Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players For Nuggets 118 Timberwolves 95 in Denver, Preseason Game

This is much of what an Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players is going to look like for the new season. There will be some commentary included for a regular season game, but most of the game and team commentary will be in the separate "Game and Team Reports."

With an Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players, you can see very rapidly who was most responsible for the winning or the losing of the game. Then someone like me can easily write a separate game report which explains how things might have worked out better for a team, or why things worked out just about as well as possible, as the case may be.

The Real Player Ratings formula has been very carefully and accurately tweaked again and is currently as follows:

POSITIVE FACTORS
Points 1.00 (at par)
Number of 3-Pt FGs Made 1.00
Number of 2-Pt FGs Made 0.60
Number of FTs Made 0.00

Assists 1.75

Offensive Rebounds 1.15
Defensive Rebounds 1.25
Blocks 1.60
Steals 2.10

NEGATIVE FACTORS
3-Pt FGs Missed -1.00
2-Pt FGs Missed -0.85
FTs Missed -0.85

Turnovers -2.00
Personal Fouls -0.80

ACTUAL COMBINED AWARD OR PENALTY BY TYPE OF SHOT
3-Pointer Made 4.00
2-Pointer Made 2.60
Free Throw Made 1.00
3-Pointer Missed -1.00
2-Pointer Missed -0.85
Free Throw Missed -0.85

ZERO POINTS: PERCENTAGES BELOW WHICH THERE IS A NEGATIVE NET RESULT
3-Pointer 0 score % 0.200
2-Pointer 0 score % 0.246
1-Pointer 0 score % 0.459

ASSISTS VERSUS TURNOVERS ZERO POINT
Assists vs Turnovers 0.533
Assist/Turnover Ratio 1.143

NOTES ON HOW TO USE ULTIMATE GAME BREAKDOWN RPR/RPP REPORTS
RPR game reports show for each player the RPR (Real Player Rating) which tells you how good a player did (the good things minus the bad things) out on the court per unit of time. The RPP (Real Player Production) report tells you how much in total (the sum of the of the good things minus the sum of the bad things) a player did out on the court.

Many and maybe most sports watchers and an unknown but probably disturbingly large number of sports managers make the mistakes of exaggerating the importance of quantity and overlooking to some extent quality. These reports allow you to expand your horizons. These reports put quantity and quality side by side, which is extremely valuable, because both are roughly equally important in explaining accurately why and how the game turned out the way it did.

Players who over many games consistently have higher RPR (quality) but lower RPP (quantity) results are in many cases not getting enough playing time. Players that over many games consistently have lower RPR (quality) but higher RPP (quantity) results are in many cases getting too much playing time.

The exceptional cases are very often going to be players who are either truly outstanding defenders or truly bad defenders. This is because the one and only thing that is not counted, because it is impossible to calculate it, is the number of shots that a player prevents from being scores. Investigation has to date revealed that, apparently, no one has even attempted, for the NBA, rough estimates of the actual value of each player's defending, in terms of number or percentage of scores prevented, or in terms of number or percentage of possessions made worthless.

Another exception. where it is really alright when it looks like a player is playing too much, will be if a team has a point guard who has many more turnovers than the average point guard has. Because the point guard is so important, a good coach has to play his best guard who can make plays at the position for a full set of minutes every game, pretty much regardless of how many turnovers that player makes. If you take out your designated point guard due to "too many turnovers," it's most often going to be sort of like cutting your foot off because you have a bad case of athletes foot!

Over the coming year, I am going to be working to see if it is possible to use some combination of advanced statistics that are tracked on certain internet sites as an accurate proxy for the number of shots and/or for the number of possessions ruined by a defender.

REAL PLAYER RATINGS
RPR 2.0B NUGGETS 118 TIMBERWOLVES 95 (Preseason Game Oct 9 2008)
MINNESOTA QUALITY
Corey Brewer, SF 1.003
Al Jefferson, PF 0.782
Mike Miller, SG 0.675
Blake Ahearn, PG 0.596
Sebastian Telfair, PG 0.558
Randy Foye, PG 0.508
Kevin Love, F 0.438
Ryan Gomes, PF 0.372
Chris Richard, PF 0.175
Mark Madsen, PF 0.137
Rodney Carney, SF -0.083

DENVER QUALITY
Renaldo Balkman, SF 2.600
Chris Andersen, PF 1.550
Ruben Patterson, SF 1.504
Steven Hunter, PF 1.167
Smush Parker, PG 1.092
Kenyon Martin, PF 0.979
J.R. Smith, SG 0.908
Nene Hilario, PF 0.852
Dahntay Jones, SG 0.743
Linas Kleiza, SF 0.633
Allen Iverson, SG 0.598
Juwan Howard, PF 0.521
Anthony Carter, PG 0.319

SCALE FOR RPR (QUALITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
Historic Superstar for this game 1.400 and more
Superstar 1.050 1.399
Star 0.800 1.049
Outstanding 0.625 0.799
Major Role Player 0.525 0.624
Role Player 0.450 0.524
Minor Role Player 0.400 0.449
Very Minor Role Player or Very Important Defender 0.350 0.399
Poor Game or Extremely Important Defender 0.275 0.349
Very Poor Game Regardless of Defending 0.200 0.274
Disaster Game Regardless of Defending and less 0.199


REAL PLAYER PRODUCTION
MINNESOTA QUANTITY
Al Jefferson, PF 25.80
Sebastian Telfair, PG 18.40
Corey Brewer, SF 16.05
Randy Foye, PG 15.75
Blake Ahearn, PG 13.70
Kevin Love, F 10.95
Ryan Gomes, PF 8.55
Mike Miller, SG 6.75
Chris Richard, PF 2.45
Mark Madsen, PF 2.05
Rodney Carney, SF -1.00

DENVER QUANTITY
Chris Andersen, PF 27.90
J.R. Smith, SG 23.60
Renaldo Balkman, SF 23.40
Ruben Patterson, SF 21.05
Kenyon Martin, PF 20.55
Nene Hilario, PF 18.75
Dahntay Jones, SG 16.35
Smush Parker, PG 14.20
Allen Iverson, SG 13.75
Linas Kleiza, SF 13.30
Steven Hunter, PF 10.50
Anthony Carter, PG 6.70
Juwan Howard, PF 6.25

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
STARTERS
Happens only a few times a year in the NBA 45.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 40.0 44.9
Huge Game 35.0 39.9
Very Big Game 30.0 34.9
Big Game 25.0 29.9
Typical Average Game 20.0 24.9
Somewhat Below Average Game 16.0 19.9
Way Below Average Game 12.0 15.9
Bad Game 9.0 11.9
Really Bad Game 5.0 8.9
Total Disaster and less 4.9

NON-STARTERS
Massive and Memorable Game 35.0 and more
Huge Game 30.0 34.9
Very Big Game 25.0 29.9
Big Game 20.0 24.9
Typical Non-Starter Game 14.0 19.9
Below Average Even For a Non-Starter 9.0 13.9
Way Below Average Even For a Non-Starter 5.0 8.9
Bad Game Even For a Non-Starter 2.0 4.9
Disaster: Nothing Much to Report and less 1.9


THE HIGH QUALITY PLAYERS IN THIS GAME
OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES FOR THE NUGGETS


















Historic Superstar Level During Minutes on the Court: Renaldo Balkman





















Historic Superstar Level During Minutes on the Court: Chris Andersen





















Historic Superstar Level During Minutes on the Court Ruben Patterson





















Superstar Level During Minutes on the Court: Steven Hunter





















Superstar Level During Minutes on the Court: Smush Parker





















Superstar Level During Minutes on the Court: Kenyon Martin





















Star Level During Minutes on the Court: JR Smith





















Star Level During Minutes on the Court: Nene





















OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES FOR THE T-WOLVES

















Superstar Level During Minutes on the Court: Corey Brewer





















Star Level During Minutes on the Court: Al Jefferson





















POWER PERFORMERS


















NUGGETS STARTERS POWER PERFORMERS
NONE, because it was a preseason game and minutes were limited.

NUGGETS NON-STARTERS POWER PERFORMERS
Very Big Game: Chris Andersen





















Big Game: JR Smith





















Big Game: Renaldo Balkman





















Big Game: Ruben Patterson





































T-WOLVES STARTERS POWER PERFORMERS
NONE, because it was a preseason game and minutes were limited.

T-WOLVES NON-STARTERS POWER PERFORMERS
NONE, mostly because it was a preseason game and minutes were limited.

Note: For the rundown of the best players and the power performers, I bump up or bump down, by one category, certain players, due to adjustments for defending, wherever such adjustments are obvious.

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum #2 Comments From July 2008, Part 5

Forum commentary I did from March 2008 through July 2008, when I didn't have time to do the detailed and extensive reports that I like to do, is being posted in early October, 2008. The primary themes are how the Nuggets are blowing a great (and expensive!) opportunity to play the game of basketball in such a way that respects the sport and that takes as much advantage as possible of who they have on the roster. The 2006-09 Nuggets have turned out to be an excellent case study of how not to run a basketball team; many things you should not do if you are a basketball manager or coach can be identified from what the Nuggets actually did during these years.

In these comments, do not look for the usual huge amount of detail and proof that you see in the ordinary releases here at Nuggets 1. Some of this is more like everyday conversation than like top quality sports writing. On the other hand, some of the comments do include some detailed reasoning and proof that I pride myself on in the regular reports.
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JULY 2008 FORUM COMMENTARY ON THE NUGGETS, ESPECIALLY ABOUT THEIR MISTAKES

To be even more clear about ESPN, they have a summary per time statistic on their site called the Hollinger Player Efficiency Rating. I think mine is at least slightly better, but who knows for sure, because the Hollinger formulas are literally a secret to one extent or another, whereas whatever I do is always out in the open.

Traditionally, the Hollinger p.e.r. is only available to those who pay for the "ESPN Insider" membership. So by definition, ESPN reserved their one and only combination, per time measurement for only those who pay for "inside" status, which, by definition would be folks who are not your average run of the mill basketball watchers. They knew that the average man on the street doesn't give a damn about being alerted in advance that JR Smith or TJ Ford are both going to be quality starters soon in the NBA, and that they are currently being underrated. But they also knew that the insiders would want to know that.
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No, you have it backwards, and you agree with me on the age thing. I'm saying that younger players normally have lower ratings than older all else held constant, so when you look at a younger player's rating, you should mentally give them some kind of a bonus, not penalize them.
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Someone was still very upset about the high rating of T.J. Ford:

Okay answer my question

So you're saying TJ Ford is better than Chauncey Billups, Jason Kidd, Tony Parker, and Jose Calderon (who he couldn't even start over last season)?

My response to him was:

You don't think the per time measure has any value, so for you the answer is no, TJ Ford was not better than those players in 2007-08, because (a) he didn't do anywhere near as much as they did and (b) there must have been a valid reason why his playing time was what it was, which is one reason why no per time measure is needed.

So for you the answer is no and for me (and the Indiana Pacers, laugh out loud, it is yes. Both you and I get to go on with our business with no changes in our thinking necessary, because I am out there on the horizon looking at things that have seldom if ever been looked at in basketball before, and you choose not to go there.
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When I went to APBR, all of my nerd alert warning bells were going off at once, and I quickly said to myself: most of the people here don't ultimately give a damn about whether what they do is a close reflection of reality or not. Believe me, I know all too much about the academic mindset, and how the elegance of the proof is more important than whether the product is useful and reflects reality well or not. Academic payrolls are determined much more by style than by reality based substance. The distinction reminds me of Karl, for whom style is more important than result or reality. No, I am definitely not an APBR type of guy.

But if I did go there and was trashed, I would be flattered.
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There is someone here trying to confuse things regarding ESPN and Hollinger. Is he doing it for the hell of it? I don't know exactly why.

ESPN to my knowledge does NOT have the Hollinger formulas on their site, whether you are an insider or not, so no one who goes to ESPN, which is a whole, hell of a lot of people, can find out how Hollinger comes up with his numbers. Only a tiny minority will ever find where the formulas are squirreled away on the net, which is the way ESPN likes it. Because if you actually start looking at the formulas, you say to yourself, if you are me anyway, "My God, how could a sports game justify all of this mathematical razzmatazz, which would take at least an 8 hour work day to evaluate and determine whether it is valid or not, and maybe much more than 8 hours."
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The guy who was really upset about the high T.J. Ford rating raised the peace pipe and I responded as follows:

You don't have to believe the Real Player Ratings are worth anything to potentially still be reading my other stuff. Look in my Nuggets game breakdowns, I put in both the basic ratings, which is total production in the game not adjusted for time, and the Real Player Ratings, which are the basic ratings adjusted for time. You can ignore one or both of them as you want.

All I am saying is that both are potentially useful to different kinds of people, both for games and for the season as a whole. If you want the actual production, you sure as hell don't need me. You can go to ESPN or, if you don't like their public formula (or the secret Hollinger formula) then you can go somewhere else. Or you can say the hell with all the formulas, because every big time basketball watcher knows, very roughly at least, how the players rank, without checking any stats at all anywhere anyway. And you may decide it just doesn't matter who is slightly better than who, because in the playoffs these slight differences don't amount to much. (Maybe TJ Ford is going to be a playoff flop, laugh out loud.

Does it really matter much where TJ Ford or Leon Powe or JR Smith ranked in the Real Player Ratings? They matter to me, because I have a way of thinking that makes these ratings important to me. It matters to some of my readers, who were too timid to appear here, or who don't know I have this habit of posting here. They should matter to front offices, such as those of the Pacers and the Nuggets.

But for many fans, it can't matter too much, because it is a hard reality that neither TJ Ford nor JR Smith played for major minutes last year, and neither started much. Therefore, since they didn't play much, they were not all that good. It's indisputable. And that is about as true as saying that, per minute, they were much better than most know. Each is equally true.

In fact, different ways of thinking don't usually mean that one is right and one is wrong, unless you are talking about obvious things like inflicting bodily harm and stuff like that.
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At APBR, they spend most of their time trying to figure out why their formulas don't work, laugh out loud. The ones running the forum and presenting the models and formulas are academics, who are paid for the correctness of their mathematics and their scientific reasoning, not for whether their formulas can be used in a real world setting or not.

I went their once and it was a joke. There were basketball models on parade that were like the Hindenburg blimp, doomed to blow up in the real world.
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Instead of being like a blimp, the straightforward but comprehensive ESPN/Miggets 1 model is more like a bicycle. It's only slightly complicated, it generally works reliably, it does most of the time get you where you want to go, and it saves you a lot of time that you would otherwise spend going through other statistics (or it saves you a lot of gas money, laugh out loud.)
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Only needed once, about an hour, and that was enough for me to decide to NOT highlight the APBR site in my bookmarks. Sorry, academics and sports do not directly mix.

The kind of academics you see there is intended to teach people how to think. I already know how to mathematically and scientifically think and reason, so I don't need to be taught what they are teaching. My job is to allow people who themselves know how to scientifically think consider new ways of looking at and evaluating basketball, managements, teams, and players. I don't need complicated models and formulas to do that; relatively simple models and formulas are all that is needed for the job.
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Only needed once, about an hour, and that was enough for me to decide to NOT highlight the APBR site in my bookmarks. Sorry, academics and sports do not directly mix.

The kind of academics you see there is intended to teach people how to think. I already know how to mathematically and scientifically think and reason, so I don't need to be taught what they are teaching. My job is to allow people who themselves know how to scientifically think to consider new ways of looking at and evaluating basketball, managements, teams, and players. I don't need complicated models and formulas to do that.

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum #2 Comments From July 2008, Part 4

Forum commentary I did from March 2008 through July 2008, when I didn't have time to do the detailed and extensive reports that I like to do, is being posted in early October, 2008. The primary themes are how the Nuggets are blowing a great (and expensive!) opportunity to play the game of basketball in such a way that respects the sport and that takes as much advantage as possible of who they have on the roster. The 2006-09 Nuggets have turned out to be an excellent case study of how not to run a basketball team; many things you should not do if you are a basketball manager or coach can be identified from what the Nuggets actually did during these years.

In these comments, do not look for the usual huge amount of detail and proof that you see in the ordinary releases here at Nuggets 1. Some of this is more like everyday conversation than like top quality sports writing. On the other hand, some of the comments do include some detailed reasoning and proof that I pride myself on in the full reports.
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JULY 2008 FORUM COMMENTARY ON THE NUGGETS, ESPECIALLY ABOUT THEIR MISTAKES

Forum participants were shocked that Leon Powe had a higher Real Player Rating than did Paul Pierce for the Celtics:

How about this for a shock: as long as Powe and Pierce are about equal in being where they need to be to try to force missed shots, and in actually forcing missed shots, and assuming that Powe has the stamina and energy needed, than the Celtics would have been about as good had the playing times been reversed.

I know that is shocking and unbelievable to many. But this is one of the main reasons I do the Real Player Ratings: to uncover surprising but true things about the players and the teams, such as this. And the shock factor is precisely why ESPN itself would never do a statistic such as this, because zillions of people would be claiming that the statistic was wack, either because they didn't really understand the per time concept, or because they did understand it and refused to believe it has any merit.
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Someone asked me this good question:

Ah yes, the ever important truth. So do you think the Celtics would be just as good if they only played Paul Pierce 14 minutes? What if they then gave Leon Powe 36?

If Powe had the stamina to play 36 instead of 14 and be just as good, which is probably true, and if Powe is just as good or better than Pierce as a made them miss defender, which I think is probably true also, and if they played the same position, than the Celtics would very likely be just as good with either of them playing 36 and the other 14.

However, although they are both forwards, Pierce is a 3 and Powe is a 4, which means if you switched the minutes, you would probably be screwing things up to some degree. Specifically, you might start to look more like the Nuggets, with very good interior defense, but very poor outside defense.

Powe turned out to be one hell of a backup for Garnett, and he was crucial for the Celtics during when Garnett was having injury problems, absolutely critical. since obviously Garnett was so important himself. Whoever would have thought that Kevin Garnett's backup would himself be one of the best PFs in the NBA?

What about Powe in the future? Powe comes from a very poor background, and players such as this have a steeper hill to climb if they are ever to be regarded as starters, a road which can on occasion be a very twisted one as well as being steep, such as Allen Iverson's road was, where he ended up having his position changed so that the coaches could be comfortable in their skin starting him. But that's another story.
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Someone attempted to trash the idea that Leon Powe was at least as good as Paul Pierce and my response was:

Yes sir, Leon Powe was just as good as Paul Pierce was, in the 2007-08 regular season, per any unit of time you want to pick, assuming Powe is at least as good as Pierce is at making shooters miss. Really and truly, regardless of how shocked you or I or Coach Rivers or anyone else is.

This statistic is in the ballpark of showing the real world in its entirety, my friend, so to claim that the real world is different is not on point. But you are correct for about 99.99 % or more of statistics, which do not reflect the complexity of the real world. Aside from single measurements like ppg and rpg, which obviously are very limited, most combination or "advanced" statistics are only partial glimpses of the real world, because they don't give the result on a per unit of time basis. Whereas, my measure takes a solid combination statistic and adjusts for time, which is as close as you are going to get to seeing the real basketball world, in full and all at once.

Since there is stuff in the real world that no one knows about, it is natural when being shocked by something like the Leon Powe performance, to assume that the measurement in question is just like the rest: a faulty, or at least insufficient view of reality. But this measure is like the real wolf at the door my friend, its not part of another boy who cried wolf story.

But if you want to just go with the actual production, then go ahead and do it. The per time views of players and teams are extremely useful for people who are looking for flaws in coaches, teams, and the entire League, not as useful for the average fan who wants to focus mostly on the specific pros and cons of players, while assuming that it is impossible to add the pros and cons of a player together to come up with the net. I think you can add the pros and cons together and come up with the ultimate net. Leon Powe is glad I did so. lol.

If all you want to do is look for bad things and good things about individual players, than do so, just don't ever click on the per 48 mins. link at ESPN lol. I don't think that even existed last year, by the way, so ESPN is moving in my direction.

As for watching games, another reason I did the Real Player Rating was precisely so I could cut way, way back on looking at statistics, which would free up a lot of game watching time. Since the Real Player Rating summarizes almost everything in one measure, it often saves me a lot of time hunting around for evidence regarding who is more productive/talented, which team is more productive/talented, and so forth.
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Pace is an important concept, and the Real Player Rating only partially adjusts for pace, by penalizing missed shots. (Fast pace teams miss more shots, by definition.) I say partially, because I think the missed shot weights should be higher, at least 1.0. But consider that most "advanced" statistics do not have any penalty at all for missed shots, and thus no adjustment whatsoever for pace. So if there is no adjustment for pace at all, they are not very "advanced" at all, are they?

The pace adjustment here is relatively crude and not in my opinion enough, but at least there is a pace adjustment, whereas it is no where to be found in the vast majority of other comparable measures. So once again, the root of the Real Player Rating is shown to be surprisingly effective and, well, real.

ESPN may possibly not even have realized that they were actually adjusting for pace when they included the missed shot items!
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Someone noticed:

TJ Ford > Vince Carter, Paul Pierce, Tmac

I responded:

Yes, and this shows you that Indiana made a good trade with Toronto recently. How do you think small market teams like Indiana maneuver to become contenders, despite being a place few top players really want to play? One way they do it is by making trades that the average person thinks is a bad trade, but is actually a good trade.

Whereas Indiana made this shrewd trade for a very talented PG with a long career ahead, the Nuggets made a trade for a very talented PG/SG with a not so long career ahead, and made no changes from how the 76'ers ran things. This is just a little snapshot of how the tradition of Indiana having FO and coaching personnel who are more shrewd than the Denver FO and coaching personnel is continuing on.
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Someone was very upset that Chris Mihm was higher than Daniel Gibson, and this is what I said to him:

Daniel Gibson is only 22 years old, he is a PG, and to be on the list at all means you are an extremely good bball player. So give him a chance lol. Chris Mihm played 275 minutes in 23 games. So why worry that Mihm, who is 28 years old, was slightly better than the up and coming PG? It doesn't really mean squat that Mihm was a little better. Who cares, when the vast majority of players who are 22 years old are going to get better when they are 23, 24, 25, and so forth.

Usually but I guess not always, you should steer away from directly comparing players who are very different in age, or who play very different positions.
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You can't simply take the five players on your team with the highest Real Player Ratings and make them all starters! If you did that, you would be putting as much faith in how positions organize an offense and a defense as George Karl does, and I wouldn't want to see anyone go down that road, lol. No, the Real Player Ratings alone can not determine who should play more and who should play less between players who play different positions, assuming that the players in question can not play a different position as well as they are playing their current position. You can to a large extent use it to figure out about how many minutes different players who play the same position should be getting.

Lol at the use of the term "credit reports", which is telling in itself. When credit reports were first invented, which was not so long ago, the inventors promised that they could and would never be used as an overall evaluation of someone's economic and social stature. But to many actual users of reports, that is exactly what they have become. In other words, many credit report users use credit reports for a lot more than seeing whether someone pays his bills or not. And so here in 2008, on SportsTwo, someone has just used the credit report term as shorthand for someone's economic and social stature!

And just about everyone important on a basketball team knows who on the roster had a particularly rough childhood, high school career, and/or college career, with no "credit report" necessary. There is most likely not a GM in the League who doesn't know that Allen Iverson would be a felon were it not for a pardon by the Governor of Virginia. And there are some GMs, and some coaches also, who would not want Iverson on their teams for that reason alone.
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Someone was upset about T.J. Ford's surprisingly high rating, and he was a little confused about what I had said earlier about how to judge a player's rating in the context of his age. Here is how I responded:

Yes, TJ Ford was slightly better than them. So I say Indiana made a good trade with Toronto and you most likely are saying they made a bad trade. So let's see if Indiana becomes as good or better a team than is Toronto in the next few years.

No, the younger the player, the lower his rating is going to be, everything else held constant. So if a young player has a very high ranking, than he is likely to be one of the best players in the world, looking at the next five years or so. So Howard's advantage over O'Neal is all the more impressive when you look at the ages. If the ratings were reversed, O'Neal's lead over Howard would not be all that impressive.
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Laugh out loud, I think Hollinger may be a little off his rocker too because, for one thing, his player efficiency rating is almost insanely complicated and, for another thing, you can't even find out what his formulas are that make up the player efficiency rating on ESPN itself! Whereas, the Real Player Rating is hardly too complicated. It's at about the 11th or 12th grade level in terms of math.

In rating the players, I didn't make up a damn thing. The scorekeepers watch the games and keep track of who does what. They turn in their counts to the NBA, which makes them available to ESPN. ESPN has programmers, who are paid a whole lot of money, who construct and maintain their NBA statistics database, which is sitting on the internet for anyone to view. ESPN Sports personnel had a meetng and decided to use a summary or combination statistic called by them the "ESPN Player Rating."

I came along and said "Wait a minute, the ESPN statistic is surprisingly good, but what about Leon Powe, TJ Ford, JR Smith, and so forth? No one seems to know how good they are. What can I do to alert the public that these are great up and coming players who, some months or years from now, will almost certainly be starters, and who most everyone will agree are good players? Can I give my readers advance knowledge that they can not get elsewhere? Why yes, I can do that! So I took the ESPN summary measure and divided by minutes.

And then I am accused of making everything up, laugh out loud. No seriously, I hope you understand now, there is no conspiracy here. I had no idea until I did this how good Leon Powe and TJ Ford are, so it wasn't just me trying to prove something I had claimed in advance.

And isn't it true that TJ Ford is going to be a PG starter in the NBA this coming season? Aren't most starters considered better than most non-starters by most fans? It looks like the Real Player Rating accomplished its mission with respect to TJ Ford. Now if only I had done the 2007-08 before the Indiana trade, laugh out loud.
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Someone was still really, really upset about the surprisingly high T.J. Ford rating. I answered him:

Well obviously, you are in the majority that ESPN identified when they decided not to do this themselves, the majority that either doesn't understand or that refuses to put any stock in any per time measure. So be it. Do what you want and go about your business.

I'm not the kind of guy who writes for the average, run of the mill fan, in case you haven't noticed, although I will do so if the price is right, laugh out loud. I am most definitely not writing for the average Joe: I am discovering things and writing for people who want to see new and better ways of looking at basketball, who plays it, and how it could be played better.

I really like the fact that ESPN made a major nod in my direction by recently installing the per 48 minute stats in their huge and sophisticated database. But Brian, don't you ever click the "per 48 mins." link on any ESPN team stats page, I wouldn't want to see you get all upset and going on their forum and saying its BS and all.

If you don't like what's on TV, change the channel. If you don't like what's on the Nuggets 1 channel, click something else.

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum #2 Comments From July 2008, Part 3

Forum commentary I did from March 2008 through July 2008, when I didn't have time to do the detailed and extensive reports that I like to do, is being posted in early October, 2008. The primary themes are how the Nuggets are blowing a great (and expensive!) opportunity to play the game of basketball in such a way that respects the sport and that takes as much advantage as possible of who they have on the roster. The 2006-09 Nuggets have turned out to be an excellent case study of how not to run a basketball team; many things you should not do if you are a basketball manager or coach can be identified from what the Nuggets actually did during these years.

In these comments, do not look for the usual huge amount of detail and proof that you see in the ordinary releases here at Nuggets 1. Some of this is more like everyday conversation than like top quality sports writing. On the other hand, some of the comments do include some detailed reasoning and proof that I pride myself on in the full reports.
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JULY 2008 FORUM COMMENTARY ON THE NUGGETS, ESPECIALLY ABOUT THEIR MISTAKES

Much respect is due JR Smith, who allowed the Nuggets to squeak into the playoffs and in general prevented them from disintegrating.

On second thought, damn JR Smith; if he had not been so good, the Nuggets might have been forced to make real changes in the off season, leading to a real chance of winning a playoff series.

Oh well, its not his fault that the Nuggets organization has proved that it is not ready for prime time.

Whereas, JR Smith is now ready for prime time...


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WHY CARMELO ANTHONY PLAYS BETTER INTERNATIONALLY

Anthony said the Nuggets "quit" in game 3 of the Lakers series, but didn't know why. The answer is that the Nuggets knew they had no chance of defeating the Lakers with the approach and setup for basketball they were running. Unlike what too many think, there is almost no such thing as pro NBA players "quitting" just because they decide to quit out of laziness or some other stupid reason. They quit if and when it is rational to quit, when it is obvious they have no chance. This is entirely normal and actually reasonable, though neither you nor I might like it.

This same reality largely explains why Carmelo Anthony is considered one of the top half dozen players in the world in basketball when playing internationally, such as at the Olympics, but can not crack the top dozen in the NBA. He doesn't really think the Nuggets can win a playoff series, or at least not more than one series, so his whole effort from season tip-off to season buzzer is ramped down a little from what it would be if he truly thought the Nuggets could win it all.

For the most part, this kind of thinking is not something C Anthony realizes is happening, or realizes is slightly affecting what he does on the court. It is mostly a subconscious thing, except in rare moments such as that game 3 of the series, when it became obvious to Carmelo that neither he nor the Nuggets were trying as hard as they could anymore.

In the NBA, the man is coasting and blaming his coasting subconsciously on the perceived shortcomings of the Nuggets franchise. He probably rationalizes that he is too young and lacking in managerial experience to be able to do much fixing of those complicated problems with the franchise.

But all players including C Anthony know that the USA can win the Olympics, so you are likely to see a 100% effort from all players there.

So Anthony plays better in international because he tries a little bit harder, because he is completely confident the USA can win. The other main reason he is better in international is that he is part of a system that makes more sense than any system he has played under in Denver.

Editorial Note:
This was another preview of an upcoming full report topic, seen here first.

I'm not sure about doing these "spoilers". On the plus side, this is a great way to make important notes on days I get some ideas, but I am not doing much writing. Also, not everyone here reads my full reports, or is it hardly anyone reads the full reports, word for word, lol? (I'll get more readers with the new editing plan.) Those who can't read a lengthy report will see some of my important stuff here instead of never.

On the other hand, anyone who reads complete reports will be getting a little repetition later on. I promise though, that there will be more evidence, more flavor, and more context in the full report than you see in any short post like this.
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And when C Anthony just before the 2007-08 season said that the Nuggets had a very good chance of winning 60 games, there were two main reactions. Most of the Nuggets' brain trust, the Charles Barkley types who don't like Allen Iverson, and anyone down on the Nuggets in general, simply dismissed it and claimed Anthony was exaggerating and not fully realistic. Meanwhile, the most enthusiastic fans of the Nuggets and of Anthony welcomed the prediction and more or less believed it to be realistic.

The thing is, whether subconsciously, or consciously and on purpose, Anthony revealed what he really thought about how the season would go by what he did not say, not by what he said. He didn't say anything about the playoffs! Here you had a team that had for 4 straight years won just one playoff game each year, the ultimate lack of movement and improvement, and yet one of the most important players of that team said nothing about doing better than that in the 2008 playoffs. And with one of the most expensive and talented teams no less.

Anthony was really saying, whether knowingly or not, and probably not, that no matter how well the Nuggets would do in the regular season, it was not safe to predict even winning just one playoff series. Which means he had little if any confidence that the Nuggets could actually win a series. But this revealing assessment by him blew right by everyone during the start of the season festivities.

In other words, Anthony faked everyone out with his deceptively optimistic preseason statement, maybe himself included. Until now.
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The following comments are related to the 2007-08 Season NBA Real Player Ratings:

How good each player is is on each player. How good the players are form the building blocks for a team, and which building blocks are available is the responsibility of the front office and, to some degree, the owner. What is built or not built with the building blocks is entirely the responsibility of the coaching staff.

So if the Nuggets are chock loaded with talented players, thanks to those players efforts, and thanks to the front office and owner getting them, it is a total scandal that they can not win a playoff series, and a humiliation that they could not win a single playoff game. Scandal and humiliation against who now? The coaches, because they had as good or better a set of building blocks than any other coaches did, yet could not do anything with them other than get their full share of obvious regular season wins against lessor and middle level teams.

I don't have the time to do it now, but I would wager I could easily prove the same with any reasonable combination player measurement: that the Nuggets are chock loaded with high performing players.

The more I have worked with this measure, the more I have realized that, even though it is no where near as complicated as the Hollinger per, it is somewhere between slightly and substantially better than it is. I am particularly impressed with the 1.4 factors installed for assists and blocks, which adjusts these critical things so that they are closer in value to a 2-point score than if you just counted them straight up.
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A couple of good questions about the Real Player Ratings:

Where is your mathematical proof that this is the, in your words, holy grail of player ratings?

What is the statistical basis for using the multipliers that you have used?

My answers were:

The reason its the holy grail is that there is nothing better I have seen. Most statistics, whether or not weighted, are just counts without giving you the per time measure. The statistics that do give you per time measures are generally one variable, as if everyone is embarrassed to combine items when doing per time. What is there to be afraid of?

The statistical basis is that these are the ESPN factors, and I don't yet believe I have the computer wherewithal to tweak the factors and make my own underlying measure. Right now, my technological capability is such that it would take me 40-100 hours of work to produce this if I tweaked the numbers and made my own statistic, whereas I can do the whole thing, lock, stock, and barrel, in about 5 hours while starting with ESPN. Yet my tweaks would only be moving players up or down, by at the very most, 10 ranks or so.

But I could be grossly underestimating what I could do database wise, since I have never made a full scale effort as of yet, only partial efforts. If only there was a place on the internet where you could simply operate a database without being a veteran database programmer. There probably is, but I have not found it yet!

If and when I get "full database capability," which is one of a few major computer things I am still green on, I would tweak as follows.

The main remaining shortcoming with the Real Player Rating is that it underweights defense to some extent, and it underweights made them miss defending severely, because it does not count it at all. Since made them miss defending can not be exactly measured statistically, and so is left out by literally everyone, the last thing you should do is have relatively small weights on any defensive factors that you can count, so one of the most important tweaks I would do would be to upgrade steals to 1.5. I would also upgrade blocks and assists very slightly to 1.5.

I would bump up turnovers from .7 to between 1.0 and 1.2, because they so often lead to easy scores, and so they are a defensive liabilty. And I would bump up the miss shot subtractions from .8 to 1.0.

As it stand now, the total points awarded for a field goal is 3: the points plus 1.0 per made shot. The points awarded for a three is 3.5: the three points plus .5 for the made three. I see the rationale for the bonuses, but I don't see the rationale for the different bonus amounts, so I would make both of them .7 or .8.

All of these tweaks, as I said, would change player ranks by, at the most, about 10 positions. You can tweak to your heart's content, but you are not going to change your view of reality very much, as long as your initial, basic approach is comprehensive and smart.

Finally, if I was really on a perfection binge, I would attempt to do the near impossible, by installing some kind of adjustment for made them miss defending. One approach I could take would be to start with the pace adjusted defensive efficiency of each team, and normalize that so that the resulting impact on the Real Player Ratings would be up or down by, at the most 10%, relative to the median Real Player Rating, which is about .700. For example, all of the Nuggets would immediately suffer a 4-8% hit on their ratings, lol.

After I did that, I could then profit from putting players into just one of 3 categories: above average made them miss defender, average, and below average. Then the players would get both the team adjustment and the adjustment for their category, which would be about another 8% up, zero, and 8% down.

But if I could ever find any assistance at all on the internet on rating made them miss defending, I could increase the number of categories in which players could go, increasing the accuracy.

I am already using a 38% total adjustment range when I adjust the ratings for the Nuggets, up to 19% up and up to 19% down.

Another approach to tackling the near impossible, if I was attempting to do the entire NBA, while ignoring the team defense measure, would be to simply divide players into 5 categories. The highest adjustments I could confidently do, with no assistance from anywhere, would be: up 10%, up 5%, no change, down 5%, and down 10%.

So in summary, there are two long term projects planned for the Real Player Rating:

1. Conversion to use of my database and custom formula. (Target: 2009-2010)
2. Addition of carefully estimated made them miss defending adjustments. (Target: 2010-2011)

Right now, it's as good or better than anything out there. These two projects would make it close to perfect.
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Someone asked about how Leon Powe, an underrated Celtics player, could be rated so high. My answer was:

As long as he stops his share of shots from going in, he was in fact a top 30 NBA player in 2007-08.

There ended up being a lot more forwards than guards with very high ratings, but low minutes. There were 7 forwards and 1 guard among the top 100 players, who did not play at least 20 minutes per game.

This is a strong clue that the guard positions are tougher to excel in than are the forward positions, and/or that there are currently more really good forwards in the NBA than really good guards. It's really two sides of the same coin.

Among the top 100 players, there was a grand total of one guard who did not get to play at least 20 minutes per game: JR Smith. This makes Karl's decision making even more wrong, and it was already just about as wrong as you can get! Thanks though, for getting me to check this, because when it comes to criticizing this coach, I will never be finished until he is gone, or until I switch to the Raptors or something.
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If a player has coaches who don't really know what they are doing, there is no chance for him or anyone on his team to become an optimized team player, so if that player ends up, in effect, concentrating as much or more on his personal production than on optimizing his team's offense or defense, whether unconsciously or consciously, than how much can you blame him? What else is there for him to do?

Players are payed to play, and coaches are payed to coach. Coaching is more complicated than playing, but being able to play at the NBA level is more rare than being smart enough to coach a team correctly. There are many thousands of people who are smart enough to coach the Nuggets better than they are coached, but no where near as many who can play as well as Anthony, Iverson, Smith, Camby, and Martin.

Players can not be expected to coach themselves, though smart, veteran players can do it to some extent. But it is almost ridiculous to say: "Carmelo Anthony and J.R. Smith, you did not have a clue as to making sure the Nuggets optimized and played like a team, so you are not really good basketball players." No, they are still great players who, by the way, never graduated from college, so they probably could not if they wanted to figure out how to coach the Nuggets.

On the other hand, as I said, great players with a huge amount of experience, such as the Celtics big three this year, are able to instinctively coach themselves to some extent, which reduced the Laker's coaching advantage over the Celtics, which in turn allowed the Celtics to win the series in just 6 games.
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The Nuggets are lacking only perimeter defense, they have interior defense down. They are the worst perimeter defense team in the NBA! It's time for the Nuggets to overcompensate: they need to gamble a little more on defense, go for steals and get right in the face of the 3-point shooters, even at the risk of a few 3-point fouls. How can you lose from gambling when you are the worst perimeter defense team in the NBA? You can't lose. George Karl should be encouraging AI and JR to gamble, within reason, not cringing and biting his nails over violations of his style book.

The Nuggets need to spend damn near half of their practice time on how to defend the outside in general and the perimeter in particular, including, obviously, how to cover and rotate out to the perimeter, to cut down on open threes.

If Marcus Camby is hell bent on getting 20 rebounds, then let him do it, and don't be afraid of Kenyon Martin and/or Carmelo Anthony going way out to contest a three.

The three point shot was instituted not only to award the extra skill needed to make a longer shot, but also to penalize teams who try to play defense on the cheap, by loading up the interior defense. The Nuggets need to realize this obvious reality, and refocus their defense, or continue to be burned by outside shooting.

The Nuggets need to surrender a few more points on the inside, so that they can cut down on what they give up, by a greater number of points, what they surrender on the outside. The defense is badly unbalanced, so job one is to refocus it. Putting in more defensive effort without refocusing it isn't going to work.
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Stoudemire and LeBron James were essentially tied as the best players in the NBA. Why Steve Kerr thought the Suns had to have O'Neal to win it all, over Shawn Marion, is beyond me. They already had enough on that team to win it all. And they had a coach who could do it, too.

Powe was essentially tied with Pierce; the .005 difference is miniscule. Of course, Pierce played more than twice as much as Powe, so he was much more important to the Celtics than Powe was. And if you know that Powe would have fallen off if given more burn, then you know that Pierce is really better. But this tells you that Powe was virtually a star in his role as a reserve. He deserves to be where he is at.

I think my base formula tweaks would put Pierce ahead of Powe by a little, but I simply don't know who is the better made them miss defender. If Powe is a slightly better made them miss defender than Pierce is, then they could be tied again.

Now if you want to determine who is really better between closely ranked players, simply ask yourself, who is the better made them miss defender? Because the tweaks are small potatoes compared to the made them miss defending adjustment that you can make. How many shots did each player prevent from going in the hoop per 12 minutes (or whatever period of time you want)? And how good are these players at being in position to try to prevent a shot from going in in the first place?
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Consider how stupid it was for Karl to have pressured, over the past couple of seasons, C Anthony to get more rebounds, calling it one of the most important things he must do to be a full success. You have on the Nuggets Marcus Camby, the ultmate rebounding machine, and Kenyon Martin, no rebounding slouch either. You also had, at the time Karl concocted his orders to Melo, Nene, an excellent rebounder, and you also had (until now) Najera, who everyone keeps emphasizing is a defensive oriented player, with defensive rebounding a part of being a good defensive player. You also had and still do have Linas Kleiza, a surprisingly good forward who is certainly good enough to get some rebounds. Why in the hell would anyone think that it would be good for the Nuggets if Carmelo Anthony hangs close to the hoop to get more defensive rebounds?

Remember the spectacle of Camby and Melo fighting over rebounds? What was that all about? It was Camby in effect saying, what the hell are you doing in here, buddy?

By telling Anthony to do this, you are indirectly excusing him in advance for relatively open and wide open midrange and longer twos, and of course threes. How can he learn how to get where he needs to be to be able to contest shots when he is honing in on rebounds? So is it any wonder that the Nuggets became the worst outside defensive team in the NBA, easily victimized by good passing, good assisting, and good outside shooting? You had guards who desperately needed defensive help and you told Carmelo Anthony to go for more rebounds instead of telling him to help out the guards!

I'm not saying he shouldn't go for more rebounds if Nene is out, or if Camby is off, or whatever, but for the Coach to make it a seasons long project for Anthony to get more rebounds was stupid from the Nuggets point of view. If Karl was coaching a bad rebounding team, it would be another story, but he was not. At the time he ordered Melo to get more rebounds or be considered a partial failure as a player, Nene and several other great rebounders were fully available. So it was a coaching error, pure and simple.

But Melo's next team, if it is not that good of a rebounding team, will be very thankful for Melo being able to rebound more, even though it actually hurt the Nuggets for him to learn how to do that.
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Maybe Karl was just trying to get Carmelo into the top 10 in the Real Player Ratings, which was accomplished by him getting more rebounds. Remember that made them miss defending gets you nothing in this or any other rating. Laugh out loud.

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum #2 Comments From July 2008, Part 2

Forum commentary I did from March 2008 through July 2008, when I didn't have time to do the detailed and extensive reports that I like to do, is being posted in early October, 2008. The primary themes are how the Nuggets are blowing a great (and expensive!) opportunity to play the game of basketball in such a way that respects the sport and that takes as much advantage as possible of who they have on the roster. The 2006-09 Nuggets have turned out to be an excellent case study of how not to run a basketball team; many things you should not do if you are a basketball manager or coach can be identified from what the Nuggets actually did during these years.

In these comments, do not look for the usual huge amount of detail and proof that you see in the ordinary releases here at Nuggets 1. Some of this is more like everyday conversation than like top quality sports writing. On the other hand, some of the comments do include some detailed reasoning and proof that I pride myself on in the full reports.
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JULY 2008 FORUM COMMENTARY ON THE NUGGETS, ESPECIALLY ABOUT THEIR MISTAKES

BEST CAREER 3-PT ACCURACY % AMONG CURRENT NBA PLAYERS
1 Jason Kapono 0.4637
2 Steve Nash 0.4314
3 Anthony Parker 0.4250
4 Ben Gordon 0.4163
5 Matt Carroll 0.4109
6 Leandro Barbosa 0.4093
7 Raja Bell 0.4092
8 Brent Barry 0.4065
9 Kyle Korver 0.4064
10 Wally Szczerbiak 0.4054
11 Peja Stojakovic 0.4051
12 Mike Miller 0.4028
13 Eric Piatkowski 0.3990
14 James Jones 0.3987
15 Pat Garrity 0.3976
16 Ray Allen 0.3969
17 Luther Head 0.3930
18 Bruce Bowen 0.3911
19 Hedo Turkoglu 0.3906
20 Rashard Lewis 0.3903
21 Damon Jones 0.3898
22 Tyronn Lue 0.3890
23 Shane Battier 0.3888
24 Michael Redd 0.3877
25 Danny Granger 0.3868
26 Jason Terry 0.3860
27 Chauncey Billups 0.3854
28 Eddie House 0.3833
29 Vladimir Radmanovic 0.3818
30 Manu Ginobili 0.3816
31 Sasha Vujacic 0.3814
32 Steve Blake 0.3807
33 Kevin Martin 0.3798
34 Dirk Nowitzki 0.3794
35 Cuttino Mobley 0.3789
36 Mike James 0.3783
37 Joe Johnson 0.3770
38 Kurt Hinrich 0.3770
39 Vince Carter 0.3750
40 Bostjan Nachbar 0.3749
41 Deron Williams 0.3743
42 Morris Peterson 0.3738
43 Eddie Jones 0.3728
44 Derek Fisher 0.3727
45 Martell Webster 0.3725
46 Troy Murphy 0.3723
47 Michael Finley 0.3711
48 Mike Bibby 0.3710
49 Chucky Atkins 0.3684
50 J.R. Smith 0.3680
51 Gordan Giricek 0.3677
52 Tayshaun Prince 0.3655
53 Tim Thomas 0.3652
54 Rasual Butler 0.3650
55 Mehmet Okur 0.3643
56 Ricky Davis 0.3641
57 Andres Nocioni 0.3640
58 Raef LaFrentz 0.3635
59 Paul Pierce 0.3634
60 Jason Richardson 0.3628
61 Lindsey Hunter 0.3620
62 Mike Dunleavy 0.3619
63 Charlie Bell 0.3617
64 Kareem Rush 0.3602
65 Bobby Jackson 0.3594
66 Maurice Williams 0.3591
67 Gilbert Arenas 0.3583
68 DeShawn Stevenson 0.3571
69 Al Harrington 0.3571
70 Damon Stoudamire 0.3568
71 Rafer Alston 0.3566
72 Chris Duhon 0.3563
73 Mickael Pietrus 0.3530
74 Keith Bogans 0.3529
75 Quentin Richardson 0.3519
76 Fred Jones 0.3510
77 Anthony Johnson 0.3509
78 James Posey 0.3506
79 Earl Boykins 0.3485
80 Donyell Marshall 0.3476
81 Antawn Jamison 0.3469
82 Earl Watson 0.3456
83 Jamal Crawford 0.3451
84 Smush Parker 0.3449
85 Richard Hamilton 0.3448
86 Marko Jaric 0.3424
87 Steve Francis 0.3414
88 Robert Horry 0.3413
89 Stephen Jackson 0.3413
90 Juan Dixon 0.3411
91 Derek Anderson 0.3411
92 Devean George 0.3410
93 Shawn Marion 0.3409
94 Rasheed Wallace 0.3408
95 Kobe Bryant 0.3402
96 Austin Croshere 0.3400
97 Darrick Martin 0.3398
98 Troy Hudson 0.3391
99 Richard Jefferson 0.3377
100 Tracy McGrady 0.3370
101 Jason Kidd 0.3366
102 DerMarr Johnson 0.3362
103 Darrell Armstrong 0.3341
104 Sam Cassell 0.3312
105 Andre Iguodala 0.3307
106 Corey Maggette 0.3292
107 Ron Artest 0.3292
108 Jeff McInnis 0.3283
109 Raymond Felton 0.3269
110 Stephon Marbury 0.3258
111 Baron Davis 0.3251
112 Antoine Walker 0.3250
113 Jason Williams 0.3245
114 LeBron James 0.3242
115 Anfernee Hardaway 0.3162
116 Lamar Odom 0.3140
117 Tony Parker 0.3139
118 Allen Iverson 0.3136

George, say hello to the 50th best 3-point shooter in the NBA. You know him, it's that guy whose style you think is a black mark on basketball, and whose hometown is in Fantasy Land. You know, that guy you will never start unless hell freezes over, and who has to be benched from time to time because of the principle of the thing.

Why, it's none other than JR Smith, sitting comfortably ahead of players such as Rasheed Wallace, Richard Hamilton, Tracy McGrady, LeBron James, and Kobe Bryant in accuracy from way out on the outer perimeter, where defense doesn't matter very much and it's mostly a question of who has real shooting skills and who doesn't. Fantasy doesn't come into play out there actually, George.

Notice that almost all of the 49 players ahead of Smith are much older and more experienced, meaning that Smith has achieved this very high ranking at an incredibly young age.

If he does come from Fantasy Land, I want to get some more players from out of there.
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Well Chucky Atkins was supposed to address the problem, but he turned out to have the mother of all hernias. I personally think he will never be a serious 3-point threat again, should he return to any degree at all.

Even if Atkins had worked out, the Nuggets still would have been extremely handicapped in 3-point shooting, not only because Smith plays only about 2/3 of the minutes he should play, but also because the Nuggets' best 3-point shooting forward/center is Najera, who doesn't start, is never in the heart of the offense, and often is timid to shoot when he does get the ball.

Kleiza is inconsistent but is great from long range sometimes.

If you have no existing forwards, other than Kleiza on occasion, who are spreading the floor and making some threes, then why would you not have C Anthony, who rains threes in international, spend 1/3 or more of his practice time learning how to make more threes in the NBA? Why would you be harping on him to make a few more rebounds and say nothing about the need for making lightly defended threes, as he does so easily in international?

You would not bother to get Anthony to make more threes only if you didn't know how to manage the team. Nuggets coaching is horrendous, pure and simple.
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Technically, Chucky Atkins would be the 3rd Nugget, but between his major hernia his coming up on 34 years old, and the fact that he hasn't earned the confidence of Karl, which if you don't do that quickly you may never succeed, he is going to be out of the picture in 2008-09 to one extent or another.

I'd say you could count Atkins as 1/2 at the most. Since there are just shy of 120 players, and there are 30 teams, the average team should have 4 players on the list. The Nuggets have only 2 or 2 1/2, with Iverson just barely qualifying. So the Nuggets are deep in the hole, even though they don't seem to realize it.

The Nuggets needed to do at least two of the following and they didn't do any one of them:

1. Get Carmelo Anthony to attempt and make more threes--get more diversity in his scoring.
2. Start J.R. Smith and play him at least 30 min. per game.
3. Start Linas Kleiza and play him at least 30 min. per game.
4. Stop looking at Najera as a defense only player, give him a few more minutes, and get him into the heart of the offense much more often.
5. Play Yakhouba Diawara for at least 20 min. per game and get him into the heart of the offense much more often.

#1 and #2 were the most likely and effective solutions to the problem. #3 worked by accident on a few occasions. #4 and #5 would give you both better defending and better 3-point shooting.
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It would be good if it were true that Anthony spent a lot of practice time making defended threes. And it may be true, as I will admit below.

On the other hand, it would be at least as bad from a management perspective if he did, because the Nuggets, due to being poor defensively, needed to be better than the middle of the pack in attempted threes per game, which is what they were adjusted for pace. In percentage of threes made, they were only #19.

Actually, the history of Anthony's 3-point shot in the NBA is mysterious. In his rookie year, 2003-04, Anthony made 69/214 threes or 32.2%, which would just qualify him to be in the top NBA group. So far so good. Then something really bad and unknown to me at this writing happened. (You can bet I will let everyone know if and when I discover what happened.) In the next three years, which were the years 2004-07, his three-point shooting was just an afterthought, and was uncompetitive. He made only 42, 37, and 40 threes in those years, and his accuracy was only slightly over 25%,

Then in 2007-08 all of a sudden, he made 58/164 threes, for a career high accuracy of 35.4%. He was a threat from long range again. It was an accuracy increase of almost 10% from the three prior years, which strongly suggests he did practice threes big time following the 2006-07 season. But if the practice coaches and/or his personal coach had him practice threes more, the game coaches did not make sure he sought out and took more threes, because the percentage of his shots that were threes in 2007-08 was not substantially higher than it was during the three years that Carmelo Anthony was failing at and largely ignoring the 3-point shot.

Nor were his 2007-08 threes any where near what they were in his rookie year. In his rookie year, 214 of his 1465 shots were threes and, as already mentioned, he made a solid 32.2% of them. In 2007-08, following the three bad years, 164 of his 1481 shots were threes. So the coaches clearly failed to reestablish his three point shot in actual games, whether or not they helped to reestablish the accuracy in practice.

It has been hard for me to think that the coaches made sure that Anthony got his accuracy back in practice but did not use it much in real games. I would rather think that Anthony got his long range shot back with no help from any coaches. But when you realize that we may be talking about totally different coaches when we are talking about who coaches Melo and about who coaches Nuggets games, then maybe I should start suspecting that the Nuggets did help get Melo's 3-point shot back, but then got almost no payoff from that. Or, the right hand didn't know or recognize what the left hand was doing.
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Your right about the roster Chutney. Every contender has to have at least one and usually two veteran G-Fs who are money from long range and decent defensively.

But the Nuggets, once they had Camby, Martin, and Nene on the same roster, none of whom has a prayer from 3-point range, were left with the short end of the stick with respect to the three. For this type of needed player, the Nuggets start with the young Linas Kleiza, who gets only 20 minutes a game and who is not such a great defender despite being qualified theoretically to play either forward position. Then they have Najera, who has been considered mostly defense only since the stone age. Yakhouba Diawara is mostly a guard and was mostly useless offensively despite being able to make threes, simply because the lack of any point guard system prevented him from getting the ball much. All of the other potential players of this type, such as DerMarr Johnson and Bobby Jones, have been fiercely resisted by and left untapped by Karl.

Given how he shows no sign that he thinks it is important, and given how badly he treats most of his better 3-point shooters, I strongly suspect that if it were up for a vote and Karl had a vote, he would vote to abolish the 3-point shot.
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Career 3-Pt. shooting Among Key Nuggets Forwards/Centers:

Nene 0/9
Camby 13/71
Martin 39/192

So none of the three defensively most important Nuggets front court players are any threat at all as far as scoring the ball from outside is concerned. And many fans bitterly complain that Camby is not that great of a threat from point blank range, either!

The moral, if you are a general manager, is that you should never have three key front court players who can not make threes on your roster at the same time, unless you have at least four or five quality veteran G-Fs and guards who can reliably make threes and who can play some defense, and unless you have a coaching staff that will recognize the problem and that can and will make full use of those G-Fs and guards.

Otherwise, teams will stack the paint against you and you can run, fast pace, drive right into a traffic jam, jab step, and alley-oop all you want, but you won't be a top offense in the NBA and you will be toast in the playoffs.
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A comment when there was talk of Anthony Johnson becoming the point guard of the Nuggets:

Oh great, now the Nuggets are going to get a point guard who is even less of a scoring threat than was Anthony Carter. That's a strategy I never heard of: to pick a point guard using defensive reasons only.

Oh well, I guess I am reduced to hoping that all the point guards bruise their little fingers so that Iverson can be PG and so that the Nuggets can make the best of a really rotten situation.

This is just one big shame: a team with a massive payroll, a huge talent bank, and a hefty luxury tax, and yet it can not come up with a point guard solution that makes any sense.

You see why I predicted that the Nuggets will not make the playoffs in 2008-09, a prediction I am standing by at the moment because although the Warriors may be out, the Clippers may be back in?
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Laugh out loud, I did the same thing you did this past season, I just as you did pointed out how each contending team had a greater number of dependable 3-point shooters than the Nuggets do, and I named them.

But see, if you and I can start to manage the Nuggets, than why is it the actual managers can't? Is it simply that they are chumps, or is there more than that to it? Aside from not knowing or at least not recognizing some basketball factors hurting the Nuggets, I think there may be a substantial number of false beliefs held by Nuggets coaches and managers that are facilitating their failure to manage the team in a good way. I know for a fact that many Colorado fans of the Nuggets do believe some or many of the following:

1. We were one of the worst teams in the League for many years before Melo came, and now we are very respectable, so we have done our jobs, and to try to go for more than one and done every year is risky.
2. Denver is not really a basketball town, so most fans are content with just being respectable; they don't think advancing far in the playoffs is all that important. One playoff series is enough for our fans, so it is enough for us.
3. The fast pace offense is very valuable, is sort of a tradition in high altitude Denver, and is a good substitute for a more planned, controlled offense.
4. The character and playing style of basketball players (and the playing style of a player reveals that player's character to some extent) is more important than either their actual production/performance or their actual net contributions (positives less minuses) to the team winning the game. In other words, characters, personalities, and "mental toughness" are at least a little more important than are skills, energy, and strategies, for winning games.
5. Allen Iverson can not play PG (Laugh out loud, I'm sorry, but this one always brings visions of mountain hicks into my head; but I don't think there is any such thing as mountain hicks anymore; they went the way of the dinosaur at least 25 years ago.)
6. Carmelo Anthony is a very good player, but it is impossible that he will ever become one of the best 10 players in the NBA, whether or not he gets markedly different coaching. (Laugh out loud at "impossible".)
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This comment was made just before Marcus Camby was given away for nothing to the Clippers:

Yes, they spent so much money that they have one of the highest payrolls and one of the highest luxury taxes in the League. If they were going to do that, they needed to be able to manage that investment properly. But they have a coaching staff that can not handle playoff basketball in particular and squeezing performance out of a roster in general, they have an owner for whom basketball is just a small part of his vast business empire, and they have a front office that seems to think that simply by building up the huge payroll with famous veterans, they ought to get some kind of a medal.

If you are going to spend big money, you need to know for sure how to manage your investment, but the Nuggets organization broke that rule of economics and finance. Can you succeed at anything that is complicated and large scale, simply by spending money, but not doing very much else than that? No, and even if you could, it would be a worthless exercise.

If you fail to manage a large investment correctly, you are subject to being penalized by losing some percentage of it. In basketball terms, the Nuggets are now subject to dropping back down close to or back into the basement of the NBA. You already see fans alluding to this in discussions about this team, although few if any are going to be as blunt about it as I am. Other fans like to use the term "blowing up" to describe the probable fate that awaits the Nuggets. Blowing up means that most or even all of the big names depart or retire. Financially it means that the team finally gets free of many, most, or possibly all of the huge contracts. In basketball performance terms, blowing up usually entails having to start from the basement, because the team didn't have the money to get the "next generation" of players in place before the blowing up.

Always remember that only badly managed franchises are subject to an actual "blowing up." Well managed franchises such as the Lakers and the Celtics may be in the cellar every once in a great while, even for a few years, but it will be in their cases due to the normal ebb and flow of a roster, and will in effect be an accident due to retirements, draft picks not working out, injuries, and other things that are bad luck more than anything else.

Getting back to the Nuggets, when money is invested and then the investment is not managed well, the investment turns into an expense. Now all of a sudden, you have spent too much money, not invested a lot of money, and the implications are totally different. As everyone knows, when you spend too much money, you are going to have to pay some kind of a penalty for that, which in the case of the Nuggets, may be a return to the basement.

They have spent the big bucks and have demonstrated that they do not know how to put the expensive pieces together to make their team work. And by work, I don't mean simply winning a few playoff games. I mean that the Nuggets are still not on the map as a desirable place to play among good free agents and players around the League who want to be traded. Normally, a team that spends big bucks becomes attractive to those good free agents and tradable assets, but the Nuggets failed to become very enticing.

And how can the Nuggets build a good franchise long term if few good players want to play in Denver? They can't. Between that and the lack of money, the Nuggets may find themselves in the basement in a few short years.

Aside from having needed to be able to manage their huge investment well, the Nuggets needed someone in the front office who understands the laws of economics and the laws of finance as they work out in pro basketball. I mean that literally; if you ever spend a huge amount of money and you do not understand the economics and finance that are involved, you are cruising for a bruising.
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The NBA is not a free market business; it is a monopolistic gang of suits who basically cater to a few billionaire and near billionaire owners. When Carmelo Anthony is given a 15 game suspension for a little punch that some swore was more like a slap, why would anyone think that the NBA cares about fans, who are the next level down from players?

And who is competing with the NBA? No one, really, unless you want to get interested in European basketball. For example, does anyone to speak of care about what is happening with the Montana Golden Nuggets? But as someone in this topic alluded to, this kind of heavy handed business monopoly is normal in America, and governments are supposed to bow down to it or be robbed blind. (He certainly didn't put it that way, lol.)

But Seattle metro has over 3.3 million people and Oklahoma metro has about 1.2 million people. And the central area of Seattle metro is much more densely packed with people than is the central area of Oklahoma metro. Also, Seattle has far better public transit, which will be critical now that gas is going to be about $5 a gallon or, gulp, even more. So factoring in total population, central area density and the gas situation, the potential long term basketball market in Seattle must be somewhere between 4 and 6 times the potential long term basketball market in Oklahoma.

So for how many years do you think there will be bigger potential crowds and merchandise sales in Oklahoma instead of in Seattle? Would you think it would be one, two, or three years before the law of numbers asserts itself and bigger crowds and merchandise sales are available in Seattle? But monopolistic gangs of suits catering to a few billionaires and near billionaires don't look at obvious free enterprise business factors like that.

You or I would make more money in Seattle than Oklahoma, but Bennett is so rich that he doesn't care if he makes a few million less long term in Oklahoma than in Seattle. He's just a "Look maw, I dun bought me a basketball team and dragged it back here to the farm" type of billionaire.
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One way to stop franchise stealing, sponsored by the elitist, monopolistic gang that Stern and company are, is to have another League to compete with the NBA, which would force the NBA to give up its life of crime. Were there an ABA type League, Stern would change his tune and not allow franchise stealing, in order to avoid abandoned markets such as Seattle being taken over by a rival League.

The ABA years were the best basketball ever saw.

However, due to the much wider wealth and income disparities of today, most economists will tell you that there could not be a new ABA today, because the sports money needed to make a League work and prosper is already pretty much tied up in the NBA. There are only so many billionaires who want a basketball team to go around.

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum #2 Comments From July 2008, Part 1

Forum commentary I did from March 2008 through July 2008, when I didn't have time to do the detailed and extensive reports that I like to do, is being posted in early October, 2008. The primary themes are how the Nuggets are blowing a great (and expensive!) opportunity to play the game of basketball in such a way that respects the sport and that takes as much advantage as possible of who they have on the roster. The 2006-09 Nuggets have turned out to be an excellent case study of how not to run a basketball team; many things you should not do if you are a basketball manager or coach can be identified from what the Nuggets actually did during these years.

In these comments, do not look for the usual huge amount of detail and proof that you see in the ordinary releases here at Nuggets 1. Some of this is more like everyday conversation than like top quality sports writing. On the other hand, some of the comments do include some detailed reasoning and proof that I pride myself on in the full reports.
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JULY 2008 FORUM COMMENTARY ON THE NUGGETS, ESPECIALLY ABOUT THEIR MISTAKES

Phil Jackson in his post game 6 of the NBA finals series interview just declared that PG Rajon Rondo of the Celtics was the one who did the most damage to Kobe Bryant and the hopes of the Lakers in general. In game 6, Rondo and Paul Pierce combined for 18 assists versus 16 for the whole Lakers team combined. Rondo and 2-guard E House combined for 13 assists, just 2 shy of the number of assists by the top two assisting guards that makes a win about 99.5% likely. As Jackson pointed out, the Celtics used a smart and efficient offense along with their fearsome defense to shut the lights out on his Lakers. If they had only had one without the other, the door would have been left open for the Lakers to pull an upset.

All of this once again shows that George Karl is simply out of his league as a basketball coach, since he believes that who exactly plays PG is not all that crucial, because it is possible to get the rest of the team to combine together to make up for an inadequate PG. This has been shown to be wrong not only by the Celtics this year, but by all NBA champions.

Congratulations to Rajon Rondo, Doc Rivers, and the rest of the Celtics.

Would you please just retire already Mr. Karl?
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I see around the net that most are predicting that the Nuggets will draft a PG with their 20th pick. They do not have a 2nd round pick.

This is a mistake, because the Nuggets are not going to be competitive anymore at Center, due to Marcus Camby on the downslope of his career and due to Nene (who can play the position to some extent in theory) seldom playing for one reason or another. The Nuggets should draft the best center they can get in this 2008 draft.

Why do they think they need a PG? They will always think they need a PG until George Karl is gone, because Karl would not know a good potential PG already on the roster if one bit him in the rear end. Karl neither fully understands nor fully respects the PG role, so it was child's play for him to pretend that Anthony Carter is a starting PG in the NBA during 2007-08, only to chicken out in the Lakers series when Allen Iverson all of a sudden appeared at the position, but without any preparation or instructions.

In other words, the Nuggets do not really need a PG unless Atkins is a lost cause, and even then they do not need a lower 1st round PG more than they need a center with that pick. But since Karl refuses to recognize J.R. Smith as one of the better 2-guards in the NBA, since Iverson can not play PG according to Karl, and since the position is really not that crucial to Karl, the front office feels the need to get another PG with the one and only pick.

For every successful 1st round PG pick, there must be at least 2 1/2 1st round PG picks that are more or less busts, so even if the Nuggets truly needed a PG, the odds would be stacked against the pick working out.

So the Nuggets if they do indeed use their pick on a lower 1st round PG will be doing nothing more and nothing less than enabling Mr. Karl's lack of understanding of the role of the PG in basketball. They will be making a key mistake and setting up a good possibility that when Camby is gone or no longer effective, the Nuggets will quickly fall down close to or actually into the cellar of the Northwest Division.
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A mock, made up response by George Karl to Phil Jackson's comment from the previous comment:

Rondo was not a big factor. No player that young can be a big factor, and the role of the PG is overrated.
[George Karl]

Go away, George, there's the door.
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Iverson always wanted freedom to be himself more than anything else, and the 76'ers and the Nuggets went along with his stated wishes. But I am afraid he ended up with a little bit too much freedom, because being a real contender got lost along that road.

Did Iverson become so obsessed with freedom to be himself that he allowed that objective to crowd out everything else?

I think I will determine the answer to that before my Iverson series is finished.
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Um, Nuggets management, having seen the 76'ers' strike one and the Nuggets' strike two with respect to Iverson, no one is going to give you real players for Iverson at this point and be strike three. He's 33, so it's kind of too late to get him into a system that makes a little sense.

Nuggets: You made your bed and you chose to not change the bedding, and now you have to sleep in it.
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It's great to see C. Anthony finally start to be an NBA man, by understanding that things are not right in Nuggets Land, and by sticking up for himself and his team more as opposed to just slaving for the coaches. He is no longer assuming that his Nuggets coaches all know what they are doing all of the time, which is good. You were never on a trip to Six Flags, Melo, and your team is really, really messed up.

Anyone who can score the ball as well as he can must have enough brains to help coach his team, or to at least demand more from the those being paid to coach. It was overdue, but better late than never.

He doesn't want to be traded because in his mind he is on top of the world in Denver and if he goes to a big market he won't be as, shall we say, legendary. But he will eventually insist on a trade if Karl doesn't mind his manners.
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I wish C Anthony would get out of Denver now that the Nuggets have revealed what a small franchise they are, by not giving much of a damn about the quality of the coaches. I guess being in his mind the Top Dawg of Denver is too valuable for Anthony to give up right now; can't say that I blame him.

Or, better the rotten franchise you know than the franchise you don't know about?
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Carter had better be gone if the Nuggets want to win more games than they lose, but if Najera goes as expected, the Nuggets defense becomes even worse, and it's already terrible.

Oh well, at least Bobby Jones is back on the roster. He can defend alright, though of course he is not considered proper according to Karl's style book.
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Seattle is a huge market and Oklahoma is small, which makes this all the more stupid.

At the very least it can not be the Oklahoma Sonics. How about the Oklahoma Rednecks, lol?

You need a team Seattle, or it's like the NFL with no LA team. It shows there is something very wrong with the economics of sports and of the NBA in particular. (Jeez, and to think I do sports in part to get away from real economics!)

There should be teams in St. Louis, Baltimore, San Diego, and perhaps Las Vegas, too.

Have a good 4th y'all.
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Mr. Karl's new book, with the cover photo recalling the Kenyon Martin benching in the 2006 playoffs, laugh out loud:

Return of Nuggets 1: Forum #2 Comments From June 2008, Part 1

Forum commentary I did from March 2008 through July 2008, when I didn't have time to do the detailed and extensive reports that I like to do, is being posted in early October, 2008. The primary themes are how the Nuggets are blowing a great (and expensive!) opportunity to play the game of basketball in such a way that respects the sport and that takes as much advantage as possible of who they have on the roster. The 2006-09 Nuggets have turned out to be an excellent case study of how not to run a basketball team; many things you should not do if you are a basketball manager or coach can be identified from what the Nuggets actually did during these years.

In these comments, do not look for the usual huge amount of detail and proof that you see in the ordinary releases here at Nuggets 1. Some of this is more like everyday conversation than like top quality sports writing. On the other hand, some of the comments do include some detailed reasoning and proof that I pride myself on in the primary reports I release.
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MAY 2008 FORUM COMMENTARY ON THE NUGGETS, ESPECIALLY ABOUT THEIR MISTAKES

I have a habit of focusing on the Nuggets' offensive mistakes and problems in greater detail than the defensive, but it turns out that in terms of damage done, the defensive flaws are bigger. The Nuggets like all teams have many flaws, but what things are they the absolute worst at as compared to other teams? There is no doubt about what the Nuggets are worst at, and they are so bad at these things that they can not hope to win a playoff series unless many of these things are improved. Here they are:

1. Defensive anticipation and intelligence: making the right guess as to where the play is going to go.
2. Defending the 3-point shot in general and getting a man on almost every 3-point shooter.
3. Rotating out of screens correctly to try to defend midrange jumpers and 3-pointers as much as possible.
4. Taking away the pass by hustling and blocking the passing lanes, and forcing a dribble or poor shot as much as possible. This is sometimes called “breaking down the offense”.
5. Forcing more turnovers in general and more steals in particular. The Nuggets are too afraid to "gamble" a little on defense and try for the extra steal by defending the passing lanes better. They act as if their opponents can not beat them with midrange jumpers and threes, which has been proved false over and over again, especially in the playoffs. Defense can not be limited to conservative and one-dimensional interior defending; you must have a defensive scheme that includes passing and outside shooting.
6. The Nuggets may need to commit a few more fouls in order to slow down the scoring, passing, and assisting rates of their opponents, which are practically off the scales.
7. Defending the other team's point guard better, especially the outstanding point guards. The Nuggets probably need to double point guards such as Chauncey Billups, Chris Paul, and Deron Williams.
8. Choosing correctly between zone and man to man defending.
9. The Nuggets if they hope to ever win a playoff series simply can not have a backcourt where both of the guards are 6 foot 3 inches or less. There should rarely if ever be two players on the court who are shorter than 6' 6" tall.
10. J.R. Smith has to start and play at least 30 minutes a game because he is 6’6” tall and because he is precisely the kind of guard defender that the Nuggets have been short on. He is a guard who not always but more and more frequently defends the midrange and 3-point shot correctly, who makes steals at a very good rate, and who generally helps more than the average player in disrupting the passing game of the other team. In particular, it's time for the coaches to stop being so terrified of having J.R. Smith guard point guards.

Investigation shows that the Nuggets are terrible in these aspects of defending, whereas thanks to Kenyon Martin and Marcus Camby, they are much better in interior man to man defending, as long as you know who does not do something stupid like put Kenyon Martin on a guard with no Nene available!

There have been those who have criticized Marcus Camby for not helping enough with the above problems, but of all positions on a basketball team, the Center is the one that is least important in dealing with these problems on a correctly run team. Don't limit the blame to Marcus Camby if aspects of defending that are supposed to be guard, swingman, and coaching responsibilities are in a state of disaster. Or, to put it more crudely, Camby can't be expected to guard the interior and the perimeter at the same time.
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Yes, the Nuggets are hopeless in this, which also kills them in the playoffs. If you combine the poor 3-point shooting on offense with the terrible 3-point shot defending, the Nuggets act as if the 3-point shot does not exist. But not only does it exist, it's even more important in the playoffs than it is in the regular season.
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The George Karl News Conference After he Lost 4 Straight Games to the Lakers

He is honest and open at least, most of the time, as television broadcasters have noted. But he takes that to an extreme when he calls out players in the Denver newspapers and television stations.
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Someone asked me an outstanding question:

The Suns' pace isn't that far behind Denver's, and you said yourself that they were even better before they traded for Shaq and slowed the pace down. Why have they managed to stay at the top so long, even coming within bad luck with injuries and suspensions at the wrong time of winning at least one or two championships, when teams like Denver and Golden State can't get past the bottom of the playoff seeding? It seems to me that while it might be harder to win at that pace, it is still quite possible if you have the right mix of coaching and players.

My answer was:

You answered yourself: the Suns had a dream mix of coaches and players. I guess Suns management concluded that Coach D'Antoni is too much of a geek or something, because they should have kept him. Now the Suns future is not very bright it seems to me.

As you can see above, the Suns were by a good margin the best offense in the NBA. I say were because that will no longer be true now that the older Shaq is on this team. They didn't know that they were about the 9th best defense in the NBA; they thought before they did the trade that they were about the 15th best defense or something. They underestimated how good their defense was, so they made a bad trade for a bad reason.

I think that the Suns would have won the title in 2006-07 were it not for the Horry-Stearns incident, and they could have won the title this year were it not for the trade. It probably would have been a 7 game series between the Lakers and the Suns for the West crown.

Neither the Warriors nor the Nuggets have top 6 offenses (Nuggets are #8 and Warriors are #11) While the Suns are 9th in defense, the Warriors are 16th and the Nuggets are 19th. So neither the Warriors nor the Nuggets were ever at the level of the Suns.

What upsets me is that the Nuggets should be about 3rd or 4th on offense if they just recognized the importance of the PG position, which is Basketball 101. They could even be 1st now that Shaq is on the Suns. If they were the 3rd or 4th best offense, they would have more to show for their fast pace and for their lazy and inept defense.
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I hate to say it, but I personally think hell will freeze over before Karl wins a playoff series again. I think in the 1990's he used to be sharper than he is now; he's not as good as he used to be, probably due to health reasons.

He makes too many decisions as if he is a scared rabbit these days. For example, he grossly exaggerated the shortcomings and unusual style of little old J.R. Smith, and thereby put a stranglehold on the Nuggets chances both in 2006-07 and this past season by, among other things, not playing him enough and by assuming Smith can hardly play defense at all. So the Nuggets were left with a midget backcourt for way too many minutes and just about the worst guard defending in the NBA, with inadequate 3-point shooting and so forth.

Poor Mr. Karl ended up paying a big price for his faulty evaluation of J.R. Smith because, even though he will apparently not be fired by the Nuggets, he still goes down in history now as one of the worst playoff coaches among all coaches with long head coach careers. All because Smith was too odd for Karl to deal with! Had Karl been able to win at least 8 playoff games in 4 years instead of just 3, which he could have done if he had gotten Smith and the backcourt overall right, he could have just barely avoided the label "One of the Worst Playoff Coaches Ever."
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Someone was on point with respect to why George Karl was not fired in May 2008:

Karl is just tight with the owners, and knows what to say. He will probably be gone after his contract is up. Denver has stuck with him this long, they will probably just wait it out. I honestly don't think there is one person in the front office or on the team who is dedicated to winning. They have the most talented team in the league, but lack the personnel and dedication to play the right way. Hopefully AI opts out and signs with a contender.

I added:

Yeah, maybe they were dedicated only to getting the Nuggets out of last place and to keeping the seats filled up and the merchandise selling. So big deal, they achieved those things. Whoo hoo. The average man on the street could probably achieve those things, actually. As a fan, I need more than those things to be impressed with a front office/owner.
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A joke during the 2008 Championship where Karl is the Coach of the Lakers instead of Phil Jackson:

"Lakers Coach" George Karl's reaction to Kobe Bryant's last ditch end of the game steal in Boston:

That was a foul and not a clean steal. He basically disrespected the game with that play. Kobe Bryant is living in fantasyland and if I were coaching the Lakers, I would bench him for game 6 of the finals.
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Someone got a little confused and thought it was me instead of a mock George Karl making the statement in the previous comment:

I find the criticism of Kobe hilarious coming from a fan of a team whose leader has never been out of the 1st round.

That's not me; I thought the steal was great. I was mocking George "Worst Playoff Coach There Will Ever Be" Karl with a mock quote. He thinks J.R. Smith (of the Nuggets) lives in fantasyland due to his 3-point shooting and due to his sometimes gambling style of defense. He benched Smith for the 2007 playoffs and then religiously refused to start Smith or give him just 24 mpg during the entire 2007-08 season, despite Smith by January 2008 having achieved the status of being one of the best 2-guards in the NBA.

For his next act, Mr. Karl will very, very likely fail to get any playoff spot at all in 2008-09.
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I think the Rockets are almost sure to get out of the 1st round next year, if Yao is back and they have no new major injuries.

I guess my team is led by someone who can't get out of the first round too: C Anthony.

Oh wait, Iverson is considered the sole captain and leader by Karl now.

Oh wait, Karl's management is so wack, that Iverson is not really responsible either.

But having said that, it's time for Melo Anthony to just say no to Karl and to start demanding that the Nuggets have a real PG be that Iverson or anyone else who is qualified. (It can't be a PG who is only real to Mr. Karl.) And its time for him to make sure he is officially and unofficially at least the co-captain of the Nuggets. And it's time for him to not listen to every little micromanagement demand that Karl throws at him. How much benefit did the Nuggets get, for example, from him following instructions to rebound more and shoot a little less. They got nothing to speak of from that.

It's time for Anthony to declare his childhood over and to start to figure out what needs to be done and do it and not listen to Karl's incorrect (and inadequate if they were correct) micromanagement gambits. The Nuggets need more 3-point shooting including from Melo himself. They need J.R. Smith to start for both offense and defense reasons. They need a real PG. They need Nene and K-Mart to play at all costs. They need to learn how to defend the pick and roll and how to rotate much better in general. They need to stop leaving a gazillion 3-point shooters per game undefended.

If Melo does not start working on these things, he's just spinning his wheels and wasting his time, something which (and how ironic is this Holmes?) Karl himself mentioned Melo might be doing these days.
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I think the Lakers and the old wise one (P Jackson) will pull out a game 6 squeaker, in regulation or OT, assuming Rondo's ankle is still a problem. Jackson is a far more experienced playoff coach than is Doc Rivers, and I have a hunch he will figure out a way to pull #6 out.

Anyone have any details on Rondo's ankle?

Then the Celtics will probably win game 7 by about 10 points; the Celtics machine is awesome even without Rondo at full. But the Rondo factor does give the Lakers a small possibility of shockingly taking the series.

I'm definitely not going to miss game 6.