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TOP NBA POINT GUARDS OF 2011-2012 (complete regular season)
Each year QFTR publishes Real Player Ratings for every player in the NBA who has played at least 300 minutes. Real Player Ratings are comprehensive player ratings that are very carefully designed and quality controlled. Starting in 2012, the Ratings are supplemented by seven per 36 minutes charts which show player performance in seven of the very most important performance measures, all of which are components of Real Player Ratings (but there are other components that go into Real Player Ratings). These charts are stationed on the home page at all times. This is most likely the only place on the Internet where this key player information is shown in this optimal way.

Here we have the leading point guards of the NBA in 2011-2012 ranked according to number of plays made per 36 minutes playing time. This is "AST" in the chart. The assists and all other items shown in the chart other than the percentages and the minutes played are per 36 minutes, which is much smarter to use than per game numbers.

For this and all the other charts, a minimum of 300 minutes of playing time is required. A player must have made at least 6 assists per 36 minutes (or at least 1 assist every 6 minutes) to be shown here.

This is one of the seven "7/36 Charts". A short user guide for these is found in this Report.

Here now are how the best point guards in the NBA in 2011-2012 rated and ranked:
Player               Tm   MP   FG  FGA  3P 3PA  FT FTA ORB DRB  AST STL BLK TOV  PF  PTS  FG%  3P%  FT%
Steve Nash          PHO 1961  5.4 10.2 1.0 2.6 2.3 2.6 0.5 2.9 12.2 0.7 0.1 4.2 1.0 14.2 .532 .390 .894
Rajon Rondo         BOS 1957  4.7 10.5 0.2 0.8 2.0 3.3 1.1 3.6 11.4 1.7 0.1 3.6 1.8 11.6 .448 .238 .597
Jose Calderon       TOR 1799  4.4  9.5 1.2 3.2 1.2 1.4 0.4 2.8  9.4 0.9 0.1 2.1 1.9 11.1 .457 .371 .882
Chris Paul          LAC 2181  7.0 14.7 1.3 3.5 4.3 5.0 0.7 2.8  9.0 2.5 0.1 2.0 2.3 19.6 .478 .371 .861
Andre Miller        DEN 1809  4.8 11.0 0.4 1.7 2.7 3.4 1.1 3.3  8.8 1.3 0.2 3.5 2.6 12.7 .438 .217 .811
Tony Parker         SAS 1923  8.0 16.7 0.3 1.1 4.2 5.3 0.4 2.8  8.7 1.1 0.1 2.9 1.4 20.5 .480 .230 .799
Jamaal Tinsley      UTA  507  4.0 10.0 0.7 2.6 0.9 1.2 0.4 2.8  8.7 1.2 0.6 3.7 3.3  9.7 .404 .270 .765
Deron Williams      NJN 1999  7.0 17.3 2.1 6.2 4.6 5.5 0.4 2.9  8.7 1.2 0.4 3.9 2.2 20.8 .407 .336 .843
Ricky Rubio         MIN 1404  3.6 10.0 0.8 2.4 3.2 4.0 0.5 3.8  8.6 2.3 0.2 3.4 2.5 11.2 .357 .340 .803
Jonny Flynn         TOT  416  4.0 11.3 0.9 2.9 2.5 3.4 0.7 2.7  8.3 0.5 0.2 3.1 2.0 11.3 .351 .294 .744
Jeremy Lin          NYK  940  6.5 14.7 0.9 2.9 5.6 7.0 0.7 3.4  8.3 2.1 0.3 4.8 3.0 19.6 .446 .320 .798
Baron Davis         NYK  595  4.1 11.1 1.6 5.1 1.0 1.5 0.8 2.6  8.2 2.1 0.2 4.6 3.7 10.8 .370 .306 .667
Jose Barea          MIN 1032  5.8 14.6 1.8 5.0 2.7 3.4 0.5 3.5  8.1 0.7 0.0 3.6 2.1 16.2 .400 .371 .776
Derrick Rose        CHI 1375  7.9 18.2 1.4 4.5 5.1 6.3 0.7 2.7  8.0 0.9 0.7 3.1 1.4 22.3 .435 .312 .812
John Wall           WAS 2386  5.7 13.5 0.0 0.6 4.8 6.1 0.7 3.8  8.0 1.4 0.9 3.8 2.1 16.2 .423 .071 .789
D.J. Augustin       CHA 1408  4.7 12.5 1.6 4.6 2.7 3.1 0.6 2.2  7.8 0.9 0.0 2.8 1.7 13.6 .376 .341 .875
Beno Udrih          MIL 1080  4.9 11.1 0.6 2.0 1.3 1.8 0.9 2.5  7.6 1.2 0.0 2.6 2.3 11.6 .440 .288 .709
Greivis Vasquez     NOH 1706  4.7 11.0 0.9 2.8 2.0 2.5 0.5 3.2  7.6 1.3 0.2 3.1 2.7 12.4 .430 .319 .821
Earl Watson         UTA 1033  1.9  5.6 0.3 1.8 1.1 1.6 1.0 3.2  7.6 1.9 0.8 3.0 3.7  5.2 .338 .192 .674
Ramon Sessions      TOT 1707  5.1 11.9 0.9 2.0 4.1 5.2 0.7 3.8  7.5 0.9 0.1 3.0 2.1 15.2 .428 .443 .782
Player               Tm   MP   FG  FGA  3P 3PA  FT FTA ORB DRB  AST STL BLK TOV  PF  PTS  FG%  3P%  FT%
Raymond Felton      POR 1906  4.9 12.1 1.2 3.8 1.9 2.3 0.5 2.3  7.4 1.5 0.2 3.2 2.3 12.9 .407 .305 .806
Kyle Lowry          HOU 1510  5.0 12.2 1.9 5.0 4.1 4.7 0.9 4.2  7.4 1.7 0.3 3.1 3.2 16.0 .409 .374 .864
Goran Dragic        HOU 1752  5.7 12.3 1.4 4.2 3.1 3.9 1.1 2.4  7.2 1.7 0.2 3.2 3.4 15.9 .462 .337 .805
Nate Robinson       GSW 1192  6.2 14.6 2.0 5.5 2.8 3.4 0.5 2.6  7.0 1.8 0.1 2.3 3.6 17.2 .424 .365 .832
Manu Ginobili       SAS  792  6.8 13.0 2.4 5.7 4.0 4.6 0.8 4.5  6.9 1.1 0.5 2.9 2.5 20.0 .526 .413 .871
Charles Jenkins     GSW  893  5.2 11.7 0.1 0.8 1.4 1.6 0.3 2.4  6.9 1.3 0.2 2.4 3.4 12.0 .447 .150 .872
Jason Kidd          DAL 1379  2.6  7.1 2.1 5.8 0.6 0.7 0.4 4.8  6.9 2.1 0.3 2.4 2.2  7.8 .363 .354 .786
Jameer Nelson       ORL 1706  5.5 12.8 1.8 4.9 1.5 1.9 0.6 3.2  6.9 0.8 0.1 2.8 2.7 14.3 .427 .377 .807
Stephen Curry       GSW  732  7.1 14.6 2.7 6.0 1.9 2.3 0.7 3.6  6.8 1.9 0.4 3.2 3.0 18.8 .490 .455 .809
Ty Lawson           DEN 2124  6.3 13.0 1.2 3.4 3.0 3.7 0.9 2.9  6.8 1.4 0.1 2.5 1.6 16.9 .488 .365 .824
Mike Conley         MEM 2174  4.9 11.3 1.0 2.6 2.3 2.6 0.4 2.2  6.7 2.3 0.2 2.1 2.2 13.0 .433 .377 .861
Jarrett Jack        NOH 1530  6.3 13.7 0.9 2.6 3.0 3.5 0.5 3.6  6.7 0.7 0.2 2.5 2.2 16.5 .456 .348 .872
Devin Harris        UTA 1741  5.0 11.2 1.6 4.4 3.2 4.3 0.2 2.1  6.5 1.3 0.3 2.5 2.8 14.8 .445 .362 .746
Kyrie Irving        CLE 1558  8.1 17.3 1.7 4.2 4.0 4.5 1.0 3.4  6.4 1.2 0.5 3.7 2.5 21.8 .469 .399 .872
C.J. Watson         CHI 1159  5.0 13.6 2.1 5.4 2.6 3.2 0.7 2.6  6.2 1.4 0.2 3.0 3.2 14.7 .368 .393 .808
Shelvin Mack        WAS  779  4.1 10.2 0.6 1.9 1.9 2.7 0.6 3.7  6.1 1.3 0.1 2.2 2.3 10.6 .400 .286 .712
Jerryd Bayless      TOR  705  6.0 14.1 2.2 5.3 3.8 4.5 0.4 3.0  6.0 1.2 0.2 2.7 3.6 18.0 .424 .423 .852
LeBron James        MIA 2326  9.6 18.1 0.8 2.3 6.0 7.8 1.5 6.2  6.0 1.8 0.8 3.3 1.5 26.0 .531 .362 .771



Sunday, December 28, 2008

Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players: Wizards 107 Pistons 94 in Washington Dec. 9 2008

REAL PLAYER RATINGS (QUALITY) FOR THIS GAME
DETROIT PISTONS QUALITY
Rasheed Wallace, C 1.070
Richard Hamilton, SG 0.874
Antonio McDyess, PF 0.712
Rodney Stuckey, PG 0.597
Walter Herrmann, PF 0.512
Allen Iverson, SG 0.411
Tayshaun Prince, SF 0.395
Arron Afflalo, SG -0.042

WASHINGTON WIZARDS QUALITY
Juan Dixon, SG 1.379
Caron Butler, SF 1.113
Dominic McGuire, PF 1.073
Nick Young, SG 0.891
Andray Blatche, PF 0.742
Antawn Jamison, PF 0.692
Darius Songaila, PF 0.632
Antonio Daniels, PG 0.388
DeShawn Stevenson, SG 0.033

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 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
Richard Hamilton, SG 33.20
Rasheed Wallace, C 28.90
Rodney Stuckey, PG 21.50
Antonio McDyess, PF 17.80
Tayshaun Prince, SF 15.80
Allen Iverson, SG 15.60
Walter Herrmann, PF 6.65
Arron Afflalo, SG -0.75

WASHINGTON WIZARDS QUANTITY
Caron Butler, SF 45.65
Juan Dixon, SG 33.10
Antawn Jamison, PF 27.00
Darius Songaila, PF 17.70
Nick Young, SG 15.15
Dominic McGuire, PF 13.95
Andray Blatche, PF 13.35
Antonio Daniels, PG 6.20
DeShawn Stevenson, SG 1.10

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 GAME
Superstar during minutes on the court: Rasheed Wallace
Star during minutes on the court: Richard Hamilton
Very Good during minutes on the court: Antonio McDyess













WASHINGTON WIZARDS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Superstar during minutes on the court: Juan Dixon
Superstar during minutes on the court: Caron Butler
Superstar during minutes on the court: Dominic McGuire
Star during minutes on the court: Nick Young
Star during minutes on the court: Andray Blatche
Very Good during minutes on the court: Antawn Jamison
Very Good during minutes on the court: Darius Songaila

THE GREATEST POWER PERFORMERS OF THIS GAME








DETROIT PISTONS POWER PERFORMERS
Huge Game: Richard Hamilton
Very Big Game: Rasheed Wallace
Big Game: Antonio McDyess













WASHINGTON WIZARDS POWER PERFORMERS
Only Some Players can Ever Fly This High, and Not Very Often: Caron Butler
Massive and Memorable Game: Juan Dixon
Very Big Game: Antawn Jamison
Big Game: Darius Songaila

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!

Posted by The Quest for the Ring at 6:04 PM

Fast Break: Cheapest Win of the Year Nomination

The Nuggets are a cheap team. They kick players to the curb, they have a "playground style" offense that is still playground despite Chauncey Billups because no point guard can totally offset pure chaos, and they play a swarming and fouling defense in the paint while leaving the perimeter largely undefended. I have decided that I really, really dislike teams and franchises like this. I mean, I dislike them even beyond the losses in general and the fooled fans and playoff losses in particular that they generate. There is too much money and too many smart coaches in pro sports to settle for all these cheap approaches to pro basketball.

Tonight I ruined my Boxer Day evening by watching what may be the cheapest victory of the 2008-09 season, when the 76'ers thoroughly outplayed the Nuggets but lost to them in Denver.

How did the 76'ers lose? The cheapest way you can imagine, of course. While the 76'ers were incredibly missing 12 of 30 foul shots, the Nuggets were lucky beyond comprehension as they made 24 of 25 free throws and 15 of 31 threes. Almost no one ever makes those numbers and percentages in combination on either free throws or threes. It is essentially unheard of for a team to make those in both categories in the same game. It's like the 76'ers lost due to a bizarre mathematical fluke.

How many good offensive players did the Nuggets have out there? One, which is what you would expect from a cheap team: J.R. Smith. Two if you count Billups and that is still cheap, sorry.

The Nuggets turned the ball over 22 times versus 16 times for the 76'ers. The 76'ers shot .494 from the field versus .434 for the Nuggets. In at least 97 out of 100 games, those two things alone would guarantee the 76'ers the win. But for some bizarre reason, they could not make free throws. Meanwhile, the Nuggets could not miss free throws.

Honestly, I think this was one of the cheapest wins ever achieved by one of the cheapest franchises of recent years.

Oh well, the harder they come, the harder they fall. Now, I will not be fully satisfied until the Nuggets lose 4-0 in the playoffs next April. The idea that the Nuggets could win a playoff series in this state remains ridiculous and you are wearing huge made in Colorado rose colored glasses if you think the Nuggets are going to get home court advantage or win more than a game in the playoffs. And, as I said, I am really, really rooting for the Nuggets to lose all 4 now.
___________________________________________
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.

Posted by The Quest for the Ring at 3:43 PM

Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players: Nuggets 105, 76'ers 101 in Denver Dec. 26 2008

REAL PLAYER RATINGS (QUALITY) FOR THIS GAME
PHILADELPHIA 76'ERS QUALITY
Andre Iguodala, SG 0.840
Andre Miller, PG 0.832
Marreese Speights, PF 0.761
Willie Green, SG 0.661
Lou Williams, SG 0.622
Royal Ivey, PG 0.561
Thaddeus Young, SF 0.385
Samuel Dalembert, C 0.384
Reggie Evans, PF 0.346

DENVER NUGGETS QUALITY
Chauncey Billups, PG 1.016
Chucky Atkins, PG 0.718
J.R. Smith, SG 0.640
Nene, C 0.597
Dahntay Jones, SG 0.474
Kenyon Martin, PF 0.456
Anthony Carter, PG 0.418
Chris Andersen, PF 0.331
Linas Kleiza, SF 0.294
Renaldo Balkman, SF -0.029

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 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
PHILADELPHIA 76'ERS QUANTITY
Andre Iguodala, SG 38.65
Andre Miller, PG 32.45
Lou Williams, SG 16.80
Willie Green, SG 14.55
Marreese Speights, PF 13.70
Thaddeus Young, SF 11.55
Samuel Dalembert, C 10.75
Royal Ivey, PG 5.05
Reggie Evans, PF 4.85

DENVER NUGGETS QUANTITY
Chauncey Billups, PG 40.65
J.R. Smith, SG 23.05
Nene, C 19.70
Kenyon Martin, PF 15.95
Chucky Atkins, PG 10.05
Dahntay Jones, SG 9.00
Anthony Carter, PG 8.35
Linas Kleiza, SF 7.05
Chris Andersen, PF 4.30
Renaldo Balkman, SF -0.20

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








PHILADELPHIA 76'ERS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Star during minutes on the court: Andre Igoudala
Star during minutes on the court: Andre Miller
Star during minutes on the court: Marreese Speights








DENVER NUGGETS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Superstar during minutes on the court: Chauncey Billups
Very Good during minutes on the court: J.R. Smith
Very Good during minutes on the court: Nene

THE GREATEST POWER PERFORMERS OF THIS GAME








PHILADELPHIA 76'ERS POWER PERFORMERS
Massive and Memorable Game: Andre Igoudala
Very Big Game: Andre Miller








DENVER NUGGETS POWER PERFORMERS
Only Some Players can Ever Fly This High, and Not Very Often: Chauncey Billups
Big Game: J.R. Smith

USER GUIDE FOR THIS TYPE OF REPORT
ULTIMATE GAME BREAKDOWN--PLAYERS REPORT EXPLAINED(Last edited Dec. 8, 2008)

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.

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!

EDITING AND PUBLISHING PLAN-MAIN DETAILS (Last Edited Dec. 21, 2008)
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.

DECEMBER 16 EDITING CHANGES

As of December 16, two very important changes were made in the editing plan. These changes are most likely the finishing touches for a plan which has gone through many developmental phases during 2008, and now is ready to be the operational plan for 2009 and for hopefully many years thereafter. We went from complete chaos to a finely tuned editing plan ready for prime time. It took many, many hours of work and iterations.

First, the tight tie-in between Fast Breaks and Game/Team/League Reports (GTLRs) was relaxed. For several months, the evolving editing plan was envisioning that all Fast Breaks would be incorporated in full in ensuing GTLRs. The new plan is that some of the Fast Breaks will stand on their own.

In conjunction with this change, it was necessary to adobt a new production measurement system. We decided to use number of words for this. The word count tool in Microsoft Word makes this feasible. Despite this change, the majority and probably the great majority of Fast Breaks will still be picked up, expanded upon, and improved to some extent in ensuing GTLRs.

An implication of this change is that we are no longer going to be promising a specific number of GTLRs anymore. But we are now pledging to produce 20,000 words or more a month during the NBA season. And we are still going to be pledging a specific number of statistical reports, such as Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players reports, Real Team Ratings reports, and various kinds of Real Player Ratings reports, and so forth.

The other big change is that GTLRs will no longer automatically cover the particular game they are tied to to any extent. Really good or important games will still be covered in detail. Other games will be covered briefly, as has been increasingly the case in recent months and years. The new change is that now, some games, usually near routs or routs where the larger issues being discussed in lieu of particular games played out, will hardly be mentioned at all.

When non-game topics are considered more deserving of the limited editorial space and time available, they will get the coverage instead of relatively lopsided particular games. Technically, within the editorial plan, all GTLRs will still be tied to individual games, all of which have been carefully chosen in advance to be the most important games for the team.

An implication of this change is that I will no longer automatically reference a game score in GTLR titles. If there is a score in a title, it means that the game will be covered in some detail. If there is no score in the title, it means the report will be one that skips the individual game and goes into topics that are broader than any particular game.

Posted by The Quest for the Ring at 3:23 PM

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Fast Break: Top Reasons Why the Nuggets Beat the TrailBlazers in Denver on Dec. 22

How in the world did the Nuggets win this game with no Carmelo Anthony (and no Reynaldo Balkman, laugh out loud)?

Just as the NBA playoffs are a different, more intense world than the regular season (unfortunately for these Nuggets) the NBA regular season is a different, more intense world than is college basketball. Greg Oden, due to a major injury, did not play a single game during what was supposed to be his rookie season last year. So he has still not finished making the adjustment from Ohio State to the NBA.

Portland chose him in the draft because they knew their biggest problem was interior defense and another big problem was a relative lack of interior scoring. Portland's guards are the opposite of Nuggets guards: they prefer to keep the passing, assisting, and good shooting game going over taking it to the hoop. Nuggets guards and Carmelo Anthony to boot have been ordered to overweight going to the hoop and foul hunting. Chauncey Billups is supposed to be the sum total of the passing game, and scoring from outside the paint has been relegated to the back burner to say the least.

But Oden is not really ready to full the Portland void in the paint yet due to last year's injury. (Some first round picks never fully adjust but this will almost certainly not be the case with Oden). So really, Portland is being hammered by the Oden injury again this year.

Everything I just pointed out explains why the TrailBlazers lost this game: they lost the game first and foremost because Oden is still playing his very first NBA games and without Oden at full speed, the TrailBlazers are still a bad inside team on both sides of the ball. They are especially vulnerable to the Nuggets in the state they are in, since the Nuggets seem to think that basketball outside the paint does not have much significance. So everything important the Nuggets do is in or very near the paint and if your team is bad there, the Nuggets will clean up on you there.

The most blatant example of how Oden has not adjusted to the NBA yet is that he seems to be in almost constant foul trouble. And he is not getting his share of easy scores yet.

But by April, if the TrailBlazers have any luck, Oden will be largely adjusted and they will be less vulnerable to being badly damaged in the paint.

Aside from this, the number two reason the Nuggets won would be that they used a high level strategy when they doubled/harassed Brandon Roy during the game. Whereas the Blazers did not do enough of that on Billups.
____________________________________________
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.

Posted by The Quest for the Ring at 3:17 AM

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players: Nuggets 97 TrailBlazers 89 in Denver Dec. 22 2008

REAL PLAYER RATINGS (QUALITY) FOR THIS GAME
PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS QUALITY
Greg Oden, C 0.773
LaMarcus Aldridge, PF 0.728
Joel Przybilla, C 0.652
Travis Outlaw, SF 0.641
Steve Blake, PG 0.563
Rudy Fernandez, SG 0.547
Brandon Roy, SG 0.483
Nicolas Batum, SF 0.058
Ike Diogu, PF -0.072

DENVER NUGGETS QUALITY
Nene, C 0.831
Chris Andersen, PF 0.812
Chauncey Billups, PG 0.789
J.R. Smith, SG 0.714
Linas Kleiza, SF 0.620
Kenyon Martin, PF 0.585
Anthony Carter, PG 0.509
Chucky Atkins, PG 0.239
Dahntay Jones, SG 0.203

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 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 28.40
Steve Blake, PG 22.50
Travis Outlaw, SF 20.50
Greg Oden, C 17.00
Brandon Roy, SG 15.45
Joel Przybilla, C 14.35
Rudy Fernandez, SG 9.85
Nicolas Batum, SF 0.75
Ike Diogu, PF -0.65

DENVER NUGGETS QUANTITY
Chauncey Billups, PG 33.15
Nene, C 32.40
J.R. Smith, SG 22.85
Kenyon Martin, PF 21.05
Linas Kleiza, SF 17.35
Chris Andersen, PF 17.05
Anthony Carter, PG 8.65
Dahntay Jones, SG 3.25
Chucky Atkins, PG 2.15

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








PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Star during minutes on the court: Greg Oden
Star during minutes on the court: LaMarcus Aldridge
Very Good during minutes on the court: Joel Przybilla
Very Good during minutes on the court: Travis Outlaw








DENVER NUGGETS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Star during minutes on the court: Nene
Star during minutes on the court: Chris Andersen
Star during minutes on the court: Chauncey Billups
Very Good during minutes on the court: J.R. Smith
Very Good during minutes on the court: Kenyon Martin

THE GREATEST POWER PERFORMERS OF THIS GAME








PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS POWER PERFORMERS
Very Big Game: LaMarcus Aldridge
Very Big Game: Travis Outlaw








DENVER NUGGETS POWER PERFORMERS
Huge Game: Chauncey Billups
Huge Game: Nene
Big Game: Chris Andersen

USER GUIDE FOR THIS TYPE OF REPORT
ULTIMATE GAME BREAKDOWN--PLAYERS REPORT EXPLAINED(Last edited Dec. 8, 2008)

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.

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!

EDITING AND PUBLISHING PLAN-MAIN DETAILS (Last Edited Dec. 21, 2008)
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.

DECEMBER 16 EDITING CHANGES

As of December 16, two very important changes were made in the editing plan. These changes are most likely the finishing touches for a plan which has gone through many developmental phases during 2008, and now is ready to be the operational plan for 2009 and for hopefully many years thereafter. We went from complete chaos to a finely tuned editing plan ready for prime time. It took many, many hours of work and iterations.

First, the tight tie-in between Fast Breaks and Game/Team/League Reports (GTLRs) was relaxed. For several months, the evolving editing plan was envisioning that all Fast Breaks would be incorporated in full in ensuing GTLRs. The new plan is that some of the Fast Breaks will stand on their own.

In conjunction with this change, it was necessary to adobt a new production measurement system. We decided to use number of words for this. The word count tool in Microsoft Word makes this feasible. Despite this change, the majority and probably the great majority of Fast Breaks will still be picked up, expanded upon, and improved to some extent in ensuing GTLRs.

An implication of this change is that we are no longer going to be promising a specific number of GTLRs anymore. But we are now pledging to produce 20,000 words or more a month during the NBA season. And we are still going to be pledging a specific number of statistical reports, such as Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players reports, Real Team Ratings reports, and various kinds of Real Player Ratings reports, and so forth.

The other big change is that GTLRs will no longer automatically cover the particular game they are tied to to any extent. Really good or important games will still be covered in detail. Other games will be covered briefly, as has been increasingly the case in recent months and years. The new change is that now, some games, usually near routs or routs where the larger issues being discussed in lieu of particular games played out, will hardly be mentioned at all.

When non-game topics are considered more deserving of the limited editorial space and time available, they will get the coverage instead of relatively lopsided particular games. Technically, within the editorial plan, all GTLRs will still be tied to individual games, all of which have been carefully chosen in advance to be the most important games for the team.

An implication of this change is that I will no longer automatically reference a game score in GTLR titles. If there is a score in a title, it means that the game will be covered in some detail. If there is no score in the title, it means the report will be one that skips the individual game and goes into topics that are broader than any particular game.

Posted by The Quest for the Ring at 8:02 PM

Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players: Cavaliers 105 Nuggets 88 in Denver Dec. 19 2008

REAL PLAYER RATINGS (QUALITY) FOR THIS GAME
CLEVELAND CAVALIERS QUALITY
LeBron James, SF 1.167
Zydrunas Ilgauskas, C 1.068
Delonte West, SG 0.960
Ben Wallace, PF 0.602
Sasha Pavlovic, SG 0.412
Anderson Varejao, PF 0.389
Mo Williams, PG 0.290
Wally Szczerbiak, SG 0.220

DENVER NUGGETS QUALITY
Chris Andersen, PF 0.908
Chauncey Billups, PG 0.702
J.R. Smith, SG 0.632
Anthony Carter, PG 0.602
Linas Kleiza, SF 0.466
Kenyon Martin, PF 0.230
Dahntay Jones, SG 0.147
Carmelo Anthony, SF 0.029
Nene, C -0.046

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 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
CLEVELAND CAVALIERS QUANTITY
LeBron James, SF 45.50
Delonte West, SG 32.65
Zydrunas Ilgauskas, C 29.90
Ben Wallace, PF 13.85
Anderson Varejao, PF 10.90
Sasha Pavlovic, SG 10.70
Mo Williams, PG 10.15
Wally Szczerbiak, SG 4.40

DENVER NUGGETS QUANTITY
Chauncey Billups, PG 22.45
Chris Andersen, PF 21.80
J.R. Smith, SG 15.80
Anthony Carter, PG 12.65
Linas Kleiza, SF 11.65
Kenyon Martin, PF 6.90
Dahntay Jones, SG 2.80
Carmelo Anthony, SF 0.85
Nene, C -1.20

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








CLEVELAND CAVALIERS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Superstar during minutes on the court: LeBron James
Superstar during minutes on the court: Zydrunas Ilgauskas
Star during minutes on the court: Delonte West
Very Good during minutes on the court: Ben Wallace








DENVER NUGGETS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Star during minutes on the court: Chris Andersen
Very Good during minutes on the court: Chauncey Billups

THE GREATEST POWER PERFORMERS OF THIS GAME







CLEVELAND CAVALIERS POWER PERFORMERS
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High, and Not Very Often: LeBron James
Very Big Game: Delonte West
Very Big Game: Zydrunas Ilgauskas








DENVER NUGGETS POWER PERFORMERS
Very Big Game: Chris Andersen
Big Game: Chauncey Billups

USER GUIDE FOR THIS TYPE OF REPORT
ULTIMATE GAME BREAKDOWN--PLAYERS REPORT EXPLAINED(Last edited Dec. 8, 2008)

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.

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!

EDITING AND PUBLISHING PLAN-MAIN DETAILS (Last Edited Dec. 21, 2008)
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.

DECEMBER 16 EDITING CHANGES

As of December 16, two very important changes were made in the editing plan. These changes are most likely the finishing touches for a plan which has gone through many developmental phases during 2008, and now is ready to be the operational plan for 2009 and for hopefully many years thereafter. We went from complete chaos to a finely tuned editing plan ready for prime time. It took many, many hours of work and iterations.

First, the tight tie-in between Fast Breaks and Game/Team/League Reports (GTLRs) was relaxed. For several months, the evolving editing plan was envisioning that all Fast Breaks would be incorporated in full in ensuing GTLRs. The new plan is that some of the Fast Breaks will stand on their own.

In conjunction with this change, it was necessary to adobt a new production measurement system. We decided to use number of words for this. The word count tool in Microsoft Word makes this feasible. Despite this change, the majority and probably the great majority of Fast Breaks will still be picked up, expanded upon, and improved to some extent in ensuing GTLRs.

An implication of this change is that we are no longer going to be promising a specific number of GTLRs anymore. But we are now pledging to produce 20,000 words or more a month during the NBA season. And we are still going to be pledging a specific number of statistical reports, such as Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players reports, Real Team Ratings reports, and various kinds of Real Player Ratings reports, and so forth.

The other big change is that GTLRs will no longer automatically cover the particular game they are tied to to any extent. Really good or important games will still be covered in detail. Other games will be covered briefly, as has been increasingly the case in recent months and years. The new change is that now, some games, usually near routs or routs where the larger issues being discussed in lieu of particular games played out, will hardly be mentioned at all.

When non-game topics are considered more deserving of the limited editorial space and time available, they will get the coverage instead of relatively lopsided particular games. Technically, within the editorial plan, all GTLRs will still be tied to individual games, all of which have been carefully chosen in advance to be the most important games for the team.

An implication of this change is that I will no longer automatically reference a game score in GTLR titles. If there is a score in a title, it means that the game will be covered in some detail. If there is no score in the title, it means the report will be one that skips the individual game and goes into topics that are broader than any particular game.

Posted by The Quest for the Ring at 6:58 PM

Monday, December 22, 2008

Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players: Rockets 108 Nuggets 96 in Houston Dec. 16, 2008

REAL PLAYER RATINGS (QUALITY) FOR THIS GAME
DENVER NUGGETS QUALITY
Linas Kleiza, SF 1.048
Chris Andersen, PF 0.935
Anthony Carter, PG 0.916
J.R. Smith, SG 0.689
Carmelo Anthony, SF 0.558
Kenyon Martin, PF 0.333
Nene, C 0.326
Chauncey Billups, PG 0.167
Dahntay Jones, SG -0.079

HOUSTON ROCKETS QUALITY
Tracy McGrady, SG 1.366
Yao Ming, C 1.108
Ron Artest, SF 0.893
Aaron Brooks, PG 0.673
Shane Battier, SF 0.524
Carl Landry, PF 0.346
Luis Scola, PF 0.340

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 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
Linas Kleiza, SF 22.00
J.R. Smith, SG 21.35
Carmelo Anthony, SF 21.20
Anthony Carter, PG 20.15
Chris Andersen, PF 15.90
Nene, C 11.40
Kenyon Martin, PF 8.65
Chauncey Billups, PG 5.85
Dahntay Jones, SG -1.10

DALLAS MAVERICKS QUANTITY
Tracy McGrady, SG 50.55
Yao Ming, C 41.00
Aaron Brooks, PG 28.25
Ron Artest, SF 25.90
Shane Battier, SF 17.80
Carl Landry, PF 8.30
Luis Scola, PF 8.50

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









DENVER NUGGETS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Superstar during minutes on the court: Linas Kleiza
Star during minutes on the court: Chris Andersen
Star during minutes on the court: Anthony Carter
Very Good during minutes on the court: J.R. Smith








HOUSTON ROCKETS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Superstar during minutes on the court: Tracy McGrady
Superstar during minutes on the court: Yao Ming
Star during minutes on the court: Ron Artest

THE GREATEST POWER PERFORMERS OF THIS GAME









DENVER NUGGETS POWER PERFORMERS
Very Big Game: Linas Kleiza
Big Game: J.R. Smith
Big Game: Anthony Carter
Big Game: Chris Andersen








HOUSTON ROCKETS POWER PERFORMERS
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High, and Not Very Often: Tracy McGrady
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High, and Not Very Often: Yao Ming
Huge Game: Ron Artest
Big Game: Aaron Brooks

USER GUIDE FOR THIS TYPE OF REPORT
ULTIMATE GAME BREAKDOWN--PLAYERS REPORT EXPLAINED(Last edited Dec. 8, 2008)

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.

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!

EDITING AND PUBLISHING PLAN-MAIN DETAILS (Last Edited Dec. 21, 2008)
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.

DECEMBER 16 EDITING CHANGES

As of December 16, two very important changes were made in the editing plan. These changes are most likely the finishing touches for a plan which has gone through many developmental phases during 2008, and now is ready to be the operational plan for 2009 and for hopefully many years thereafter. We went from complete chaos to a finely tuned editing plan ready for prime time. It took many, many hours of work and iterations.

First, the tight tie-in between Fast Breaks and Game/Team/League Reports (GTLRs) was relaxed. For several months, the evolving editing plan was envisioning that all Fast Breaks would be incorporated in full in ensuing GTLRs. The new plan is that some of the Fast Breaks will stand on their own.

In conjunction with this change, it was necessary to adobt a new production measurement system. We decided to use number of words for this. Despite this change, the majority and probably the great majority of Fast Breaks will still be picked up, expanded upon, and improved to some extent in ensuing GTLRs.

An implication of this change is that we are no longer going to be promising a specific number of GTLRs anymore. But we are now pledging to produce 20,000 words or more a month during the NBA season. And we are still going to be pledging a specific number of statistical reports, such as Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players reports, Real Team Ratings reports, and various kinds of Real Player Ratings reports, and so forth.

The other big change is that GTLRs will no longer automatically cover the particular game they are tied to to any extent. Really good or important games will still be covered in detail. Other games will be covered briefly, as has been increasingly the case in recent months and years. The new change is that now, some games, usually near routs or routs where the larger issues being discussed in lieu of particular games played out, will hardly be mentioned at all.

When non-game topics are considered more deserving of the limited editorial space and time available, they will get the coverage instead of relatively lopsided particular games. Technically, within the editorial plan, all GTLRs will still be tied to individual games, all of which have been carefully chosen in advance to be the most important games for the team.

An implication of this change is that I will no longer automatically reference a game score in GTLR titles. If there is a score in a title, it means that the game will be covered in some detail. If there is no score in the title, it means the report will be one that skips the individual game and goes into topics that are broader than any particular game.

Posted by The Quest for the Ring at 1:32 AM

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players: Jazz 120 Pistons 114, 2 OT in Detroit Dec. 19, 2008

REAL PLAYER RATINGS (QUALITY) FOR THIS GAME
UTAH JAZZ QUALITY
Deron Williams, PG 0.972
Ronnie Brewer, SG 0.878
Paul Millsap, PF 0.864
Mehmet Okur, C 0.810
Matt Harpring, SF 0.417
Andrei Kirilenko, SF 0.351
C.J. Miles, SF 0.235
Kyle Korver, SG 0.036
Ronnie Price, PG -0.064
Brevin Knight, PG -0.225

DETROIT PISTONS QUALITY
Allen Iverson, SG 0.900
Richard Hamilton, SG 0.764
Rasheed Wallace, C 0.757
Tayshaun Prince, SF 0.602
Rodney Stuckey, PG 0.528
Jason Maxiell, PF 0.513
Antonio McDyess, PF 0.222
Arron Afflalo, SG 0.200

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 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
UTAH JAZZ QUANTITY
Deron Williams, PG 44.70
Paul Millsap, PF 44.05
Mehmet Okur, C 38.90
Ronnie Brewer, SG 20.20
Andrei Kirilenko, SF 13.00
C.J. Miles, SF 4.00
Matt Harpring, SF 3.75
Kyle Korver, SG 1.25
Ronnie Price, PG -0.45
Brevin Knight, PG -2.70

DETROIT PISTONS QUANTITY
Allen Iverson, SG 48.60
Richard Hamilton, SG 35.90
Rasheed Wallace, C 26.50
Tayshaun Prince, SF 25.30
Rodney Stuckey, PG 16.90
Jason Maxiell, PF 8.20
Antonio McDyess, PF 7.55
Arron Afflalo, SG 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







UTAH JAZZ OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Star during minutes on the court: Deron Williams
Star during minutes on the court: Ronnie Brewer
Star during minutes on the court: Paul Milsap
Star during minutes on the court: Mehmet Okur








DETROIT PISTONS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Star during minutes on the court: Allen Iverson
Star during minutes on the court: Rasheed Wallace
Very Good during minutes on the court: Richard Hamilton
Very Good during minutes on the court: Tayshaun Prince

THE GREATEST POWER PERFORMERS OF THIS GAME







UTAH JAZZ POWER PERFORMERS
Only Some Players can Ever Fly This High, and Not Very Often: Deron Williams
Only Some Players can Ever Fly This High, and Not Very Often: Paul Milsap
Only Some Players can Ever Fly This High, and Not Very Often: Mehmet Okur








DETROIT PISTONS POWER PERFORMERS
Only Some Players can Ever Fly This High, and Not Very Often: Allen Iverson
Huge Game: Richard Hamilton
Very Big Game: Rasheed Wallace
Big Game: Tayshaun Prince

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!

Posted by The Quest for the Ring at 10:45 PM

Friday, December 19, 2008

Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players: Nuggets 98 Mavericks 88 in Dallas Dec. 15, 2008

REAL PLAYER RATINGS (QUALITY) FOR THIS GAME
DENVER NUGGETS QUALITY
J.R. Smith, SG 1.375
Chauncey Billups, PG 0.884
Nene, C 0.693
Kenyon Martin, PF 0.670
Carmelo Anthony, SF 0.549
Linas Kleiza, SF 0.456
Anthony Carter, PG 0.450
Dahntay Jones, SG 0.297
Chris Andersen, PF 0.181

DALLAS MAVERICKS QUALITY
Erick Dampier, C 0.728
Devean George, SF 0.722
Dirk Nowitzki, PF 0.694
Jose Juan Barea, PG 0.693
Jason Terry, PG 0.655
Josh Howard, SF 0.482
Brandon Bass, PF 0.350
Jason Kidd, PG 0.307
DeSagana Diop, C 0.075

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 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
J.R. Smith, SG 33.00
Chauncey Billups, PG 30.95
Kenyon Martin, PF 25.45
Nene, C 24.25
Carmelo Anthony, SF 18.65
Anthony Carter, PG 9.90
Linas Kleiza, SF 8.20
Dahntay Jones, SG 4.75
Chris Andersen, PF 3.25

DALLAS MAVERICKS QUANTITY
Dirk Nowitzki, PF 28.45
Jose Juan Barea, PG 23.55
Erick Dampier, C 21.10
Jason Terry, PG 20.30
Devean George, SF 19.50
Jason Kidd, PG 11.05
Josh Howard, SF 6.75
Brandon Bass, PF 6.30
DeSagana Diop, C 0.60

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









DENVER NUGGETS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Superstar during minutes on the court: J.R. Smith
Star during minutes on the court: Chauncey Billups
Very Good during minutes on the court: Nene
Very Good during minutes on the court: Kenyon Martin








MAVERICKS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Very Good during minutes on the court: Erick Dampier
Very Good during minutes on the court: Devean George
Very Good during minutes on the court: Dirk Nowitzki
Very Good during minutes on the court: Jose Juan Berea

THE GREATEST POWER PERFORMERS OF THIS GAME









DENVER NUGGETS POWER PERFORMERS
Only Some Players can Ever Fly This High: J.R. Smith
Massive and Memorable Game: Chauncey Billups
Big Game: Kenyon Martin
Big Game: Nene








DALLAS MAVERICKS POWER PERFORMERS
Very Big Game: Dirk Nowitzki

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!

Posted by The Quest for the Ring at 7:32 PM

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You may have something else in mind for a reward for linking to QFTR. If so, after linking to QFTR, feel free to e-mail QFTR at thequestforthering1. This is a gmail address, so you use @gmail.com after that address.
BASKETBALL FORUMS THAT ARE OPEN FOR CONTENT FROM ANYONE
Another place you can post links to QFTR Reports is at basketball forums. QFTR started out as a forum poster (and we wish we had the time to post at forums even now.)

As with everything else traffic varies widely from one forum to another. But basketball forums seem to have more staying power than basketball sites in general do.

Beware of "layered" sites. As far as we know, none of the following are layered sites, which are sites that allow contributions from the general public only in hard to find, low traffic areas, while the main areas are off limits for public input and are only for a chosen few. All of the following have at least some notable traffic, and all of them allow relatively equal and open participation. The order is from most recommended to least recommended, based on about half a dozen factors.

FORUMS THAT DO NOT USE TRADITIONAL FORUM TEMPLATES AKA OPEN POSTING SITES
Bleacher Report Open Posting Site
Armchair GM Open Posting Site

FORUMS THAT DO USE TRADITIONAL FORUM TEMPLATES
Inside Hoops NBA Forum
Real GM NBA and Team Forums
Pro Sports Daily NBA Forum
Hoops Hype NBA Forum
Sports Two NBA Forum
NBA Dimensions NBA Forum
NBA Boards NBA Forum
OTR Basketball Forums NBA Forum
Sporting News NBA Forum
KFFL NBA Forum

Notes: There may be a small number of newer forums not on this list (QFTR does not have the time for a full investigation here in 2012). Also, there were other forums when this list was first composed, but they were all very low traffic and low activity ones compared to the ones above. They may have much higher traffic now.

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ESPN NBA Message Board

TOP NBA SCORERS CHART 1 OF 3 >>> TOP VOLUME SCORERS in 2011-2012 (complete regular season)
Each year QFTR publishes Real Player Ratings for every player in the NBA who has played at least 300 minutes. Real Player Ratings are comprehensive player ratings that are very carefully designed and quality controlled. Starting in 2012, the Ratings are supplemented by seven per 36 minutes charts which show player performance in seven of the very most important performance measures, all of which are components of Real Player Ratings (but there are other components that go into Real Player Ratings). These charts are stationed on the home page at all times. This is most likely the only place on the Internet where this key player information is shown in this optimal way.

Here we have the top scorers of the NBA in 2011-2012 as indicated by points per 36 minutes playing time. This is "PTS" in the chart. The points and all other items shown in the chart other than the percentages and the minutes played are per 36 minutes, which is much smarter to use than per game numbers.

For this and all the other charts, a minimum of 300 minutes of playing time is required. A player must have scored at least 18 points per 36 minutes (which is 1 point every 2 minutes) to be shown here. Also, a minimum shooting percentage (field goal percentage) of .400 is required. Players with field goal (shooting) percentages of .399 or less are disqualified from being on this list of top scorers.

This is one of the seven "7/36 Charts". A short user guide for these is found in this Report.

Here now are how the top scorers in the NBA in 2011-2012 rated and ranked:

Player               Tm   MP   FG  FGA  3P 3PA  FT FTA ORB  DRB AST STL BLK TOV  PF  PTS  FG%  3P%  FT%
Kevin Durant        OKC 2546  9.1 18.3 1.9 4.9 6.1 7.1 0.6  6.9 3.3 1.2 1.1 3.5 1.9 26.2 .496 .387 .860
Kobe Bryant         LAL 2232  9.3 21.5 1.4 4.6 6.1 7.3 1.1  4.0 4.3 1.1 0.3 3.3 1.7 26.1 .430 .303 .845
LeBron James        MIA 2326  9.6 18.1 0.8 2.3 6.0 7.8 1.5  6.2 6.0 1.8 0.8 3.3 1.5 26.0 .531 .362 .771
Russell Westbrook   OKC 2331  8.9 19.6 1.0 3.0 5.3 6.4 1.5  3.2 5.6 1.7 0.3 3.7 2.3 24.1 .457 .316 .823
Kevin Love          MIN 2145  8.0 17.8 1.8 4.7 6.4 7.7 3.8  8.5 1.9 0.8 0.5 2.1 2.6 24.0 .448 .372 .824
Dwyane Wade         MIA 1625  9.2 18.5 0.3 1.2 5.2 6.6 1.6  3.6 5.0 1.8 1.4 2.9 2.4 24.0 .497 .268 .791
Carmelo Anthony     NYK 1876  8.5 19.7 1.3 3.9 5.7 7.0 1.7  4.9 3.8 1.2 0.5 2.8 3.0 23.9 .430 .335 .804
Dirk Nowitzki       DAL 2079  8.2 17.9 1.4 3.7 5.5 6.1 0.8  6.5 2.4 0.7 0.5 2.0 2.2 23.2 .457 .368 .896
Derrick Rose        CHI 1375  7.9 18.2 1.4 4.5 5.1 6.3 0.7  2.7 8.0 0.9 0.7 3.1 1.4 22.3 .435 .312 .812
Kyrie Irving        CLE 1558  8.1 17.3 1.7 4.2 4.0 4.5 1.0  3.4 6.4 1.2 0.5 3.7 2.5 21.8 .469 .399 .872
LaMarcus Aldridge   POR 1994  8.7 17.0 0.0 0.2 4.0 4.9 2.7  5.3 2.4 0.9 0.8 2.0 2.8 21.5 .512 .182 .814
Eric Gordon         NOH  310  7.3 16.3 1.2 4.6 5.7 7.5 0.2  2.7 3.6 1.5 0.5 2.8 2.3 21.5 .450 .250 .754
DeMarcus Cousins    SAC 1950  8.3 18.4 0.0 0.3 4.8 6.9 4.9  8.1 1.9 1.7 1.4 3.1 4.7 21.4 .448 .143 .702
Andrea Bargnani     TOR 1032  7.3 16.9 1.2 4.0 5.3 6.0 0.8  5.2 2.1 0.6 0.5 2.4 1.8 21.0 .432 .296 .873
Deron Williams      NJN 1999  7.0 17.3 2.1 6.2 4.6 5.5 0.4  2.9 8.7 1.2 0.4 3.9 2.2 20.8 .407 .336 .843
Blake Griffin       LAC 2392  8.4 15.4 0.0 0.2 3.7 7.0 3.3  7.5 3.2 0.8 0.7 2.3 3.3 20.6 .549 .125 .521
Tony Parker         SAS 1923  8.0 16.7 0.3 1.1 4.2 5.3 0.4  2.8 8.7 1.1 0.1 2.9 1.4 20.5 .480 .230 .799
Paul Pierce         BOS 2075  6.8 15.4 1.7 4.7 5.1 6.0 0.6  4.9 4.8 1.2 0.5 3.0 2.6 20.5 .443 .366 .852
Louis Williams      PHI 1682  6.8 16.7 1.8 4.9 5.1 6.2 0.6  2.7 4.7 1.1 0.4 1.5 1.9 20.5 .407 .362 .812
Al Jefferson        UTA 2075  9.0 18.2 0.0 0.1 2.4 3.1 2.3  7.8 2.3 0.8 1.8 1.1 2.7 20.3 .492 .250 .774
Player               Tm   MP   FG  FGA  3P 3PA  FT FTA ORB  DRB AST STL BLK TOV  PF  PTS  FG%  3P%  FT%
Danny Granger       IND 2062  6.8 16.4 2.1 5.6 4.4 5.1 1.4  4.0 1.9 1.1 0.7 1.9 2.5 20.2 .416 .381 .873
Monta Ellis         TOT 2120  7.6 17.7 1.1 3.4 3.7 4.7 0.3  3.1 5.9 1.4 0.3 3.0 2.3 20.1 .433 .308 .796
Manu Ginobili       SAS  792  6.8 13.0 2.4 5.7 4.0 4.6 0.8  4.5 6.9 1.1 0.5 2.9 2.5 20.0 .526 .413 .871
Tim Duncan          SAS 1634  8.0 16.1 0.0 0.1 3.8 5.5 2.4  9.0 2.9 0.8 1.9 2.1 2.2 19.7 .492 .000 .695
Jeremy Lin          NYK  940  6.5 14.7 0.9 2.9 5.6 7.0 0.7  3.4 8.3 2.1 0.3 4.8 3.0 19.6 .446 .320 .798
Chris Paul          LAC 2181  7.0 14.7 1.3 3.5 4.3 5.0 0.7  2.8 9.0 2.5 0.1 2.0 2.3 19.6 .478 .371 .861
Brandon Jennings    MIL 2331  7.2 17.3 2.0 6.0 3.0 3.7 0.8  2.7 5.6 1.6 0.3 2.3 1.8 19.5 .418 .332 .808
David Lee           GSW 2121  7.9 15.6 0.0 0.1 3.7 4.8 2.9  6.3 2.7 0.9 0.4 2.5 3.0 19.5 .503 .000 .782
Michael Redd        PHO  770  6.7 16.8 2.0 6.2 4.1 5.2 0.7  2.9 1.5 0.6 0.0 1.7 1.4 19.5 .400 .318 .793
Dwight Howard       ORL 2070  7.2 12.6 0.0 0.1 4.9 9.9 3.5 10.2 1.8 1.4 2.0 3.0 2.8 19.4 .573 .000 .491
Kevin Martin        HOU 1264  6.3 15.3 2.2 6.4 4.6 5.1 0.4  2.6 3.1 0.8 0.1 2.0 2.0 19.4 .413 .347 .894
Jordan Crawford     WAS 1753  7.2 17.9 1.6 5.6 3.3 4.2 0.9  2.5 3.9 1.2 0.1 2.9 2.3 19.3 .400 .289 .793
James Harden        OKC 1946  5.7 11.6 2.1 5.4 5.8 6.8 0.6  4.1 4.2 1.1 0.3 2.5 2.8 19.3 .491 .390 .846
Marcus Thornton     SAC 1780  7.1 16.2 2.2 6.3 2.9 3.3 1.7  2.1 2.0 1.4 0.2 1.7 2.2 19.3 .438 .345 .865
Josh Smith          ATL 2329  7.8 17.0 0.4 1.7 3.1 5.0 2.1  7.7 4.0 1.4 1.8 2.5 2.7 19.2 .458 .257 .630
Amare Stoudemire    NYK 1543  7.4 15.3 0.1 0.5 4.3 5.7 2.5  6.1 1.2 0.9 1.0 2.6 3.2 19.2 .483 .238 .765
Andrew Bynum        LAL 2112  7.6 13.6 0.0 0.1 4.0 5.8 3.3  8.8 1.4 0.5 2.0 2.6 1.8 19.1 .558 .200 .692
Joe Johnson         ATL 2127  7.2 15.8 2.1 5.4 2.7 3.1 0.9  2.8 3.9 0.8 0.2 2.0 1.3 19.1 .454 .388 .849
Stephen Curry       GSW  732  7.1 14.6 2.7 6.0 1.9 2.3 0.7  3.6 6.8 1.9 0.4 3.2 3.0 18.8 .490 .455 .809
Drew Gooden         MIL 1469  7.0 16.1 0.4 1.3 4.3 5.1 3.2  5.7 3.5 1.1 0.8 2.7 2.7 18.8 .437 .291 .846
Player               Tm   MP   FG  FGA  3P 3PA  FT FTA ORB  DRB AST STL BLK TOV  PF  PTS  FG%  3P%  FT%
Antawn Jamison      CLE 2151  7.0 17.5 1.5 4.5 3.1 4.5 2.1  4.8 2.2 0.9 0.7 1.5 2.7 18.7 .403 .341 .683
Al Harrington       DEN 1761  7.1 15.8 2.1 6.2 2.4 3.6 1.5  6.5 1.8 1.2 0.2 2.3 3.7 18.6 .446 .333 .676
Nikola Pekovic      MIN 1264  7.3 12.9 0.0 0.0 4.0 5.3 5.2  4.7 0.9 0.8 0.9 2.5 2.8 18.5 .564      .743
Klay Thompson       GSW 1608  7.1 16.1 2.5 6.0 1.8 2.0 0.5  3.1 3.0 1.1 0.4 2.3 3.5 18.5 .443 .414 .868
Leandro Barbosa     TOT 1382  7.1 16.6 1.7 4.4 2.6 3.2 0.9  2.5 2.5 1.5 0.2 2.4 3.5 18.4 .425 .382 .815
Chris Bosh          MIA 2007  7.0 14.5 0.2 0.6 4.1 5.0 1.7  6.4 1.8 0.9 0.8 2.1 2.3 18.4 .487 .286 .821
Gerald Green        NJN  781  7.1 14.8 2.0 5.1 2.3 3.0 0.7  4.3 1.6 1.3 0.8 2.5 3.7 18.4 .481 .391 .754
Carl Landry         NOH  999  6.6 13.0 0.0 0.1 5.3 6.6 2.8  4.9 1.4 0.5 0.4 2.3 3.2 18.4 .503 .000 .799
Carlos Boozer       CHI 1948  8.3 15.6 0.0 0.0 1.8 2.5 2.1  8.3 2.3 1.2 0.4 2.1 3.1 18.3 .532 .000 .693
Kevin Garnett       BOS 1864  7.6 15.0 0.1 0.2 3.1 3.7 1.3  8.3 3.4 1.1 1.2 2.1 2.7 18.3 .503 .333 .857
Rudy Gay            MEM 2422  7.2 15.9 0.8 2.6 3.1 3.9 1.9  4.3 2.2 1.4 0.8 2.4 2.1 18.3 .455 .312 .791
Nick Young          TOT 1729  6.6 16.3 2.1 5.9 3.0 3.5 0.6  2.1 1.2 0.9 0.4 1.7 2.9 18.3 .403 .365 .852
Paul Millsap        UTA 2100  7.3 14.8 0.1 0.5 3.5 4.4 3.1  6.6 2.6 2.0 0.9 1.9 3.8 18.2 .495 .226 .792
Jerryd Bayless      TOR  705  6.0 14.1 2.2 5.3 3.8 4.5 0.4  3.0 6.0 1.2 0.2 2.7 3.6 18.0 .424 .423 .852

TOP NBA SCORERS 2012 CHART 2 OF 3 >>> MOST EFFICIENT SCORERS in 2011-2012 (complete regular season)
Each year QFTR publishes Real Player Ratings for every player in the NBA who has played at least 300 minutes. Real Player Ratings are comprehensive player ratings that are very carefully designed and quality controlled. Starting in 2012, the Ratings are supplemented by seven per 36 minutes charts which show player performance in seven of the very most important performance measures, all of which are components of Real Player Ratings (but there are other components that go into Real Player Ratings). These charts are stationed on the home page at all times. This is most likely the only place on the Internet where this key player information is shown in this optimal way.

Here we have the most efficient scorers of the NBA in 2011-2012 as indicated by shooting percentage or in other words field goal percentage. This is "FG%" in the chart. All items shown in the chart other than the percentages and the minutes played are per 36 minutes, which is much smarter to use than per game numbers.

For this and all the other charts, a minimum of 300 minutes of playing time is required. To be on this chart, players had to have a shooting percentage of .500 or higher AND they have to have scored at least 9 points per 36 minutes.

This is one of the seven "7/36 Charts". A short user guide for these is found in this Report.

Here now are how the most efficient scorers in the NBA in 2011-2012 rated and ranked:
Player               Tm   MP   FG  FGA  3P 3PA  FT FTA ORB  DRB  AST STL BLK TOV  PF  PTS  FG%  3P%  FT%
Tyson Chandler      NYK 2061  4.2  6.2 0.0 0.0 3.8 5.5 3.7  7.0  1.0 1.0 1.6 1.8 3.2 12.2 .679 .000 .689
DeAndre Jordan      LAC 1798  4.1  6.5 0.0 0.0 1.5 2.8 4.0  6.9  0.3 0.6 2.7 1.5 3.8  9.7 .632 .000 .525
Tiago Splitter      SAS 1121  6.8 11.0 0.0 0.0 4.0 5.8 3.0  6.8  2.1 0.7 1.5 2.8 4.3 17.6 .618      .691
Brandan Wright      DAL  791  6.6 10.6 0.0 0.0 2.4 3.7 2.8  5.1  0.6 1.0 2.9 1.0 2.8 15.5 .618 .000 .634
Andris Biedrins     GSW  739  1.9  3.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.4 2.2  6.4  0.8 1.1 2.2 0.7 6.1  3.8 .609      .111
Kosta Koufos        DEN  792  5.2  8.7 0.0 0.0 1.5 2.5 4.3  7.4  0.7 1.1 1.9 1.5 4.4 12.0 .599      .600
Chris Wilcox        BOS  481  4.8  8.0 0.0 0.0 1.8 2.9 2.8  6.3  0.9 0.8 0.7 2.2 4.8 11.4 .598      .615
Nick Collison       OKC 1307  3.3  5.5 0.0 0.0 1.2 1.7 3.3  4.3  2.3 0.9 0.8 1.7 4.2  7.8 .597 .000 .710
Kenneth Faried      DEN 1037  6.3 10.7 0.0 0.0 3.8 5.7 4.9  7.3  1.2 1.2 1.6 1.9 4.0 16.4 .586      .665
Amir Johnson        TOR 1553  4.5  7.9 0.0 0.1 1.3 1.9 3.5  6.0  1.8 0.8 1.6 2.2 4.8 10.5 .576 .400 .690
Dwight Howard       ORL 2070  7.2 12.6 0.0 0.1 4.9 9.9 3.5 10.2  1.8 1.4 2.0 3.0 2.8 19.4 .573 .000 .491
Nikola Pekovic      MIN 1264  7.3 12.9 0.0 0.0 4.0 5.3 5.2  4.7  0.9 0.8 0.9 2.5 2.8 18.5 .564      .743
Joel Anthony        MIA 1349  2.3  4.1 0.0 0.0 1.3 1.9 2.7  4.0  0.2 1.0 2.2 1.2 3.4  5.8 .559      .690
Andrew Bynum        LAL 2112  7.6 13.6 0.0 0.1 4.0 5.8 3.3  8.8  1.4 0.5 2.0 2.6 1.8 19.1 .558 .200 .692
JaVale McGee        TOT 1535  7.2 12.9 0.0 0.0 1.8 3.9 3.8  7.4  0.7 0.8 3.1 2.0 3.9 16.2 .556      .461
Marcin Gortat       PHO 2114  7.3 13.1 0.0 0.0 2.8 4.3 3.2  8.1  1.0 0.8 1.7 1.5 2.4 17.3 .555 .000 .649
Al Horford          ATL  348  5.9 10.7 0.0 0.1 2.3 3.1 2.7  5.3  2.5 1.0 1.4 1.7 2.2 14.1 .553 .000 .733
Blake Griffin       LAC 2392  8.4 15.4 0.0 0.2 3.7 7.0 3.3  7.5  3.2 0.8 0.7 2.3 3.3 20.6 .549 .125 .521
Ryan Hollins        TOT  522  3.2  5.8 0.0 0.0 2.7 5.2 2.3  3.3  0.6 0.3 1.2 2.4 5.4  9.0 .548      .520
Chris Andersen      DEN  486  4.4  8.0 0.0 0.0 3.7 6.1 3.6  7.4  0.4 1.4 3.4 1.3 3.9 12.4 .546      .610
Player               Tm   MP   FG  FGA  3P 3PA  FT FTA ORB  DRB  AST STL BLK TOV  PF  PTS  FG%  3P%  FT%
Ian Mahinmi         DAL 1139  4.1  7.5 0.0 0.0 3.0 4.6 3.4  5.7  0.4 1.2 1.0 1.6 5.6 11.2 .546 .000 .639
Greg Stiemsma       BOS  766  3.1  5.7 0.0 0.0 1.4 1.9 2.3  6.1  1.3 1.7 4.0 1.6 6.8  7.6 .545      .707
Nene Hilario        TOT 1110  6.8 12.7 0.0 0.1 3.7 5.4 2.0  7.4  2.6 1.4 1.2 3.1 3.1 17.4 .537 .000 .673
Jan Vesely          WAS 1078  3.9  7.3 0.0 0.0 1.1 2.1 3.4  4.9  1.6 1.3 1.1 2.0 5.2  8.9 .537 .000 .532
Gustavo Ayon        NOH 1088  4.6  8.6 0.0 0.0 1.3 2.1 2.8  5.9  2.4 1.8 1.5 1.5 3.9 10.6 .536 .000 .619
Serge Ibaka         OKC 1792  5.3  9.8 0.0 0.1 1.6 2.4 3.9  6.1  0.6 0.7 4.8 1.6 3.6 12.1 .535 .333 .661
Jason Thompson      SAC 1657  5.1  9.6 0.0 0.0 2.4 3.9 3.6  6.0  1.7 0.9 1.0 1.5 3.2 12.7 .535 .000 .602
DeJuan Blair        SAS 1363  7.1 13.3 0.0 0.0 1.9 3.1 4.1  5.2  2.1 1.6 0.3 2.4 4.4 16.1 .534 .000 .613
Emeka Okafor        NOH  781  5.3  9.9 0.0 0.0 1.8 3.4 3.2  6.6  1.1 0.7 1.2 1.7 3.4 12.3 .533      .514
Carlos Boozer       CHI 1948  8.3 15.6 0.0 0.0 1.8 2.5 2.1  8.3  2.3 1.2 0.4 2.1 3.1 18.3 .532 .000 .693
Steve Nash          PHO 1961  5.4 10.2 1.0 2.6 2.3 2.6 0.5  2.9 12.2 0.7 0.1 4.2 1.0 14.2 .532 .390 .894
Trevor Booker       WAS 1261  5.2  9.7 0.0 0.1 1.6 2.7 3.4  5.9  1.1 1.4 1.2 1.7 3.9 12.0 .531 .500 .602
LeBron James        MIA 2326  9.6 18.1 0.8 2.3 6.0 7.8 1.5  6.2  6.0 1.8 0.8 3.3 1.5 26.0 .531 .362 .771
Kevin Seraphin      WAS 1176  6.2 11.7 0.0 0.0 1.4 2.1 3.2  5.4  1.0 0.6 2.3 2.0 4.1 13.9 .531 .000 .671
Semih Erden         CLE  333  4.2  8.0 0.0 0.0 2.3 4.4 2.2  5.6  1.0 1.1 0.5 1.7 6.5 10.7 .527      .512
Manu Ginobili       SAS  792  6.8 13.0 2.4 5.7 4.0 4.6 0.8  4.5  6.9 1.1 0.5 2.9 2.5 20.0 .526 .413 .871
Timofey Mozgov      DEN  687  5.2 10.0 0.0 0.0 2.0 3.0 2.8  6.6  1.2 0.8 2.2 2.8 4.5 12.5 .526      .684
Greg Monroe         DET 2082  7.0 13.5 0.0 0.0 3.5 4.7 4.1  6.9  2.6 1.4 0.8 2.8 3.1 17.6 .521 .000 .739
Jason Smith         NOH  947  6.9 13.2 0.0 0.3 1.3 1.8 2.7  4.7  1.3 0.8 1.6 1.5 3.9 15.1 .520 .111 .702
Derrick Brown       CHA 1443  5.3 10.2 0.1 0.6 2.3 3.5 2.4  3.5  1.7 1.2 0.3 1.4 2.4 13.1 .518 .250 .667
Player               Tm   MP   FG  FGA  3P 3PA  FT FTA ORB  DRB  AST STL BLK TOV  PF  PTS  FG%  3P%  FT%
Brendan Haywood     DAL 1146  3.7  7.2 0.0 0.0 1.4 3.0 4.4  5.8  0.6 0.8 1.7 1.4 3.8  8.8 .518      .469
Dante Cunningham    MEM 1124  4.6  8.9 0.0 0.1 1.4 2.2 2.9  5.0  1.2 1.3 1.1 0.9 3.1 10.7 .516 .000 .652
Aaron Gray          TOR  813  3.7  7.1 0.0 0.0 1.1 2.1 3.7  8.8  1.2 1.0 0.8 2.3 5.6  8.5 .516      .532
Anderson Varejao    CLE  785  5.2 10.2 0.0 0.2 2.0 2.9 5.0  8.2  2.0 1.6 0.8 2.1 2.8 12.4 .514 .000 .672
Ed Davis            TOR 1534  4.0  7.9 0.0 0.0 1.7 2.5 3.1  7.1  1.4 0.9 1.5 1.6 3.7  9.7 .513 .000 .670
Ivan Johnson        ATL  934  5.4 10.6 0.1 0.2 2.8 3.9 2.5  6.2  1.2 1.7 0.7 2.7 4.5 13.7 .513 .333 .720
LaMarcus Aldridge   POR 1994  8.7 17.0 0.0 0.2 4.0 4.9 2.7  5.3  2.4 0.9 0.8 2.0 2.8 21.5 .512 .182 .814
Luc Mbah a Moute    MIL 1009  4.7  9.3 0.0 0.1 2.4 3.7 2.7  5.4  1.0 1.4 0.8 1.4 3.3 11.9 .510 .250 .641
Jon Leuer           MIL  555  6.3 12.4 0.2 0.6 1.4 1.8 2.9  4.9  1.6 0.9 1.1 1.2 4.3 14.1 .508 .333 .750
Joakim Noah         CHI 1945  4.6  9.1 0.0 0.0 2.9 3.8 4.5  7.2  3.0 0.8 1.7 1.7 3.0 12.1 .508 .000 .748
Jordan Williams     NJN  635  4.4  8.6 0.0 0.0 2.4 3.7 3.7  5.1  0.6 1.2 0.9 1.3 3.5 11.2 .507      .652
Thaddeus Young      PHI 1755  7.1 14.1 0.0 0.1 2.3 3.0 2.8  3.9  1.5 1.3 0.8 1.1 2.6 16.6 .507 .250 .771
Omer Asik           CHI  971  2.9  5.8 0.0 0.0 1.7 3.8 4.7  8.3  1.2 1.1 2.5 2.5 4.5  7.6 .506      .456
Samuel Dalembert    HOU 1446  5.0  9.8 0.0 0.0 2.2 2.8 3.9  7.4  0.8 0.9 2.8 2.0 4.0 12.2 .506 .000 .796
Craig Smith         POR  464  4.6  9.1 0.0 0.1 2.9 4.1 2.6  6.0  1.5 1.2 0.4 1.9 4.3 12.1 .504 .000 .717
Kevin Garnett       BOS 1864  7.6 15.0 0.1 0.2 3.1 3.7 1.3  8.3  3.4 1.1 1.2 2.1 2.7 18.3 .503 .333 .857
Carl Landry         NOH  999  6.6 13.0 0.0 0.1 5.3 6.6 2.8  4.9  1.4 0.5 0.4 2.3 3.2 18.4 .503 .000 .799
David Lee           GSW 2121  7.9 15.6 0.0 0.1 3.7 4.8 2.9  6.3  2.7 0.9 0.4 2.5 3.0 19.5 .503 .000 .782
Pau Gasol           LAL 2430  6.8 13.6 0.1 0.4 3.0 3.9 2.7  7.3  3.5 0.5 1.3 2.1 1.9 16.7 .501 .259 .782
Brandon Rush        GSW 1717  4.9  9.8 2.1 4.6 1.4 1.7 0.7  4.6  1.8 0.7 1.2 1.4 1.3 13.3 .501 .452 .793

TOP NBA SCORERS CHART 3 OF 3 >>> BEST THREE-POINT SCORERS in 2011-2012 (complete regular season)
Each year QFTR publishes Real Player Ratings for every player in the NBA who has played at least 300 minutes. Real Player Ratings are comprehensive player ratings that are very carefully designed and quality controlled. Starting in 2012, the Ratings are supplemented by seven per 36 minutes charts which show player performance in seven of the very most important performance measures, all of which are components of Real Player Ratings (but there are other components that go into Real Player Ratings). These charts are stationed on the home page at all times. This is most likely the only place on the Internet where this key player information is shown in this optimal way.

Here we have the best 3-point scorers of the NBA in 2011-2012 as indicated by 3-point shooting percentage. This is "3P%" in the chart. All items shown in the chart other than the percentages and the minutes played are per 36 minutes, which is much smarter to use than per game numbers.

For this and all the other charts, a minimum of 300 minutes of playing time is required. Players who make at least 2.2 three-point shots per 36 minutes and who have at least a .300 (30%) three-point shot shooting percentage are the only ones qualified to be on this list.

This is one of the seven "7/36 Charts". A short user guide for these is found in this Report.

Here now are how the best 3-point scorers in the NBA in 2011-2012 rated and ranked:

Player                 Tm   MP   FG  FGA  3P  3PA  FT FTA ORB DRB AST STL BLK TOV  PF  PTS  FG%  3P%  FT%
Steve Novak           NYK 1020  5.7 11.9 4.7 10.0 0.8 0.9 0.3 3.4 0.4 0.6 0.3 0.7 2.1 16.8 .478 .472 .846
Stephen Curry         GSW  732  7.1 14.6 2.7  6.0 1.9 2.3 0.7 3.6 6.8 1.9 0.4 3.2 3.0 18.8 .490 .455 .809
Ray Allen             BOS 1565  5.2 11.3 2.4  5.4 2.2 2.4 0.3 2.9 2.5 1.1 0.2 1.6 1.9 15.1 .458 .453 .915
Mike Miller           MIA  752  4.4 10.0 2.5  5.6 0.1 0.2 1.1 5.1 2.0 0.7 0.3 1.4 2.8 11.3 .435 .453 .400
Jordan Farmar         NJN  831  6.4 13.6 2.4  5.4 2.5 2.7 0.3 2.3 5.6 1.0 0.1 2.9 2.1 17.6 .467 .440 .905
Danny Green           SAS 1522  5.0 11.3 2.4  5.5 1.9 2.4 1.3 4.1 2.0 1.4 1.1 1.6 2.5 14.3 .442 .436 .790
Kyle Korver           CHI 1469  4.4 10.1 2.9  6.6 1.3 1.6 0.6 3.3 2.7 0.9 0.4 1.3 2.7 13.0 .432 .435 .833
Luke Babbitt          POR  537  4.8 11.6 2.9  6.7 1.1 1.3 1.1 5.3 1.1 0.7 0.3 1.8 3.1 13.5 .410 .430 .850
Jerryd Bayless        TOR  705  6.0 14.1 2.2  5.3 3.8 4.5 0.4 3.0 6.0 1.2 0.2 2.7 3.6 18.0 .424 .423 .852
Matt Bonner           SAS 1326  4.2  9.5 2.9  6.8 0.4 0.6 0.8 5.0 1.7 0.4 0.6 0.4 1.8 11.6 .440 .420 .762
Richard Jefferson     TOT 1748  4.2 10.1 2.3  5.5 1.2 1.8 0.5 4.0 1.8 0.8 0.4 1.0 2.5 11.9 .416 .420 .694
Gary Neal             SAS 1206  6.3 14.5 2.5  5.9 1.5 1.9 0.4 3.2 3.5 0.8 0.1 1.8 2.2 16.6 .436 .419 .781
J.J. Redick           ORL 1765  5.1 11.9 2.3  5.5 2.9 3.2 0.4 2.7 3.3 0.6 0.1 1.4 1.9 15.3 .425 .418 .911
Klay Thompson         GSW 1608  7.1 16.1 2.5  6.0 1.8 2.0 0.5 3.1 3.0 1.1 0.4 2.3 3.5 18.5 .443 .414 .868
Manu Ginobili         SAS  792  6.8 13.0 2.4  5.7 4.0 4.6 0.8 4.5 6.9 1.1 0.5 2.9 2.5 20.0 .526 .413 .871
James Jones           MIA  666  3.1  8.1 2.5  6.2 1.4 1.6 0.3 2.3 1.0 0.9 0.5 0.5 2.4 10.0 .380 .404 .833
Chase Budinger        HOU 1298  5.8 13.1 2.4  6.1 1.5 1.9 1.1 5.0 2.1 0.8 0.2 1.5 1.8 15.5 .442 .402 .771
Ryan Anderson         ORL 1964  6.1 13.9 3.0  7.7 2.7 3.1 4.1 4.5 1.0 0.9 0.5 1.0 2.7 18.0 .439 .393 .877
John Lucas            CHI  726  7.1 17.8 2.7  6.9 1.4 1.6 1.1 2.7 5.4 0.9 0.0 2.1 2.1 18.3 .399 .393 .875
Mo Williams           LAC 1472  6.4 14.9 2.3  5.8 1.8 2.0 0.6 1.9 3.9 1.2 0.2 2.1 2.5 16.8 .426 .389 .900
Player                 Tm   MP   FG  FGA  3P  3PA  FT FTA ORB DRB AST STL BLK TOV  PF  PTS  FG%  3P%  FT%
Cartier Martin        WAS  391  5.4 12.3 2.7  6.9 1.0 1.7 1.1 4.2 0.9 1.0 0.2 1.2 3.2 14.5 .440 .387 .579
Randy Foye            LAC 1682  5.5 13.8 2.7  7.0 1.6 1.8 0.5 2.4 3.1 1.0 0.5 1.6 2.8 15.2 .398 .386 .859
Chauncey Billups      LAC  607  4.9 13.5 2.8  7.4 5.0 5.6 0.2 2.7 4.7 0.5 0.2 2.3 2.4 17.7 .364 .384 .895
Jannero Pargo         ATL  671  5.6 13.6 2.8  7.4 1.0 1.1 0.5 3.4 5.2 1.1 0.1 2.6 3.4 15.1 .415 .384 .950
Roger Mason           WAS  697  5.3 13.3 3.0  8.0 1.1 1.4 0.4 3.2 2.4 0.7 0.3 1.7 1.7 14.8 .399 .383 .778
Jason Terry           DAL 2000  6.4 14.9 2.5  6.6 1.8 2.0 0.3 2.4 4.1 1.3 0.2 2.3 1.2 17.1 .430 .378 .883
Andrew Goudelock      LAL  419  5.8 14.9 2.4  6.4 0.9 1.0 0.4 2.2 1.7 0.3 0.0 1.8 2.7 15.0 .391 .373 .917
Anthony Morrow        NJN 1636  6.0 14.5 2.3  6.3 2.1 2.3 0.7 2.1 1.3 1.0 0.2 1.5 1.9 16.4 .413 .371 .933
Vladimir Radmanovic   ATL  755  3.5  9.4 2.4  6.4 1.0 1.4 1.6 5.2 2.6 1.0 0.7 1.7 3.0 10.5 .376 .370 .759
Jason Richardson      ORL 1591  5.5 13.5 2.3  6.3 0.9 1.6 0.8 3.6 2.4 1.2 0.5 1.4 2.1 14.2 .408 .368 .594
Jimmer Fredette       SAC 1135  5.5 14.1 2.5  6.9 1.3 1.5 0.5 1.8 3.4 1.0 0.1 2.1 2.3 14.7 .386 .361 .833
Dorell Wright         GSW 1650  4.8 11.5 2.3  6.4 1.7 2.1 1.3 4.8 2.1 1.3 0.6 1.1 2.1 13.7 .422 .360 .816
Kevin Martin          HOU 1264  6.3 15.3 2.2  6.4 4.6 5.1 0.4 2.6 3.1 0.8 0.1 2.0 2.0 19.4 .413 .347 .894
J.R. Smith            NYK  967  6.1 15.1 2.5  7.2 1.5 2.0 1.1 4.0 3.1 2.0 0.2 1.7 3.2 16.2 .407 .347 .709
Daequan Cook          OKC  989  4.0 10.8 2.9  8.3 0.5 0.8 0.4 4.0 0.5 0.8 0.4 0.6 2.5 11.3 .368 .346 .636
Mickael Pietrus       BOS  921  4.1 10.6 2.4  7.1 0.8 1.2 0.7 4.4 1.0 0.8 0.4 1.3 3.2 11.3 .385 .335 .645

Laugh Out Loud, George Karl: Have You Seen the News Lately?

Laugh Out Loud, George Karl: Have You Seen the News Lately?


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TOP NBA DEFENDERS CHART 1 OF 3 >>> TOP REBOUNDERS in 2011-2012 (complete regular season)
Each year QFTR publishes Real Player Ratings for every player in the NBA who has played at least 300 minutes. Real Player Ratings are comprehensive player ratings that are very carefully designed and quality controlled. Starting in 2012, the Ratings are supplemented by seven per 36 minutes charts which show player performance in seven of the very most important performance measures, all of which are components of Real Player Ratings (but there are other components that go into Real Player Ratings). These charts are stationed on the home page at all times. This is most likely the only place on the Internet where this key player information is shown in this optimal way.

Here we have the best defensive rebounders of the NBA in 2011-2012 as indicated by defensive rebounds per 36 minutes playing time. This is "DRB" in the chart. All items shown in the chart other than the percentages and the minutes played are per 36 minutes are per 36 minutes, which is much smarter to use than per game numbers.

For this and all the other charts, a minimum of 300 minutes of playing time is required. Only players who made at least 6.5 defensive rebounds per 36 minutes are shown here.

This is one of the seven "7/36 Charts". A short user guide for these is found in this Report.

Here now are how the best defensive rebounders in the NBA in 2011-2012 rated and ranked:
Player              Tm   MP   FG  FGA  3P 3PA  FT FTA ORB  DRB AST STL BLK TOV  PF  PTS  FG%  3P%  FT%
Dwight Howard      ORL 2070  7.2 12.6 0.0 0.1 4.9 9.9 3.5 10.2 1.8 1.4 2.0 3.0 2.8 19.4 .573 .000 .491
Marcus Camby       TOT 1352  3.4  7.6 0.1 0.1 0.8 1.7 4.2  9.9 2.8 1.3 2.3 1.5 3.4  7.6 .446 .400 .453
Tim Duncan         SAS 1634  8.0 16.1 0.0 0.1 3.8 5.5 2.4  9.0 2.9 0.8 1.9 2.1 2.2 19.7 .492 .000 .695
Andrew Bynum       LAL 2112  7.6 13.6 0.0 0.1 4.0 5.8 3.3  8.8 1.4 0.5 2.0 2.6 1.8 19.1 .558 .200 .692
Aaron Gray         TOR  813  3.7  7.1 0.0 0.0 1.1 2.1 3.7  8.8 1.2 1.0 0.8 2.3 5.6  8.5 .516      .532
Joel Przybilla     POR  449  1.8  3.8 0.0 0.0 0.9 1.4 2.3  8.7 0.5 0.3 1.3 1.8 5.3  4.4 .458      .611
Kevin Love         MIN 2145  8.0 17.8 1.8 4.7 6.4 7.7 3.8  8.5 1.9 0.8 0.5 2.1 2.6 24.0 .448 .372 .824
Jamaal Magloire    TOR  374  1.6  4.3 0.0 0.0 0.7 2.6 2.4  8.5 0.6 0.4 1.0 2.1 6.4  3.9 .378      .259
Omer Asik          CHI  971  2.9  5.8 0.0 0.0 1.7 3.8 4.7  8.3 1.2 1.1 2.5 2.5 4.5  7.6 .506      .456
Carlos Boozer      CHI 1948  8.3 15.6 0.0 0.0 1.8 2.5 2.1  8.3 2.3 1.2 0.4 2.1 3.1 18.3 .532 .000 .693
Kevin Garnett      BOS 1864  7.6 15.0 0.1 0.2 3.1 3.7 1.3  8.3 3.4 1.1 1.2 2.1 2.7 18.3 .503 .333 .857
Jordan Hill        TOT  551  5.4 10.8 0.0 0.2 2.0 3.1 4.0  8.2 1.0 0.9 1.8 2.0 4.6 12.7 .497 .000 .638
Anderson Varejao   CLE  785  5.2 10.2 0.0 0.2 2.0 2.9 5.0  8.2 2.0 1.6 0.8 2.1 2.8 12.4 .514 .000 .672
DeMarcus Cousins   SAC 1950  8.3 18.4 0.0 0.3 4.8 6.9 4.9  8.1 1.9 1.7 1.4 3.1 4.7 21.4 .448 .143 .702
Marcin Gortat      PHO 2114  7.3 13.1 0.0 0.0 2.8 4.3 3.2  8.1 1.0 0.8 1.7 1.5 2.4 17.3 .555 .000 .649
Reggie Evans       LAC  771  1.6  3.4 0.0 0.0 1.7 3.3 4.7  8.0 0.8 1.4 0.3 2.1 5.5  4.9 .472      .507
Udonis Haslem      MIA 1589  3.4  8.1 0.0 0.0 1.9 2.3 2.7  8.0 1.0 0.8 0.5 1.4 3.2  8.7 .423      .814
Al Jefferson       UTA 2075  9.0 18.2 0.0 0.1 2.4 3.1 2.3  7.8 2.3 0.8 1.8 1.1 2.7 20.3 .492 .250 .774
Andrew Bogut       MIL  364  6.0 13.5 0.0 0.1 1.4 2.3 2.2  7.7 3.1 1.2 2.4 2.4 3.6 13.5 .449 .000 .609
Josh Smith         ATL 2329  7.8 17.0 0.4 1.7 3.1 5.0 2.1  7.7 4.0 1.4 1.8 2.5 2.7 19.2 .458 .257 .630
Player              Tm   MP   FG  FGA  3P 3PA  FT FTA ORB  DRB AST STL BLK TOV  PF  PTS  FG%  3P%  FT%
Blake Griffin      LAC 2392  8.4 15.4 0.0 0.2 3.7 7.0 3.3  7.5 3.2 0.8 0.7 2.3 3.3 20.6 .549 .125 .521
Spencer Hawes      PHI  920  6.1 12.5 0.1 0.5 1.6 2.2 3.1  7.5 3.8 0.6 1.9 2.2 3.9 13.9 .489 .250 .727
Kris Humphries     NJN 2162  5.4 11.2 0.0 0.0 3.5 4.6 3.9  7.5 1.5 0.8 1.2 2.0 2.9 14.2 .481      .752
Chris Andersen     DEN  486  4.4  8.0 0.0 0.0 3.7 6.1 3.6  7.4 0.4 1.4 3.4 1.3 3.9 12.4 .546      .610
Samuel Dalembert   HOU 1446  5.0  9.8 0.0 0.0 2.2 2.8 3.9  7.4 0.8 0.9 2.8 2.0 4.0 12.2 .506 .000 .796
Nene Hilario       TOT 1110  6.8 12.7 0.0 0.1 3.7 5.4 2.0  7.4 2.6 1.4 1.2 3.1 3.1 17.4 .537 .000 .673
Kosta Koufos       DEN  792  5.2  8.7 0.0 0.0 1.5 2.5 4.3  7.4 0.7 1.1 1.9 1.5 4.4 12.0 .599      .600
JaVale McGee       TOT 1535  7.2 12.9 0.0 0.0 1.8 3.9 3.8  7.4 0.7 0.8 3.1 2.0 3.9 16.2 .556      .461
Kenneth Faried     DEN 1037  6.3 10.7 0.0 0.0 3.8 5.7 4.9  7.3 1.2 1.2 1.6 1.9 4.0 16.4 .586      .665
Pau Gasol          LAL 2430  6.8 13.6 0.1 0.4 3.0 3.9 2.7  7.3 3.5 0.5 1.3 2.1 1.9 16.7 .501 .259 .782
Evan Turner        PHI 1713  5.5 12.4 0.2 1.0 1.5 2.3 0.6  7.3 3.8 0.8 0.4 2.2 2.5 12.8 .446 .224 .676
Lavoy Allen        PHI  624  4.6  9.6 0.0 0.0 0.6 0.8 2.7  7.2 2.0 0.7 1.0 1.2 4.2  9.7 .473      .786
Ersan Ilyasova     MIL 1655  6.4 13.0 1.1 2.4 3.1 4.0 4.3  7.2 1.5 0.9 1.0 1.7 2.9 17.0 .492 .455 .781
Chris Kaman        NOH 1372  7.0 15.7 0.0 0.0 2.2 2.8 2.3  7.2 2.7 0.7 2.0 3.4 2.8 16.2 .446      .785
Joakim Noah        CHI 1945  4.6  9.1 0.0 0.0 2.9 3.8 4.5  7.2 3.0 0.8 1.7 1.7 3.0 12.1 .508 .000 .748
Zach Randolph      MEM  735  6.5 14.0 0.1 0.4 2.8 4.3 3.8  7.2 2.4 1.0 0.2 2.0 2.8 15.9 .463 .250 .659
Ed Davis           TOR 1534  4.0  7.9 0.0 0.0 1.7 2.5 3.1  7.1 1.4 0.9 1.5 1.6 3.7  9.7 .513 .000 .670
Tyson Chandler     NYK 2061  4.2  6.2 0.0 0.0 3.8 5.5 3.7  7.0 1.0 1.0 1.6 1.8 3.2 12.2 .679 .000 .689
Derrick Favors     UTA 1376  5.8 11.6 0.0 0.0 3.3 5.1 4.1  7.0 1.1 1.0 1.7 2.7 3.8 14.9 .499      .649
Marc Gasol         MEM 2370  5.4 11.2 0.0 0.2 3.6 4.8 1.8  7.0 3.1 0.9 1.8 1.8 3.1 14.5 .482 .083 .748
Player              Tm   MP   FG  FGA  3P 3PA  FT FTA ORB  DRB AST STL BLK TOV  PF  PTS  FG%  3P%  FT%
Enes Kanter        UTA  874  4.8  9.7 0.0 0.0 2.9 4.3 4.4  7.0 0.3 0.7 0.9 2.2 3.6 12.5 .496 .000 .667
Nikola Vucevic     PHI  812  5.8 12.9 0.1 0.4 0.8 1.5 3.9  7.0 1.4 0.9 1.5 1.5 4.9 12.5 .450 .375 .529
Kevin Durant       OKC 2546  9.1 18.3 1.9 4.9 6.1 7.1 0.6  6.9 3.3 1.2 1.1 3.5 1.9 26.2 .496 .387 .860
DeAndre Jordan     LAC 1798  4.1  6.5 0.0 0.0 1.5 2.8 4.0  6.9 0.3 0.6 2.7 1.5 3.8  9.7 .632 .000 .525
Greg Monroe        DET 2082  7.0 13.5 0.0 0.0 3.5 4.7 4.1  6.9 2.6 1.4 0.8 2.8 3.1 17.6 .521 .000 .739
Ben Wallace        DET  980  1.2  3.2 0.0 0.1 0.6 1.7 3.0  6.9 1.6 1.7 1.9 1.2 2.2  3.1 .395 .250 .340
Tiago Splitter     SAS 1121  6.8 11.0 0.0 0.0 4.0 5.8 3.0  6.8 2.1 0.7 1.5 2.8 4.3 17.6 .618      .691
Roy Hibbert        IND 1937  6.2 12.4 0.0 0.0 3.2 4.4 4.0  6.7 2.0 0.6 2.4 2.4 3.6 15.5 .497 .000 .711
Zaza Pachulia      ATL 1640  3.7  7.4 0.0 0.0 2.6 3.5 3.4  6.7 1.7 1.2 0.6 1.8 3.8 10.0 .499      .741
Kurt Thomas        POR  803  3.3  7.0 0.0 0.0 0.6 0.9 1.7  6.7 2.1 1.1 1.4 1.4 5.5  7.2 .465      .700
Channing Frye      PHO 1669  5.5 13.2 2.0 5.7 1.6 1.8 1.5  6.6 1.9 0.9 1.5 1.4 3.8 14.5 .416 .346 .890
Paul Millsap       UTA 2100  7.3 14.8 0.1 0.5 3.5 4.4 3.1  6.6 2.6 2.0 0.9 1.9 3.8 18.2 .495 .226 .792
Timofey Mozgov     DEN  687  5.2 10.0 0.0 0.0 2.0 3.0 2.8  6.6 1.2 0.8 2.2 2.8 4.5 12.5 .526      .684
Emeka Okafor       NOH  781  5.3  9.9 0.0 0.0 1.8 3.4 3.2  6.6 1.1 0.7 1.2 1.7 3.4 12.3 .533      .514
Al Harrington      DEN 1761  7.1 15.8 2.1 6.2 2.4 3.6 1.5  6.5 1.8 1.2 0.2 2.3 3.7 18.6 .446 .333 .676

TOP NBA DEFENDERS CHART 2 OF 3 >>> TOP BLOCKERS in 2011-2012 (complete regular season)
Each year QFTR publishes Real Player Ratings for every player in the NBA who has played at least 300 minutes. Real Player Ratings are comprehensive player ratings that are very carefully designed and quality controlled. Starting in 2012, the Ratings are supplemented by seven per 36 minutes charts which show player performance in seven of the very most important performance measures, all of which are components of Real Player Ratings (but there are other components that go into Real Player Ratings). These charts are stationed on the home page at all times. This is most likely the only place on the Internet where this key player information is shown in this optimal way.

Here we have the best (defensive) blockers of the NBA in 2011-2012 as indicated by blocks per 36 minutes playing time. This is "BLK" in the chart. All items shown in the chart other than the percentages and the minutes played are per 36 minutes, which is much smarter to use than per game numbers.

For this and all the other charts, a minimum of 300 minutes of playing time is required. Only players who made at least 1.5 blocks per 36 minutes are shown here.

This is one of the seven "7/36 Charts". A short user guide for these is found in this Report.

Here now are how the best blockers in the NBA in 2011-2012 rated and ranked:
Player              Tm   MP   FG  FGA  3P 3PA  FT FTA ORB  DRB AST STL BLK TOV  PF  PTS  FG%  3P%  FT%
Serge Ibaka        OKC 1792  5.3  9.8 0.0 0.1 1.6 2.4 3.9  6.1 0.6 0.7 4.8 1.6 3.6 12.1 .535 .333 .661
Larry Sanders      MIL  643  4.7 10.3 0.0 0.1 1.0 2.1 3.5  5.5 1.8 1.8 4.3 2.4 7.4 10.4 .457 .000 .474
Greg Stiemsma      BOS  766  3.1  5.7 0.0 0.0 1.4 1.9 2.3  6.1 1.3 1.7 4.0 1.6 6.8  7.6 .545      .707
Chris Andersen     DEN  486  4.4  8.0 0.0 0.0 3.7 6.1 3.6  7.4 0.4 1.4 3.4 1.3 3.9 12.4 .546      .610
JaVale McGee       TOT 1535  7.2 12.9 0.0 0.0 1.8 3.9 3.8  7.4 0.7 0.8 3.1 2.0 3.9 16.2 .556      .461
Brandan Wright     DAL  791  6.6 10.6 0.0 0.0 2.4 3.7 2.8  5.1 0.6 1.0 2.9 1.0 2.8 15.5 .618 .000 .634
Bismack Biyombo    CHA 1455  3.2  6.9 0.0 0.0 1.7 3.5 2.8  6.3 0.7 0.5 2.8 1.8 3.6  8.1 .464      .483
Samuel Dalembert   HOU 1446  5.0  9.8 0.0 0.0 2.2 2.8 3.9  7.4 0.8 0.9 2.8 2.0 4.0 12.2 .506 .000 .796
Ekpe Udoh          TOT 1290  3.5  8.2 0.0 0.1 2.4 3.2 2.8  4.3 1.6 1.1 2.8 1.5 4.9  9.5 .431 .000 .754
DeAndre Jordan     LAC 1798  4.1  6.5 0.0 0.0 1.5 2.8 4.0  6.9 0.3 0.6 2.7 1.5 3.8  9.7 .632 .000 .525
Jermaine ONeal     BOS  570  3.3  7.6 0.0 0.0 1.3 2.0 2.3  6.2 0.6 0.5 2.7 1.3 5.1  7.9 .433      .677
Omer Asik          CHI  971  2.9  5.8 0.0 0.0 1.7 3.8 4.7  8.3 1.2 1.1 2.5 2.5 4.5  7.6 .506      .456
Andrew Bogut       MIL  364  6.0 13.5 0.0 0.1 1.4 2.3 2.2  7.7 3.1 1.2 2.4 2.4 3.6 13.5 .449 .000 .609
Roy Hibbert        IND 1937  6.2 12.4 0.0 0.0 3.2 4.4 4.0  6.7 2.0 0.6 2.4 2.4 3.6 15.5 .497 .000 .711
Robin Lopez        PHO  895  5.0 10.8 0.0 0.0 4.0 5.6 3.6  4.8 0.8 0.7 2.4 1.7 5.1 14.0 .461      .714
Anthony Randolph   MIN  517  6.5 13.9 0.0 0.1 4.5 5.8 2.9  5.6 1.3 0.9 2.4 2.8 3.9 17.5 .470 .000 .762
Marcus Camby       TOT 1352  3.4  7.6 0.1 0.1 0.8 1.7 4.2  9.9 2.8 1.3 2.3 1.5 3.4  7.6 .446 .400 .453
Taj Gibson         CHI 1284  5.6 11.3 0.0 0.0 2.4 3.8 3.8  5.5 1.3 0.8 2.3 1.7 3.7 13.6 .495      .622
Kevin Seraphin     WAS 1176  6.2 11.7 0.0 0.0 1.4 2.1 3.2  5.4 1.0 0.6 2.3 2.0 4.1 13.9 .531 .000 .671
Joel Anthony       MIA 1349  2.3  4.1 0.0 0.0 1.3 1.9 2.7  4.0 0.2 1.0 2.2 1.2 3.4  5.8 .559      .690
Player              Tm   MP   FG  FGA  3P 3PA  FT FTA ORB  DRB AST STL BLK TOV  PF  PTS  FG%  3P%  FT%
Andris Biedrins    GSW  739  1.9  3.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.4 2.2  6.4 0.8 1.1 2.2 0.7 6.1  3.8 .609      .111
Timofey Mozgov     DEN  687  5.2 10.0 0.0 0.0 2.0 3.0 2.8  6.6 1.2 0.8 2.2 2.8 4.5 12.5 .526      .684
Louis Amundson     IND  753  4.3  9.9 0.0 0.0 1.7 3.9 4.5  6.1 0.7 1.3 2.1 2.2 6.0 10.2 .430      .427
Earl Clark         ORL  559  3.3  9.0 0.0 0.0 1.4 1.9 2.3  5.7 1.2 0.8 2.1 1.6 4.6  7.9 .367      .724
Tyrus Thomas       CHA 1013  4.3 11.6 0.0 0.1 2.2 2.9 1.7  5.4 1.2 1.3 2.1 1.9 5.1 10.8 .367 .333 .759
Elton Brand        PHI 1732  6.0 12.1 0.0 0.0 1.8 2.4 3.0  5.9 2.0 1.2 2.0 1.4 3.7 13.7 .494 .000 .733
Andrew Bynum       LAL 2112  7.6 13.6 0.0 0.1 4.0 5.8 3.3  8.8 1.4 0.5 2.0 2.6 1.8 19.1 .558 .200 .692
Dwight Howard      ORL 2070  7.2 12.6 0.0 0.1 4.9 9.9 3.5 10.2 1.8 1.4 2.0 3.0 2.8 19.4 .573 .000 .491
Chris Kaman        NOH 1372  7.0 15.7 0.0 0.0 2.2 2.8 2.3  7.2 2.7 0.7 2.0 3.4 2.8 16.2 .446      .785
Tim Duncan         SAS 1634  8.0 16.1 0.0 0.1 3.8 5.5 2.4  9.0 2.9 0.8 1.9 2.1 2.2 19.7 .492 .000 .695
Spencer Hawes      PHI  920  6.1 12.5 0.1 0.5 1.6 2.2 3.1  7.5 3.8 0.6 1.9 2.2 3.9 13.9 .489 .250 .727
James Johnson      TOR 1561  5.4 11.9 0.4 1.4 1.9 2.7 1.7  5.0 2.8 1.6 1.9 2.3 4.1 13.1 .450 .317 .704
Kosta Koufos       DEN  792  5.2  8.7 0.0 0.0 1.5 2.5 4.3  7.4 0.7 1.1 1.9 1.5 4.4 12.0 .599      .600
Darko Milicic      MIN  472  4.5  9.9 0.0 0.0 1.2 2.8 2.7  4.7 1.3 0.7 1.9 2.4 4.5 10.2 .454      .432
Nazr Mohammed      OKC  692  4.1  8.8 0.0 0.1 0.7 1.2 3.1  5.8 0.7 1.0 1.9 1.4 5.3  8.9 .467 .000 .565
Ben Wallace        DET  980  1.2  3.2 0.0 0.1 0.6 1.7 3.0  6.9 1.6 1.7 1.9 1.2 2.2  3.1 .395 .250 .340
Marc Gasol         MEM 2370  5.4 11.2 0.0 0.2 3.6 4.8 1.8  7.0 3.1 0.9 1.8 1.8 3.1 14.5 .482 .083 .748
Jordan Hill        TOT  551  5.4 10.8 0.0 0.2 2.0 3.1 4.0  8.2 1.0 0.9 1.8 2.0 4.6 12.7 .497 .000 .638
Al Jefferson       UTA 2075  9.0 18.2 0.0 0.1 2.4 3.1 2.3  7.8 2.3 0.8 1.8 1.1 2.7 20.3 .492 .250 .774
Josh Smith         ATL 2329  7.8 17.0 0.4 1.7 3.1 5.0 2.1  7.7 4.0 1.4 1.8 2.5 2.7 19.2 .458 .257 .630
Player              Tm   MP   FG  FGA  3P 3PA  FT FTA ORB  DRB AST STL BLK TOV  PF  PTS  FG%  3P%  FT%
Derrick Favors     UTA 1376  5.8 11.6 0.0 0.0 3.3 5.1 4.1  7.0 1.1 1.0 1.7 2.7 3.8 14.9 .499      .649
Francisco Garcia   SAC  798  3.9 10.3 1.7 5.9 1.1 1.4 0.5  4.0 1.4 1.6 1.7 1.0 3.3 10.6 .376 .290 .800
Marcin Gortat      PHO 2114  7.3 13.1 0.0 0.0 2.8 4.3 3.2  8.1 1.0 0.8 1.7 1.5 2.4 17.3 .555 .000 .649
Brendan Haywood    DAL 1146  3.7  7.2 0.0 0.0 1.4 3.0 4.4  5.8 0.6 0.8 1.7 1.4 3.8  8.8 .518      .469
Joakim Noah        CHI 1945  4.6  9.1 0.0 0.0 2.9 3.8 4.5  7.2 3.0 0.8 1.7 1.7 3.0 12.1 .508 .000 .748
Tyson Chandler     NYK 2061  4.2  6.2 0.0 0.0 3.8 5.5 3.7  7.0 1.0 1.0 1.6 1.8 3.2 12.2 .679 .000 .689
Kenneth Faried     DEN 1037  6.3 10.7 0.0 0.0 3.8 5.7 4.9  7.3 1.2 1.2 1.6 1.9 4.0 16.4 .586      .665
Amir Johnson       TOR 1553  4.5  7.9 0.0 0.1 1.3 1.9 3.5  6.0 1.8 0.8 1.6 2.2 4.8 10.5 .576 .400 .690
Kenyon Martin      LAC  940  3.7  8.4 0.1 0.5 0.8 2.1 1.9  5.1 0.7 1.7 1.6 1.2 3.9  8.3 .441 .231 .370
Jason Smith        NOH  947  6.9 13.2 0.0 0.3 1.3 1.8 2.7  4.7 1.3 0.8 1.6 1.5 3.9 15.1 .520 .111 .702
Tristan Thompson   CLE 1424  4.9 11.2 0.0 0.1 2.7 4.9 4.7  5.1 0.7 0.7 1.6 2.0 3.4 12.5 .439 .000 .552
Gustavo Ayon       NOH 1088  4.6  8.6 0.0 0.0 1.3 2.1 2.8  5.9 2.4 1.8 1.5 1.5 3.9 10.6 .536 .000 .619
Channing Frye      PHO 1669  5.5 13.2 2.0 5.7 1.6 1.8 1.5  6.6 1.9 0.9 1.5 1.4 3.8 14.5 .416 .346 .890
Travis Outlaw      SAC  500  4.3 12.6 1.2 4.3 2.2 3.3 1.4  3.0 1.2 1.4 1.5 1.4 2.4 12.0 .343 .267 .674
Kendrick Perkins   OKC 1744  2.6  5.4 0.0 0.0 1.5 2.3 2.5  6.3 1.6 0.5 1.5 2.4 3.9  6.8 .489      .652
Tiago Splitter     SAS 1121  6.8 11.0 0.0 0.0 4.0 5.8 3.0  6.8 2.1 0.7 1.5 2.8 4.3 17.6 .618      .691
Nikola Vucevic     PHI  812  5.8 12.9 0.1 0.4 0.8 1.5 3.9  7.0 1.4 0.9 1.5 1.5 4.9 12.5 .450 .375 .529

TOP NBA DEFENDERS CHART 3 OF 3 >>> TOP THIEVES / FAST BREAKERS in 2011-2012 (complete regular season)
Each year QFTR publishes Real Player Ratings for every player in the NBA who has played at least 300 minutes. Real Player Ratings are comprehensive player ratings that are very carefully designed and quality controlled. Starting in 2012, the Ratings are supplemented by seven per 36 minutes charts which show player performance in seven of the very most important performance measures, all of which are components of Real Player Ratings (but there are other components that go into Real Player Ratings). These charts are stationed on the home page at all times. This is most likely the only place on the Internet where this key player information is shown in this optimal way.

Here we have the best thieves / fast breakers of the NBA in 2011-2012 as indicated by steals per 36 minutes playing time. This is "STL" in the chart. All items shown in the chart other than the percentages and the minutes played are per 36 minutes, which is much smarter to use than per game numbers.

For this and all the other charts, a minimum of 300 minutes of playing time is required. Only players who made at least 1.7 steals per 36 minutes are shown here.

This is one of the seven "7/36 Charts". A short user guide for these is found in this Report.

Here now are how the best thieves / fast breakers in the NBA in 2011-2012 rated and ranked:
Player               Tm   MP   FG  FGA  3P 3PA  FT FTA ORB DRB  AST STL BLK TOV  PF  PTS  FG%  3P%  FT%
Tony Allen          MEM 1525  5.0 10.6 0.2 0.6 3.3 4.1 2.3 3.2  1.9 2.5 0.8 2.2 3.4 13.4 .469 .308 .800
Sundiata Gaines     NJN  793  4.6 12.3 1.3 3.7 2.7 4.4 1.2 3.7  5.7 2.5 0.1 2.4 2.6 13.2 .376 .341 .615
Chris Paul          LAC 2181  7.0 14.7 1.3 3.5 4.3 5.0 0.7 2.8  9.0 2.5 0.1 2.0 2.3 19.6 .478 .371 .861
Eric Bledsoe        LAC  464  3.8  9.8 0.5 2.3 2.2 3.4 1.7 3.3  5.1 2.4 1.1 3.6 4.5 10.2 .389 .200 .636
Ronnie Price        PHO  517  3.4  9.1 0.9 3.1 1.4 1.7 1.3 2.6  4.7 2.4 0.2 3.2 5.0  9.1 .377 .295 .800
Mike Conley         MEM 2174  4.9 11.3 1.0 2.6 2.3 2.6 0.4 2.2  6.7 2.3 0.2 2.1 2.2 13.0 .433 .377 .861
Ricky Rubio         MIN 1404  3.6 10.0 0.8 2.4 3.2 4.0 0.5 3.8  8.6 2.3 0.2 3.4 2.5 11.2 .357 .340 .803
Baron Davis         NYK  595  4.1 11.1 1.6 5.1 1.0 1.5 0.8 2.6  8.2 2.1 0.2 4.6 3.7 10.8 .370 .306 .667
Jason Kidd          DAL 1379  2.6  7.1 2.1 5.8 0.6 0.7 0.4 4.8  6.9 2.1 0.3 2.4 2.2  7.8 .363 .354 .786
Jeremy Lin          NYK  940  6.5 14.7 0.9 2.9 5.6 7.0 0.7 3.4  8.3 2.1 0.3 4.8 3.0 19.6 .446 .320 .798
Iman Shumpert       NYK 1705  4.5 11.3 1.0 3.3 1.8 2.3 0.9 3.0  3.5 2.1 0.2 2.3 3.7 11.9 .401 .306 .798
Corey Brewer        DEN 1287  5.6 13.0 0.9 3.6 2.5 3.6 1.2 3.0  2.5 2.0 0.5 1.6 3.2 14.7 .434 .260 .692
Paul George         IND 1958  5.2 11.7 1.7 4.3 2.7 3.3 1.0 5.8  2.9 2.0 0.7 2.2 3.5 14.7 .440 .385 .802
Kawhi Leonard       SAS 1534  4.7  9.5 1.0 2.6 1.6 2.1 2.4 5.2  1.6 2.0 0.6 1.0 2.1 11.9 .493 .376 .773
Paul Millsap        UTA 2100  7.3 14.8 0.1 0.5 3.5 4.4 3.1 6.6  2.6 2.0 0.9 1.9 3.8 18.2 .495 .226 .792
J.R. Smith          NYK  967  6.1 15.1 2.5 7.2 1.5 2.0 1.1 4.0  3.1 2.0 0.2 1.7 3.2 16.2 .407 .347 .709
Delonte West        DAL 1060  5.6 12.2 0.9 2.6 2.1 2.4 0.4 3.0  4.7 2.0 0.4 2.6 2.3 14.3 .461 .355 .886
Mario Chalmers      MIA 1825  4.4  9.8 2.0 5.1 1.6 2.0 0.3 3.1  4.4 1.9 0.2 2.8 3.3 12.4 .448 .388 .792
Stephen Curry       GSW  732  7.1 14.6 2.7 6.0 1.9 2.3 0.7 3.6  6.8 1.9 0.4 3.2 3.0 18.8 .490 .455 .809
Carlos Delfino      MIL 1537  4.3 10.6 2.0 5.6 0.9 1.1 0.5 4.4  2.9 1.9 0.2 1.5 2.3 11.4 .402 .360 .792
Player               Tm   MP   FG  FGA  3P 3PA  FT FTA ORB DRB  AST STL BLK TOV  PF  PTS  FG%  3P%  FT%
Earl Watson         UTA 1033  1.9  5.6 0.3 1.8 1.1 1.6 1.0 3.2  7.6 1.9 0.8 3.0 3.7  5.2 .338 .192 .674
Trevor Ariza        NOH 1350  4.5 10.7 0.8 2.3 2.1 2.7 1.1 4.6  3.6 1.8 0.7 2.0 1.9 11.8 .417 .333 .775
Gustavo Ayon        NOH 1088  4.6  8.6 0.0 0.0 1.3 2.1 2.8 5.9  2.4 1.8 1.5 1.5 3.9 10.6 .536 .000 .619
Rodrigue Beaubois   DAL 1151  5.9 13.9 1.2 4.1 1.8 2.2 0.6 4.1  4.8 1.8 0.9 2.2 3.1 14.8 .422 .288 .841
Reggie Jackson      OKC  501  3.7 11.4 0.9 4.5 1.8 2.1 1.0 2.8  5.1 1.8 0.1 2.6 2.2 10.1 .321 .210 .862
LeBron James        MIA 2326  9.6 18.1 0.8 2.3 6.0 7.8 1.5 6.2  6.0 1.8 0.8 3.3 1.5 26.0 .531 .362 .771
Nate Robinson       GSW 1192  6.2 14.6 2.0 5.5 2.8 3.4 0.5 2.6  7.0 1.8 0.1 2.3 3.6 17.2 .424 .365 .832
Walker Russell      DET  357  3.3  9.6 0.4 1.3 1.4 2.2 0.7 1.9  5.8 1.8 0.1 3.3 2.9  8.5 .347 .308 .636
Larry Sanders       MIL  643  4.7 10.3 0.0 0.1 1.0 2.1 3.5 5.5  1.8 1.8 4.3 2.4 7.4 10.4 .457 .000 .474
Chris Singleton     WAS 1431  2.9  7.8 1.1 3.2 0.8 1.1 1.1 4.8  1.2 1.8 0.8 1.0 4.4  7.7 .372 .346 .682
Dwyane Wade         MIA 1625  9.2 18.5 0.3 1.2 5.2 6.6 1.6 3.6  5.0 1.8 1.4 2.9 2.4 24.0 .497 .268 .791
DeMarcus Cousins    SAC 1950  8.3 18.4 0.0 0.3 4.8 6.9 4.9 8.1  1.9 1.7 1.4 3.1 4.7 21.4 .448 .143 .702
Goran Dragic        HOU 1752  5.7 12.3 1.4 4.2 3.1 3.9 1.1 2.4  7.2 1.7 0.2 3.2 3.4 15.9 .462 .337 .805
Andre Iguodala      PHI 2209  4.7 10.3 1.2 3.1 2.0 3.2 0.9 5.3  5.5 1.7 0.5 1.9 1.5 12.6 .454 .394 .617
Kyle Lowry          HOU 1510  5.0 12.2 1.9 5.0 4.1 4.7 0.9 4.2  7.4 1.7 0.3 3.1 3.2 16.0 .409 .374 .864
Rajon Rondo         BOS 1957  4.7 10.5 0.2 0.8 2.0 3.3 1.1 3.6 11.4 1.7 0.1 3.6 1.8 11.6 .448 .238 .597
Lance Stephenson    IND  442  3.8 10.2 0.3 2.4 0.7 1.4 1.0 3.3  3.7 1.7 0.4 2.9 2.4  8.6 .376 .133 .471
Greg Stiemsma       BOS  766  3.1  5.7 0.0 0.0 1.4 1.9 2.3 6.1  1.3 1.7 4.0 1.6 6.8  7.6 .545      .707
Jeff Teague         ATL 2183  5.3 11.1 0.8 2.5 2.3 3.1 0.3 2.3  5.3 1.7 0.6 2.2 2.4 13.7 .476 .342 .757
Ben Wallace         DET  980  1.2  3.2 0.0 0.1 0.6 1.7 3.0 6.9  1.6 1.7 1.9 1.2 2.2  3.1 .395 .250 .340
Player               Tm   MP   FG  FGA  3P 3PA  FT FTA ORB DRB  AST STL BLK TOV  PF  PTS  FG%  3P%  FT%
Russell Westbrook   OKC 2331  8.9 19.6 1.0 3.0 5.3 6.4 1.5 3.2  5.6 1.7 0.3 3.7 2.3 24.1 .457 .316 .823

From day one we knew that QFTR would never be a hang out place, a place where people come to comment on basketball news and blogs and what not. For one thing, we knew it could never possibly be even a moderate traffic Site (let alone a high traffic Site) regardless of the quality or quantity of basketball content loaded on to it. (It took years and about 15 books worth of content just to go from zero traffic to low traffic). Although you wouldn't expect it to be all that popular, it seems that a serious and unique basketball Site has even a lower potential audience than one would expect.

For another thing, QFTR is too serious for the quick little comments that are a dime a dozen at basketball Sites and blogs around the Internet. And most people who comment like to make only short little comments.

And of course it is well known that only a tiny percentage of blogs get more than a tiny number of comments and that essentially all of the blogs that do get comments are part of blog networks and/or they are run by celebrities.

And there are other reasons but those are the main ones.

The truth though is that your QFTR producer never had the resources to moderate and / or to participate in discussions at QFTR. Before there was a QFTR we participated in forums, and for about 18 months after there was a QFTR we still posted at a couple of forums, but we had to discontinue due to lack of time and because posting at forums was useless for getting traffic to QFTR that would return for future visits. As mentioned above in "Your Ball, Take Your Best Shot, Option 3," QFTR has only roughly 1/10 of the time it would like for producing content and for getting the background work done. So we are not even close to having the time to deal with comments that would go directly onto QFTR. So actually, we are glad that there has been very little interest.

Having said that, until January 2012 there was an option for commenting on Reports etc.. There was a page called "QFTR Discussions" where all comments on all Reports would appear in one place. These were going to be more serious and lengthy comments than the ones you see around the Internet.

Along with the discussion page there was to be an "open blog" called "My Quest for the Ring". Anyone who demonstrated the ability to make important, interesting, and/or useful contributions toward explaining how playoff games are won and lost would be given the keys and would be allowed to post whatever whenever. These would be full posts and not just comments. This would be a collaboration blog.

Both Discussions and My Quest for the Ring were nice, creative ideas, but there were no takers because of some combination of the following:

--Hardly anyone is qualified to discuss basketball at a high level.
--No one who is qualified has the time.
--QFTR traffic has been too low and/or it has the wrong people visiting, so therefore those who might have posted have never seen the option.

Although all of the links to these pages are removed from the QFTR home page as of January 2012 (except for the ones just above) the pages themselves are not being taken down. So if anyone (and it can be just one single person) is interested in posting to either of these Sites, please send an email to:
thequestforthering1 @ gmail dot com
[Remove the spaces and replace "dot" with an actual (.)

If even one person is interested and posts at either of those sites, we will restore all of the links that were removed.

RICKY RUBIO, MINNESOTA TIMBERWOLVES POINT GUARD

RICKY RUBIO, MINNESOTA TIMBERWOLVES POINT GUARD

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

>>OR YOU CAN DO A CUSTOM GOOGLE SEARCH OF THE 20 BOOKS AND COUNTING CONTAINED ON THIS SITE>>>>>

SEARCH QFTR, THE EQUIVALENT OF ABOUT 20 BOOKS ABOUT BASKETBALL

Custom Search
SEARCH THE 20 BOOKS / 2.0 MILLION WORDS

COMPLETE AND ALWAYS UPDATED DIRECTORY OF ALL QUEST FOR THE RING REPORTS ON ONE PAGE

COMPLETE AND ALWAYS UPDATED DIRECTORY OF ALL QUEST FOR THE RING REPORTS ON ONE PAGE>>> CLICK HERE TO SEE LINKS TO EVERY REPORT EVER POSTED. This is now often working even in Internet Explorer, imagine that!

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

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

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

GOOGLE ARCHIVE



QUEST FOR THE RING USER GUIDE

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






WELCOME TO THE QUEST--THINGS ARE VERY DIFFERENT HERE

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

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

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

UNIQUE SITE DESIGN
The Quest is organized in a completely different way from what you are used to on the Internet. We have combined the best features of the blog and the conventional web site formats, the latter being the norm for large organizations. However, since we do not like the idea of using flash to "wow" visitors, we do not use flash except within video and other discrete components. So we are state of the art in terms of expanding the power of visitors to get exactly what they want very quickly, but we do not have the latest flash gadgetry just to "keep up with the Joneses".

More broadly, you will find that Quest for the Ring never seeks to keep up with the Joneses, simply because the Joneses never had the nerve and the intelligence to do what we do.

Unlike many Internet operations QFTR is never going to quit due to low traffic; we have learned over the last decade that traffic is about 95% determined by variables completely out of our control. The 5% that we do control is not enough to change traffic in any significant way. The corporate, hype, and porn sites get all the easy (and sleazy!) traffic. QFTR gets a relatively small amount of traffic but how could it possibly be otherwise? QFTR gets high quality traffic from serious, intelligent people (who are in limited supply) and that is exactly how it was inevitably going to be.

2009: A PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATION COMES TO QUEST
The QFTR Home Page consists of numerous types of content, organized carefully into clearly labelled sections. Features can be any educational and / or entertaining basketball content you can think of, including everything from music players to videos to photos to breaking NBA news readers to top teams performance breakdown pages.

Quest for the Ring has a world class link system for easy access to many of the Worlds' most important basketball resources. (We don't give a damn that all the outbound links might hurt our placement in search results, because we are not going to cheat visitors just to get more "fly by night" visitors.) But the Quest visitor does not HAVE to hunt for links to have an intelligent and entertaining experience because QFTR is a massive resource in and of itself.

THERE MUST BE FIFTY WAYS TO READ REPORTS [AS PAUL SIMON SANG YEARS AGO, LOL]
Well, maybe not fifty, but there are close to ten ways to find out about, select, and read Quest Reports! The standard, traditional blog presentation is available as one of the many ways to choose, access, and read reports. On the Home Page, only one report loads in the traditional format in order to keep this page as quick loading as possible. See the "Total Freedom of Navigation" section not far below the main Report you have loaded for complete details about how to find, choose, and read reports.

THE QUEST USER GUIDE VERSUS THE MERE ABOUT PAGE
Other sites very often have undeveloped and limited in scope "about pages" which is usually all they have for what we call a "User Guide". The QFTR User Guide is a little blog in itself with several dozen articles explaining aspects of the Site and how you can benefit from them. This approach is a vast improvement, quantitatively and qualitatively, over a mere "about page" While many other sites don't help their visitors to make the best use of the content, we do. Also, the User Guide is chock loaded with invitations to visitors to participate in all kinds of ways, including for example advertising for free, link exchange, and getting a team site supported by Quest. You can access User Guide articles either by visiting the User Guide dedicated page or by locating the list of User Guide articles right on the primary QFTR Home Page.

SEARCH QFTR, THE EQUIVALENT OF ABOUT 20 BOOKS ABOUT BASKETBALL

Custom Search
SEARCH THE 20 BOOKS / 2.0 MILLION WORDS

RECOMMENDED SCHOOL--CLICK FOR DETAILS

RECOMMENDED SCHOOL--CLICK FOR DETAILS

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

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

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

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

MOST RECENT LEAGUE WIDE REAL PLAYER RATINGS

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

NBA REAL PLAYER RATINGS
2009-10 REGULAR SEASON

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

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

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

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

NBA REAL PLAYER RATINGS
2009-10 REGULAR SEASON
--Shows the real quality of players
--Includes all tracked actions and also includes untracked or hidden defending
--The average Real Player Rating for all players who play 300 minutes or more is about .700.
--All players who have played at least 300 minutes are included here and in all other ratings to follow in coming days

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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