Linas Kleiza is Huge as the Nuggets Roll Over the Jazz 120-109

The Jazz’ offense was more organized and better managed than that of the Nuggets, but they committed too many turnovers on offense and too many fouls on defense, which enabled the Nuggets to roll to a relatively easy win at home against them, 120-109. Neither the Jazz nor the Nuggets were playing on back to back nights. The Jazz turned it over 18 times, the Nuggets a very reasonable 12 times. The Nuggets have been uncharacteristically limiting their turnovers lately.

Kyle Korver was 4/8 and the Jazz were an extremely good 9/19 on three-point shots overall, while for the Nuggets, Kleiza was 4/8 but the Nuggets overall were a poor 5/19 on long range shots. Both teams were an identical 41/92 or 44.6% overall from the field, which is about average for a NBA game.

Marcus Camby made twice as many rebounds as Carlos Boozer, and made more than half the rebounds that the entire Jazz squad made. Along with 24 rebounds, Camby, this year’s NBA leader in blocks by far, skillfully powered his way to 11 blocks, more than twice as many blocks as the entire Jazz squad, which made 5 blocks. Camby has become so dominant on the boards lately that he is sometimes fighting with some of his own teammates to get that extra rebound. He waves Carmelo Anthony off some of his possible rebounds, as if he was a lion defending his territory.

On the one hand, there is no denying that there is no one better in the NBA in rebounding than Camby, with the possible exception of the Celtic’s Kevin Garnett. On the other hand, Camby runs the risk of making his teammates lazy regarding rebounding by dominating the boards in game after game. It’s kind of the defensive version of the periodic offensive problem the Nuggets have with superstar Allen Iverson, where A.I. takes too many shots and enables his teammates to become relatively lazy in terms of moving, cutting, and screening on offense.

The Camby high intensity in rebounding, and the Iverson high intensity on possessing and shooting the ball, is matched by the Carmelo Anthony intensity and drive to score the ball one way or the other every good chance he gets. These three turn out to be remarkably similar personalities from a basketball performance standpoint, when all is said and done.

Everyone knows that the Nuggets have 3 major superstars. But what many don’t know, with the notable exception of Charles Barkley who has opined on this topic, and thinks the Nuggets are doomed because of this, is that all 3 of the Nuggets superstars are by nature more individually oriented and less team oriented than the average basketball superstar. It is their personality and, George Karl’s wrong beliefs aside, personalities can not be changed, though they can be adjusted to some extent if they are channeled into the right strategies and tactics.

The huge problem is, as has been discussed and illustrated over and over again in these reports, the Nugget’s coaches do not provide enough tactics and strategies that would have the effect of getting these three superstar and individualistic personalities to work together. If this could be done, the Nuggets would then clearly finally be in a position to make a serious run to be the Champions of the NBA. The more any three superstars work together, the more likely it is they could win over any and all opposition. The less they mesh their games, the easier it is for the opposing teams to focus on hyper defending one or two of the three, partly removing them from the game, while disrupting the on the fly attempts the Nuggets make to work out of the double teams by coordinating the non-doubled superstars with the other Nuggets.

In other words, the Nuggets have generously provided the opposing teams with a formula for defeating them, even though they have 3 superstars and most other teams have only 1 or two of those. If you are opposing the Nuggets, you simply double team one of the Nuggets offensive superstars, Anthony or Iverson, and ramp up the defense to disrupt the subsequent Nugget’s attempts to score out of the double teams with tactics that they make up as they go. The disruption translates into turnovers, and the Nugget turn it over more than any other team in basketball. The Nuggets make it all too easy for the best teams to beat them, about as easy as taking candy from a baby in fact.

Utah has been a surprisingly poor team on the road so far this season. The Jazz have the biggest gap of all NBA teams between winning percentage at home and winning percentage on the road. Almost unbeatable in Salt Lake City, the Jazz have been easily beaten by many other teams besides the Nuggets on the road this year. Stockton and Malone from years ago has given way to Williams and Boozer for today’s Jazz, but inside scoring is not as automatic and consistent for Boozer as it was for Malone back in the day. And until the Jazz obtained Korver, the present day version of the team was terrible in 3-point shooting and, even with him, it will be average at best.

Now we proceed to the George Karl Fiasco Story, Part 2:

There are two players on the Nuggets who Karl would never bench or partly bench no matter what: Marcus Camby and Allen Iverson. Why these two? Because these two have such long and great careers, and many awards as well, that they have become legends, already part of the glorious history of basketball, which Karl reveres.

Karl would have to defy his own belief system in order to bench Camby or Iverson, and it is rare for anyone to defy his or her belief system. Neither Camby nor Iverson is likely to ever mess up to the point of deserving to be benched, so this potential flip side of the usual Karl mistake is most likely just a hypothetical.

Kenyon Martin does not qualify as great enough to be part of the glorious history of basketball, so that enabled Karl to bench him for the playoff series two seasons ago and freed him, in his mind, from the responsibility to seek a compromise with his feuding star player.

This is why, by the way, that Iverson gets more burn than Anthony, and why Iverson is always discussed in glowing terms in the media by Karl, whereas Anthony is always minimized to one extent or another. Karl generally refers to Anthony as nothing more than a work in progress who needs to make changes in his game, and never as the cornerstone of the Nuggets franchise.

If Rick Adelman, or any other good NBA coach, was coaching the Nuggets, he would never have a player of the caliber of JR Smith completely benched. He would make sure the player was traded or waived if there was truly a severe attitude problem. On the other hand, Adelman would be at least as fast as Karl to yank Smith, or most other players for that matter, from a particular game if a player was clearly playing very poorly after about 10-12 minutes.

In the NBA, players who are impulsive, young, and poor decision makers due to inexperience, but have a lot of raw athletic ability, commonly have their minutes reduced, but you almost never see them completely benched for games at a time. Karl justifies his periodic complete benching of Smith by complaining about Smith’s personality and how it leads to dumb mistakes on the court. This type of sweeping and derogatory accusation is just not something anyone should accept without proof. I keep looking, but I still haven't found the personality and IQ ratings of basketball players on the internet in order to confirm that Smith is the dumbest player in the NBA, and/or the one with the worst personality. Until I find objective information that shows that Smith has one of the very worst personality ratings in the NBA, I am not going to agree to his being the only very talented player in the NBA who should be totally benched for games at a time. Even if I found such information, I would still not agree to the total benching, but I would acknowledge that Karl had a leg to stand on, something which he doesn’t have right now.

And the Nuggets can't have it both ways at once. If the serious Karl accusations are true, Smith is just about worthless and needs to be waived immediately. Surely no other team will offer anything for the worst personality and the dumbest player. And no other team will ever play him either.

Seriously though, there have been cases where good players have washed out of the League as a result of psychological difficulties. But JR is definitely not in that group. He plays video games for god’s sakes, how dangerous can he be to himself or others? If Karl gets what he really wants, which is JR off the team, Smith will definitely move on and get to play substantial minutes elsewhere.

PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE

NUGGETS INJURIES AND OUT SICKS
Kenyon Martin: A staph infection.
Chucky Atkins: He was diagnosed with a right groin/abdominal strain (Sports Hernia) on 1/9 and underwent successful surgery on 1/11. He is expected to be sidelined a minimum of eight weeks.
Nene: He has taken an indefinite leave to tend to a tumor growth.

JAZZ INJURIES AND OUT SICKS
NONE
And they still lost big!

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of January 18, 2008

The Nuggets are under an ORANGE ALERT, on account of the following problems.

INJURIES & SUSPENSIONS
1. Kenyon Martin illness 22 points
2. Chucky Atkins injury 18 points
3. Nene illness 14 points

SEVERE AND UNEXPECTED PLAYER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
There are none at this time: 0 points.

BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl has completely benched one or more players who should not be benched due to his incompetence, hatred of the player, and/or his having the ulterior motive of forcing the player off the team. The problem points would be the points you would have if the player were injured.

No one is currently completely benched who should not be: 0 points.

2. One or more players are partially benched; their minutes are being artificially limited due to abstract and subjective factors that the Denver Coaches believe are more important than performance on the court.

J.R. Smith was partially benched: 2 points.

2. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 1-12 Points. The severity varies depending on the circumstances, mainly Karl’s beliefs and moods, and whether the other team is playing well enough to take advantage of the Nuggets playing with not enough breathers, with too many fouls, and so forth. The current points reported are for the use, or should I say the misuse, of the reserves for the most recent games, with the most weight being given to the game being reported on here.

The bad use of reserves score for this game is 4 points. Either Yakhouba Diawara or Steven Hunter should have played 7-13 minutes.

3. The Nuggets have extreme inconsistency and a truly excessive number of turnovers because they have neither a system nor even a partial system on offense. The damage caused by this would be up to 20 points, except that Iverson reduces the damage. In broad terms, the team has failed to decide whether it wants Melo alone, Iverson alone, Melo and Iverson together, or neither of them to be firstly responsible for scoring enough points to keep the Nuggets in games. If it were neither, I call the name of that strategy the "share the wealth" strategy. More specifically, the Nuggets lack enough tried and tested offensive plays that they can run game after game, perfecting them as they go, and having everyone automatically on the same page for those plays.

Lack of an adequate number of offensive plays and schemes: 5 Points

INTENSITY, HUSTLE, AND HEART
1. The Nugget’s intensity, hustle and heart are lacking: 0 Points. It’s not anywhere near as bad as some fans sometime think it is.

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 65, which constitutes ORANGE ALERT.

ORANGE ALERT (55-74): Moderate damage is occurring to the season. The entire season is under serious threat, and you can just about forget about beating quality teams. About 3/4 of all potential wins against good teams will now be losses. Beating mid-level teams is much more difficult. About 1/2 of games against mid-level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. Even poor teams can often beat an otherwise good team that is under this alert. Close to 1/4 of games against low level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. A good team has been reduced to being a mid-level team, at best, when it is under this alert.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE ALERT STATUS
Injury and illness disaster has once again struck the Nuggets, with Kenyon Martin, Chucky Atkins, and Nene all out. The losses to the Bobcats and then to the Hawks in what would have been relatively easily won games had the alert status been green, grey, or even yellow illustrate the usefulness and accuracy of the alert system. When you reach ORANGE ALERT, you start losing a substantial number of games that you would win normally, it’s that simple.

RESERVE WATCH
Number of Players Who Played at Least 6 Minutes: Nuggets 7 Jazz 12
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 7 Jazz 9

Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 15
Jazz Non-Starters Points: 38

Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 6
Jazz Non-Starters Rebounds: 17

Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 2
Jazz Non-Starters Assists: 12

This feature is under development, and it will be gradually expanded. The complications involved explain why there are no formal statistics anywhere on the internet on the subject of how much non-starters contribute to different teams, and also why coaches are not compared statistically the way players are. There are a lot of variables that come into the use of reserves that interfere with the objective of judging their use. Statisticians call this “statistical noise,” and if you have a substantial amount of it, then what you are trying to do with your statistics becomes very difficult or next to impossible.

GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
3: He's hiding under his seat on the sidelines

PLAYER RATINGS FOR THIS GAME:
You can tell how well every player played at a glance. Of the advanced statistics I have seen on the internet, this one seems to have the best balance between offense and defense. Many other advanced statistics are biased in favor of good defenders, and do not reflect the heavy importance of offense in basketball. Here is the formula for the ESPN rating of a player:

Points + Rebounds + 1.4*Assists + Steals + 1.4*Blocks - .7*Turnovers + # of Field Goals Made +1/2*# of 3-pointers Made - .8*# of Missed Field Goals - .8*# of Missed Free Throws + .25 *# of Free Throws Made

All players on each team who played at least 5 minutes are shown. The number after “game,” is how well the player did in this game, whereas the number after “season” is that player’s overall average for the entire season.

NUGGETS PLAYER RATINGS
Linas Kleiza: Game 61.4 Season 18.5
Allen Iverson: Game 47.4 Season 41.2
Marcus Camby: Game 45.5 Season 33.3
Anthony Carter: Game 27.1 Season 21.2
Carmelo Anthony: Game 25.8 Season 38.6
J.R. Smith: Game 19.2 Season 15.3
Eduardo Najera: Game 8.3 Season 12.9

Kenyon Martin: Did Not Play-Illness
Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Nene: Did Not Play-Illness

Yakhouba Diawara: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Von Wafer: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision

JAZZ PLAYER RATINGS
Deron Williams: Game 46.9 Season 36.6
Carlos Boozer: Game 30.5 Season 40.7
Kyle Korver: Game 27.9 Season 15.2
Mehmet Okur: Game 26.9 Season 21.5
Andrei Kirilenko: Game 22.2 Season 27.3
C.J. Miles: Game 11.9 Season 9.7
Matt Harpring: Game 8.6 Season 12.8
Paul Millsap: Game 8.5 Seasoin 16.7
Ronnie Brewer: Game 8.0 Season 21.0
Jason Hart: Game 6.4 Season 7.1
Jarron Collins: Game 4.6 Season 4.9
Ronnie Price: Game 1.0 Season 3.6

NOTE: these stats do not correct for the big differences in playing times. Players with small minutes would get a higher rating if they had more minutes.

OBSERVATIONS ON RATINGS:
The Jazz were swamped by Kleiza, Camby, and Iverson, and it didn’t even matter that Carmelo Anthony did not get what he normally gets, especially on rebounding. Camby insisted on hogging the rebounds, essentially, not that I can blame him. With Camby having become the ultimate rebounding machine, Anthony’s rebounding was not needed in this game.

Running the show aside from Iverson was Anthony Carter, who had 11 assists, but he could not get the double double because he only scored 5 points. Carter continues to play extremely well at the Pepsi Center, but is far from a sure bet away from there. And he is far from a sure thing against the best teams of the West. Utah is not in that top group of 4 or 5 teams that the Nuggets most have to worry about.
J.R. Smith continues to cram a whole lot of achievements into a small number of minutes. Najera’s offense was crowded out in this game: the Nuggets don’t need his offense when you have Iverson, Kleiza, Anthony, and Smith hitting shots, with none of them in shooting slumps.

Boozer was actually pretty much normal in this game, he just missed a few free throws, and was short a made shot, a steal, and a block from his normal production. But being a littlke short will cost you in Lithuania, and also in Denver when Kleiza is playing his game of the year. Deron Williams and Mehmet Okur were slightly above normal, while Kyle Korver, who is new to the Jazz, having been acquired from the 76’ers so that Utah would have a chance at getting up to mediocre on 3-point shooting for the playoffs, was almost twice as productive as usual. This was the first game that Korver, who was 4/8 from downtown, made more than 2 threes in a game for the Jazz. Unfortunately, were the Jazz to play the Nuggets in the playoffs, this would be a signal of the kind of damage Korver could cause to the Nugget’s hopes, unless the volatile and often benched J.R. Smith could offset.

Paul Millsap and especially Ronnie Brewer were big disappointments for the Jazz, while the Nuggets enjoyed a very unusual instance of no real disappointments.

NUGGETS REAL PLAYER RATINGS—EXPLANATION
The Real Player Rating reflects reality better than the gross player rating, since it washes out differences in playing times among the players. The straight up player rankings are obviously heavily affected by how many playing minutes the various players get. With many teams, you can rely on the coach to give his various players roughly the playing time that makes the most sense for his team. Unfortunately, some coaches bring other factors besides actual performance into their rotation decisions. Therefore, it makes good sense to introduce a new and extremely important statistic that Nuggets 1 calls the Real Per Minute Player Rating. As the name implies, this is the gross ESPN player rating divided by the number of minutes. The statistic is called Real Player Rating for short.

This statistic allows anyone to see whether or not players who play only a small number of minutes are doing better than their low gross rating will indicate. You can spot diamond in the rough players who are not getting all the respect and playing time due to them. At the same time, it will allow anyone to see whether players with a lot of minutes are playing worse than, as well as, or better than their gross rating shows.

In summary, the Real Player Rating allows the reader, at a glance, to see exactly how well each player is doing without regard to playing time, which is subject to coaching error and subjective and less important factors such as a player's personality. The Real Player Rating provides the real truth-pure knowledge not available anywhere else.

SCALE FOR THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
1.80 More Amazing Happens, but only certain players can ever fly this high
1.60 1.79 Rare Superstar Plus-Above Normal Even For Michael Jordan
1.40 1.60 Superstar Performance Plus-A Michael Jordan Type Game
1.20 1.40 Spectacular Performance-Star Plus
1.05 1.20 Star Performance
0.90 1.05 Outstanding Game
0.80 0.90 Very Good Game
0.70 0.80 Good Game
0.60 0.70 Mediocre Game
0.50 0.60 Poor Game
0.40 0.50 Very Poor Game
0.25 0.40 Bad Game-Near Disaster
Less 0.25 Total Disaster

NUGGETS-JAZZ REAL PLAYER RATINGS
All players who played 5 minutes or more are included. Any player who played only 5-9 minutes is noted.

1. Linas Kleiza, Den 1.462
2. Deron Williams, Uta 1.340
3. C.J. Miles, Uta 1.322…Miles played only 9 minutes.
4. Kyle Korver, Uta 1.116
5. J.R. Smith, Den 1.067
6. Allen Iverson, Den 1.053
7. Marcus Camby, Den 1.034
8. Carlos Boozer, Uta 0.924
9. Andrei Kirilenko, Uta 0.854
10. Mehmet Okur, Uta 0.841
11. Anthony Carter, Den 0.821
12. Carmelo Anthony, Den 0.679
13. Ronnie Brewer, Uta 0.667
14. Jarron Collins, Uta 0.575… Collins played only 8 minutes.
15. Jason Hart, Uta 0.492
16. Matt Harpring, Uta 0.478
17. Eduardo Najera, Den 0.461
18. Paul Millsap, Uta 0.370
19. Ronnie Price, Uta 0.167… Price played only 6 minutes.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Linas Kleiza was the superstar. Deron Williams and C.J. Miles in limited minutes were stars plus, while Korver for the Jazz and Smith and Iverson for the Nuggets were regular old stars. Not counting Miles, among the 7 players who were outstanding or better, the Nuggets had 4 players and the Jazz had 3.

At the point, Williams for the Jazz was far better than Carter for the Nuggets. At the 2-spot, in this game at least, a lot more Miles and a lot less Brewer would have worked better for the Jazz, who were badly beaten by the Nugget’s dynamic shooting guard duo of Iverson and Smith. At small forward, Korver badly outplayed Anthony. At power forward, Kleiza exploded past Boozer. At center, Marcus Camby scored a narrow victory over Mehmet Okur.

NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court. All Nuggets who played at least 10 minutes are shown.

Marcus Camby: +22
Allen Iverson: +22
Linas Kleiza: +10
J.R. Smith: +4
Eduardo Najera: +4
Carmelo Anthony: +3
Anthony Carter: -4

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
These numbers tell you that the Jazz could not avoid being confounded on offense by Camby, who made 24 rebounds and 11 blocks. And they could not avoid being confounded on defense by Iverson, who made 9 assists and 28 points on 9/19 shooting. They apparently were gambling that if they used enough double teams to contain Melo, Iverson would not be able to hit enough shots and get to the line enough to win it for the Nuggets. However, Kleiza was left out of their how to beat the Nuggets calculations. Last year that calculation was correct, but this year it failed. So you can bet that the Jazz will come to the next Nuggets game, which will be the second of 4 games between the two teams this season, with a new strategy where they do their best to contain both Melo and Iverson at the same time, while being ready to go after Kleiza if the situation warrants. That is a very tall order, but I’m sure Coach Sloan has learned his lesson and will come correct next time. Sloan was literally shocked at how well Kleiza played, and you can’t blame him. Amazing happens sometimes.

NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
All Nuggets who played at least 5 minutes are shown. The order is from lowest to highest in real player rating.

Eduardo Najera played 18 minutes and was 1/2 for 2 points, and he made 4 rebounds, 1 block, and 1 assist.

Carmelo Anthony played 38 minutes and was 8/20, 0/1 on 3’s, and 7/8 from the line for 23 points, and he made 2 assists and 2 rebounds.

Anthony Carter played 33 minutes and was 1/3, 0/1 on 3’s, and 3/4 from the line for 5 points, and he made 11 assists, 4 steals, and 4 rebounds.

Marcus Camby played for virtually the whole game, 44 minutes, and was 4/13 and 0/1 on 3’s for 8 points, and he made 24 rebounds, 11 blocks, 2 steals, and 1 assist.

Allen Iverson played for virtually the whole game, 45 minutes, and was 9/19, 0/2 on 3’s, and 10/12 from the line for 28 points, and he made 9 assists, 4 rebounds, and 3 steals.

J.R. Smith played for 18 minutes and was 5/12, 1/4 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 13 points, and he made 2 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 steal, and 1 block.

Linas Kleiza played for most of the game, 42 minutes, and was 13/21, 4/8 on 3’s, and 11/14 from the line for 41 points, and he made 9 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 steal.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Saturday, January 19 in Denver to play the Timberwolves at 7 pm mountain time. The Timberwolves will be playing on back to back nights while the Nuggets will not be. Therefore, the Nuggets will enjoy both the home court and the rest advantages.

Nuggets 120 Jazz 109 Most Valuable Nuggets

NUGGETS 120 JAZZ 109
MOST PRODUCTIVE NUGGET: LINAS KLEIZA
MOST EFFICIENT NUGGET: LINAS KLEIZA









NUGGETS 120 JAZZ 109
2ND MOST PRODUCTIVE NUGGET: ALLEN IVERSON






NUGGETS 120 JAZZ 109
2ND MOST EFFICIENT NUGGET: J.R. SMITH

BULLETIN: Nene Tumor Was Benign

THE SITUATION AS OF THIS POST:

The Nuggets are still awaiting test results before making an official comment on the prognosis for Nene.

A story posted on Nene's website early today said that the testicular tumor removed Monday was benign. That was later taken off the site, according to The Associated Press. The Nuggets, however, were not ready to confirm that statement.

"I don't think there's any question there's some positive energy, but I'm not going to interpret or analyze until we get all of the information," Nuggets coach George Karl said Thursday morning at the team shootaround. "There's still information to be had."

Asked when he thought he would know for sure, Karl said, "I would think in the near future, by early next week for sure."

A statement posted on the web site nene31.com.br Thursday said, "According to reports presented by doctors, the exams show that the tumor is benign."

Nene, from Brazil, took an indefinite leave of absence Friday.

THE SITUATION ABOUT THREE HOURS EARLIER:

The Denver Nuggets said Thursday they are waiting for the results of further medical tests after doctors removed a testicular tumor from Nene, but the player's Web site said the tumor was benign.

A statement posted on the Web site Thursday said, "According to reports presented by doctors, the exams show that the tumor is benign."

A Nuggets spokesman said the team would have no comment until the results of other tests were available over the next few days.

The statement said more information would be released later Thursday.

Nene, from Brazil, took an indefinite leave of absence Friday. There is no timetable for his return.

Dr. Fernando J. Kim, who performed the surgery at Denver Health Medical Center, said earlier that a "right testicular mass was found incidentally and it was managed surgically."

The tumor was found last week in an exam by team physician Dr. Saurabh Mangalik.

Nene had said the tumor was found at an early stage.

"I want to thank my fans, my teammates, the Nuggets organization and everyone that's been supporting me," he said in a statement released before the tumor was found to be benign. "My victory will represent their victory as well."

BULLETIN: Brazil Report on Nene Translated From Portuguese

This is a rough translation, so you just have to use your word skills and your imagination a little bit to be able to understand it.

Removed tumor of Nenê was benign, says doctors UOL Sport In São Paulo the tumor extracted in surgery of the testicules of the Brazilian pivot Nenê is benign. This is, as communicated of the assessorship of the press of the player, the conclusion of the together doctor who takes care of of the health of the athlete of the Denver Nuggets. according to exactly communicated, details of seeming of the specialists will be divulged still in this thursday. The pivot was submitted to a surgery in the last monday, day 14. Nenê already received high from the hospital where he was interned, but waits for the result of the examinations to give beginning to the next steps to the treatment. Still it is not known when the pivot will be able to come back to squares them. In the Denver Nuggets, the expectation is of that the Brazilian does not delay very to come back to play. As the tumor was detected still in initial periods of training and the size of the extracted mass was very small, the hope is great of that it has total hope. Nenê worried the world of basquete in the friday of the last week when asking for removal of the Denver Nuggets to deal with a health problem. Before disclosing that it passed for a surgery, the pivot gained support of fans very. In the current regular season, Nenê disputed 12 departures. After playing first the five rounds, it he was moved away for about 45 days because of an injury in left hand e, in the return, made more seven games. Nenê, that still it fought to recoup the bearer position, who was with Kenyon Martin, has average of 6,4 points, 6,4 rebotes and an assistance for departure. In the career, it has 10,9 points, 6,4 rebotes and 1,7 assistance.

SOURCE: http://esporte.uol.com.br/basquete/ultimas/2008/01/17/ult4356u1729.jhtm

Nene Speaks to the Fans

"I would like to thank my fans, my teammates, the people at the Nuggets and all the others who are giving me their support. My victory will represent your victory, too. Thanks for being with me on this moment. I will remember all the affection. I thank God that we detected my condition in an early moment.”

Nene, 1/15/07

"I would like to thank for all the support that I am receiving from the fans. It gives me even more strength to fight this new obstacle in my life. I am used to face every kind of challenge, and this time things won’t be different. I would also like to thank the press for respecting and understanding this difficult moment, and for the care which the matter is being carried. I wish my best to the fans, for whom I have a big affection, and to those who are praying for me. Be sure that I will be back to the courts very soon.”

Nenê, 1/14/07

The Hawks Rout the Nuggets 104-93, and Part 1 of the George Karl Fiasco

Taking full advantage of the absences of the Nugget’s starting PF Kenyon Martin, the second PF Nene, and the theoretical starting PG Chucky Atkins, the young and energetic Atlanta Hawks routed the Nuggets in Atlanta, 104-93. The Hawks dominated the 1st half, and led 65-44 at the intermission. The outcome was never seriously in doubt. But you should never say die in sports. And sure enough, Carmelo Anthony, Allen Iverson, and J.R. Smith piloted a furious rally in the 4th quarter that was doomed to fall short and ended in a bizarre pair of missed calls by an inexperienced referee.

Hanging over the proceedings and making the game seem even more dismal than it was, Nene underwent surgery Monday in Denver to remove a testicular tumor. A biopsy will determine if it was cancerous

Amazingly, the Nuggets had 3 players who scored exactly 0 points: Anthony Carter in 26 minutes, Eduardo Najera in 22 minutes, and Yakhouba Diawara in 12 minutes of action. Just as amazingly, three Nuggets scored 84 of the Nugget’s 93 points: Carmelo Anthony scored 36, Allen Iverson scored 27, and J.R. Smith scored 21. Meanwhile, six Hawks scored in double digits. Iverson, with 21,816 career points, passed Larry Bird (21,791) and Gary Payton (21,813) for 21st place on the NBA all-time scoring list. Iverson began the day three points behind Bird and passed both Bird and Payton in the same game.

With J.R. Smith playing, the Nuggets are not one of the worst 3-point shooting teams, and one of the few categories in which the Nuggets were better than the Hawks in this game was in 3-point shooting. Smith was 4/8 and the Nuggets overall were 7/19 or 36.8% from downtown, while the Hawks were just 4/14 or 28.6%. The Hawks are just about the worst three-point shooting team in the NBA. Otherwise, this would most likely have been a monumental rout instead of just a garden variety rout.

The Hawks had a huge 33 assists, while the dysfunctional and depleted Nuggets made only 22 assists. The Hawks had 8 players who made 3 or more assists, something you very rarely see and are always very impressed by. The Nuggets did manage to have 5 players with 3 or more assists.

The Nuggets committed 17 turnovers, while the Hawks committed 13 turnovers. All losses are ugly to one extent or another, but this one was especially ugly.

The Nuggets managed only 8 fast break points, while the young and well managed Hawks had 27. And the Hawks, taking full advantage of the absence of Martin and Nene, outscored the Nuggets in the paint 48-34. But Camby, Anthony, and Kleiza enabled the Nuggets to stay a little better than even with the Hawks in rebounding.

Making the game even more tasteless was an incompetent referee. Iverson was blatantly shoved to the floor and out of bounds by Hawks PG Anthony Johnson with about a minute left in the game and the Nuggets trailing by 8. Iverson and Smith at the time were still in the midst of a furious comeback attempt that armchair fans watching knew was futile, because there simply wasn’t enough time left for the Nuggets to pull it out. Instead of making the obvious foul call on Johnson, the seemingly blind referee called Iverson out of bounds.

On the next Nuggets possession, with 38 seconds left, Johnson again obviously bumped Iverson as he was bringing the ball up in the backcourt, and Iverson lost the ball out of bounds. But once again, the same referee failed to call the foul on Johnson. Iverson was understandably enraged, not only because of the two blown calls both of which went against him, but also because it prematurely ended an especially intense and well played quarter for the Nugget’s scoring trio of himself, Smith, and Carmelo Anthony. To Iverson, even it was impossible for the Nuggets to win the game, the referee was disrespecting him and the Nuggets by not making the obvious foul calls against the Hawks. Iverson and Smith were in a high zone of peak performance when the seemingly blind referee made them look like fools.

Iverson was so enraged that his protestations earned him a double technical and an ejection with 38 seconds remaining. J.R. Smith, already mad about the blown calls against his team, then became even more enraged when Iverson was ejected, and was ejected himself.

It was a tasteless and demoralizing, but fitting end to a tasteless and demoralizing game. Iverson was probably more mad at a referee than he had been in years, and with good reason.

Now that the J.R. Smith Fiasco story has been completed for the time being, I am going to move on to the George Karl Fiasco story. Of course, I am always pointing out specific mistakes Karl has made in specific games. But in subsequent parts of the story, I will show why Karl should not have been hired as the Coach of the Nuggets, and I will go over in close detail the reasons why Karl is, at best, a slightly below average coach and, at worst, a very below average coach.

Today I will start the story by going over an extremely important subject that you must understand and always keep in mind if you want to know why and how Karl falls short. This is the root cause of most of Karl’s actual mistakes in actual games.

The most important thing to keep in mind about George Karl is that to him, abstract things such as philosophy and honor are more important than concrete things such as whether someone can bury a 3-point shot and whether the shooting guard out on the floor can successfully guard the opposing shooting guard. As a result, Karl has a bad relationship with the whole concept of talented, professional players. In his philosophy, all such players are small potatoes compared with the grandeur and glorious history and present day reality of basketball. If you don't worship basketball as a concept, it doesn't matter how talented or good a player you are, you are small in Karl's eyes.

Most coaches value players and what they do and what they might be able to do in the near future much more and abstract concepts much less than Karl does. Karl seems to think that if a team has the right philosophy, or in other words the right way of thinking, it can offset all kinds of other shortcomings. But to coin a phrase by twisting Shakespeare a little, there are more things important in basketball than Karl’s or Carmelo Anthony’s or J.R. Smith’s or anyone’s philosophy.

Unfortunately for the Nuggets, the two abstract concepts that are considered critical by most successful coaches, strategy and tactics, are not considered very important by Karl. So paradoxically, and very ironically, while the Nuggets have one of the most abstract coaches in pro basketball, they have one of the least developed and ineffective combination of strategies and tactics in the NBA. Because Karl’s favorite abstract concepts are not the ones that have the biggest payoffs in terms of wins.

Karl is always out for someone's blood for imagined slights against basketball honor, ethics, and morality as he defines them, and he is always playing damaging games of revenge with those who are the most lacking. J.R. Smith is by far the Nugget who Karl thinks commits the most offenses against basketball honor, tradition, and morality. And indeed, Smith, being nothing more than an impulsive 22 year old high school graduate who spends a lot of spare time playing video games and watching old movies, is about the last player you would think of when thinking of players who most epitomize the glory and honor of basketball and the history of basketball.

But who other than Karl really cares that Smith doesn’t fit the honor and tradition of basketball? To me, what is far more important is whether Smith can score and whether he can defend his man. And what is more important than having honorable and right thinking players who reflect well on the great sport of basketball is whether those players have been given some strategy and a few tactics which they can use to win games. Sorry if it seems selfish or crass to want to win more than to want to represent the glory and great traditions of the game, but that’s the way I see it and I am sticking to it.

So J.R. Smith is George Karl’s worst nightmare. Smith to Karl is seemingly someone whose every action or inaction seems to be an affront to the wonderful and glorious history and present day reality of the game. Karl seethes about it, and then overestimates Smith’s negatives and underestimates Smith’s positives. Then he takes the next logical action, which is to bench Smith, or at least partly bench him. Realistically, the only hope for Smith to get playing time often is if a key player is out with an injury or a sickness. The Chucky Atkins hernia was just what Smith needed to stand a chance to get good playing time from Karl, even though he is hated by Karl.

The continual benching and partial benching of JR Smith is just one example of how Karl's belief system produces for him a different reality from the one that the average fan sees. He literally sees things differently than most others do. There are many other, more subtle things that go on in the management of the Nuggets that make the team quite a bit different in actual games from how it would be if it were coached by most other possible alternative coaches. I will point out a few of those things when this story continues in the next report.

INJURY SUMMARY: PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE

NUGGETS
Kenyon Martin: A staph infection.
Chucky Atkins: He was diagnosed with a right groin/abdominal strain (Sports Hernia) on 1/9 and underwent successful surgery on 1/11. He is expected to be sidelined a minimum of eight weeks.
Nene: He has taken an indefinite leave to tend to a tumor growth.

HAWKS
Speedy Claxton: He is still unable to even practice with the team as he continues his recovery from off-season knee surgery. There are also conflicting reports stating he's away from the team for personal reasons
Salim Stoudamire: He sustained a sprained ankle on Dec. 14. He is still unable to cut and is not traveling with the team.
Zaza Pachulia: He was forced to sit after a doctor's visit revealed an ingrown toenail on his left foot. He should be ready to return to action soon.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of January 16, 2008

The Nuggets are under an ORANGE ALERT, on account of the following problems.

INJURIES & SUSPENSIONS
1. Kenyon Martin illness 22 points
2. Chucky Atkins injury 18 points
3. Nene illness 14 points

SEVERE AND UNEXPECTED PLAYER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
There are none at this time: 0 points.

BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl has completely benched one or more players who should not be benched due to his incompetence, hatred of the player, and/or his having the ulterior motive of forcing the player off the team. The problem points would be the points you would have if the player were injured.

No one is currently completely benched who should not be: 0 points.

2. One or more players are partially benched; their minutes are being artificially limited due to abstract and subjective factors that the Denver Coaches believe are more important than performance on the court.

J.R. Smith was partially benched: 2 points.

2. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 1-12 Points. The severity varies depending on the circumstances, mainly Karl’s beliefs and moods, and whether the other team is playing well enough to take advantage of the Nuggets playing with not enough breathers, with too many fouls, and so forth. The current points reported are for the use, or should I say the misuse, of the reserves for the most recent games, with the most weight being given to the game being reported on here.

The bad use of reserves score for this game is 4 points. Steven Hunter should have played a little.

3. The Nuggets have extreme inconsistency and a truly excessive number of turnovers because they have neither a system nor even a partial system on offense. The damage caused by this would be up to 20 points, except that Iverson reduces the damage. In broad terms, the team has failed to decide whether it wants Melo alone, Iverson alone, Melo and Iverson together, or neither of them to be firstly responsible for scoring enough points to keep the Nuggets in games. If it were neither, I call the name of that strategy the "share the wealth" strategy. More specifically, the Nuggets lack enough tried and tested offensive plays that they can run game after game, perfecting them as they go, and having everyone automatically on the same page for those plays.

Lack of an adequate number of offensive plays and schemes: 9 Points

INTENSITY, HUSTLE, AND HEART
1. The Nugget’s intensity, hustle and heart are lacking: 0 Points. It’s not anywhere near as bad as some fans sometime think it is.

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 69, which constitutes ORANGE ALERT.

ORANGE ALERT (55-74): Moderate damage is occurring to the season. The entire season is under serious threat, and you can just about forget about beating quality teams. About 3/4 of all wins against good teams will now be losses. Beating mid-level teams is much more difficult. About 1/2 of games against mid-level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. Even poor teams can often beat an otherwise good team that is under this alert. Close to 1/4 of games against low level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. A good team has been reduced to being a mid-level team, at best, when it is under this alert.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE ALERT STATUS
Injury and illness disaster has once again struck the Nuggets, with Kenyon Martin, Chucky Atkins, and Nene all out. The losses to the Bobcats and then to the Hawks in what would have been relatively easily won games had the alert status been green, grey, or even yellow illustrate the usefulness and accuracy of the alert system. When you reach ORANGE ALERT, you start losing a substantial number of games that you would win normally, it’s that simple.

RESERVE WATCH
Number of Players Who Played 6 or more Minutes: Nuggets 8 Hawks 8
Number of Players Who Played 10 or more Minutes: Nuggets 8 Hawks 8

Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 26
Hawks Non-Starters Points: 28

Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 11
Hawks Non-Starters Rebounds: 8

Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 4
Hawks Non-Starters Assists: 11

This feature is under development, and it will be gradually expanded. The complications involved explain why there are no formal statistics anywhere on the internet on the subject of how much non-starters contribute to different teams, and also why coaches are not compared statistically the way players are. There are a lot of variables that come into the use of reserves that interfere with the objective of judging their use. Statisticians call this “statistical noise,” and if you have a substantial amount of it, then what you are trying to do with your statistics becomes very difficult or next to impossible.

GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
3: He's hiding under his seat on the sidelines

PLAYER RATINGS FOR THIS GAME:
You can tell how well every player played at a glance. Of the advanced statistics I have seen on the internet, this one seems to have the best balance between offense and defense. Many other advanced statistics are biased in favor of good defenders, and do not reflect the heavy importance of offense in basketball. Here is the formula for the ESPN rating of a player:

Points + Rebounds + 1.4*Assists + Steals + 1.4*Blocks - .7*Turnovers + # of Field Goals Made +1/2*# of 3-pointers Made - .8*# of Missed Field Goals - .8*# of Missed Free Throws + .25 *# of Free Throws Made

All players on each team who played at least 5 minutes are shown. The number after “game,” is how well the player did in this game, whereas the number after “season” is that player’s overall average for the entire season.

NUGGETS PLAYER RATINGS
Carmelo Anthony: Game 55.2 Season 38.6
Allen Iverson: Game 32.6 Season 41.3
J.R. Smith: Game 29.6 Season 15.4
Marcus Camby: Game 24.4 Season 33.3
Linas Kleiza: Game 10.7 Season 18.5
Anthony Carter: Game 8.1 Season 21.2
Yakhouba Diawara: Game -0.5 Season 5.4
Eduardo Najera: Game -0.7 Season 12.9

Kenyon Martin: Did Not Play-Illness
Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Nene: Did Not Play-Illness

Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Von Wafer: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision

HAWKS PLAYER RATINGS
Marvin Williams: Game 40.1 Season 26.6
Joe Johnson: Game 33.7 Season 32.8
Josh Childress: Game 29.6 Season 21.9
Anthony Johnson: Game 29.0 Season 17.0
Al Horford: Game 25.3 Season 21.8
Josh Smith: Game 22.3 Season 34.3
Acie Law: Game 11.5 Season 8.4
Tyron Lue: Game 7.4 Season 9.5

NOTE: these stats do not correct for the big differences in playing times. Players with small minutes would get a higher rating if they had more minutes.

OBSERVATIONS ON RATINGS:
The Nuggets had by far the best player on the court, Anthony, but still lost the game. As you can see, the Nuggets had only 4 players who were moderately or more productive, while the Hawks had 6. Kleiza and especially Carter could not get it done. Both of these, especially Carter, seem to be negatively affected by playing on the road. But J.R.Smith who we know doesn’t care too much about the substantial amount of negativity he generates by his style and off the court problems, also doesn’t seem to be affected much by the negative vibes that flow from the arena when playing on the road. This is yet another reason why Smith is valuable in the playoffs; he is one of the few players the Nuggets have who plays about as well on the road as he does at home.

At the bottom, the Hawks two least important players, Lue and Law, out produced the Nuggets two least important, Diawara and Najera, by a wide margin.

Important to note here too is that the Nugget’s power forward, Najera, and the center, Camby, were extremely below and well below normal respectively, while the Hawk’s PF Marvin Williams was way above normal and the center Al Horford was a little above normal. So the Nuggets were heavily dominated in the front court, due not only to Martin and Nene being out, but also due to Camby having an off night. The only way the Nuggets could avoid being routed was with stellar play from their guards and from Anthony, which they did get.

NUGGETS REAL PLAYER RATINGS—EXPLANATION
The Real Player Rating reflects reality better than the gross player rating, since it washes out differences in playing times among the players. The straight up player rankings are obviously heavily affected by how many playing minutes the various players get. With many teams, you can rely on the coach to give his various players roughly the playing time that makes the most sense for his team. Unfortunately, some coaches bring other factors besides actual performance into their rotation decisions. Therefore, it makes good sense to introduce a new and extremely important statistic that Nuggets 1 calls the Real Per Minute Player Rating. As the name implies, this is the gross ESPN player rating divided by the number of minutes. The statistic is called Real Player Rating for short.

This statistic allows anyone to see whether or not players who play only a small number of minutes are doing better than their low gross rating will indicate. You can spot diamond in the rough players who are not getting all the respect and playing time due to them. At the same time, it will allow anyone to see whether players with a lot of minutes are playing worse than, as well as, or better than their gross rating shows.

In summary, the Real Player Rating allows the reader, at a glance, to see exactly how well each player is doing without regard to playing time, which is subject to coaching error and subjective and less important factors such as a player's personality. The Real Player Rating provides the real truth-pure knowledge not available anywhere else.

SCALE FOR THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
1.60 More Rare Superstar Plus-Above Normal Even For Michael Jordan
1.40 1.60 Superstar Performance Plus-A Michael Jordan Type Game
1.20 1.40 Spectacular Performance-Star Plus
1.05 1.20 Star Performance
0.90 1.05 Outstanding Game
0.80 0.90 Very Good Game
0.70 0.80 Good Game
0.60 0.70 Mediocre Game
0.50 0.60 Poor Game
0.40 0.50 Very Poor Game
0.25 0.40 Bad Game-Near Disaster
Less 0.25 Total Disaster

NUGGETS-HAWKS REAL PLAYER RATINGS
All players who played 5 minutes or more are included. Any player who played only 5-9 minutes is noted.

1. Carmelo Anthony, Den 1.284
2. Marvin Williams, Atl 1.215
3. Anthony Johnson, Atl 1.115
4. J.R. Smith, Den 1.057
5. Josh Childress, Atl 0.846
6. Joe Johnson, Atl 0.802
7. Al Horford, Atl 0.791
8. Josh Smith, Atl 0.743
9. Allen Iverson, Den 0.741
10. Marcus Camby, Den 0.659
11. Tyronn Lue, Atl 0.617
12. Acie Law, Atl 0.523
13. Linas Kleiza, Den 0.382
14. Anthony Carter, Den 0.312
15. Eduardo Najera, Den -0.032
16. Yakhouba Diawara, Den -0.042

OBSERVATIONS ON THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Anthony for the Nuggets and Williams for the Hawks were star plus, while Johnson for the Hawks and Smith for the Nuggets were stars. The Hawks had 6 of the top 9 performing players in this game, which is way more lopsided than most NBA games are. It is almost impossible to win a game with that amount of disparity. Camby must have been slightly worn out playing on the second straight night following his superstar performance the night before in Charlotte.

The Nuggets had 4 no shows. Kleiza and Carter were near disasters, and Najera and Diawara were actual disasters, although the latter two are good defenders and probably made at least a handful of made you miss defenses that do not show up in the measurement. So if you counted those, they would probably be near disasters or possibly in the very poor zone. By contrast, the Hawks had no disasters or near disasters. Their worst player, Law, was poor, which is substantially better than near disaster.

The Hawk’s Coach deserves a lot of credit for having had 7 players playing mediocre or better; it shows that there is a lot of coordination, sharing of possessions, and well defined roles on this team. That would go a long way to explaining why the Hawks might surprise and get a playoff berth this year.

NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court. All Nuggets who played at least 10 minutes are shown.

J.R. Smith: +4
Linas Kleiza: -5
Carmelo Anthony: -5
Anthony Carter: -7
Marcus Camby: -9
Allen Iverson: -10
Eduardo Najera: -11
Yakhouba Diawara: -12

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
It’s so nice to see Smith at the top and the only plus in this game, because as you know, I have been working my rear end off to prove that he should never be benched and should get a lot more playing time then he has been getting. Meanwhile, there is a surprisingly and annoyingly large minority of forum goers around the internet who have been supporting Karl’s periodic decisions to bench Smith completely. Sorry, but I think you are kind of blind and very biased when you agree with Karl on this.

Anthony played extremely well, and Kleiza did not, but they both ended up next down the line with -5 each. Diawara was a total non-factor other than make you miss defending, and since the Hawks made 52% of their shots, I doubt Diawara made too many made you misses in this game. 9 times out of 10, if a defensive oriented player does not get a substantial number of rebounds or steals, he has not gotten a substantial number of made you miss defenses, either, although Diawara can be an exception to the rule sometimes. In this game, Diawara made only 1 block and 2 rebounds

NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
All Nuggets who played at least 5 minutes are shown. The order is from lowest to highest in real player rating.

Yakhouba Diawara played 12 minutes and was 0/4 and 0/1 on 3’s for 0 points, and he made 12 rebounds and 1 block.

Eduardo Najera played 22 minutes and was 0/5 for 0 points, and he made 4 rebounds.

Anthony Carter played 26 minutes and was 0/5 and 0/1 on 3’s for 0 points, and he made 7 assists and 3 rebounds.

Linas Kleiza played 28 minutes and was 2/8 and 1/4 on 3’s for 5 points, and he made 8 rebounds and 1 assist.

Marcus Camby played 37 minutes and was 2/6 for 4 points, and he made 12 rebounds, 4 steals, 3 assists, and 1 block.

Allen Iverson played for virtually the whole game, 44 minutes, and was 9/18, 2/4 on 3’s, and 7/11 from the line for 27 points, and he made 4 assists and 1 block.

J.R. Smith played for 28 minutes and was 7/15, 4/8 on 3’s, and 3/3 from the line for 21 points, and he made 3 assists, 1 block, and 1 rebound.

Carmelo Anthony played for most of the game, 43 minutes and was 14/24, 0/1 on 3’s, and 8/12 from the line for 36 points, and he made 11 rebounds, 4 assists, and 2 steals.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Thursday, January 17 in Denver to play the Jazz at 7 pm mountain time. Neither the Nuggets nor the Jazz will be playing on back to back nights.

The Nuggets Lose to the Bobcats 119-116 Despite a Huge Marcus Camby Game

This Bobcats game was a repeat of the December 5 in Denver versus the Lakers, where Iverson scored 51 points on 18/27 shooting and with 8 assists, but the Coaches forgot to put Kleiza in the game, and Kobe Bryant and his strong cast of co-stars used the Kobe Bryant Offense to outfox the Nuggets and to steal the game. The Nuggets make it up as we go offense sputtered to a stall out in the 4th quarter in both that game and again in this Bobcats game. In the Lakers game, Iverson and Kobe were both superstars, but the Nuggets were at home and rested, while the Lakers were not. That was a game that was lost largely due to the lack of set plays that you can rely on to keep turnovers down and to prevent scoring from drying up completely, especially in the 4th quarter. Iverson’s game, which may end up being his very best this season, was squandered by the Nuggets with their soft, wishful thinking coaching, poor closing skills, and general lack of intelligence and strategy.

Fast forward to this Bobcats game, and you find that nothing has changed in the past month. In this one, Marcus Camby was the superstar and even more than that, with 23 rebounds, 6 blocks, and 6 assists, to go with 20 points on 7/14 shooting, with 6/6 from the line to boot in a year when he has been missing a lot of free throws. But the Nuggets squandered this once or twice a season type of game from Camby. Last time it was Kleiza due to coaching error and this time the key player missing was Nene, due to his health problem. Nene has had some type of tumor removed and is awaiting results of tests to see whether or not the tumor was malignant. Since George Karl did play J.R. Smith to some extent, this game was not lost due to any huge rotation blunders. But the lack of anything resembling an offensive system was again a huge factor in this loss, as the Nugget’s offense dissolved away into a morass of aimlessness and futility in the 4th quarter. The Nuggets led by 3 going into the 4th and after scoring just 17 points in the period, lost the game 119-116 to a Bobcats team that lacks all-star or superstar caliber players at the moment.

So it was if the Nuggets said to the Bobcats: “we have better players, and Camby is playing one of his very best games of the year tonight, but heck, we don’t really know what we are doing on offense, so why don’t you have this game, it will make your fans feel better anyway.” If a team could talk, this is what the Nuggets were saying, and it is sure a farce, isn’t it? If I’m Iverson or Camby, and my team lost the game I put everything I had on the court, am I going to have the maximum motivation needed for an encore in a more important game in the future? Very possibly not, so when you lose a game like this, you are paving the way for more losses that could have been wins in the future.

There is no excuse for squandering performances such as Iverson’s versus the Lakers and Camby’s in this game. If a player leaves it all out on the court and his team is a very talented, ambitious, and reasonably hard working one, the most likely reason why the game was lost was that the coaches did not do all their work, either before the game, during the game, or most likely both.

I hate to preach, but I have to in this case, and heck, this game was played in the Bible belt, so you will have to excuse me for doing a Baptist style game report. You never, ever want to lose a game like this, where your best players have played better than their best players, and you obviously could have won the game if you knew what you were doing on the basketball court. Gerald Wallace had a massive game, but it was offset by Camby’s massive game. Jason Richardson was no more than J.R. Smith on steroids. And Emeka Okafur was fouling and turning it over in the 4th quarter rather than scoring and blocking. Neither of them was in a position to actually win this game for the Bobcats, so the Nuggets had to blow the game offensively in order to lose, which is exactly what they did. The Bobcats are a decent team, but the Nuggets have more than enough talent to beat a team like the Bobcats, but they didn’t use the talent in a smart way at the critical time. Teams like the Spurs, Suns, Mavericks, and Lakers lose winnable games on occasion, but not at least they do so without an embarrassing lack of offensive style consistency.

Both teams were very shorthanded for this game, as the Injury Summary, a new feature whose time has definitely come, shows in detail. Starting with this report, the Injury Summary will be the first feature following the article part of the game report.

J.R. Smith, the best 3-point shooter for the Nuggets, should have played the whole 4th quarter, because the Nuggets were getting killed by the three-point shot and their offense was broken down, but he played only 8 minutes of it. Carter and Iverson were a combined 1/7 from downtown in this game. I’m afraid that it is nothing more than a pipe dream to think that Carter, who has been surprising from long range so far, can be a dependable three point shooter for the balance of the season, and especially in the playoffs.

The Bobcats dominated the 3-point shooting in this game and it is tough to win any game with the amount of dominance they had with these big money shots. Gerald Wallace, for the first time in his career, has a three point shot, which along with the arrival this year of Jason Richardson, who is one of the best 3-point shooters, has helped to make the Bobcats a decent 3-point shooting team, which is a big improvement from last year. The other two Bobcats on their “3-point squad” are SG Raymond Felton, who is working on his three, and Matt Carroll, who is already very good with his. The Bobcats were 10/26 or 38.5% from long range, whereas the Nuggets were a very poor 4/21, or 19.0%. J.R. Smith led the Nuggets on threes, and even he was just 2/6.

That’s a good lead-in to move on to The J.R. Smith Fiasco, Part 3. In part 1, which was in the Nuggets 118 Timberwolves 107 game report, I showed that the benching of J.R. Smith as of the 1st of the year was more obnoxious than most of George Karl’s benchings, many of which are very obnoxious, since Smith played extremely well in limited minutes in the last 4 games before his benching. I then went on to explain the most likely motivation of Karl for not giving Smith significant playing time, that he wants him to be traded to another team, against the wishes of the Denver front office and against the wishes of Smith himself. I then made a big attempt to explain many possible reasons why Karl has come to hate J.R. Smith to the point where he refuses to teach him or to play him in significant minutes.

In part 2, which was in the Nuggets 109 76’ers 96 game report, I showed, using just 2007-08 per time performance measures, including turnovers by the way, that Smith is one of the better players on the Nuggets despite his turnovers, even while being jerked around on playing time and being the only Nugget under a lot of pressure to try to get more playing time. Here is a quick summary of those:

Points: Smith is 3rd of all Nuggets
Points: Smith is 38th of all NBA players
Assists: Smith is 4th of all Nuggets
Steals: Smith is 4th of all Nuggets
Rebounds: Smith is 10th of all Nuggets
Turnovers: Smith is 13th of all Nuggets
Assist/Turnover Ratio: Smith is 8th of all Nuggets

Now in part 3, I explain why the Nuggets are extremely likely to lose in the 1st round of the playoffs unless Smith plays. First I will show a couple of advanced performance measures, where the individual things are combined together to give overall ratings and rankings.

From an advanced statistics site, here is an advanced but relatively simple per time performance measure called productivity.

Productivity = (Points +Rebounds + Assists + Blocks + Steals - Turnovers) / Minute

NUGGETS PRODUCTIVITY (PER 48 Minutes.)
1 Anthony 44.2
2 Iverson 41.3
3 Camby 41.3
4 Martin 34.1
5 Smith 34.1
6 Nene 33.6
7 Kleiza 32.6
8 Carter 28.3
9 Najera 27.4
10 Diawara 19.7
11 Hunter 19.7
12 Atkins 19.2
13 Wafer 14.9

Even though turnovers are included in this, Smith still comes out very high: 5th.

But what about missed shots? Last year, Smith was .441 in overall accuracy, but this year, he's .424, a substantial drop. But his 3-point accuracy has remained almost exactly the same, at a very high .390.

If you subtract missed shots and missed free throws from the productivity stat above, you get another per time performance measure called efficiency.

NUGGETS EFFICIENCY PER 48 MINUTES
Through the first 34 games of the season
1 Camby 33.9
2 Anthony 28.0
3 Iverson 27.6
4 Martin 24.0
5 Kleiza 22.6
6 Carter 22.2
7 Nene 21.8
8 Smith 21.6
9 Najera 20.3
10 Diawara 13.1
11 Hunter 9.9
12 Atkins 6.1
13 Wafer 1.4

Smith drops to 8th. Carter, Kleiza, and Martin move ahead of Smith when missed shots are added to the basic productivity performance measure.

Smith's decline in non-3-point shooting from last season to this, while small, has given Coach Karl another justification for the benching. The huge dilemma for the Nuggets, though, is that you can't win a Western Conference playoff series without at rock bottom an average 3-point shooting squad, and Smith is the best 3-point shooter on a poor 3-point shooting team.

The Nuggets will not win a playoff series unless J.R. Smith is ready to and allowed to, in substantial playoff minutes, sink threes while keeping his missed shots and turnovers at a rate no worse than his average since he came on to the Nuggets. But Smith will not be ready unless he gets regular playing time, with about 18 minutes a game the safe minimum. The Nuggets will be easy to defeat in the playoff unless George Karl becomes less hostile toward J.R. Smith.

Even forgetting about the crucial 3-point scoring aspect, and after missed shots are factored in, Smith is still the 8th most efficient Nugget, only slightly behind Kleiza, Carter, and Nene, and still ahead of Najera. So even if you forget about the 3-point shooting aspect, (which is a heavy bias against Smith) but include all the missed shots, Smith's efficiency tells you that he should definitely never ever be deep benched unless the team wants another team to pick him up.

The problem is, and it's a whopper, is that the Nuggets are a bad three-point shooting team without J.R. Smith, pure and simple. Does anyone think, for example, after the Suns recently schooled the Nuggets with long range shooting that they will not do exactly the same thing if they meet up with the Nuggets in the playoffs?

If Smith is held out, the Nuggets will be the only bad 3-point shooting team in the Western Conference playoffs, with the possible exception of the Jazz. And the Jazz have acquired Kyle Korver to try to avoid the fate that faces the Nuggets without Smith. They knew it would have been futile to go up against the Spurs or Suns this year without a better 3-point shooting squad.

If I were you, I wouldn't put much hope on Najera and Carter sinking the necessary threes under heavy playoff pressure. Nor would I put much hope even on Kleiza or Iverson for that matter. They can hit some, but they can't get enough of them.

As for Carmelo Anthony, he had an outstanding 3-point shot for Team USA, but the distance of the three is slightly less in international basketball. But still, his drop-off in long range shooting from international to NBA ball is huge and makes no sense. So along with playing Smith, the Nuggets desperately need to get Melo to attempt and to hit more threes.

Every playoff team in the West needs solid 3-point shooters. I just checked the current list of the top 120 3-point shooters in the NBA ranked by percentage made. Since there are 30 teams in the NBA, the average team should have 4 players on this list. But as you would suspect, many of the West Conference playoff teams have 5 or even, in the case of the Warriors, 6 capable 3-point shooters.

The Nuggets have 5 to start with. Smith is the best 3-point shooter on the Nuggets. If you take him out, you are left with just 4, so you are short 1 against most of the good teams you might play in the playoffs.

More importantly, check the ranks of the Nugget's five good three point shooters, within the group of 120:

Smith is #34
Najera is #69
Iverson is #90
Kleiza is #105
Anthony is #114

As you can see, the Nuggets are bunched near the bottom of the ranked list of 3-point shooters. The Nuggets have exactly one among the top 60, and barely 3 among the top 90.

If you remove the Nugget's best, Smith, from this lineup, you have done very heavy damage to the 3-point capability of the team. What do you have left? The worst 3-point shooting playoff team, and by a wide margin against everyone except maybe the Jazz even with Korver.

Here are the solid 3-point shooters on the other potential playoff teams.

# of SOLID THREE POINT SHOOTERS BY % ACCURACY BY TEAM
Spurs: Barry, Bowen, Bonner, Ginobili, Finley
Lakers: Fisher, Farmar, Radnamovic, Bryant
Suns: Nash, Bell, Barbosa, Hill, Marion
Mavericks: Terry, Howard, Nowitzki, Stackhouse
Jazz: Williams, Okur, Korver
Warriors: Harrington, Azubuike, Peitrus, Davis, Barnes, Jackson
Trailblazers: Jones, Blake, Webster, Jack, Roy
Hornets: Stojakovic, Peterson, Paul, Butler, Jackson
Rockets: Head, Battier, McGrady, Alston
Nuggets: Smith, Najera, Iverson, Kleiza, Anthony

Can anyone name any player on this list other than Smith, who is benched now, or who has a good chance of being benched for the playoffs? Seriously, for real, is there even one?

Why should the Nuggets be the only team that disarms before it goes into battle?

INJURY SUMMARY: PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE

NUGGETS
Chucky Atkins: He was diagnosed with a right groin/abdominal strain (Sports Hernia) on 1/9 and underwent successful surgery on 1/11. He is expected to be sidelined a minimum of eight weeks.
Nene: He has taken an indefinite leave to tend to a tumor growth.
Eduardo Najera: A right elbow hyper-extension. The sore elbow is affecting his shooting.

BOBCATS
Sean May: He will miss the season after undergoing microfracture knee surgery in early October.
Adam Morrison: He had season-ending surgery on his left knee to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament.
Othello Harrington: He has a knee injury, and will probably miss the rest of the season.
Derek Anderson: Bruised knee.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of January 15, 2008

The Nuggets are under an ORANGE ALERT, on account of the following problems.

INJURIES & SUSPENSIONS
1. Chucky Atkins injury 18 points
2. Nene illness 14 points
3. Eduardo Najera injury 10 points

SEVERE AND UNEXPECTED PLAYER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
There are none at this time.

BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl has completely benched one or more players who should not be benched due to his incompetence, hatred of the player, and/or his having the ulterior motive of forcing the player off the team. The problem points would be the points you would have if the player were injured.

No one is currently completely benched who should not be: 0 points.

2. One or more players are partially benched; their minutes are being artificially limited due to abstract and subjective factors that the Denver Coaches believe are more important than performance on the court.

J.R. Smith was partially benched: 6 points.

2. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 1-12 Points. The severity varies depending on the circumstances, mainly Karl’s beliefs and moods, and whether the other team is playing well enough to take advantage of the Nuggets playing with not enough breathers, with too many fouls, and so forth. The current points reported are for the use, or should I say the misuse, of the reserves for the most recent games, with the most weight being given to the game being reported on here.

The bad use of reserves score for this game is 3 points.

3. The Nuggets have extreme inconsistency and a truly excessive number of turnovers because they have neither a system nor even a partial system on offense. The damage caused by this would be up to 20 points, except that Iverson reduces the damage. In broad terms, the team has failed to decide whether it wants Melo alone, Iverson alone, Melo and Iverson together, or neither of them to be firstly responsible for scoring enough points to keep the Nuggets in games. If it were neither, I call the name of that strategy the "share the wealth" strategy. More specifically, the Nuggets lack enough tried and tested offensive plays that they can run game after game, perfecting them as they go, and having everyone automatically on the same page for those plays.

Lack of an adequate number of offensive plays and schemes: 8 Points

INTENSITY, HUSTLE, AND HEART
1. The Nugget’s intensity, hustle and heart are lacking: 0 Points. It’s not anywhere near as bad as some fans sometime think it is.

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 59, which constitutes ORANGE ALERT.

ORANGE ALERT (55-74): Moderate damage is occurring to the season. The entire season is under serious threat, and you can just about forget about beating quality teams. About 3/4 of all wins against good teams will now be losses. Beating mid-level teams is much more difficult. About 1/2 of games against mid-level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. Even poor teams can often beat an otherwise good team that is under this alert. Close to 1/4 of games against low level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. A good team has been reduced to being a mid-level team, at best, when it is under this alert.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE ALERT STATUS
Injury disaster has once again struck the Nuggets, with Chucky Atkins, Nene, and Eduardo Najera out. The loss to Charlotte of what would have been an easily won game had the alert status been green or grey illustrates the accuracy of the alert system.

RESERVE WATCH
Number of Players Who Played at Least 6 Minutes: Nuggets 8 Bobcats 8
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 8 Bobcats 7

Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 19
Bobcats Non-Starters Points: 34

Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 12
Bobcats Non-Starters Rebounds: 10

Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 4
Bobcats Non-Starters Assists: 3

This feature is under development, and it will be gradually expanded. The complications involved explain why there are no formal statistics anywhere on the internet on the subject of how much non-starters contribute to different teams, and also why coaches are not compared statistically the way players are. There are a lot of variables that come into the use of reserves that interfere with the objective of judging their use. Statisticians call this “statistical noise,” and if you have a substantial amount of it, then what you are trying to do with your statistics becomes very difficult or next to impossible.

GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
3: He's hiding under his seat on the sidelines

PLAYER RATINGS FOR THIS GAME:
You can tell how well every player played at a glance. Of the advanced statistics I have seen on the internet, this one seems to have the best balance between offense and defense. Many other advanced statistics are biased in favor of good defenders, and do not reflect the heavy importance of offense in basketball. Here is the formula for the ESPN rating of a player:

Points + Rebounds + 1.4*Assists + Steals + 1.4*Blocks - .7*Turnovers + # of Field Goals Made +1/2*# of 3-pointers Made - .8*# of Missed Field Goals - .8*# of Missed Free Throws + .25 *# of Free Throws Made

All players on each team who played at least 5 minutes are shown. The number after “game,” is how well the player did in this game, whereas the number after “season” is that player’s overall average for the entire season.

NUGGETS PLAYER RATINGS
Marcus Camby: Game 61.3 Season 32.9
Carmelo Anthony: Game 48.1 Season 39.0
Allen Iverson: Game 34.4 Season 41.1
Kenyon Martin: Game 25.3 Season 19.8
J.R. Smith: Game 18.2 Season 15.2
Linas Kleiza: Game 10.0 Season 17.3
Anthony Carter: Game 9.8 Season 20.9
Yakhouba Diawara: Game 8.2 Season 5.6

Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Nene: Did Not Play-Injury
Eduardo Najera: Did Not Play-Injury

Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Von Wafer: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision

BOBCATS PLAYER RATINGS
Gerald Wallace: Game 61.4 Season 34.5
Emeka Okafur: Game 40.6 Season 26.9
Matt Carroll: Game 27.9 Season 13.1
Jason Richardson: Game 26.6 Season 31.4
Raymond Felton: Game 26.3 Season 25.5
Nazr Mohammed: Game 16.6 Season 14.8
Jeff McInnis: Game 13.3 Season 10.4
Jared Dudley: Game 9.7 Season 7.7

NOTE: these stats do not correct for the big differences in playing times. Players with small minutes would get a higher rating if they had more minutes.

OBSERVATIONS ON RATINGS:
Whoever gets the most points wins the game, something which, like when you ignore the forest for the trees, gets overlooked a little sometimes in thinking about and discussing players and games. The Bobcat’s three best three-point shooters, Wallace, Carroll, and Richardson, were all deadly from beyond the arc in this game, and aside from making a big impact toward winning a game, hitting a bunch of threes does wonders for your player rating, as it should.

Camby exactly matched Wallace, as both stormed their way to what will be one of their very biggest games of the year.

On the downside, the Nuggets had Kleiza and Carter playing much less productively than usual, while the Bobcats had everyone playing close to normal or better, so it is no surprise they won this game.

NUGGETS REAL PLAYER RATINGS—EXPLANATION
The Real Player Rating reflects reality better than the gross player rating, since it washes out differences in playing times among the players. The straight up player rankings are obviously heavily affected by how many playing minutes the various players get. With many teams, you can rely on the coach to give his various players roughly the playing time that makes the most sense for his team. Unfortunately, some coaches bring other factors besides actual performance into their rotation decisions. Therefore, it makes good sense to introduce a new and extremely important statistic that Nuggets 1 calls the Real Per Minute Player Rating. As the name implies, this is the gross ESPN player rating divided by the number of minutes. The statistic is called Real Player Rating for short.

This statistic allows anyone to see whether or not players who play only a small number of minutes are doing better than their low gross rating will indicate. You can spot diamond in the rough players who are not getting all the respect and playing time due to them. At the same time, it will allow anyone to see whether players with a lot of minutes are playing worse than, as well as, or better than their gross rating shows.

In summary, the Real Player Rating allows the reader, at a glance, to see exactly how well each player is doing without regard to playing time, which is subject to coaching error and subjective and less important factors such as a player's personality. The Real Player Rating provides the real truth-pure knowledge not available anywhere else.

SCALE FOR THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
1.60 More Rare Superstar Plus-Above Normal Even For Michael Jordan
1.40 1.60 Superstar Performance Plus-A Michael Jordan Type Game
1.20 1.40 Spectacular Performance-Star Plus
1.05 1.20 Star Performance
0.90 1.05 Outstanding Game
0.80 0.90 Very Good Game
0.70 0.80 Good Game
0.60 0.70 Mediocre Game
0.50 0.60 Poor Game
0.40 0.50 Very Poor Game
0.25 0.40 Bad Game-Near Disaster
Less 0.25 Total Disaster

NUGGETS-BOBCATS REAL PLAYER RATINGS
All players who played 5 minutes or more are included. Any player who played only 5-9 minutes is noted.

1. Marcus Camby, Den 1.572
2. Gerald Wallace, Cha 1.364
3. Carmelo Anthony, Den 1.203
4. Emeka Okafor, Cha 1.160
5. Jared Dudley, Cha 1.078…Dudley played just 9 minutes.
6. Matt Carroll, Cha 1.033
7. J.R. Smith, Den 0.958
8. Jason Richardson, Cha 0.887
9. Allen Iverson, Den 0.782
10. Kenyon Martin, Den 0.723
11. Nazr Mohammed, Cha 0.722
12. Raymond Felton, Cha 0.658
13. Yakhouba Diawara, Den 0.586
14. Jeff McInnis, Cha 0.532
15. Linas Kleiza, Den 0.526
16. Anthony Carter, Den 0.327

OBSERVATIONS ON THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Marcus Camby was the one superstar of this game, and he continues to lead the NBA by a wide margin in blocks. And he is second only to Dwight Howard of the Magic in rebounding, with 1 rebound fewer than Howard per game so far. To say that Camby is on course to be the defensive player of the year again would be an understatement.

PF Gerald Wallace and Carmelo Anthony were spectacular, but C Omeka Okafur and SF Jared Dudley, in limited minutes off the bench, were stars for the Bobcats. Two backup shooting guards were outstanding in this game: Matt Carroll for the Bobcats and J.R. Smith for the Nuggets.

Iverson was not as outstanding as usual, and Kleiza was off, while Anthony Carter disappeared from the radar screen as soon as I jinxed him by calling him Iverson #2 and singing his praises after his spectacular game against the Magic. Unlike last year’s Iverson #2, Earl Boykins, this one is not consistently good, which is a huge signal that the Nuggets are going to be in great difficulty at the point guard position for the playoffs, unless one of the sick men, Chucky Atkins, is able to storm back into shape. Atkins is no Kidd, Paul, or Nash, but if he ever gets back into form, at least you know the bottom is not going to fall out of his game just because he’s up against a monster team like the Spurs or the Suns. Unfortunately, you do know that the bottom is likely to fall out in the case of Carter.

NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court. All Nuggets who played at least 10 minutes are shown.

J.R. Smith: +9
Linas Kleiza: +7
Yakhouba Diawara: +6
Carmelo Anthony: -1
Anthony Carter: -4
Marcus Camby: -4
Allen Iverson: -12
Kenyon Martin: -16

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
There are right now undoubtedly general managers who are scheming up ways they might take advantage of the rift between Smith and his Coach in order to extract Smith from the Nuggets and onto their team with the least amount of expense possible. In other words, they are going to try to see whether they can get the Nuggets to part with Smith for less than what he is worth. Here you see one snapshot of the value of Smith. One thing he can do often is keep you in a game where your defense leaves a lot to be desired, due to a major injury for example. Someone else may have to win it for you, but Smith can put you into position to win a high scoring game. Diawara played well defensively, and it was a tough night for Kenyon Martin, who hit a few shots but did not seem to play at anywhere near his usual explosive level.

NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
All Nuggets who played at least 5 minutes are shown. The order is from lowest to highest in real player rating.

Anthony Carter played 30 minutes and was 3/9 and 1/5 on 3’s for 7 points, and he made 4 assists and 2 rebounds.

Linas Kleiza played 19 minutes and was 1/5, 1/4 on 3’s, and 2/4 from the line for 5 points, and he made 4 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 steal.

Yakhouba Diawara played 14 minutes and was 1/3 and 0/1 on 3’s for 2 points, and he made 4 rebounds and 2 assists.

Kenyon Martin played 35 minutes and was 6/10 for 12 points, and he made 6 rebounds, 3 assists, and 1 steal.

Allen Iverson played for virtually the whole game, 44 minutes, and was 9/20, 0/3 on 3’s, and 5/6 from the line for 23 points, and he made 6 assists, 2 rebounds, and 1 steal.

J.R. Smith played 19 minutes and was 5/9, 2/6 on 3’s, and 0/2 from the line for 12 points, and he made 4 rebounds and 1 steal.

Carmelo Anthony played most of the game, 40 minutes, and was 12/19, 0/1 on 3’s, and 11/17 from the line for 35 points, and he made 7 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 steal, and 1 block.

Marcus Camby played 39 minutes and was 7/14 and 6/6 from the line for 20 points, and he made 23 rebounds, 6 blocks, and 6 assists.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Tuesday, January 15 in Atlanta to play the Hawks at 5 pm mountain time. The Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights, while the Hawks will not be.

BULLETIN: Nene Has a Tumor Removed

From the official Nene site:

http://nene31.com.br/publicsite/ig_home.php

Notice of Nene's Tumor Removal Surgery on the Nene site translated (roughly) from Portuguese:

Watching over for the allegiance and precision of the information that are passed to the media and the fans, having preserved the man Maybyner Rodney Hilário and its familiar ones, and in consideration to the thousands of messages of solidarity and sent affection in the most diverse ways and parts it world for the athlete, the team ' Nenê31 ' has to communicate that: After to take leave for indeterminate time of its activities with the team of the Denver Nuggets - as communicated official divulged in the last friday, day 10 -, the player Maybyner Rodney Hilário (Nenê) if submitted, in the monday night, day 14, in a hospital in the city of Denver (Colorado-U.S.A.), to a surgery for extration of a tumor. The procedure was considered well-succeeded e, for medical recommendation, the athlete will remain in rest waiting orientation on future procedures and treatments. The decision for the operation was taken by the together doctor who takes care of of the case and the result of the conclusive examinations will have to be known until the end of the week. The information divulged for the Assessorship of the Press of Nenê are official and come to the meeting of the commitment with the truth of all the team ' Nenê31 ', commitment this important and still more essential in a little comfortable situation as the one that in we come across them, but that it needs to be faced with professionalism and, mainly, confidence and optimism for all. Yours truly, Team ' Nenê31 ' SOURCE: CIAO Communication

Also from the site, a description of Nene's off the court goodwill activities in Brazil:

Outside basketball courts, Nenê develops a series of humanitarian activities, especially on his home city, São Carlos, in the Brazilian State of São Paulo. Fame and success did not change that boy who came from a poor family, which now turns eyes and heart towards those who need help. Nenê is an example to a big number of young boys and knows the importance of creating opportunities. To assist local kids, offering sports and artistic activities is the basic role of the Nenê Institute. The objective is to change lives in São Carlos, but the player wishes to expand the project to the four corners of his native land.

Renctas, a non-governmental organization which fights against the traffic of wild animals, also receives his support. And Nenê wishes to take part of many other humanitarian projects. Most NBA players promote some kind of humanitarian work at their home communities. “I want to do the same, to show the kids that it is possible to win in the sport and do not forget the studies. I also experienced difficult times, came from a modest family and want to help others to have opportunities”. In 2003, Nenê was invited by the United Nations Organization (UNO) to join worldwide AIDS prevention and anti-drugs campaigns.

In 2003, Nenê visited the Brazilian Capital District to meet national secretaries and the Vice-President of the Republic, José de Alencar, where he got the support to his humanitarian projects. Inside the courts, in addition to humanitarian and beneficent activities related to his team, Nenê is involved on initiatives like NBA Basketball Without Boarders – BWB, a project for the promotion of basketball around the world, which aims to take the sport to needy areas.

Peace and Good Health To You, Nene

Peace and Good Health To You, My Brother