
14 San Antonio Spurs 41.6
15 Portland Trail Blazers 41.6
16 Los Angeles Clippers 42.1
17 Toronto Raptors 42.3
18 Philadelphia 76ers 42.7
19 Oklahoma City Thunder 43.1
20 Denver Nuggets 43.5
21 Phoenix Suns 43.7
22 Minnesota Timberwolves 43.8
23 Atlanta Hawks 44.1
24 Houston Rockets 44.3
25 New Orleans Hornets 44.5
26 New Jersey Nets 44.7
27 Sacramento Kings 45.6
28 New York Knicks 46.4
29 Golden State Warriors 46.6
30 Memphis Grizzlies 48.4

The Nuggets, who have been victimized in the paint more and more as this season has progressed, as the other teams realize that Denver is not defending the paint well like they did last year, are now averaging 43.5 points given up in the paint per game versus 38.4 points last year. Remember, what may seem like a small difference like this means big changes in whether a team can really win the NBA Championship or not.

The Nuggets have flipped from being a tough in the paint team last year to a soft in the paint team, something which they could largely avoid if they played expert paint defender Renaldo Balkman for at least as many minutes as they did last year, which was 780 minutes in the regular season but, however, virtually zero minutes in the playoffs. Playing without Balkman’s tough paint defending and great defensive rebounding against Dallas in the West semifinal was not enough to sink Denver but it was enough to help ruin Denver in the West final, and the same thing or worse is destined to happen this year.

Defending the paint means, to name the most important things:

--You deny offensive rebounds by very good or better defensive rebounding. Your team boxes out and fights for all rebounds continuously and aggressively.

--You have very good or better man to man defending close to the hoop.

--You are not doing so much switching due to screens and pick and rolls that the big men who can defend the paint end up out of the paint guarding guards while a small forward or a guard is left with the near impossible task of preventing a score in the paint by a center or power forward. Instead of over switching all the time, your big men need to often fight through screens and fight to stay with the opponent’s big men.

--Guards almost by definition are just minor factors with respect to paint defense. Even small forwards are often relatively minor factors. Defending the paint is primarily a job for power forwards and centers. So to defend well in the paint, you can not make the big mistake of playing guards for too many minutes and centers and power forwards for too few minutes. Size is crucial in basketball; every inch counts.

For most teams, you want to have the total minutes played by centers and power forwards add up to more than 96 (the length of a game, 48 minutes, times two positions). The optimal number of minutes depends on how good the players at the different positions are, but almost always you will need to have power forwards and centers play at a rock bottom minimum a combined 101 minutes per game and, in many, many cases they should play 106-116 minutes a game. Any coach who thinks he is going to win a lot of playoff games while having always exactly two power forwards and centers in the game and never three of them is very unlikely to be successful.

As you might suspect, George Karl is doing this: he is refusing to play three power forwards and centers at once for even a tiny number of minutes a game. He did play three of them at once for a few minutes a game last year, which was quite surprising and unusual. But this year, as a result of inadequate center and power forward minutes, not only is George Karl not defending the paint well, he is also not taking advantage of a good opportunity to add some extra disruption and confusion for the opponent’s offense. Playing three power forwards and centers at once is a little bit like a power play in hockey.

Phil Jackson is typically playing three power forwards / centers at once for 6-12 minutes per game.

NOTES ABOUT CERTAIN OTHER TEAMS
First, notice an obvious but important generality: roughly speaking, the worst teams in the League give up the most points in the paint and vice versa. There are a small number of exceptions from time to time.

Notice that even though the Lakers overall this year are outstanding on defense (they have just about the best defensive efficiency) they are slightly over the recommended points in the paint maximum. But this is illusory, because Pau Gasol, the most important Lakers paint defender, has missed just about 18 games this season. The Lakers are definitely under 40 points per game surrendered in the paint as long as Pau Gasol is in there and as long as Coach Phil Jackson keeps reminding them to defend the paint well. Having said that, the Lakers, like the Nuggets, do seem to be emphasizing perimeter defense more and paint defense less. But they are doing both at a higher level than are the Nuggets.

What about Nuggets’ injuries? Kenyon Martin and Chris Andersen have missed a very small number of games. Small forward Carmelo Anthony has missed some games but he is definitely not a great or even a good paint defender which by the way is another indirect reason for why Balkman absolutely must play or the Nuggets are toast.

Notice that the Celtics, who won the Quest in 2008 with, you guessed it, a fierce in the paint and overall defense, have not, unlike the Nuggets, abandoned tough paint defending. However, the Celtics have their hands full to say the least in the East Conference, because both the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Orlando Magic (the two teams which are Boston’s main rivals to win the East this year) have extremely good paint defending this year, substantially better than that of the Celtics. Always remember that small differences in numbers translate into big differences on the court in terms of win potential in the playoffs.

We can also look at a related view: the percentage of all points given up that are given up in the paint. This indirectly corrects for pace, whereas the straight up points per game in the paint is slightly biased against fast paced teams such as the Nuggets. Could it be that the Nuggets have been getting a bum rap from Quest for the Ring on this subject?

Let’s compare the teams in percentage of all points given up that are given up in the paint. In other words, we are looking at, in effect, how important a team thinks paint defending is, and/or we are looking at how strong the paint defense is relative to the defense as a whole.

POINTS GIVEN UP IN THE PAINT AS A PERCENTAGE OF ALL POINTS GIVEN UP
2009-10 REGULAR SEASON
As of March 2 2010
1 Indiana Pacers 0.3683
2 Cleveland Cavaliers 0.3757
3 Orlando Magic 0.3772
4 Detroit Pistons 0.3802
5 Milwaukee Bucks 0.3868
6 Miami Heat 0.3989
7 Washington Wizards 0.3990
8 Boston Celtics 0.4008
9 Chicago Bulls 0.4010
10 Toronto Raptors 0.4013
11 Utah Jazz 0.4078
12 Phoenix Suns 0.4123
13 Minnesota Timberwolves 0.4124
14 Dallas Mavericks 0.4189
15 Charlotte Bobcats 0.4199
16 Los Angeles Clippers 0.4202
17 Golden State Warriors 0.4213
18 Los Angeles Lakers 0.4235
19 Philadelphia 76ers 0.4236
20 Denver Nuggets 0.4240
21 San Antonio Spurs 0.4302
22 Sacramento Kings 0.4326
23 Houston Rockets 0.4365
24 Portland Trail Blazers 0.4370
25 New Orleans Hornets 0.4393
26 New York Knicks 0.4419
27 New Jersey Nets 0.4430
28 Oklahoma City Thunder 0.4490
29 Atlanta Hawks 0.4537
30 Memphis Grizzlies 0.4699

OK, now we have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Denver is, whether they know it or not, packing it in with regard to paint defense, because they rank exactly the same (20th) in percentage of points given up that are given up in the paint as they do in straight up points given up in the paint per game.

With respect to winning the Quest, on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is the least important thing to do and 10 is the most important thing to do, paint defense is somewhere between an 8 and a 10. You most definitely do not want to be below average on anything that is extremely important for winning the Quest.

So the Nuggets are cruising for a bruising, yet all they have to do to shore up the paint defense is increase Chris Andersen and Renaldo Balkman minutes by a combined 24-30 minutes per game. If they did this, they would most likely improve to where they could really challenge the Lakers this year. But right now, the Nuggets have guard overkill going. They have two truly outstanding young guards in Ty Lawson and Arron Afflalo and of course they have superstar Chauncey Billups at the point.

Given the fact that 2-guard J.R. Smith has fallen off pretty badly this year, as by the way Quest thought would probably happen sooner or later if he was treated as a black sheep instead of as a valuable starter, the Nuggets could easily take away some playing time from Smith and not lose anything on the guard front. Further, there is essentially zero reason for reserve point guard Anthony Carter to be playing at all since the Nuggets have three truly outstanding guards along with the potentially outstanding J.R. Smith. Whenever Carter plays, who simply due to age alone can not compete with Afflalo, Lawson, or even Smith, the Nuggets are shooting themselves in the foot. Steven Graham isn't even worth discussing.

A FEW NOTES ABOUT CERTAIN OTHER TEAMS
So far this year (it won’t change much between now and the end of the season) the Indiana Pacers are most dedicated to and/or most able to defend the paint whereas the Memphis Grizzlies are the least. You know those Grizzlies, always screwing up somehow, laugh out loud.

The Cavaliers and the Magic are just behind the Pacers at the top of the paint defending heap. The Celtics are just far enough behind those two teams to have a problem that they had better deal with in some way, since despite superstar point guard Rajon Rondo the Celtics are going to be depending at least as much on defense as on offense in this year’s playoffs. In other words, the Celtics are doing very well at defending the paint, but they probably have to do even better if they want to be in the NBA Final this year.

Notice that if you look closely you can often see evidence of major injuries when you break something like this down. For example, the Portland Trailblazers are 15th in points given up per game and 24th in percentage of points given up that are in the paint. This tells you that although the Trailblazers play at a very slow pace and keep their points per game given up fairly low as a result, they are actually getting killed in the paint, which is obviously due to several major injuries to some of their best forwards and centers. Portland, like Denver, has flipped from being a fairly good paint defense team to a poor one, but in Portland’s case this is due to injuries whereas in Denver’s case this is due to poor player minutes allocation.

Another interesting thing to observe is that the Atlanta Hawks, because they have a really bad paint defense, even worse than Denver’s, seem destined this year to be defeated fairly easily no later than the East semifinal round (2nd round of the playoffs). This is especially true given that Boston and especially Cleveland and Orlando all have outstanding paint defenses.

For more details of this whopper of a Nuggets mistake that we have been understandably focused on since early December, see any or all of these Reports:

--Shocking but True: the Denver Nuggets are Better than the Lakers but can they beat the Lakers in the 2010 Playoffs?

--George Karl is Losing Home Court Advantage due to not Defending the Paint

--The Denver Nuggets have Defensive Problems and the Solution is Sitting on the Bench

DENVER NUGGETS HANDLED IN THE PAINT THE LAST 2 GAMES
The Nuggets just dropped two straight important games. On Sunday February 28 against the Lakers themselves in Los Angeles, Phil Jackson figured this paint defense thing (and more) out at halftime and, after a shaky first half, the Lakers dominated in the second half and defeated the Nuggets 95-89. The Lakers scored 50 points in the paint! That’s five-oh, brother man! This means the Lakers owned the Nuggets in the paint and it also means that the Lakers were intentionally running extra plays into the paint because they knew for a certainty that the Nuggets’ paint defense is not what it was last year and is simply not good enough.

We like to say that LA Coach Phil Jackson is one of the few basketball people who does not need to check out Quest for the Ring because he knows everything we know and more. So it is doubtful Jackson figured out how to beat the Nuggets by reading the Quest. Still, Quest is hot like fire and, after last year’s horrible wild ride that might have ended up in total destruction (see the Darth Vader Series) this year is going along quite well indeed so far.

Although the next night the Nuggets were back to back road in Phoenix, the Suns were also back to back, having played on Sunday themselves in San Antonio (where they lost by a little bit). So both teams were back to back. Once again, the Nuggets got off to a strong start early. But it took the Suns just one quarter to learn how to turn things around big time against the Nuggets, and by halftime the Suns were leading the Nuggets 57-44. In the second half, the Nuggets, and this was surprising even to me, never mounted a serious challenge and lost the game 101-85. The Suns scored 44 points against the Nuggets in the paint although in fairness the explosive Suns average 44.6 points in the paint offensively.

The Lakers offensively average 45.1 points per game in the paint, so if you think you are going to beat them or even just compete closely with them in a series with a lame paint defense (with for example too many guard minutes and not enough power forward / center minutes) you have another thing coming.

Oh well, we can cry the blues for those wayward Nuggets, laugh out loud….

THE NUGGETS 2008-09 DEFENSE: GONE TOO SOON