Kenyon Martin Steps it up as the Nuggets Rout the Hurting Grizzlies 108-86

Shooting guard Mike Miller got off to a great start, scoring 8 early 1st quarter points, and the Memphis Grizzlies scored the first 10 points of the game, but the Denver Nuggets needed neither intense defense nor a well organized offense to quickly offset that and to go on to rout the Grizzlies the rest of the way in Denver. Miller scored only 4 more points the entire rest of the game, and ended up with 12 points on 3/12 shooting. Two of the other Grizzlies’ starters, PG Conley and Center Darko Milicic, were almost total no shows. Milicic did not play at all in the 2nd half due to a sore foot. A fourth starter, PF Hakim Warrick, was a little better than mediocre but not good enough to threaten the outcome of the game. The fifth starter, SF Rudy Gay, the best player on the Grizzlies right now, was limited to 9 points on 3/8 shooting, and he added 4 rebounds and a block. Life can be kind of miserable when you are lottery bound in March, relieved perhaps only if you curl up with George Karl’s book about the glories of basketball.

Things don’t any more dismal than they are right now for the Grizzlies. This team has lost 16 straight road games and 17 of the last 19 games overall. The only team with a worse pace-adjusted defense than the Grizzlies is the Milwaukee Bucks. And there are only 8 teams with weaker pace-adjusted offenses than the Grizzlies. This franchise has once again become one of the worst teams in the NBA, as it was for so many years when it played in Vancouver, Canada. Why they kept the name I have no idea. The grizzly bears are up there, in the Northwestern region of North America; there are no grizzly bears in the mid-south, and apparently very few great basketball players as well. The few years of respectability, including playoff appearances, are now a fading memory.

So the Grizzlies were no match for the Nuggets, mismanaged as they are. The Nuggets buried the Grizzlies 108-86. Maybe these bears became soft due to being fed too much people food; you know how park rangers are always warning folks to not feed the wildlife.

Kenyon Martin was the most productive player of the game and the game’s only superstar. He was 9/11 from the field and 5/9 from the line for 23 points, and he made 7 rebounds, 3 assists, and a steal.

All three Nuggets who have been slumping to one extent or another took advantage of the opportunity to play a very poor defensive team to get out of their slumps, if only for a day, Marcus Camby pulled down 10 boards and made 6 blocks, 3 assists, and 2 steals. Linas Kleiza played one of his best games in a month, and Chucky Atkins played his best game of the year so far, which is not saying a whole lot considering how few games he has played in. But the best news from this game was that Chucky Atkins finally had a breakout game, which hopefully gets him out of the massive rut he has been in since the beginning of the season, due mostly to his hernia condition now repaired by surgery.

Not counting the special case of Atkins, only Martin and Kleiza were substantially above normal in this game, so you have to attribute the rout more to Memphis being bad then to the Nuggets being great. The Grizzlies were a terrible 32/90 or 35.6% from the field, while the Nuggets were 40/85 or 47.1%. The Grizzlies attempted a huge number of 3’s but made only 6/30 of them, while the Nuggets were 8/19 or 42.1% from downtown. Atkins was 2/3, J.R. Smith was 2/4, and both Najera and Carter were 1/2. Marcus Camby was 1/1, as he made his 5th shot from beyond the arc this season.

The Nuggets finished only slightly ahead in rebounding, but way ahead in assisting. The Nuggets’ offense works extremely well against poor defenses and extremely poorly against great defenses. The Nuggets’ offense is a great meter for measuring how good a defense is. In fact, a coaching staff and a front office could actually use how well the Nuggets do against it’s defense to gage how good a defense they have.

Turnovers were equal, but the Nuggets made 29 assists while the Grizzlies made 20. The Nuggets exceeded their minimum recommended number of assists per game, 25, and did meet the playmaking identity requirement, which is that two guards should make between 1/2 and 2/3 of all the assists. Atkins and Iverson combined to make 15 of the 29 assists.

Other than running the point and assisting, Iverson couldn’t do much. He was playing with a fractured right ring finger, he banged his right knee early in the game, and he was held to eight points on 2-for-12 shooting. J.R. Smith, other than 2/4 from downtown, was also a disappointment in this game.

Anthony Carter is rapidly becoming a permanent disappointment, and it will be George Karl’s fault if this continues, not the fault of Carter himself. In this game, Carter made only 2 assists. Since Iverson has been increasingly running the point as this season has gone along and since Atkins, a true, experienced point guard, has now come back and is starting to play well, it is difficult to justify more than about 10 minutes a game now for Carter. To the extent Carter plays more than 10 minutes from here on out, in effect he is being played as a shooting guard. As long as Atkins continues to play well, the only reason left for Carter to play for more than about 10 minutes is so that Karl can keep J.R. Smith’s minutes in the 15-20 minutes per game, which Karl decided Smith was going to be limited to this year regardless of how well Smith played. The fact that Smith has been one of the best shooting guards in the NBA over the last couple of months is not enough to overcome the Karl anti-Smith bias.

It is very difficult for even an on the fly offense to have difficulty against one of the worst defensive squads in the League. Indeed, the Nuggets have racked up a large number of routs this year against these hapless teams, as if they think that the huge margins can be applied to games against elite teams, especially against teams with the best defenses. The Nuggets can rout teams like the Grizzlies as thoroughly as the Pistons, the Celtics, the Rockets, and the Lakers can, which proves that in theory the Nuggets should be able to compete with those elite teams. But they can’t actually fully compete with those elite teams, because they lack the schemes and practical knowledge necessary to do that.

Does that mean I am not hopeful? No, it means I am doing my job, which is to report why the Nuggets have the fate that they do. Can they defy that fate? Yes, but defying a fate in sports is extremely difficult. For the Nuggets to win a playoff series, it would take at least half a dozen Nuggets to rise up and play better than they have been playing all season long. Not a lot better, but not a trivial amount better either. They would have to compensate for their lack of consistency and reliability by ramping up the raw execution of their talents.

Kenyon Martin seems to understand what I am talking about. He said in his post game interview: “It’s now or never. We don’t have a choice,” Martin said. “It’s either win now or be watching come April, and I don’t think anyone around here wants to be watching. We’ve got too much talent and the guys have too much pride, so we’re going to approach every game like it’s our last. That’s what it’s all about.” I agree K-Mart, but be careful, because I think A.I. may have copyrighted the “play every game like it’s our last” phrase, so I hope you cleared using his phrase beforehand with him or his lawyer.

Every team that has won 46 or more games in the NBA has made the playoffs since the 16 teams playoff system came into effect. This year is now very likely to see a team that wins 48, 49, or 50 games not make the playoffs. Wouldn’t you know it would be the Nuggets who are most likely to be that team? I wonder if even George Karl will still consider the huge disparity between the Eastern and the Western Conferences to be a glorious tradition of basketball if that happens.

And whose personalities will Karl announce to be the most at fault, other than the obvious one, J.R. Smith’s? Will Yakhouba Diawara’s obscure, French personality finally come in for some long overdue public criticism from Karl? What about Karl’s personality, which practically worships other teams while constantly dwelling on and highlighting every real and imagined weakness of the Nuggets? Will Karl ever criticize his own personality in public? And is Karl’s personality ever going to get any of the blame from the Denver front office for this basketball disaster in the making? If the Nuggets become the biggest chump team in the glorious history of basketball, and since personalities are so important to Karl, there are going to have to be some hard questions about personalities answered.

PROJECTIONS

Nuggets 1 Current odds, to the nearest 5%, of the Nuggets making the playoffs: 40%
Nuggets 1 Current odds, to the nearest 5%, that the Nuggets and their suffering fans will be stuck with George Karl for next season: 65%

The current odds of the Nuggets making the playoffs, according to Hollinger at ESPN’s excellent team analysis system, are 54%. However, and I know this is a little confusing, the Nuggets are projected to most likely be the 9th seed in the Western Conference, meaning that they will not make the playoffs because only 8 teams qualify in each Conference. It seems right now that the Suns, the Warriors, and the Nuggets will be battling it out for the last 2 playoff spots in the West. All three of them are considered likely to make the playoffs, in statistical terms, but not all three are going to make it. Nuggets 1 agrees with Hollinger’s system, which is saying that the Suns and the Warriors are favored in this race. The Suns’ victory over the Spurs on Sunday March 9 gave them a boost over the Warriors and the Nuggets.

The Hollinger odds don’t take into account that, most likely, Nene is not going to be available in top form for the Nuggets for the stretch run. Also, there may not be enough time for Atkins to get back to good condition. It’s still unknown whether Atkins can help to rescue the Nuggets from not making the playoffs. If the Hollinger system adjusted for the Atkins and the Nene situations, it would show a lower percentage chance than 54% for the Nuggets to make the playoffs.

The Lakers, the Rockets, the Spurs, the Jazz, and the Hornets are currently considered locks to make the playoffs, and the Mavericks are currently considered near locks to make the playoffs. However, the Rockets are no longer really total locks, due to the loss of Yao Ming for the season. But I think they are still near locks. The Suns are in trouble, due to their terrible trade, which was Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks for Shaquille O’Neal, but they are in less trouble after their win at home over the Spurs on March 9.

PLAYOFF TEAMS PROJECTED FINAL RECORDS-HOLLINGER-ESPN
1. Lakers 58-24
2. Rockets 56-26
3. Spurs 55-27
4. Jazz 54-28
5. Hornets 53-29
6. Mavericks 52-30
7. Suns 51-31
8. Warriors 51-31

NON-PLAYOFF TEAMS PROJECTED FINAL RECORDS-HOLLINGER-ESPN
9. Nuggets 48-34
10. Trailblazers 42-40

The Rockets have lost their best player, and one of the best players in the NBA, Yao Ming, for the rest of the season. Therefore, they will probably drop substantially below their current projection, since the projections do not take injuries into account. The Suns will probably drop a little more also, because they made a bad trade when they gave up “The Matrix,” Shawn Marion. At this time, however, Nuggets 1 does not believe that either the Rockets or the Suns will fail to win at least 50 games, so they will most likely finish ahead of the Nuggets despite their difficulties.

The Warriors are now 2 1/2 games ahead of the Nuggets for the last spot. The schedules of the two teams are roughly equal difficulty from here on out. If the Nuggets make up the 2 1/2 games, so that the Warriors and the Nuggets finish with identical records, and the season series between them ends up tied 2-2, the Warriors are likely to get the playoff spot rather than the Nuggets, because it is likely that the Warriors will finish at least 1 game ahead of the Nuggets in Conference record, which would be the tie-breaker if the Warriors and the Nuggets split their 4 head to head games. The Nuggets and Warriors have each won one game in the head to head series so far.

Now that the Nuggets are 2 games behind the Warriors, the two remaining Nuggets-Warriors games are more important than ever. If the Warriors win both games, the Nuggets are definitely out of the playoffs. If each team wins one game, the Warriors remain more likely to make the playoffs than the Nuggets. If the Nuggets win both games, then the Nuggets are about even with the Warriors in the race. The Nuggets-Warriors games are on Saturday, March 29 in Denver and on Thursday, April 10 in Oakland. Neither the Warriors nor the Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights in either of those games.

WARRIORS REMAINING SCHEDULE, All times, EDT
Thu, Mar 13 @ Phoenix 10:30 PM
Sat, Mar 15 Memphis 10:30 PM
Tue, Mar 18 @ Sacramento 10:00 PM
Wed, Mar 19 @ LA Clippers 10:30 PM
Fri, Mar 21 Houston 10:30 PM
Sun, Mar 23 @ LA Lakers 9:30 PM
Mon, Mar 24 LA Lakers 10:30 PM
Thu, Mar 27 Portland 10:30 PM
Sat, Mar 29 @ Denver 9:00 PM
Sun, Mar 30 Dallas 9:00 PM
Tue, Apr 1 @ San Antonio 8:30 PM
Wed, Apr 2 @ Dallas 9:30 PM
Fri, Apr 4 @ Memphis 8:00 PM
Sun, Apr 6 @ New Orleans 7:00 PM
Tue, Apr 8 Sacramento 10:30 PM
Thu, Apr 10 Denver 8:00 PM
Sat, Apr 12 LA Clippers 10:30 PM
Mon, Apr 14 @ Phoenix 10:00 PM
Wed, Apr 16 Seattle 10:30 PM

NUGGETS REMAINING SCHEDULE, All times EDT
Fri, Mar 14 Toronto 9:00 PM
Sun, Mar 16 Seattle 9:00 PM
Tue, Mar 18 @ Detroit 7:30 PM
Wed, Mar 19 @ Philadelphia 7:00 PM
Fri, Mar 21 @ New Jersey 7:30 PM
Sun, Mar 23 @ Toronto 3:30 PM
Mon, Mar 24 @ Memphis 8:00 PM
Thu, Mar 27 Dallas 10:30 PM
Sat, Mar 29 Golden State 9:00 PM
Mon, Mar 31 @ Phoenix 10:00 PM
Tue, Apr 1 Phoenix 9:00 PM
Sat, Apr 5 Sacramento 9:00 PM
Sun, Apr 6 @ Seattle 9:00 PM
Tue, Apr 8 @ LA Clippers 10:30 PM
Thu, Apr 10 @ Golden State 8:00 PM
Sat, Apr 12 @ Utah 9:00 PM
Sun, Apr 13 Houston 9:00 PM
Wed, Apr 16 Memphis 9:00 PM

So overall, Nuggets 1 agrees with the Hollinger system; as of now, we think the Nuggets will fail to make the playoffs. But it will probably be a very close call, and it still could go either way. We think that the Warriors will finish with either 49 or 50 wins. The Nuggets would need to finish 12-6 to reach 50 wins. This is realistically the minimum they must do to have a decent chance of making the playoffs. 11-7 will probably not be good enough, and 10-8 will definitely not be good enough. To be almost guaranteed a playoff spot, the Nuggets must go 13-5.

If you win a division you get into the playoffs regardless of how poor your record is. For the Nuggets, winning the Northwest Division is very unlikely at this point; the odds on that are at 5%. The odds that Utah will win the Northwest are 95% right now. The Nuggets would have to beat the Jazz in their remaining game against them, and they would also have to hope that the Jazz stumble down the stretch.

NUGGETS INJURY REPORT FOR PLAYERS WHO PLAYED IN THIS GAME
Allen Iverson: suffered a non-displaced fracture on the end of his right ring finger vs. San Antonio on 3/7. X-rays were negative, and he remains probable for the Raptors game on March 14.
Marcus Camby: suffered a right hip contusion at San Antonio on March 10, and he is probable for the Raptors game on March 14.

PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
NUGGETS PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
Nene: He underwent successful surgery to remove a testicular tumor on Jan. 14. A timeline for his return is still unknown. He has now missed 29 straight games. He is out until at least the middle of March, but could easily be out for the entire rest of the season. Nene has now missed 27 straight games this season. CBS Sportsline says Nene is most likely out for the rest of the season.

GRIZZLIES PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
All players on the roster were available.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of March 13, 2008

The Nuggets are under a GREEN ALERT, on account of the following problems.

NUGGETS INJURIES, ILLNESSES, SUSPENSIONS, AND PERSONAL LEAVES
1. Nene illness 14 points

SEVERE AND UNEXPECTED CRUCIAL PLAYER SLUMPS
Chucky Atkins, 4 points

BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl has completely benched one or more players who should not be benched due to his incorrect calculation of the benefits and costs of that player, his 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: 4 points. Smith was about 8 minutes short of the minimum number of minutes reasonable for him.

3. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 0-12 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 0 points. The rotations were reasonable.

4. The Nuggets have extreme offensive inconsistency and an excessive number of turnovers because they have neither a system nor even a good partial system on offense. They over rely on fast pace and on isolation plays, especially isolation plays by Anthony and Iverson. All kinds of unwanted problems pop up with this type of offense. For example, at one time earlier this season, Iverson and Carter were marginalizing Anthony to some extent. That problem went away when Anthony ramped up his rebounding, but the problem is coming back again right now.

Another problem has developed due to a combination of the unstructured offense and the Karl lineup, and it is not going to go away anytime soon. That would be the double point guard problem. The Nuggets don’t know in advance who is going to be the effective point guard in the game: Iverson, Carter, or both Iverson and Carter roughly equally. And in any case, it is foolish to have two point guards in the game for more than a small number of minutes.

In summary, 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.

The damage caused by this poor offense would be up to 20 points, except that Iverson’s intelligence in recognizing different situations in different games and responding appropriately reduces the damage. This problem is a killer against the top 7-9 defenses in the NBA, but the damage is reduced when the Nuggets are playing an average team, and sharply reduced when the Nuggets are playing a poor team.

On defense a system is much less important than on offense. How good your defense is is determined much more by effort and skill than by strategy. On defense, the main strategic decision is whether you are playing zone or man to man defense. The choice varies during each game, and usually depends on a gut feeling of the coach and/or the defensive floor leader, as to which is better at a particular point in the game, and with a particular opposing lineup on the court. At least as important as whether a zone or a man to man defense is in effect is the quality of the actual defending.

Lack of an adequate number of offensive plays and patterns: 4 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 think it is.

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 26, which constitutes GREEN ALERT.

GREEN ALERT (20-29): There are minor problems whose total impact is very small. There is very little effect on the team’s ability to win games against teams from any level.

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT ALERT STATUS
All teams, of course, have an alert status, and the key thing that can swing games is not so much the actual status of the two teams, but the difference in the two statuses. The difference in the alert status is a third outside factor that impacts a game, joining home court advantage and extra rest advantage, if any.

IMPACT OF OUTSIDE FACTORS, INCLUDING ALERT STATUS, ON THIS GAME
The alert status system is still relatively new, but a preliminary estimate of what the point differential will be for each 1 level difference in the alert status has been made, and that estimate is 3-5 points. The Home court advantage has also been estimated to be 3-5 points, and we use 4 points for it. The extra rest advantage is very uncertain, and would differ a little from team to team, but it must be at least as much as the home court advantage. For now, until we can study it more, we will use 4 points for the extra rest advantage.

The Grizzlies had all players on their roster available, and I am not aware of any major player slumps or coaching deficiencies, so the Grizzlies were most likely in GREEN alert along with the Nuggets, so neither team had an advantage with alert status. The Nuggets had both the home court and the extra rest advantages, so they had an 8 point outside factor advantage over the struggling Grizzlies. The Nuggets won by 22, but a 14 point win is approximately what it really was after you adjust for these outside factors.

George Karl has been doing better with the rotations lately, which has prevented the alert status from being worse.

Atkins, in his fourth outing since coming back, had a breakout game, so his alert points were slashed to a very small number. We don’t know for sure yet that Atkins is reliably back to his potential.

The Nuggets have been unable to issue any prediction about when or whether Nene is going to return to the court. There was a rumor recently that he was going to return by mid-March, but there is no sign that that will become a reality yet. CBS Sportsline is saying that, most likely, Nene will not return to the court at all this season, including for the playoffs. If Nene in fact never returns, and Atkins continues to be a lost cause, and Karl goes back to making his usual mistakes, and if Carter starts to reassert himself at point guard, the Nuggets will range between YELLOW and ORANGE alert status for the rest of the season, and that right there may cost the Nuggets a playoff spot.

The mid January losses to the Bobcats and the Hawks, and the close calls at home against the Wolves and the Hawks in January, in games that should have and probably would have been relatively easy wins had the alert status been green, grey, or even yellow, illustrate the usefulness and accuracy of the alert system. When you reach ORANGE ALERT and especially RED ALERT, you start losing a substantial number of games that you would normally win. It’s that simple, and there is little anyone can do about it.

RESERVE WATCH
Number of Players Who Played at Least 6 Minutes: Nuggets 11 Grizzlies 12
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 9 Grizzlies 11

Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 47
Grizzlies Non-Starters Points: 49

Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 21
Grizzlies Non-Starters Rebounds: 24

Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 11
Grizzlies Non-Starters Assists: 10

THE NON-STARTERS IN THIS GAME
The whole 4th quarter was essentially garbage time. Two Grizzlies played only in garbage time, Javaris Crittenton and Casey Jacobsen. Not counting them, the Grizzlies Coach, Mark Iavaroni, wisely used 10 players, maximizing the chance that someone would have a shockingly great game, in a long shot attempt to upset the Nuggets. For the Nuggets, Yakhouba Diawara and Steven Hunter were garbage time only players.

It is very unusual for Karl to play 9 players for 10 or more minutes. Right now he is forced to, because pushing J.R. Smith below 10 minutes is out of the question the way he is playing, and there is a huge mess at PG which requires Karl to play 2 official point guards for much more than 10 minutes each. Anthony Carter took over the PG position for the bulk of the season when Chucky Atkins went out for 2 months with hernia surgery. Atkins was poor in limited games before he went out. Carter has been better than expected, but apparently Karl agrees with most fans that Atkins will be eaten alive if the Nuggets make the playoffs and so Atkins, who has far more experience, including playoff experience, may be the Nuggets’ only hope at the position in the playoffs, and in the stretch run to make the playoffs for that matter. So Karl has to give Atkins playing time in a last chance desperate bid to get Atkins up to speed. But since Atkins is inconsistent so far, Atkins minutes have to be limited, so Carter has to play a lot of minutes also.

Even though the game was a rout, the non-starters were about even in all three categories. The Grizzlies’ non-starters were very slightly ahead of the Nuggets’ non-starters in points 49-47 and in rebounding 24-21, while the Nuggets’ non-starters were very slightly ahead in assisting, 11-10.

I hope to develop the reserve watch feature further in the future, because I want to try to expand what I already have in terms of a game coaching evaluation system. But 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 EXPLAINED
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. While some are biased in favor of offensive players, such as the efficiency measure at the NBA site, 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, which I think is a very good balance between offense and defense:

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-GRIZZLIES PLAYER RATINGS
NUGGETS PLAYER RATINGS

Kenyon Martin: Game 40.0 Season 22.4
Marcus Camby: Game 34.8 Season 32.6
Carmelo Anthony: Game 30.8 Season 38.9
Linas Kleiza: Game 28.6 Season 18.2
Chucky Atkins: Game 26.8 Season 9.2
Anthony Carter: Game 12.5 Season 20.2
Eduardo Najera: Game 12.1 Season 13.3
Allen Iverson: Game 11.9 Season 41.0
J.R. Smith: Game 8.8 Season 16.3
Yakhouba Diawara: Game 4.1 Season 5.2
Steven Hunter: Game 3.1 Season 4.1

Nene: Did Not Play-Illness

Taurean Green: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision

GRIZZLIES PLAYER RATINGS
Juan Carlos Navarro: Game 25.5 Season 16.2
Hakim Warrick: Game 22.9 Season 15.7
Mike Miller: Game 22.1 Season 15.1
Javaris Crittenton: Game 15.5 Season 7.0
Brian Cardinal: Game 15.1 Season 7.3
Kyle Lowry: Game 14.8 Season 17.1
Kwame Brown: Game 14.0 Season 11.7
Rudy Gay: Game 13.4 Season 30.8
Jason Collins: Game 2.9 Season 4.1
Darko Milicic: Game 2.2 Season 15.7
Mike Conley: Game 0.6 Season 16.4
Casey Jacobsen: Game -1.3 Season 3.5

NOTE 1: 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.
NOTE 2: This performance measure does NOT include the quality and quantity of each player’s defending, including the number of shots that the player prevented from going in the basket. The best Nuggets defenders, which are the ones who consistently make the extra effort and have the strength and defensive talent to make that effort pay off, are Camby, Martin, Nene, Najera, and Diawara.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE PLAYER RATINGS:
Chucky Atkins had a major breakout game, which was the best news of the night for the Nuggets. Now fans can cautiously hope that he will be able to help out the Nuggets in the stretch run for the playoffs.

Kenyon Martin was not far from twice as productive as usual; he was the top performer on the court and the biggest step-up player for Denver. Martin scored 23 points in 28 minutes on 9/11 shooting and he added 7 rebounds and 3 assists. The only other Nugget above normal was Kleiza, who was half again more productive than usual.

Camby and Najera made their averages, as did Diawara and Hunter at their very limited minutes levels.

Anthony was 80% of normal against a poor team, which is a major danger sign that the Nuggets will not be able to beat the elite teams this year. The Nuggets’ on the fly offense has lately drifted away from getting the ball enough to Anthony, as players such as Kleiza, Carter, and Najera take shots some of which would go to Anthony in a more strategic and tactical offense. This happened in December as well and it led to a full scale Carmelo Anthony slump, which cost the Nuggets at least a couple of games. Melo is a rhythm type player, and if he doesn’t get the ball anywhere near as much as usual, he can then miss shots that he would have hit when he does get the ball.

Both J.R. Smith and Carter were only about 60% as productive as usual.

But the real shocker was that Iverson was only about 30% as productive as usual, leaving him slightly less productive than Carter and Najera. Yikes! You won’t see Iverson finishing behind most of his teammates, including Carter and Najera, very often. A.I. missed 10/12 shots and, were it not for 8 assists, he would not have been far from worthless.

The Grizzlies had 3 players who were half again more productive than usual: SG Navarro, PF Warrick, and SG Miller. Off the bench and in less than 1 1/2 quarters of action, PG Crittenton and PF Cardinal were twice as productive as usual.

PF Brown made his normal and a little more and PG Lowry was close to making his normal.

Amazingly, the Grizzlies had 3 starters who were almost totally shut down by the Nuggets and the atmosphere at the Pepsi Center. Both C Milicic and PG Conley came up almost empty. Milicic didn’t play in the second half due to a sore right foot. The biggest disaster of all for the Grizzlies was their best player, SF Rudy Gay. He was almost as short as Iverson was; he made only 40% of his normal production.

In very limited minutes, C Collins was disappointing and SF Jacobsen was extremely disappointing.

REAL PLAYER RATINGS EXPLAINED
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 1.80 Superstar Plus-Above Normal Even For Michael Jordan
1.40 1.60 Superstar Performance-A Michael Jordan Type Game
1.20 1.40 Star Plus-Spectacular Performance
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 Extremely Poor-Near Disaster
Less 0.25 Total Disaster

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

1. Kenyon Martin, Den 1.429
2. Chucky Atkins, Den 1.276
3. Marcus Camby, Den 1.243
4. Juan Carlos Navarro, Mem 1.159
5. Linas Kleiza, Den 1.100
6. Javaris Crittenton, Mem 1.033
7. Carmelo Anthony, Den 1.027
8. Kwame Brown, Mem 0.933
9. Brian Cardinal, Mem 0.888
10. Rudy Gay, Mem 0.744
11. Hakim Warrick, Mem 0.739
12. Mike Miller, Mem 0.737
13. Eduardo Najera, Den 0.672
14. Kyle Lowry, Mem 0.643
15. J.R. Smith, Den 0.629
16. Anthony Carter, Den 0.543
17. Yakhouba Diawara, Den 0.456…Diawara played only 9 minutes.
18. Steven Hunter, Den 0.443…Hunter played only 7 minutes.
19. Allen Iverson, Den 0.384
20. Darko Milicic, Mem 0.244…Milicic played only 9 minutes.
21. Jason Collins, Mem 0.145
22. Mike Conley, Mem 0.022
24. Casey Jacobsen, Mem -0.108

OBSERVATIONS ON THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
The Nuggets knew they could turn off their defensive intensity and still win this game, so there were a lot of high performers. Kenyon Martin for the Nuggets was the best player on the court, and the only superstar. Chucky Atkins and Marcus Camby were both star-plus for the Nuggets. Plain old stars were Juan Carlos Navarro of the Grizzlies and Linas Kleiza of the Nuggets. Of the 5 players who were stars or better, the Nuggets had 4 and the Grizzlies only 1.

Brown and Crittenton were outstanding for the Grizzlies. Anthony was outstanding for the Nuggets.

The Grizzlies had 1 player who was very good, Cardinal, and 3 players who were good, Gay, Warrick, and Miller. But good is not good enough to win games in the NBA; you have to be better than good.

Najera and J.R. Smith for the Nuggets were mediocre, as was Lowry for the Grizzlies.

Carter was poor for the Nuggets. In limited minutes, Diawara and Hunter were very poor.

Iverson was extremely poor for the Nuggets, which is something you will rarely see.

At the bottom of the barrel, the Grizzlies had 4 players who were total disasters, while the Nuggets had none. Milicic in limited minutes was a disaster; he just missed the near disaster level.

Conley, Collins, and Jacobsen were total disasters. Conley started at PG and played 27 minutes. C Collins played 20 minutes off the bench, and SF Jacobsen played 12 minutes off the bench.

Among the 8 players who were poor or worse, each team had 4, but the 4 Grizzlies were even worse than the 4 Nuggets.

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.

Allen Iverson: +26
Carmelo Anthony: +20
Marcus Camby: +18
Kenyon Martin: +15
Eduardo Najera: +15
Linas Kleiza: +14
J.R. Smith: +7
Anthony Carter: +7
Chucky Atkins: +4

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
This game’s plus-minus proves that sometimes a lot of good luck, or a lot of bad luck, can distort the measure. Iverson did relatively little in this game, mostly 8 assists, and yet he ended up with the highest plus-minus. So his teammates rescued Iverson from a much lower number. 3 Nuggets guards, Smith, Carter, and Atkins, were at the low end of the plus-minus, but everyone finished in the positive.

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

Turnovers: NBA Average: 14, Nuggets’ Total 13, Team 0, Anthony 2, Atkins 1, Camby 0, Carter 3, Diawara 0, Hunter 2, Iverson 1, Kleiza 1, Martin 1, Najera 0, Smith 2

Personal Fouls: NBA Average: 21, Nuggets’ Total 21, Anthony 4, Atkins 1, Camby 1, Carter 3, Diawara 1, Hunter 2, (Green 1), Iverson 1, Kleiza 3, Martin 2, Najera 0, Smith 2

Allen Iverson played 31 minutes and was 2/12, 0/2 on 3’s, and 4/6 from the line for 8 points, and he made 8 assists.

Steven Hunter played 7 minutes and was 2/2 from the line for 2 points, and he made 2 rebounds.

Yakhouba Diawara played 9 minutes and was 1/4 and 2/2 from the line for 4 points, and he made 1 rebound.

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

J.R. Smith played 14 minutes and was 2/7 and 2/4 on 3’s for 6 points, and he made 2 assists, 1 block, and 1 rebound.

Eduardo Najera played 18 minutes and was 3/6 and 1/2 on 3’s for 7 points, and he made 4 rebounds.

Carmelo Anthony played 30 minutes and was 7/14 for 14 points, and he made 13 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 steal.

Linas Kleiza played 26 minutes and was 7/13, 1/4 on 3’s, and 4/5 from the line for 19 points, and he made 6 rebounds and 1 assist.

Marcus Camby played 28 minutes and was 3/4, 1/1 on 3’s, and 1/2 from the line for 8 points, and he made 10 rebounds, 6 blocks, 3 assists, and 2 steals.

Chucky Atkins played 21 minutes and was 3/4, 2/3 on 3’s, and 1/2 from the line for 9 points, and he made 7 assists and 6 rebounds.

Kenyon Martin played 28 minutes and was 9/11 and 5/9 from the line for 23 points, and he made 7 rebounds, 3 assists, and 1 steal.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Friday, March 14 in Denver to play the Raptors at 7 pm mountain time. Neither the Nuggets nor the Raptors will be playing on back to back nights.

The San Antonio Spurs' Almost Flawless Execution Beats the Denver Nuggets 107-103, but J.R. Smith Kept the Nuggets Close

The Nuggets are good enough in terms of talent to beat the San Antonio Spurs and they did so three nights earlier in Denver. But in Texas, the Spurs almost always win and this game was no exception. Tim Duncan and Matt Bonner dominated Kenyon Martin and Marcus Camby, who was playing with a bruised hip, and the Spurs defeated the Nuggets 107-103, despite heroics from Allen Iverson and especially from J.R. Smith. The loss left the Nuggets 2 1/2 games behind the Golden State Warriors for the 8th and final playoff spot in the tough Western Conference.

Martin did what he could against Duncan, but Nene is the type of player who has more success against him than the less bulky Martin. Technically, if the Nuggets fail to make the playoffs, it won’t really be the full team that missed the playoffs because Nene, a multi-million dollar big man who is big enough to effect the course of a game near the hoop, has been out for essentially the entire season. It is my contention that the Nuggets should make the playoffs regardless of this, but there is little doubt that the Nuggets would have won this game had Nene played in it.

J.R. Smith was unbelievable in this game; he was more than twice as productive as usual. Without Smith, the Nuggets would not have been able to hang close with the Spurs as they did. Smith made all the highlight reels. On one play, he squeezed past Duncan along the baseline below the hoop, turned all the way around, and jumped so high over Duncan to make the shot on the other side that Duncan looked useless on the play. And Bruce Bowen started guarding J.R. Smith at one point. One of the ultimate honors you can get in pro basketball, as an offensive player, is if Spurs Coach Greg Popovich orders defensive specialist Bruce Bowen to guard you, because you have to be a major threat to the Spurs for that to happen.

Many Nuggets fans who saw the game were convinced that the Nuggets were at least slightly cheated by the refs. Specifically, Nuggets fans could not believe how it was possible that the Nuggets had 22 fouls called against them while the Spurs had only 20. It wasn’t just the fans. The Spurs were 22/29 on free throws, while the Nuggets, who in most games get more free throws than their opponent, were 17/23. Carmelo Anthony never even got to the line until 4 ½ minutes left in the game, despite clearly being fouled numerous times earlier. Melo was particularly angry after he was kneed by Duncan and pushed back behind the mid-court line, which resulted in an over and back turnover. Melo’s reaction was not very mellow, and he got a very quick technical from a referee. Camby also got a technical in this game, whereas the Spurs, of course, did not get any technicals.

There were definitely some instances when the Spurs fouled a Nuggets player but there was no call, and there were definitely some instances when the Nuggets were called for a foul that was questionable at best. For example, in the 3rd quarter, Martin got almost all ball on Parker going to the hoop, and it should have been a jump ball, but it was a foul on Martin. J.R. Smith was clearly fouled while going straight through the paint with just under 3 minutes to go and that wasn’t called. With 1:45 left, Parker pushed Iverson to the floor and there was no call. At about that time also, Parker was camped out in the lane for more than 4 seconds and there was no 3-second violation call. These are some of the instances, but there were other instances of calls and non-calls going in favor of the Spurs.

I guess the referees were not in the mood to favorably consider the plight of what looks to end up as one of the best teams in the history of sports that failed to make the playoffs. Maybe they figure there must be something really rotten at the core about such a team, which would be ironic since George Karl is one of the few coaches in basketball who thinks that the personalities and characters of players are large factors in determining the fate of a team. Maybe George Karl should have been a referee instead of a coach, since he seems to think more like a referee might think than like other coaches think.

The Nuggets fought tooth and nail and led for much of the game. After falling 7 behind midway through the 2nd quarter, they battled back later in the period, mostly with dunks and layups, but also with two long threes by Iverson just before the half time horn. The Nuggets led the Spurs at the half 58-55.

In the 3rd quarter, the Nuggets led by as many as seven, but the Spurs went on a 16-5 run to close the quarter and take an 84-80 lead. They started executing flawlessly, while the Nuggets could not keep up despite the best efforts of Iverson and Smith. The Spurs took the lead with 1:37 left in the 3rd with a long 3 by PF Matt Bonner.

The Spurs scored on their last 6 possessions to win the game. These were mostly easy shots earned by the Spurs following their usual tactics. Meanwhile, the Nuggets’ late in the game shots were mostly difficult shots that were well defended. The Spurs’ execution down the stretch was outstanding, while the Nuggets’ execution varied from occasional brilliance to total ineptness.

I have been discussing the point guard mess and the need for what I call an offensive identity over the last several game reports. You need to have an offensive identity so that you can be consistent on offense, so that you give yourself the best chance to win tough games. You need to have either one dominant, playmaking PG and someone who backs him up, or you need to have two playmakers who more or less share the job. If your playmakers are not established, and they change from game to game, and there are games where the playmaking is spread through most of the team, you will most of the time end up with fewer overall assists than you need, and you will score less than you should because players who should be worried mostly about scoring will be worried too much about assisting.

Sure enough, this was another game in which the Nuggets’ point guard situation was still a hopeless mess, and their offensive identity was nothing more than wishful thinking that they have one.

Let’s look at the Spurs to see how an offense is supposed to work. SG Manu Ginobili is such a quick and fluid a mover on the court, and he is such an intelligent player, that he gets more assists than does PG Tony Parker. So the Spurs do not have the perfect set-up, which is where your starting PG gets more assists than anyone else on the team. But they have the next best set-up, and the difference between the two is not that serious a thing.

The Spurs do follow the most important thing, which is what I call the minimum requirements to have an offensive identity. I use to call them guidelines, but from now on I am calling them requirements, because the more I think about this, the more I realize that this is critical as to whether an NBA team can win games it is supposed to win or not. There are two rules. The first rule is that the team must average, at an absolute minimum, the NBA average number of assists per game, adjusted for pace. I have calculated that the Nuggets, the fastest pace team in the League, should be averaging at least 25 assists per game. They are averaging 1 ½ fewer assists per game than that, so they have failed the first requirement.

But the Nuggets are close to meeting the first requirement, so they could have a decent offense if they met the second requirement. But they don’t. The Nuggets are extremely inconsistent with their assists, so they violate the second requirement too often. The second requirement is that, in every game, your top two assisting guards should make at least half and no more than 2/3 of all the assists. If the assists are more spread out than this, too many players are looking for assists rather than getting in position and executing pick and rolls and so forth for scores.

Consider the Nuggets’ center, Marcus Camby, as an example. He is averaging about 3 assists per game, which makes Camby look generous, but it is terrible for the Nuggets. Camby is averaging only 9 points per game, down 2 from last year and down almost 4 from 2005-06. Fans have been known to complain about Camby acting like a point guard, but the problem is deeper than just Camby. All Nuggets players are subject to acting too much like a point guard from time to time, because of the failure of the team to have 2 established playmakers who make the plays almost every game.

Now if you look at the seasonal averages, you would never know there is a problem, because Iverson and Carter clearly are the dominant playmakers judged by that. The problem does not occur in every game. If it did, the Nuggets would be heading for a 20-62 record or so. There are games where Carter and Iverson get 2/3 of all the assists. The problem appears mostly in games against the better teams. The better the team that the Nuggets are playing and especially the better the defense that the Nuggets are playing, the more likely the playmaking will break down and the Nuggets offense will become far less productive than usual. If Iverson decides he has to ramp up his scoring to try to beat a great team like the Spurs, but at the same time he refuses to leave the playmaking mostly to Carter, then Carter becomes of little value, and the Nuggets can win only if Iverson is able to play both guard positions well simultaneously most of the time he is out there. Since Iverson is not a machine so far as we know, he is not going to be able to do that near-impossible task on a regular basis, especially since we are talking about playing the better defenses..

So this game was a perfect example of what I have been talking about. The Nuggets finished with only 18 assists, grossly short of the needed 25. There were three Nuggets who made 4 assists each, Iverson, Anthony, and Camby. Not only did the Nuggets fail the second requirement, because the top two assisters made only 8 assists instead of 9-12, but the starting point guard, Carter, made a grand total of 1 assist in almost 20 minutes, and was not one of the top two assisters. Anthony and Camby were both wasted to some extent by making these assists instead of being able to execute plays where they score the ball.

So we have identified a critical reason why the Nuggets are having so much trouble making the playoffs this year, and why they have had so much trouble under Karl winning playoff games.

There is only one known solution to this, but for Karl it would be sacrilege. Karl would have to defy one of the “glorious traditions of basketball,” which is that Iverson plays the 2-guard position and is “not a point guard”. Atkins would come off the bench in relief of Iverson, and so could Carter. When either one of them came in, Iverson could move over to the 2-guard.

The important thing would be to limit the amount of time that Iverson and either Carter or Atkins are on the court at the same time. The Nuggets are losing out when Iverson and either Carter or Atkins are playing at the same time, it’s that simple. But Karl is never going to have enough courage to admit that Iverson should be declared to be the PG because, for one thing, he would have to defy one of his best friends, Larry Brown, to do that.

Larry Brown has always thought that a PG should never be a major scorer, and he was desperate for heavy guard scoring in Philadelphia, so he insisted that AI play SG. In Brown's mind, it was the only possible solution to meeting the scoring objective without violating the PG rule. One big reason why the Pistons under Brown won it all in 2003-04 was that the Billups-Hamilton back court was perfect for Brown's limitations and rules. Billups was a PG who was not at all obsessed with scoring, and Hamilton was an excellent SG who had little interest in encroaching on the PG role. So those two guards made it possible for Brown's views to work very well. Brown never had a 2-guard the caliber of Hamilton in Philadelphia, which is a partial but by no means a complete excuse for Brown's failure to make any adjustments to Iverson’s role as the years went by after the 76'ers loss to the Lakers in the finals. Karl would never do anything to go against his idol Brown. That would be sacrilege, so that is why the Nuggets are stuck with this problem to this day. If Karl officially realized that AI has been running the point, there would be all kinds of stories in the media about how Karl was trying to improve on what Brown did, and Karl could not tolerate or deal with that.

It should be noted, in all fairness, that Brown and Karl are not the only two coaches in the world who worry about a PG being a huge scorer. But as Byron Scott is showing with his Hornets, it is definitely possible to have a successful offense where your PG is a huge scorer.

If we had a coach who was not tied at the hip to Larry Brown, we would probably have A.I. as the starting PG by now. At the start of the 2007-08 season, basketball's best minds penciled in the Nuggets' starting five as Iverson/Smith/Anthony/Martin/Camby. Early this season, many of the sports sites were showing Iverson as the starting PG for the Nuggets, because they thought that was the only reasonable possibility once Atkins was not available. But the basketball experts at ESPN, CBS Sportsline, and so forth did not understand that Karl can never do anything that would in any way challenge his idol Brown.

With every game the door starts to close a little more on the Nugget’s playoff hopes. Now the Nuggets need to win the next 3 straight games, which are all home games, because they have been struggling on the road this year, unlike last year, and because they have fallen 2 ½ games behind the last playoff spot with only 19 games left. The Nuggets are more talented than the Mavericks, the Warriors, the Hornets, and the Rockets, but they are inferior in basketball knowledge, and they employ fewer strategies and tactics than any of those teams. It’s as if the Nuggets are doing a scientific experiment to see if athletic skills and talent are enough to offset knowledge, strategies, and tactics. It’s looking more and more like the answer is no, they are not enough.

The Nuggets only hope now may be to want to win so badly that they employ an even greater percentage of their abilities than they would otherwise. To tap most of your raw abilities you need to get really pumped up. Maybe, as the season draws to a close, the Nuggets will rebel against going down in history as one of the all-time chump teams. Maybe they will join J.R. Smith in the quest for the ring.

PROJECTIONS

Nuggets 1 Current odds, to the nearest 5%, of the Nuggets making the playoffs: 40%
Nuggets 1 Current odds, to the nearest 5%, that the Nuggets and their suffering fans will be stuck with George Karl for next season: 60%

The current odds of the Nuggets making the playoffs, according to Hollinger at ESPN’s excellent team analysis system, are 51%. However, and I know this is a little confusing, the Nuggets are projected to most likely be the 9th seed in the Western Conference, meaning that they will not make the playoffs because only 8 teams qualify in each Conference. It seems right now that the Suns, the Warriors, and the Nuggets will be battling it out for the last 2 playoff spots in the West. All three of them are considered likely to make the playoffs, in statistical terms, but not all three are going to make it. Nuggets 1 agrees with Hollinger’s system, which is saying that the Suns and the Warriors are favored in this race. The Suns’ victory over the Spurs on Sunday March 9 gave them a boost over the Warriors and the Nuggets.

The Hollinger odds don’t take into account that, most likely, Nene is not going to be available in top form for the Nuggets for the stretch run. Also, there may not be enough time for Atkins to get back to good condition. It’s still unknown whether Atkins can help to rescue the Nuggets from not making the playoffs. If the Hollinger system adjusted for the Atkins and the Nene situations, it would show a lower percentage chance than 53% for the Nuggets to make the playoffs.

The Lakers, the Rockets, the Spurs, the Jazz, and the Hornets are currently considered locks to make the playoffs, and the Mavericks are currently considered near locks to make the playoffs. However, the Rockets are no longer really total locks, due to the loss of Yao Ming for the season. But I think they are still near locks. The Suns are in trouble, due to their terrible trade, which was Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks for Shaquille O’Neal, but they are in less trouble after their win at home over the Spurs on March 9.

PLAYOFF TEAMS PROJECTED FINAL RECORDS-HOLLINGER-ESPN
Lakers 58-24
Rockets 56-26
Spurs 55-27
Jazz 54-28
Hornets 53-29
Mavericks 52-30
Suns 51-31
Warriors 51-31

NON-PLAYOFF TEAMS PROJECTED FINAL RECORDS-HOLLINGER-ESPN
Nuggets 48-34
Trailblazers 42-40

The Rockets have lost their best player, and one of the best players in the NBA, Yao Ming, for the rest of the season. Therefore, they will probably drop substantially below their current projection, since the projections do not take injuries into account. The Suns will probably drop a little more also, because they made a bad trade when they gave up “The Matrix,” Shawn Marion. At this time, however, Nuggets 1 does not believe that either the Rockets or the Suns will fail to win at least 50 games, so they will most likely finish ahead of the Nuggets despite their difficulties.

The Warriors are now 3 games ahead of the Nuggets for the last spot. The schedules of the two teams are roughly equal difficulty from here on out. If the Nuggets make up the three games, so that the Warriors and the Nuggets finish with identical records, and the season series between them ends up tied 2-2, the Warriors are likely to get the playoff spot rather than the Nuggets, because it is likely that the Warriors will finish at least 1 game ahead of the Nuggets in Conference record, which would be the tie-breaker if the Warriors and the Nuggets split their 4 head to head games.

Now that the Nuggets are 2 games behind the Warriors, the two remaining Nuggets-Warriors games are more important than ever. If the Warriors win both games, the Nuggets are definitely out of the playoffs. If each team wins one game, the Warriors remain more likely to make the playoffs than the Nuggets. If the Nuggets win both games, then the Nuggets are about even with the Warriors in the race. The Nuggets-Warriors games are on Saturday, March 29 in Denver and on Thursday, April 10 in Oakland. Neither the Warriors nor the Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights in either of those games.

WARRIORS REMAINING SCHEDULE, All times, EDT
Wed, Mar 12 Toronto 10:30 PM
Thu, Mar 13 @ Phoenix 10:30 PM
Sat, Mar 15 Memphis 10:30 PM
Tue, Mar 18 @ Sacramento 10:00 PM
Wed, Mar 19 @ LA Clippers 10:30 PM
Fri, Mar 21 Houston 10:30 PM
Sun, Mar 23 @ LA Lakers 9:30 PM
Mon, Mar 24 LA Lakers 10:30 PM
Thu, Mar 27 Portland 10:30 PM
Sat, Mar 29 @ Denver 9:00 PM
Sun, Mar 30 Dallas 9:00 PM
Tue, Apr 1 @ San Antonio 8:30 PM
Wed, Apr 2 @ Dallas 9:30 PM
Fri, Apr 4 @ Memphis 8:00 PM
Sun, Apr 6 @ New Orleans 7:00 PM
Tue, Apr 8 Sacramento 10:30 PM
Thu, Apr 10 Denver 8:00 PM
Sat, Apr 12 LA Clippers 10:30 PM
Mon, Apr 14 @ Phoenix 10:00 PM
Wed, Apr 16 Seattle 10:30 PM

NUGGETS REMAINING SCHEDULE, All times EDT
Wed, Mar 12 Memphis 9:00 PM
Fri, Mar 14 Toronto 9:00 PM
Sun, Mar 16 Seattle 9:00 PM
Tue, Mar 18 @ Detroit 7:30 PM
Wed, Mar 19 @ Philadelphia 7:00 PM
Fri, Mar 21 @ New Jersey 7:30 PM
Sun, Mar 23 @ Toronto 3:30 PM
Mon, Mar 24 @ Memphis 8:00 PM
Thu, Mar 27 Dallas 10:30 PM
Sat, Mar 29 Golden State 9:00 PM
Mon, Mar 31 @ Phoenix 10:00 PM
Tue, Apr 1 Phoenix 9:00 PM
Sat, Apr 5 Sacramento 9:00 PM
Sun, Apr 6 @ Seattle 9:00 PM
Tue, Apr 8 @ LA Clippers 10:30 PM
Thu, Apr 10 @ Golden State 8:00 PM
Sat, Apr 12 @ Utah 9:00 PM
Sun, Apr 13 Houston 9:00 PM
Wed, Apr 16 Memphis 9:00 PM

So overall, Nuggets 1 agrees with the Hollinger system; as of now, we think the Nuggets will fail to make the playoffs. But it will probably be a very close call, and it still could go either way. We think that the Warriors will finish with either 49 or 50 wins. The Nuggets would need to finish 13-6 to reach 50 wins. This is realistically the minimum they must do to have a decent chance of making the playoffs. 12-7 will probably not be good enough, and 11-8 will definitely not be good enough. To be almost guaranteed a playoff spot, the Nuggets must go 14-5.

If you win a division you get into the playoffs regardless of how poor your record is. For the Nuggets, winning the Northwest Division is very unlikely at this point; the odds on that are at 4%. The odds that Utah will win the Northwest are 96% right now. The Nuggets would have to beat the Jazz in their remaining game against them, and they would also have to hope that the Jazz stumble down the stretch.

NUGGETS INJURY REPORT FOR PLAYERS WHO PLAYED IN THIS GAME
Allen Iverson: suffered a non-displaced fracture on the end of his right ring finger vs. San Antonio on 3/7. X-rays were negative, and he remains probable for the Grizzlies game on March 12.
Marcus Camby: suffered a right hip contusion at San Antonio on March 10, and he is probable for the Grizzlies game on March 12.

PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
NUGGETS PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
Nene: He underwent successful surgery to remove a testicular tumor on Jan. 14. A timeline for his return is still unknown. He has now missed 29 straight games. He is out until at least the middle of March, but could easily be out for the entire rest of the season. Nene has now missed 27 straight games this season. CBS Sportsline says Nene is most likely out for the rest of the season.

SPURS PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
All players on the roster were available.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of March 11, 2008

The Nuggets are under a YELLOW ALERT, on account of the following problems.

NUGGETS INJURIES, ILLNESSES, SUSPENSIONS, AND PERSONAL LEAVES
1. Nene illness 14 points

SEVERE AND UNEXPECTED CRUCIAL PLAYER SLUMPS
Chucky Atkins, 14 points

BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl has completely benched one or more players who should not be benched due to his incorrect calculation of the benefits and costs of that player, his 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: 0 points. Smith was not partially benched.

3. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 0-12 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 0 points. The rotations were reasonable.

4. The Nuggets have extreme offensive inconsistency and an excessive number of turnovers because they have neither a system nor even a good partial system on offense. They over rely on fast pace and on isolation plays, especially isolation plays by Anthony and Iverson. The damage caused by this would be up to 20 points, except that Iverson’s intelligence in recognizing different situations in different games, and responding appropriately, reduces the damage. At one time earlier this season, Iverson and Carter were marginalizing Anthony to some extent. That problem went away when Anthony ramped up his rebounding.

However, another problem has developed due to a combination of the unstructured offense and the Karl lineup, and it is not going to go away anytime soon. That would be the double point guard problem. The Nuggets don’t know in advance who is going to be the effective point guard in the game: Iverson, Carter, or both Iverson and Carter roughly equally. And in any case, it is foolish to have two point guards in the game for more than a small number of minutes.

In any event, 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.

On defense a system is much less important than on offense. How good your defense is is determined much more by effort and skill than by strategy. On defense, the main strategic decision is whether you are playing zone or man to man defense. The choice varies during each game, and usually depends on a gut feeling of the coach and/or the defensive floor leader, as to which is better at a particular point in the game, and with a particular opposing lineup on the court. At least as important as whether a zone or a man to man defense is in effect is the quality of the actual defending.

Lack of an adequate number of offensive plays and patterns: 14 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 think it is.

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 42, which constitutes YELLOW ALERT.

YELLOW ALERT (40-54): Minor damage is occurring to the season. The entire season is under medium threat. Beating quality teams is more difficult and will be relatively unusual. About 1/2 of all would be wins against good teams will now be losses. Beating mid-level teams is a little more difficult. About 1/4 of games that would be wins against mid-level teams will now be losses. Beating low level teams is still relatively easy. A good team has become in between a good team and a mid-level team when it is under this alert.

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT ALERT STATUS
All teams, of course, have an alert status, and the key thing that can swing games is not so much the actual status of the two teams, but the difference in the two statuses. The difference in the alert status is a third outside factor that impacts a game, joining home court advantage and extra rest advantage, if any.

IMPACT OF OUTSIDE FACTORS, INCLUDING ALERT STATUS, ON THIS GAME
The alert status system is still relatively new, but a preliminary estimate of what the point differential will be for each 1 level difference in the alert status has been made, and that estimate is 3-5 points. The Home court advantage has also been estimated to be 3-5 points, and we use 4 points for it. The extra rest advantage is very uncertain, and would differ a little from team to team, but it must be at least as much as the home court advantage. For now, until we can study it more, we will use 4 points for the extra rest advantage.

In this game, the Nuggets had the extra rest advantage, and the Spurs had the home court advantage, and those two offset each other.

The Spurs had no injuries, and were in either GREY or GREEN alert. So they had a 1-2 level advantage over the Nuggets, which translates roughly into a 6-10 point advantage. So the Spurs had a total net advantage of 6-10 points from outside factors. Since the Nuggets lost by only 4 points, they definitely played well enough to beat the Spurs, and would most likely have won the game were it not for the factors detailed in the alert status report feature.

George Karl has been doing better with the rotations lately, which has prevented the alert status from being even worse.

Atkins, in his third outing since coming back, did poorly again, so his alert points were increased.

The Nuggets have been unable to issue any prediction about when or whether Nene is going to return to the court. There was a rumor recently that he was going to return by mid-March, but there is no sign that that will become a reality yet. CBS Sportsline is saying that, most likely, Nene will not return to the court at all this season, including for the playoffs. If Nene in fact never returns, and Atkins continues to be a lost cause, and Karl goes back to making his usual mistakes, and if Carter starts to reassert himself at point guard, the Nuggets will range between YELLOW and ORANGE alert status for the rest of the season, and that right there may cost the Nuggets a playoff spot.

And don’t expect George Karl to pull a few offensive set plays out of a hat any time soon.

The mid January losses to the Bobcats and the Hawks, and the close calls at home against the Wolves and the Hawks in January, in games that should have and probably would have been relatively easy wins had the alert status been green, grey, or even yellow, illustrate the usefulness and accuracy of the alert system. When you reach ORANGE ALERT and especially RED ALERT, you start losing a substantial number of games that you would normally win. It’s that simple, and there is little anyone can do about it.

RESERVE WATCH
Number of Players Who Played at Least 6 Minutes: Nuggets 9 Spurs 10
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 9 Spurs 8

Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 28
Spurs Non-Starters Points: 31

Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 13
Spurs Non-Starters Rebounds: 12

Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 5
Spurs Non-Starters Assists: 4

THE NON-STARTERS IN THIS GAME
It is very unusual for Karl to play 9 players for 10 or more minutes. Right now he is forced to, because pushing J.R. Smith below 10 minutes is out of the question the way he is playing, and there is a huge mess at PG which requires Karl to play 2 official point guards for much more than 10 minutes each. Anthony Carter took over the PG position for the bulk of the season when Chucky Atkins went out for 2 months with hernia surgery. Atkins was poor in limited games before he went out. Carter has been better than expected, but apparently Karl agrees with most fans that Atkins will be eaten alive if the Nuggets make the playoffs and so Atkins, who has far more experience, including playoff experience, may be the Nuggets’ only hope at the position in the playoffs, and in the stretch run to make the playoffs, for that matter. So Karl has to give Atkins playing time in a last chance desperate bid to get Atkins up to speed. But since Atkins is poor so far, Atkins minutes have to be limited, and so Carter has to play a lot of minutes also.

J.R. Smith scored 22 points, allowing the Nuggets to hang tight with the Spurs non-starters in scoring, 28-31. In a similar way, Linas Kleiza was a good rebounder, which allowed the Nuggets’ non-starters to out rebound the Spurs’ non-starters 13-12. It’s unusual for the Nuggets’ non-starters to out assist the non-starters of the other team, but in this game they did, 5-4.

I hope to develop the reserve watch feature further in the future, because I want to try to expand what I already have in terms of a game coaching evaluation system. But 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 EXPLAINED
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. While some are biased in favor of offensive players, such as the efficiency measure at the NBA site, 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, which I think is a very good balance between offense and defense:

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-SPURS PLAYER RATINGS
NUGGETS PLAYER RATINGS
Allen Iverson: Game 41.5 Season 41.4
J.R. Smith: Game 34.5 Season 16.4
Carmelo Anthony: Game 32.1 Season 39.1
Kenyon Martin: Game 22.4 Season 22.1
Marcus Camby: Game 18.5 Season 32.3
Anthony Carter: Game 14.6 Season 20.3
Eduardo Najera: Game 9.7 Season 13.3
Linas Kleiza: Game 8.0 Season 18.1
Chucky Atkins: Game 1.6 Season 5.7

Nene: Did Not Play-Illness

Yakhouba Diawara: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Taurean Green: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision

SPURS PLAYER RATINGS
Tim Duncan: Game 52.9 Season 38.9
Manu Ginobili: Game 36.1 Season 34.2
Tony Parker: Game 22.8 Season 29.5
Bruce Bowen: Game 17.7 Season 11.2
Kurt Thomas: Game 16.9 Season 19.2
Matt Bonner: Game 14.5 Season 10.1
Michael Finley: Game 12.4 Season 15.4
Ime Udoka: Game 10.6 Season 10.3
Fabricio Oberto: Game 8.6 Season 13.2
Damon Stoudamire: Game 5.1 Season 11.9

NOTE 1: 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.
NOTE 2: This performance measure does NOT include the quality and quantity of each player’s defending, including the number of shots that the player prevented from going in the basket. The best Nuggets defenders, which are the ones who consistently make the extra effort and have the defensive talent to make that effort pay off, are Camby, Martin, Najera, and Diawara.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE PLAYER RATINGS:
J.R. Smith was more than twice as productive as his average, but where he led none of the other Nuggets followed. No other Nugget was above average at all, let alone much above average. In fact, there were only two Nuggets who made their averages against the tough Spurs defense, Iverson and Martin, who have been there, done that.

Anthony was 1/5 off his average, mainly because he didn’t get the ball much in the last third of this game. Carter was 1/4 off his average, mainly because he is getting confused about what he should be doing out there in the wake of Iverson’s gradual taking over of running the point. Najera was about 30% off his average, mainly because he didn’t get the rebounds he gets against many other teams, and because he, like Anthony, did not get the ball as much on offense as usual.

Camby is in a major slump, since the first of March, and he was only 60% as productive as usual. Kleiza is also in a slump, for about 2 1/2 weeks long now, and he was less than half as productive as usual.

For the Spurs, PF Tim Duncan was huge; he was about 1/3 more productive than usual, which is hard to do when you do as much as Duncan does on a regular basis. Joining him on the major plus side were SF Bowen and PF Bonner.

SG Ginobili made his average as did SF Udoka, though at less than 1/3 of Ginobili’s high level.

C Thomas and SG Finley were both just a very little short of their averages.

C Oberto was about 1/3 off his average, but he only played 8 minutes, compared to his average playing time of 20 minutes, so in real terms he played extremely well. Similarly, PG Stoudamire was a little more than 1/2 off his average productivity, but he only played 6 minutes compared to his average playing time of 20 minutes, so he actually played very well in real terms.

So there was really only 1 Spur who was substantially below his average, and even he was not way below. It was PG Parker, but he was not poor enough in this game to truly endanger the Spurs winning it, and he was no where near as poor as we was in the 3 days earlier Spurs-Nuggets game in Denver.

REAL PLAYER RATINGS EXPLAINED
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 1.80 Superstar Plus-Above Normal Even For Michael Jordan
1.40 1.60 Superstar Performance-A Michael Jordan Type Game
1.20 1.40 Star Plus-Spectacular Performance
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 Extremely Poor-Near Disaster
Less 0.25 Total Disaster

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

1. Tim Duncan, SA 1.356
2. J.R. Smith, Den 1.190
3. Manu Ginobili, SA 1.128
4. Fabricio Oberto, SA 1.075…Oberto played only 8 minutes.
5. Matt Bonner, SA 0.967
6. Allen Iverson, Den 0.965
7. Damon Stoudamire, SA 0.850…Stoudamire played only 6 minutes.
8. Carmelo Anthony, Den 0.803
9. Anthony Carter, Den 0.768
10. Ime Udoka, SA 0.757
11. Kenyon Martin, Den 0.723
12. Kurt Thomas, SA 0.704
13. Michael Finley, SA 0.653
14. Marcus Camby, Den 0.638
15. Tony Parker, SA 0.585
16. Linas Kleiza, Den 0.533
17. Bruce Bowen, SA 0.432
18. Eduardo Najera, Den 0.422
19. Chucky Atkins, Den 0.133

OBSERVATIONS ON THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
The best player on the court was Tim Duncan of the Spurs, and he was a star-plus. There were 3 stars: J.R. Smith for the Nuggets, and Manu Ginobili and Fabricio Oberto for the Nuggets. But Oberto played for only 8 minutes. Not counting Oberto, the Spurs had 1 star-plus and one star, while the Nuggets had just one star.

Iverson for the Nuggets and Bonner for the Spurs were outstanding.

Anthony for the Nuggets and Stoudamire in limited minutes for the Spurs were very good. Udoka and Thomas for the Spurs and Carter and Martin for the Nuggets were plain good.

Camby for the Nuggets and Finley for the Spurs were only mediocre, and when Camby is only mediocre the Nuggets are in deep trouble

Kleiza for the Nuggets and Parker for the Spurs were poor.

Bowen for the Spurs and Najera for the Nuggets were very poor, not counting their made you miss type shot defending.

Atkins for the Nuggets was a total disaster in his third game back from his long injury out. He was also a disaster in his first game back, but played much better in his second game, which was the Jazz game.

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.

Linas Kleiza: +10
Chucky Atkins: +9
Eduardo Najera: +0
J.R. Smith: -2
Anthony Carter: -2
Carmelo Anthony: -7
Marcus Camby: -8
Kenyon Martin: -10
Allen Iverson: -10

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
If anyone thinks that the Nugget’s non-starters are useless, consider these results. The 4 non-starters finished ahead of the 5 starters, except that Carter was tied with Smith.

Although there is no performance measure for made you miss type defending yet, the plus-minus will often give you some clues as to who defended very well. This is a good example of that. Kleiza was extremely quiet offensively, but he had a strong plus-minus, which suggests but does not prove that he was a very good defender in this game. In the case of Najera, who is usually a good defender in games, his plus-minus is usually better than his real player rating would suggest.

Smith was huge in this game, but even he couldn’t quite get into positive territory against the grind them out and shut them down Spurs.

All of the Nuggets’ starters except for Carter were beaten decisively by the Spurs.

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

Turnovers: NBA Average: 14, Nuggets’ Total 16, Team 1, Anthony 2, Atkins 0, Camby 2, Carter 2, Iverson 2, Kleiza 0, Martin 1, Najera 2, Smith 4

Personal Fouls: NBA Average: 21, Nuggets’ Total 22, Anthony 3, Atkins 1, Camby 2, Carter 1, Iverson 2, Kleiza 1, Martin 5, Najera 3, Smith 4

Chucky Atkins played 12 minutes and was 0/1 and 0/1 on 3’s for 0 points, and he made 1 assist and 1 steal.

Eduardo Najera played 23 minutes and was 1/3, 0/2 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 4 points, and he made 2 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 block, and 1 steal.

Linas Kleiza played 15 minutes and was 1/4 for 2 points, and he made 5 rebounds, 1 assist, and 1 steal.

Marcus Camby played 29 minutes and was 1/5 and 1/2 from the line for 3 points, and he made 14 rebounds and 4 assists.

Kenyon Martin played 31 minutes and was 7/15 and 2/5 from the line for 16 points, and he made 5 rebounds, 2 steals, and 1 block.

Anthony Carter played 19 minutes and was 4/7 and 2/2 on 3’s for 10 points, and he made 2 rebounds and 1 assist.

Carmelo Anthony played most of the game, 40 minutes, and was 8/15, 0/1 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 18 points, and he made 7 rebounds and 4 assists.

Allen Iverson played most of the game, 43 minutes, and was 9/22, 3/6 on 3’s, and 7/7 from the line for 28 points, and he made 5 rebounds, 4 assists, 1 steal, and 1 block.

J.R. Smith played 29 minutes and was 9/13, 1/4 on 3’s, and 3/5 from the line for 22 points, and he made 6 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 steal, and 1 block.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Wednesday, March 12 in Denver to play the Grizzlies at 7 pm mountain time. The Grizzlies will be playing on back to back nights, but the Nuggets will not be. So the Nuggets will have both the home court and the extra rest advantages.

The Jazz Rout the Nuggets 132-105, as Kenyon Martin is Knocked Out of the Game and the Jazz Clean up on the Boards

The Jazz won their 18th straight home game by routing the Nuggets in Utah, 132-105. Although the Nuggets never led in this game, they did hang with the Jazz for the first 8 minutes or so; it was 18 each following a long two Camby jumper with 4:39 left in the 1st. But it was all downhill from there. Seriously downhill, as in it was like coming down a steep mountain road with poor breaks. The Jazz led 34-26 after the 1st, 77-54 at the half, and 108-75 at the end of the 3rd. So the 2nd quarter was the real killer, as the Jazz outscored the Nuggets 43-28 in that one.

The Jazz excel in inside scoring, and they scored 60 points in the paint in this game. Kenyon Martin had to come out of the game after playing 9 minutes due to a mild concussion. After Martin was gone, and with no Nene to boot, it was a foregone conclusion that the Jazz were going to go to town in the paint, and they did exactly that.

In the first two months of this season, the Jazz, the Mavericks, and the Nuggets were the only three Western powers who were not great in 3-point shooting. But since the Jazz acquired Kyle Korver from the 76’ers, they have left the Nuggets in the dust in that area, and now the Nuggets and the Mavericks are the only two Western playoff and potential playoff teams which are not a great 3-point shooting team. The Nuggets and the Mavericks are roughly equal as they trail the field. The Nuggets make half a three more per game, but the Mavericks are a percentage point more accurate.

As usual, there was no sense of urgency on the part of Coach George Karl during this critical game, and no emergency time outs to speak of. Today’s George Karl has an incredibly frustrating ability to accept defeat without getting the slightest bit upset about it, and without kicking into a higher gear and being more active in terms of shouting, instructing, timeouts, half time adjustments, rotation changes, and so forth. It seems that Karl thinks that every loss is deserved, because every loss is due to inferior thinking by players and/or inferior toughness. He is always quick with praise for how wonderful the other team is. I sometimes think that Karl thinks that every win and every loss is preordained, so why should he get worked up trying to change outcomes that have already been decided by some higher power somewhere.

5 minutes into the game, Mehmet Okur gave Kenyon Martin a mild concussion with a sharp and cheap elbow to the face as he headed for the hoop. Martin played for 4 more minutes and, after playing very well, he was taken out of the game after 9 minutes. Meanwhile, Okur went on to complete one of his best games of the year. According to the Real Player Ratings, he was a superstar and was the best player on the court. The starting center for the Jazz, Okur was 9/11 from the field, an incredible 6/7 from beyond the arc, and 3/4 from the line for 27 points, and he added 11 rebounds, 3 steals, and 1 assist. Although Martin himself has been known to get someone out of a game while powering his way to get to the basket, at least the Nuggets have not made it a team policy to foul intentionally, to smash faces and even on occasion to throw bodies to the floor, and to ask questions later.

There is something very cheap about how the Jazz win games if you ask me. And it’s interesting that when the Jazz are on better behavior on the road, they lose more games than they win. Coaches should instruct their teams in advance of playing in Utah that they had better be ready to fight back if the Jazz step too far over the line. Let’s just summarize it this way: don’t be worried about getting a technical foul or two whenever you play in Salt Lake City. If you don’t get any technicals, you are not putting yourself in a position to win in Utah.

The Nuggets fast break style yielded an 18-5 advantage over the Jazz in fast break scoring, but as you can tell by those relatively low numbers, a fast break strategy can’t take you very far toward winning a game, and it certainly can never be the foundation to your plans for how you are going to win games. The Nuggets’ coaches have been overestimating what fast breaks can do for them since they were hired to coach the team, not to mention that they have been overestimating the supposed tremendous fast break skills of Nuggets players. But fast breaking is more like dribbling than it is like jump shooting. Most players can do it well, certainly most guards, so it’s not as if you should build a strategy around it. You want to build strategies on what you have that your opponents do not have, not on what every team has.

The Jazz were a mind boggling 50/83 or 60.2% from the field, whereas the Nuggets were a more down to Earth 38/80 or 47.5%. Mehmet Okur made 6/7 threes as the Jazz were 11/15 overall from downtown, while the Nuggets were a miserable 5/21. The Nuggets are generally going to be terrible on three-point shooting if Smith is not making them, and Smith was definitely not making threes in this game; he was just 1/4. Atkins and Anthony were both 1/2, but Iverson and Kleiza were 1/3, and Carter, Najera, and Diawara were all 0/2. When Smith is not hitting threes, the Nuggets start a game in a fairly deep hole.

Turnovers were about even, but the Nuggets were more than doubled by the Jazz in assisting. You read that correctly, the Jazz made more than twice as many assists as did the Nuggets. If you have been reading these reports, you already know what happened and why. Iverson, sensing correctly that the Jazz were going to score a lot of points in this game, decided to concentrate mostly on scoring and less on assisting. So he decided to leave the assisting to Anthony Carter and to a lesser extent to Chucky Atkins, who was playing in his second game following two months out with an injury. But Carter and Atkins did not come through; they made only 6 assists in a combined 42 minutes.

The Nuggets violated both of the guidelines that you must meet if you want to have a well run offense and maximize your chances to win. They failed to come close to the number of assists they should get adjusted for their pace, which is 25; the Nuggets made only 17 assists. And the top two Nuggets’ assisters failed to make at least half of all the assists; Carter and Iverson combined made just 8 assists. So the assisting was spread out too much, indicating an offense where there is too much uncertainty and confusion and not enough effectiveness and efficiency. Amazingly, you can say that the Nuggets had no effective point guard in this game, despite playing point guards for a combined 72 minutes if you count Iverson as you should.

The absences of Nene and Martin killed the Nuggets in rebounding. Melo may have picked up his rebounding this season, but he is no where near a dedicated enough rebounder to be able to make up for the absence of Kenyon Martin. And Marcus Camby has been in a slump since the calendar flipped to March. Camby made just 9 rebounds in this game, 5 fewer than his average in one of the most important games of the year. Anthony made 6 rebounds, and Kleiza also made 6, but that was about it for rebounding for the Nuggets; no other Nugget made more than 2 rebounds. The Jazz badly defeated the Nuggets in offensive rebounding 9-5, and they badly defeated the Nuggets in defensive rebounding 34-25.

Just as the Nuggets use fast pace and fast breaks as a major strategy, the Jazz use conservative and efficient shooting and hyper rough defending to win games. The Jazz by far have more personal fouls called against them than any other team, and that is no accident. I think that Coach Sloan fears that the Jazz would be terrible defensively without all the pushing and elbowing, and he may very well be right, because even with all the rough stuff, the Jazz are only in the middle of the pack in terms of points surrendered, whether or not you adjust for pace. The Jazz so far this season are giving up 107.9 points for every 100 possessions, good enough for 13th in the NBA, while the Nuggets are giving up 106.4 points for every 100 possessions, good enough for 6th in the NBA. So the Nuggets are 1 1/2 points better than the Jazz defensively.

The real strength of the Jazz is in their extremely efficient offense. While the Nuggets try to use speed and fast breaks to have a great offense, the Jazz try to use efficient scoring to get there, much of it from carefully practiced plays where everyone is on the same page. For example, Boozer and Williams are running the pick and roll these days almost as effectively as Stockton and Malone used to run it for years and years in Utah. The Jazz are the 2nd best offense in the NBA after you make the very important adjustment for pace, scoring 114.2 points per 100 possessions. The Nuggets are the 11th best offense in the NBA after you adjust for pace, with 109.9 points per 100 possessions. So the Jazz are a little more than 4 points better than the Nuggets on offense per 100 possessions.

If you look at the all-important differential between points scored and points given up per 100 possessions, the Nuggets are +3.5 points, but the Jazz are +6.3 points, substantially better. The Trailblazers have a differential of -1.0 points, incidentally, so they are not at all competitive with either the Nuggets or the Jazz. So if the Jazz win the Northwest division, and it is almost certain now that they will, the best team in the division will have won in terms of points scored minus points given up, with pace corrected for.

NBA TEAMS RANKED ACCORDING TO THE ULTIMATE MEASURE: POINTS SCORED PER 100 POSSESSIONS MINUS POINTS GIVEN UP PER 100 POSSESSIONS as of March 9, 2008
1. Celtics +12.2
2. Pistons +8.3
3. Lakers +7.9
4. Jazz +6.3
5. Hornets +5.8
6. Spurs +5.8
7. Suns +5.7
8. Rockets +5.6
9. Magic +5.4
10. Raptors +4.9
11. Mavericks +4.9
12. Warriors +3.8
13. Nuggets +3.5

Since the Celtics and the Pistons play in the much weaker Eastern Conference, this does not mean that the Celtics or the Pistons will be favored to win the Championship against the Lakers this year.

Notice that the Cavaliers are not on this list. In fact, the Cavaliers’ differential is a dangerously bad -0.6. LeBron James has to be a miracle worker just to make the Cavaliers competitive; it’s too much to ask to think that he will be able to advance the Cavaliers in the playoffs again this year.

Notice how this extremely important measure very closely parallels the actual win-loss standings. You can see that the Nuggets are only 9th best in the West, which is exactly their position in the win-loss standings. Notice too that the Warriors are very slightly ahead of the Nuggets, just as they are in the standings. However, the difference between the Warriors and the Nuggets is so small that either team could win both of the remaining two head to head games and therefore most likely take the last playoff spot from the other. If the Nuggets want to make the playoffs bad enough, they are good enough as they are, warts and all, to defeat the Warriors in both of the head to head games, even given all of the shortcomings and problems they have that we cover here.

Nuggets 1 is predicting that the Los Angeles Lakers will win the 2008 NBA Championship, a prediction which is heavily supported by this performance measure, keeping in mind once again that the West is a far stronger Conference than the East. On the other hand, if it is a Lakers-Celtics series, it should be a great 6 or 7 game series, because the Celtics’ +12.2 is a huge number even considering how weak the East is.

PROJECTIONS

Nuggets 1 Current odds, to the nearest 5%, of the Nuggets making the playoffs: 45%
Nuggets 1 Current odds, to the nearest 5%, that the Nuggets and their suffering fans will be stuck with George Karl for next season: 60%

The current odds of the Nuggets making the playoffs, according to Hollinger at ESPN’s excellent team analysis system, are 53%. However, and I know this is a little confusing, the Nuggets are projected to most likely be the 9th seed in the Western Conference, meaning that they will not make the playoffs. It seems right now that the Suns, the Warriors, and the Nuggets will be battling it out for the last 2 playoff spots in the West. All three of them are considered likely to make the playoffs, in statistical terms, but not all three are going to make it. Nuggets 1 agrees with Hollinger’s system, which is saying that the Suns and the Warriors are favored in this race. The Suns’ victory over the Spurs on Sunday, March 9 gave them a boost over the Warriors and the Nuggets.

The Hollinger odds don’t take into account that, most likely, Nene is not going to be available in top form for the Nuggets for the stretch run. Also, Atkins was a disaster in his first time back, but did a little better in this Jazz game. It’s still unknown whether Atkins can help to rescue the Nuggets from not making the playoffs. If the Hollinger system adjusted for the Atkins and the Nene situations, it would show a lower percentage chance than 53% for the Nuggets to make the playoffs.

The Lakers, the Rockets, the Spurs, the Jazz, and the Hornets are currently considered locks to make the playoffs, and the Mavericks are currently considered near locks to make the playoffs. However, the Rockets are no longer really total locks, due to the loss of Yao Ming for the season. But I think they are still near locks. The Suns are in trouble, due to their terrible trade, which was Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks for Shaquille O’Neal, but they are in less trouble after their win at home over the Spurs on March 9.

PLAYOFF TEAMS PROJECTED FINAL RECORDS-HOLLINGER-ESPN
1. Lakers 58-24
2. Rockets 56-26
3. Spurs 55-27
4. Jazz 54-28
5. Hornets 53-29
6. Mavericks 52-30
7. Suns 51-31
8. Warriors 51-31

NON-PLAYOFF TEAMS PROJECTED FINAL RECORDS-HOLLINGER-ESPN
9. Nuggets 49-33
10. Trailblazers 42-40

The Rockets have lost their best player, and one of the best players in the NBA, Yao Ming, for the rest of the season. Therefore, they will probably drop substantially below their current projection, since the projections do not take injuries into account. The Suns will probably drop a little more also, because they made a bad trade when they gave up “The Matrix,” Shawn Marion. At this time, however, Nuggets 1 does not believe that either the Rockets or the Suns will fail to win at least 50 games, so they will most likely finish ahead of the Nuggets despite their difficulties.

The Warriors are now 2 games ahead of the Nuggets for the last spot. The schedules of the two teams are roughly equal difficulty from here on out. If the Nuggets make up the two games, so that the Warriors and the Nuggets finish with identical records, and the season series between them ends up tied 2-2, the Warriors are likely to get the playoff spot rather than the Nuggets, because it is likely that the Warriors will finish at least 1 game ahead of the Nuggets in Conference record, which would be the tie-breaker if the Warriors and the Nuggets split their 4 head to head games.

Now that the Nuggets are 2 games behind the Warriors, the two remaining Nuggets-Warriors games are more important than ever. If the Warriors win both games, the Nuggets are most likely out of the playoffs. If each team wins one game, the Warriors remain more likely to make the playoffs than the Nuggets. If the Nuggets win both games, they then become a little more likely to win the last spot than the Warriors do. The Nuggets-Warriors games are on Saturday, March 29 in Denver and on Thursday, April 10 in Oakland. Neither the Warriors nor the Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights in either of those games.

WARRIORS REMAINING SCHEDULE, All times, EDT
Wed, Mar 12 Toronto 10:30 PM
Thu, Mar 13 @ Phoenix 10:30 PM
Sat, Mar 15 Memphis 10:30 PM
Tue, Mar 18 @ Sacramento 10:00 PM
Wed, Mar 19 @ LA Clippers 10:30 PM
Fri, Mar 21 Houston 10:30 PM
Sun, Mar 23 @ LA Lakers 9:30 PM
Mon, Mar 24 LA Lakers 10:30 PM
Thu, Mar 27 Portland 10:30 PM
Sat, Mar 29 @ Denver 9:00 PM
Sun, Mar 30 Dallas 9:00 PM
Tue, Apr 1 @ San Antonio 8:30 PM
Wed, Apr 2 @ Dallas 9:30 PM
Fri, Apr 4 @ Memphis 8:00 PM
Sun, Apr 6 @ New Orleans 7:00 PM
Tue, Apr 8 Sacramento 10:30 PM
Thu, Apr 10 Denver 8:00 PM
Sat, Apr 12 LA Clippers 10:30 PM
Mon, Apr 14 @ Phoenix 10:00 PM
Wed, Apr 16 Seattle 10:30 PM

NUGGETS REMAINING SCHEDULE, All times EDT
Mon, Mar 10 @ San Antonio 8:30 PM
Wed, Mar 12 Memphis 9:00 PM
Fri, Mar 14 Toronto 9:00 PM
Sun, Mar 16 Seattle 9:00 PM
Tue, Mar 18 @ Detroit 7:30 PM
Wed, Mar 19 @ Philadelphia 7:00 PM
Fri, Mar 21 @ New Jersey 7:30 PM
Sun, Mar 23 @ Toronto 3:30 PM
Mon, Mar 24 @ Memphis 8:00 PM
Thu, Mar 27 Dallas 10:30 PM
Sat, Mar 29 Golden State 9:00 PM
Mon, Mar 31 @ Phoenix 10:00 PM
Tue, Apr 1 Phoenix 9:00 PM
Sat, Apr 5 Sacramento 9:00 PM
Sun, Apr 6 @ Seattle 9:00 PM
Tue, Apr 8 @ LA Clippers 10:30 PM
Thu, Apr 10 @ Golden State 8:00 PM
Sat, Apr 12 @ Utah 9:00 PM
Sun, Apr 13 Houston 9:00 PM
Wed, Apr 16 Memphis 9:00 PM

So overall, Nuggets 1 agrees with the Hollinger system; as of now, we think the Nuggets will fail to make the playoffs. But it will probably be an extremely close call, and it could go either way. We think that the Warriors will finish with either 49 or 50 wins. The Nuggets would need to finish 13-7 to reach 50 wins. This is realistically the minimum they must do to have a decent chance of making the playoffs. 12-8 will probably not be good enough, and 11-9 will definitely not be good enough. To be almost guaranteed a playoff spot, the Nuggets must go 14-6.

If you win a division you get into the playoffs regardless of how poor your record is. For the Nuggets, winning the Northwest Division is very unlikely at this point; the odds on that are at 6%. The odds that Utah will win the Northwest are 94% right now. The Nuggets would have to beat the Jazz in their remaining game against them, and they would also have to hope that the Jazz stumble down the stretch.

NUGGETS INJURY REPORT FOR PLAYERS WHO PLAYED IN THIS GAME
Allen Iverson: He suffered a sprained right ring finger in the Spurs game on 3/7. X-Rays were negative and he remains probable for the Spurs game.
Kenyon Martin: Went out after 9 minutes in this game, after suffering a mild concussion. CBS Sportsline says Martin is doubtful, but the official Nuggets sites says thatMartin is probable for the Spurs game.
Chucky Atkins: has played in two-straight games after missing the previous 26 games due to a surgically repaired right groin/abdominal strain (Sports Hernia). He is probable for the Spurs game.

PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
NUGGETS PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
Nene: He underwent successful surgery to remove a testicular tumor on Jan. 14. A timeline for his return is still unknown. He is out until at least the middle of March, but could easily be out for the entire rest of the season. Nene has now missed 27 straight games this season. CBS Sportsline says Nene is most likely out for the rest of the season.
Steven Hunter: A death in the family made him unavailable for the Jazz game. He is questionable for tonight’s Spurs game.

JAZZ PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
Andrei Kirilenko: He is day-to-day with a bruised hip.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of March 9, 2008

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

INJURIES, ILLNESSES, SUSPENSIONS, AND LEAVES
1. Kenyon Martin, injury during the game 14 points
2. Nene illness 14 points
3. Steven Hunter 4 points

SEVERE AND UNEXPECTED CRUCIAL PLAYER SLUMPS
Chucky Atkins, 10 points

BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl has completely benched one or more players who should not be benched due to his incorrect calculation of the benefits and costs of that player, his 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: 0 points. Smith was not partially benched.

3. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 0-12 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 0 points. Kleiza probably played too many minutes, but that is not definitely an error.

4. The Nuggets have extreme offensive inconsistency and an excessive number of turnovers because they have neither a system nor even a good partial system on offense. They over rely on fast pace and on isolation plays, especially isolation plays by Anthony and Iverson. The damage caused by this would be up to 20 points, except that Iverson’s intelligence in recognizing different situations in different games, and responding appropriately, reduces the damage. At one time earlier this season, Iverson and Carter were marginalizing Anthony to some extent. That problem went away when Anthony ramped up his rebounding.

However, another problem has developed due to a combination of the unstructured offense and the Karl lineup, and it is not going to go away anytime soon. That would be the double point guard problem. The Nuggets don’t know in advance who is going to be the effective point guard in the game: Iverson, Carter, or both Iverson and Carter roughly equally. And in any case, it is foolish to have two point guards in the game for more than a small number of minutes.

In any event, 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.

On defense a system is much less important than on offense. How good your defense is is determined much more by effort and skill than by strategy. On defense, the main strategic decision is whether you are playing zone or man to man defense. The choice varies during each game, and usually depends on a gut feeling of the coach and/or the defensive floor leader, as to which is better at a particular point in the game, and with a particular opposing lineup on the court. At least as important as whether a zone or a man to man defense is in effect is the quality of the actual defending.

Lack of an adequate number of offensive plays and patterns: 13 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 think it is.

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 55, which constitutes ORANGE ALERT. The status is on the border between ORANGE and YELLOW alert, so both descriptions are shown:

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 would be 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 wins will now be losses 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 poor teams that would have been wins will now be losses under this alert. A good team has been reduced to being a mid-level team, at best, when it is under this alert.

YELLOW ALERT (40-54): Minor damage is occurring to the season. The entire season is under medium threat. Beating quality teams is more difficult and will be relatively unusual. About 1/2 of all would be wins against good teams will now be losses. Beating mid-level teams is a little more difficult. About 1/4 of games that would be wins against mid-level teams will now be losses. Beating low level teams is still relatively easy. A good team has become in between a good team and a mid-level team when it is under this alert.

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT ALERT STATUS
All teams, of course, have an alert status, and the key thing that can swing games is not so much the actual status of the two teams, but the difference in the two statuses. The difference in the alert status is a third outside factor that impacts a game, joining home court advantage and extra rest advantage, if any.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE ALERT STATUS FOR THIS GAME
The Nuggets were on the border between YELLOW and ORANGE alert, and the JAZZ were probably in GREY alert, so the Jazz had a 1 1/2 level alert status advantage, along with the home court advantage in this game. The alert status system is still relatively new, but a preliminary estimate of what the point differential will be for each 1 level difference in the alert status has been made, and that estimate is 4-6 points. The home court advantage has been estimated by other basketball statisticians as being 3-4 points. So the Jazz had a 9-13 point advantage in this game from the outside factors. They won by 27, but you can estimate that their real advantage over the Nuggets was 14-18 points, still enough to be a statement win: the Jazz are better than the Nuggets this year, folks, despite the apparent talent advantage for the Nuggets.

George Karl has been doing better with the rotations lately, which has prevented the alert status from being even worse.

Atkins did better so his alert points were reduced.

The Nuggets have been unable to issue any prediction about when or whether Nene is going to return to the court. There was a rumor recently that he was going to return by mid-March, but there is no sign that that will become a reality yet. CBS Sportsline is saying that, most likely, Nene will not return to the court at all this season, including for the playoffs. If Nene in fact never returns, and Atkins continues to be a lost cause, and Karl goes back to making his usual mistakes, and if Carter starts to reassert himself at point guard, the Nuggets will range between strong YELLOW and strong ORANGE the rest of the season, and that right there may cost the Nuggets a playoff spot.

And don’t expect George Karl to pull a few offensive set plays out of a hat any time soon.
The mid January losses to the Bobcats and the Hawks, and the close calls at home against the Wolves and the Hawks in January, in games that should have and probably would have been relatively easy wins had the alert status been green, grey, or even yellow, illustrate the usefulness and accuracy of the alert system. When you reach ORANGE ALERT and especially RED ALERT, you start losing a substantial number of games that you would normally win. It’s that simple, and there is little anyone can do about it.

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

Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 45
Jazz Non-Starters Points: 47

Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 10
Jazz Non-Starters Rebounds: 17

Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 5
Jazz Non-Starters Assists: 11

THE RESERVES IN THIS GAME
Due to the return of Atkins after a very long injury out, and the total uncertainty as to whether Atkins is going to be able to earn back from Anthony Carter the starting point guard slot, Karl now has 9 players he wants to play 10 minutes or more. Normally, Karl doesn’t like to play more than 8 players for 10 or more minutes in a game. But this is a special situation brought about by the combination of the return of Atkins and by J.R. Smith playing extremely well. J.R. Smith is currently untouchable because the Nuggets are seeing mostly the good J.R. Smith and very little of the bad J.R. Smith these days, and because Iverson has publicly stated that Smith is crucial for the Nuggets’ stretch run. Fans these days would call for the head of Coach Karl were he to cut Smith’s minutes below 10. In this game, because Kenyon Martin was knocked out early, Yakhouba Diawara in heavy garbage time was the 9th man instead of Martin.

Sloan is one of the best coaches in the NBA and, generally speaking, the best coaches prefer to, and have the competence to, play 9 players and every once in a while 10 players for 10 or more minutes in games. The extra player gives them an extra wildcard chance that somebody will surprise with a huge game and help their team get the win.

I hope to develop the reserve watch feature further in the future, because I want to try to expand what I already have in terms of a game coaching evaluation system. But 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 EXPLAINED
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. While some are biased in favor of offensive players, such as the efficiency measure at the NBA site, 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, which I think is a very good balance between offense and defense:

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-JAZZ PLAYER RATINGS
NUGGETS PLAYER RATINGS
Allen Iverson: Game 38.5 Season 41.4
Carmelo Anthony: Game 34.1 Season 39.3
Linas Kleiza: Game 21.6 Season 18.3
J.R. Smith: Game 19.5 Season 16.0
Marcus Camby: Game 18.7 Season 32.5
Chucky Atkins: Game 13.2 Season 6.1
Kenyon Martin: Game 8.8 Season 22.1
Eduardo Najera: Game 7.7 Season 13.4
Anthony Carter: Game 1.3 Season 20.4
Yakhouba Diawara: Game 3.3 Season 5.1

Nene: Did Not Play-Illness
Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Personal Leave

Taurean Green: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision

JAZZ PLAYER RATINGS
Mehmet Okur: Game 52.1 Season 24.9
Carlos Boozer: Game 41.2 Season 39.1
Paul Millsap: Game 41.2 Season 17.3
Deron Williams: Game 35.8 Season 37.8
Kyle Korver: Game 24.6 Season 15.6
C.J. Miles: Game 20.1 Season 8.4
Ronnie Brewer: Game 17.8 Season 20.6
Matt Harpring: Game 14.9 Season 13.3
Ronnie Price: Game 10.2 Season 6.0

NOTE 1: 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.
NOTE 2: This performance measure does NOT include the quality and quantity of each player’s defending, including the number of shots that the player prevented from going in the basket. The best Nuggets defenders, which are the ones who consistently make the extra effort and have the defensive talent to make that effort pay off, are Camby, Martin, Najera, and Diawara.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE PLAYER RATINGS:
Both Iverson and Anthony were held slightly below their averages, but this was due to reduced minutes and not to any serious quality of play problem.

Both J.R. Smith and Kleiza were a little above normal, but still far below the production of Iverson and Anthony, of course. Chucky Atkins was much improved over his unproductive start the game before; he was 4/7 and 1/2 from downtown for 9 points in 21 minutes.

Marcus Camby, who was only about 60% as productive as usual, has yet to play well in the month of March; this was the 4th game of a slump that actually got worse in this game. Camby has been getting more foul calls and making fewer blocks than usual in these 4 games. The last game that Camby was great in was on Feb. 29 against the Clippers.

Kenyon Martin played only 9 minutes and was on track for a big game before he was literally knocked out of the game. The Najera magic from the Spurs game the night before was no where to be found; Najera was about 40% below his normal not counting defending.

As Nuggets 1 has warned and explained, Carter is becoming almost meaningless out there in games where Iverson readily passes and makes assists. As you can see, he was almost meaningless in this game, even though neither he nor Iverson got a good number of assists.

The Jazz, astoundingly, had 3 players who were more than twice as productive as usual: C Okur, PF Millsap, and SG Miles. This is the kind of thing that will happen when the bottom falls out of the Nuggets’ defense. SF and 3-point specialist Korver was kept somewhat short of double his usual, as was PG Price. But both of them were more than half again more productive than usual.

In total, the Jazz had a staggering 5 players who were way above their normals, due to the Nuggets’ defensive collapse. The Nuggets didn’t have anyone way above normal, and they had 3 players way below normal, 4 if you count Martin.

PF Boozer and PG Williams, the primary stars of the Jazz, were both rock solid in this game and achieved their high performance averages.

SF Harpring was a little better than usual, and SG Brewer was a little short.

REAL PLAYER RATINGS EXPLAINED
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 1.80 Superstar Plus-Above Normal Even For Michael Jordan
1.40 1.60 Superstar Performance-A Michael Jordan Type Game
1.20 1.40 Star Plus-Spectacular Performance
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 Extremely Poor-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. Mehmet Okur, Uta 1.447
2. Carlos Boozer, Uta 1.373
3. Paul Millsap, Uta 1.288
4. Allen Iverson, Den 1.283
5. Carmelo Anthony, Den 1.066
6. Deron Williams, Uta 1.053
7. Kyle Korver, Uta 1.025
8. Ronnie Price, Uta 1.020
9. Kenyon Martin, Den 0.978…Martin played only 9 minutes.
10. C.J. Miles, Uta 0.874
11. Matt Harpring, Uta 0.784
12. J.R. Smith, Den 0.750
13. Ronnie Brewer, Uta 0.742
14. Linas Kleiza, Den 0.697
15. Chucky Atkins, Den 0.629
16. Marcus Camby, Den 0.603
17. Yakhouba Diawara, Den 0.330
18. Eduardo Najera, Den 0.308
19. Anthony Carter, Den 0.062

OBSERVATIONS ON THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Mehmet Okur was a superstar and was the best player on the court. Boozer and Millsap for the Jazz and Iverson for the Nuggets were stars-plus. Anthony for the Nuggets and Williams for the Jazz were plain old stars. Among the 6 players who were stars or better, the Jazz had 4, including the top 3 players on the court.

Korver and Price were outstanding for the Jazz and Martin was outstanding in 9 minutes for the Nuggets.

Miles was very good and Harpring and Brewer were good for the Jazz. J.R. Smith had a good game for the Nuggets.

The Nuggets had 3 players who were just mediocre: Kleiza, Atkins, and Camby.

Diawara and Najera were extremely poor for the Nuggets, and Carter was a total disaster. Among players who were mediocre or worse, the Nuggets had 6 and the Jazz had none. The Nuggets had 4 players who were better than mediocre and 6 who were mediocre or worse, while all 9 Jazz players were better than mediocre.

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.

Yakhouba Diawara: +1
Chucky Atkins: -1
Kenyon Martin: -4
J.R. Smith: -4
Linas Kleiza: -12
Eduardo Najera: -13
Allen Iverson: -22
Anthony Carter: -23
Carmelo Anthony: -27
Marcus Camby: -30

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
Fans get really upset when Anthony and Camby are at the bottom of the plus-minus; they start talking about blowing the team up and shipping Melo out of town because he’s “coasting.” But in a full scale rout, usually the best plus-minus will be for players who played the least, and that is what you see here. Camby has been in a slump since the beginning of March, and there were signs he was heading into this slump in late February.

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

Turnovers: NBA Average: 14, Nuggets’ Total 13, Team 0, Anthony 3, Atkins 1, Camby 0, Carter 3, Diawara 0, (Green 1), Iverson 2, Kleiza 1, Martin 0, Najera 1, Smith 1

Personal Fouls: NBA Average: 21, Nuggets’ Total 23, Anthony 3, Atkins 0, Camby 4, Carter 2, Diawara 0, Iverson 1, Kleiza 5, Martin 1, Najera 5, Smith 2

Anthony Carter played 21 minutes and was 0/4 and 0/2 on threes for 0 points, and he made 4 assists and 1 rebound.

Yakhouba Diawara played 10 minutes and was 0/2, 0/2 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 2 points, and he made 1 assist and 1 rebound.

Eduardo Najera played 25 minutes and was 2/5 and 0/2 on 3’s for 4 points, and he made 2 assists and 2 rebounds.

Marcus Camby played 31 minutes and was 2/7 and 2/2 from the line for 6 points, and he made 9 rebounds, 2 blocks, 1 assist, and 1 steal.

Chucky Atkins played 21 minutes and was 4/7 and 1/2 on 3’s for 9 points, and he made 2 assists.

Linas Kleiza played 31 minutes and was 5/9, 1/3 on 3’s, and 3/4 from the line for 14 points, and he made 6 rebounds.

J.R. Smith played 26 minutes and was 7/12, 1/4 on 3’s, and 1/3 from the line for 16 points, and he made 1 steal and 1 rebound.

Kenyon Martin played 9 minutes and was 1/1 for 2 points, and he made 2 rebounds, 1 block, 1 assist, and 1 steal.

Carmelo Anthony played 32 minutes and was 7/15, 1/2 on 3’s, and 9/12 from the line for 24 points, and he made 6 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 block, and 1 steal.

Allen Iverson played 30 minutes and was 10/17, 1/3 on 3’s, and 7/10 from the line for 28 points, and he made 4 assists and 2 rebounds.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Monday, March 10 in San Antonio to play the Spurs at 6:30 pm mountain time. The Spurs will be playing on back to back nights, but the Nuggets will not be. So the Spurs’ home court advantage will be approximately offset by the Nuggets’ extra rest advantage.