The George Karl Theme Song: Dr. John, "Right Place, Wrong Time"

I present an explanation and the lyrics for the Mr. George "I actually admitted on national TV that I don't really know how to win in the playoffs" Karl theme song.

The George Karl theme song is "Right Place, Wrong Time" by Dr. John. This song is about someone who seems just a little paranoid about life in general, and about various things and people he encounters. At the same time, the singer/subject seems to be almost obsessed about possible personality shortcomings he may or may not have. The logic is, if he really has personality or psychological shortcomings, he won't be able to deal with the things in life he is worried about. I guess it is true, ironically, that you actually can become neurotic while worrying about being neurotic.

If all of this doesn't briefly but accurately describe George Karl, I don't know what does. George Karl, like the poor guy in this song, is kind of a failed perfectionist. A successful perfectionist outgrows worrying about possible personality or psychological problems. First because most psychological problems are relative, contextual, and speculative and second. because actual such shortcomings are usually no big deal, and do not in and of themselves stop someone from getting most things done correctly.

The lyrics:

I been in the right place but it must have been the wrong time
I'd have said the right thing but I must have used the wrong line
I been in the right trip but I must have used the wrong car
My head was in a bad place and I'm wondering what it's good for
I been the right place but it must have been the wrong time
My head was in a bad place but I'm having such a good time

I been running trying to get hung up in my mind
Got to give myself a good talking-to this time
Just need a little brain salad surgery
Got to cure my insecurity

I been in the wrong place but it must have been the right time
I been in the right place but it must have been the wrong song
I been in the right vein but it seems like the wrong arm
I been in the right world but it seems wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong

Slipping dodging sneaking creeping hiding out down the street
See me life shaking with every ho' I meet
Refried confusion is making itself clear
Wonder which way do I go to get on out of here

I been in the right place but it must have been the wrong time
I'd have said the right thing but I must have used the wrong line
I'd have took the right road but I must have took a wrong turn
I'd have took the right move but I made it at the wrong time
I been on the road trip but I must have used the wrong car
My head was in a good place and I wonder what it's bad for.

You can listen to the George Karl Theme Song at any time at Quest For the Ring. It can be find not far from the beginning of the User Guide, which itself is near the top of the home page.

Fast Break: A Problem with Hollinger's Performance Efficiency Ratings

Overall, I really and truly respect John Hollinger's content at ESPN. But since I am someone who is an expert at noticing flaws and problems, I thought I would reveal a shortcoming with one of Mr. Hollinger's statistical crown jewels.

Even though I can't find the large amount of time to figure out every detail of the hard to understand Hollinger Performance Efficiency Ratings formulas, I am already aware that his standardization around the number 15 is not a good thing, because there is no true, good reason for making all the players average out to 15. Hollinger does this because he is fond of how that technique on the surface allows complete comparability from one year to the next. But what if all League players on the average are better one year than the other year? You would never know it from the Hollinger rating system. Also, a player could be better one year than the other, but show up as worse in the year he was better, according to the Hollinger system, due to the standardization of all ratings around 15.0. This would happen if the League of players as a whole had higher ratings in the year in which that player's rating went up, and if the League average rating went up by more than that player's rating.

The point is, if the number of points or whatever else goes up League-wide, why should every individual player have the measurement of his points or whatever else scaled back? No, Hollinger is wrong about this. A player who does more in season B than in season A should automatically get a higher rating, regardless of whether the League as a whole had more overall production. Year to year comparisons are more valid if the rating is not standardized around a particular number, not less valid as Hollinger wrongly claims. The standardization is a needless academic type of thing.

Without a doubt the standardization around the number 15 is not needed, unless you are just an academic trying to show off your mathematical skills. There is no basketball reason for the standardization. There is no such thing as an average player in the Hollinger sense, because the League and the players in it do change from year to year and from decade to decade. Why should you pretend that the players of 1975 or whatever were, overall, exactly as good as the players of 2008? That's what Hollinger is claiming, but it's not true.

Also, you can not fairly compare a player from one year to the next using the Hollinger system, but you can do it with the Real Player Ratings here at Quest For the Ring.
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Editorial Notes: A "Fast Break" is a short and quick preview of some of the topics that will be explored and proved in more detail in upcoming regular reports. Fast Breaks will often reappear in full reports with only minor reediting, but there will be more important details, more evidence, and more implications and explanations in the full reports. Moreover, there will be topics that never appear in any Fast Break in a full Report.

Fast Breaks are especially useful for the first few days after major news breaks. They are also very useful for people who will seldom or never have enough time to read a full Game/Team/League Report. Fast Breaks are the type of article that more typical web logs feature almost all or all of the time.

Fast Break: A Comparison Fair to Iverson For a Change

Now let's make a comparison that is fair to Iverson for a change. Here are the 2007-08 assist ratios for Iverson and for the other players who played his position, 2-guard (shooting guard):

Allen Iverson, DEN 21.4
Manu Ginobili, SAS 19.4
Kobe Bryant, LAL 16.2
Dwyane Wade, MIA 20.6
Kevin Martin, SAC 9.0
Brandon Roy, POR 22.6
Monta Ellis, GSW 16.6
Michael Redd, MIL 13.1
Vince Carter, NJN 19.0
Tracy McGrady, HOU 19.2
Jason Richardson, CHA 12.7
Ronnie Brewer, UTH 14.1
Richard Hamilton, DET 19.2
J.R. Smith, DEN 12.9
Mike Dunleavy, IND 16.3
Joe Johnson, ATL 20.1
Brent Barry, HOU 22.4
Ben Gordon, CHI 13.6
Ray Allen, BOS 15.6
Mike Miller, MIN 17.9
Jamal Crawford, NYK 18.5
Leandro Barbosa, PHO 14.9
Sasha Vujacic, LAL 11.1
Rashad McCants, MIN 12.0
Anthony Parker, TOR 15.9
C.J. Miles, UTH 15.6
John Salmons, SAC 16.1
Maurice Evans, ORL 11.5
Rodney Stuckey, DET 23.2
Luther Head, HOU 19.2
Carlos Delfino, TOR 15.8
Bobby Jackson, HOU 18.8
Kelenna Azubuike, GSW 9.6
Jerry Stackhouse, DAL 17.6
Kirk Snyder, MIN 18.6
Jarrett Jack, IND 25.7
Willie Green, PHI 12.6
DeShawn Stevenson, WAS 20.6
Rodney Carney, MIN 6.5
Delonte West, CLE 26.6
Larry Hughes, CHI 15.3
Juan Carlos Navarro, MEM 15.5
Nick Young, WAS 9.1
Marquis Daniels, IND 15.7
Cuttino Mobley, LAC 15.8
Thabo Sefolosha, CHI 18.7
Juan Dixon, DET 23.1
Damien Wilkins, OKC 15.4
Morris Peterson, NOR 10.1
Fred Jones, NYK 22.7
Charlie Bell, MIL 25.9
Keith Bogans, ORL 13.1
Matt Carroll, CHA 9.4
Tony Allen, BOS 16.5
Raja Bell, PHO 16.4
Arron Afflalo, DET 14.2
Kareem Rush, IND 12.1
Gordan Giricek, PHO 14.5
Antoine Wright, DAL 16.4
Yakhouba Diawara, DEN 18.4
Daequan Cook, MIA 11.1
Quinton Ross, LAC 18.4
Eddie Jones, DAL 24.3
Sasha Pavlovic, CLE 14.3
Greg Buckner, MEM 20.0
Mardy Collins, NYK 26.4
Bobby Jones, NYK 12.8

Dwyane Wade has stated that he does not want to play point guard, so that explains him. Iverson has never stated any such thing.

The obvious thing to see here is that Iverson was way ahead of most of the 2-guards in assisting!

The handful of 2-guards (shooting guards) who were ahead of Iverson in assisting are definitely all combo guards, and most likely a good number of them are playing the 2-guard only because that is best for their teams, either because their team does not have a better 2-guard, or because their team has a 1-guard (point guard) who is better than they are. In other words, I would bet that most of the other teams have good excuses for playing players who get a lot of assists at the 2-guard rather than the 1-guard.

But the Nuggets had no player who could play point guard better than Iverson, which it took them until the playoffs to realize! (Actually, I don't think they actually realized it even then laugh out loud.) And the Nuggets had one of the better 2-guards in the League ready to start if called on, J.R. Smith. So I hardly think that the Nuggets had any excuse other than stupidity. Or, maybe it was just Mr. Karl suffering from "J.R. Smith paranoia," which has been recently identified by basketball psychologists as an official clinical problem.

So to summarize and simplify, you had Iverson playing both guard positions at once, which ended up putting him a little above average among all 1-guards and 2-guards in assisting. Iverson was like the man without a position. He had too many assists to be a good 2-guard, and not as many assists as he could have had if he had been the 1-guard. He was like a character on the show "LOST".

As explained so often at Quest For the Ring, the correction for this was obvious: Iverson had to be the point guard all along if the Nuggets really wanted to contend.

As you can see above, Iverson while playing 2-guard, has way more of his possessions end in assists than most of the other 2-guards. Furthermore, while not responsible for the position, his assist ratio is only marginally less than the assist ratios of quality (but relatively modest assist ratio) point guards such as Tony Parker and Baron Davis.

Well, Iverson, Parker, and Davis share another obvious feature: they like to score and they can do so well. And there is no law or regulation against having a point guard who likes to take a good number of shots and to score a good number of points. The Hornets, with the high scoring PG Chris Paul, were probably the biggest surprise this past season, while Tony Parker has won several rings with the Spurs over the last several years.

There is simply no serious argument to be made that it is necessary or even just highly advisable to have a low scoring point guard rather than a high scoring point guard. There are certain athletes who can walk and chew gum at the same time and Iverson is obviously one of them. You can win with, if you know what you are doing, either a high scoring or with a very unselfish, moderate scoring point guard.

The number is important, the rank not as important. But for the record, Iverson was #57 out of 72 actual point guards in assisting, while being instructed to NOT in the least be the point guard by the twisted George Karl. Had he been instructed to be the point guard, his rank in terms of assisting would have been between #17 and #45. His rank among point guards in scoring would have been top 10, obviously. And then the rough approximation of Chris Paul, together with JR Smith at 2-guard, would have made the Nuggets about the best offense in the league, instead of only about 10th best, which in turn would have made them a real contender.
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Editorial Notes: A "Fast Break" is a short and quick preview of some of the topics that will be explored and proved in more detail in upcoming regular reports. Fast Breaks will often reappear in full reports with only minor reediting, but there will be more important details, more evidence, and more implications and explanations in the full reports. Moreover, there will be topics that never appear in any Fast Break in a full Report.

Fast Breaks are especially useful for the first few days after major news breaks. They are also very useful for people who will seldom or never have enough time to read a full Game/Team/League Report. Fast Breaks are the type of article that more typical web logs feature almost all or all of the time.

Fast Break: For the Record, Iverson Did Play Both Guard Positions at Once in Denver and That is Why The Nuggets' Offense Didn't Work Correctly

Anyone, insider or not, can now use Mr. Hollinger's data base at ESPN (though you still can not find his player efficiency rating formulas there). So why don't we compare Iverson the 2-guard to the designated 1-guards (point guards) of the NBA from the 2007-08 season. The assist rate is the percentage of the time a player's possession ends with an assist.

ASSIST RATE
Allen Iverson, DEN 21.4
Chris Paul, NOR 35.7
Chauncey Billups, DET 30.1
Steve Nash, PHO 39.7
Deron Williams, UTH 35.3
Jose Calderon, TOR 43.4
T.J. Ford, IND 31.5
Tony Parker, SAS 23.2
Baron Davis, LAC 24.3
Andre Miller, PHI 27.2
Jason Terry, DAL 18.1
Devin Harris, NJN 27.2
Mo Williams, MIL 26.1
Louis Williams, PHI 20.1
Jason Kidd, DAL 41.6
Rajon Rondo, BOS 29.5
Jameer Nelson, ORL 32.1
Sam Cassell, BOS 23.6
Jordan Farmar, LAL 22.5
Nate Robinson, NYK 17.9
Earl Watson, OKC 35.0
Mike Bibby, ATL 27.5
Kyle Lowry, MEM 25.3
Keyon Dooling, NJN 18.9
Raymond Felton, CHA 30.1
Chris Quinn, MIA 27.4
Stephon Marbury, NYK 23.7
Roger Mason, SAS 16.1
Derek Fisher, LAL 20.1
Antonio Daniels, WAS 34.9
Beno Udrih, SAC 23.5
Rafer Alston, HOU 25.5
Ronald Murray, IND 22.6
Kirk Hinrich, CHI 30.8
Aaron Brooks, HOU 23.0
Eddie House, BOS 19.6
Carlos Arroyo, ORL 31.8
Anthony Carter, DEN 37.8
Randy Foye, MIN 22.4
Jason Williams, MIA 31.2
Jamaal Tinsley, IND 33.9
Marcus Banks, MIA 20.0
Mike Conley, MEM 27.5
Dan Dickau, LAC 30.8
Ronnie Price, UTH 23.7
Travis Diener, IND 32.7
Steve Blake, POR 34.6
Marko Jaric, MEM 29.9
Jannero Pargo, NOR 19.7
Tyronn Lue, MIL 20.1
Daniel Gibson, CLE 19.8
Brevin Knight, UTH 42.5
Luke Ridnour, OKC 33.1
Damon Jones, CLE 23.5
Anthony Johnson, ORL 36.4
Chris Duhon, NYK 36.9
Marcus Williams, GSW 26.5
Javaris Crittenton, MEM 13.3
Sebastian Telfair, MIN 33.2
Earl Boykins, CHA 28.7
Quincy Douby, SAC 11.3
Jacque Vaughn, SAS 29.9
Sergio Rodriguez, POR 31.6
Damon Stoudamire, SAS 27.6
Royal Ivey, PHI 24.1
Darrell Armstrong, NJN 30.8
Mike James, NOR 14.7
Jason Hart, LAC 27.4
Acie Law, ATL 26.5
Smush Parker, LAC 25.9
Jeff McInnis, CHA 39.4

So from this you can see that Iverson, while playing shooting guard, and while ordered by George Karl to shoot as often as he wanted, made an assist as often as did the lessor assisting point guards! For example, look at Baron Davis and Tony Parker, just ever so slightly ahead of Iverson in assisting. If you just wished on a star for Iverson to be the point guard he would probably move ahead of Davis and Parker, laugh out loud.

If you made Allen Iverson responsible and accountable for assisting, then obviously the percentage of his possessions ending in assists would go up from 21.4. By how much, we will soon know as a result of the Detroit Pistons being aware of the hidden Iverson controversy that I have been reporting about for many moons.

At a rock bottom minimum, and assuming due to bad habits that Iverson would not do much of anything differently after being instructed to be the 1-guard for his team, his assist percentage would most likely go to about 25%. (It would go at least that high simply because of how often the designated point guard brings the ball up.) Depending on how much he was persuaded, and how much he was able to shake the bad habit of sometimes ignoring the open man, his assist percentage would, conservatively, go up to between 25% and about 30%. Theoretically, but not likely and not at all necessary for success, it would go higher than 30%.

An Iverson assist ratio of roughly 30% would have been perfect for the Nuggets, whereas the 21.4% was not enough, given how often Iverson was marginalizing the actual point guard, who was usually Anthony Carter. To a lessor extent in fact, Iverson as the 2-guard marginalized all of the other players, for that matter, as Iverson haters are fond of pointing out and exaggerating.

So what would you have to do to make Iverson, at the least, a point guard who is average with respect to assisting, among the starting point guards of the NBA? Most likely, you could simply strongly request it and it would be done. You know, simply asking can often do wonders. Why so many people have mental blocks on this subject is bewildering to say the least. It would seem that those who claim Iverson would not change anything if his position were changed are thinking that Iverson is some kind of alien who does not understand English.

Notice that the Raptors have the ultimate assisting point guard in Juan Calderon, even better in the basic assisting role than are Steve Nash, Chauncey Billups, Chris Paul, and Deron Williams.
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Editorial Notes: A "Fast Break" is a short and quick preview of some of the topics that will be explored and proved in more detail in upcoming regular reports. Fast Breaks will often reappear in full reports with only minor reediting, but there will be more important details, more evidence, and more implications and explanations in the full reports. Moreover, there will be topics that never appear in any Fast Break in a full Report.

Fast Breaks are especially useful for the first few days after major news breaks. They are also very useful for people who will seldom or never have enough time to read a full Game/Team/League Report. Fast Breaks are the type of article that more typical web logs feature almost all or all of the time.

Fast Break: Why Detroit is Right to Designate Iverson Point Guard

Iverson has been playing both guard positions at the same time most of the time his whole career. It's usually a good thing to be a combo guard, but Iverson is such a great player that his teams would have been better off had they channeled his huge efforts into where they could do the most good for the team, without marginalizing the other guard who is out there with him. The only way to channel Iverson is to make him the 1-guard, responsible for more than jacking up shots and cutting to the basket. If and only if you do this, you can maximize what you are getting offensively from Iverson and the other guard out there at the same time. You can not completely stop Iverson from playing both guard positions at once, but by making him responsible for the most important of the guard positions in general, and for passing and assisting specifically, you reduce the extent to which he eclipses the other guard by a big amount.

If Iverson after being designated point guard knows his passing and assisting are at least as important to his team as is his scoring, then he won't be able to make the 2-guard almost meaningless. Whereas if he is 2-guard (shooting guard) he does often make the designated point guard relatively meaningless, if only because he ends up with the ball so damn much that, like it or not, he is to one extent or another (his choice of extent) the real point guard.

Or to put it yet another way, how often in basketball history has there been a 2-guard who possesses the ball for as long as, or for as many times as, Iverson? What in the name of holy hell is a 2-guard doing with the ball for all that time, and on the great majority of possessions? How can that way of running the offense possibly work out for your team as compared to making that player responsible for passing and assisting?

Anthony Carter, the actual designated point guard, had a very high assist percentage, but did not score much, on account of, um, Iverson taking almost all of the shots, as he was instructed to do by George Karl. As a result, opposing teams did not have to worry about guarding Carter very much, although ignoring Carter did occasionally cost another team.

Iverson was pigeonholed by Larry Brown into the 2-guard position because Brown was not comfortable with Iverson being his PG. It had little if anything to do with Iverson's abilities to play the 1-guard, or even his style for that matter. It was all about Brown wanting to be comfortable in his own skin. Brown could not stand the idea of having a player who he openly fought with in the media being his point guard.

Look for much more on how Larry Brown created the Iverson mess and on the resulting emergence of the complicated "Iverson Game," which is the puzzle and contest that franchises must win to avoid being harmed by having Iverson on their team, in future special reports.
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Editorial Notes: A "Fast Break" is a short and quick preview of some of the topics that will be explored and proved in more detail in upcoming regular reports. Fast Breaks will often reappear in full reports with only minor reediting, but there will be more important details, more evidence, and more implications and explanations in the full reports. Moreover, there will be topics that never appear in any Fast Break in a full Report.

Fast Breaks are especially useful for the first few days after major news breaks. They are also very useful for people who will seldom or never have enough time to read a full Game/Team/League Report. Fast Breaks are the type of article that more typical web logs feature almost all or all of the time.

The Economics of an NBA Team: Introducing the Concept of Relative Player Cost

If we take the salary of a player and divide by the adjusted real player rating, we get how much that player costs relative to how good that player is. Obviously, from a raw financial perspective, the lesser the player costs, the better it is for the team, not because it "saves money," but because there is more money within the salary cap and all of the salary cap exception rules to get better players than otherwise. Think what the Nuggets could do if Carmelo Anthony would play for free. Why, they might actually be able to become a contender if he played for free.

Now you have to be very careful about how you look at this, because you might make the false conclusion that everyone is nuts for paying huge money for the best players, where they could get a lot more production per dollar if they used cheaper players. The problem is that you can not possibly win in the NBA unless you have enough players who produce at an extremely high level as measured by the real player rating, preferably adjusted for made them miss defending. And the overwhelming majority of the very high level players come with very steep salary price tags.

This fact by the way is the main reason why the Nuggets were total jerks for giving Marcus Camby away for nothing; there are very few players who play at as high a level as does Marcus Camby. You should never, ever, ever simply give away a high performing player with a player rating of about 1.000 or more. Regardless of what your overall plan is, you can't do that and expect to succeed.

Specifically, the objective of every NBA team must be to have five starters all of whom perform at an extremely high level, with minimum adjusted real player ratings of as close to 1.000 as possible. Then you want to have up to three role players who do not start, but who are quality players regardless, substantially better than the more ordinary players. For these, the gold standard would be adjusted real player ratings of around .800.

Now let's take a look at that stumbling, bumbling franchise, the Denver Nuggets, and introduce a new concept called "Relative Player Cost." This concept is the cost of a player relative to his production. It is the salary of the player divided by the player's Real Player Rating, preferably his Rating adjusted for defending. In other words, how many dollars did that player cost relative to his actual production as shown by adjusted RPR?

The following shows you what the Nuggets' Relative Player Costs (RPC) were for 2007-08. The RPCs are the first number, the big one, since pro basketball players make huge amounts of money. The second number, as indicated, is the adjusted real player rating itself. The players are listed in order of their adjusted real player ratings.

RELATIVE PLAYER COSTS FOR THE DENVER NUGGETS 2007-08
Carmelo Anthony 12,899,357 Adj. RPR= 1.011
Marcus Camby 11,205,179 Adj. RPR= 1.004
Kenyon Martin 14,608,600 Adj. RPR= 0.907
Allen Iverson 21,172,049 Adj. RPR= 0.898
J.R. Smith 2,403,229 Adj. RPR= 0.888
Nene Hilario 10,612,245 Adj. RPR= 0.833
Linas Kleiza 1,344,894 Adj. RPR= 0.752
Eduardo Najera 7,219,213 Adj. RPR= 0.686
Anthony Carter 1,636,832 Adj. RPR= 0.674
Bobby Jones 1,046,356 Adj. RPR= 0.657
Steven Hunter 5,440,536 Adj. RPR= 0.597
Yakhouba Diawara 1,261,387 Adj. RPR= 0.545
Taurean Green 812,097 Adj. RPR= 0.526
Chucky Atkins 6,741,573 Adj. RPR= 0.445

So what can we observe from this? First, we can be reminded of what we already know, which is that JR Smith was supposed to start for the Nuggets. As an aside, if I had a dollar for every time someone writes on the internet that the Nuggets are going to be a really good team when JR Smith starts, I would be a heck of a lot richer. But the fact is, unless George Karl goes away, JR Smith is almost certainly not going to start for the Nuggets, so anyone's dreams predicated on Smith starting are, you guessed it, Fantasy Land. People need to wake up from dreaming and understand that JR Smith is not going to start for George Karl on the Denver Nuggets. I can't be any more clear than that.

Another observation is how much of a financial boondoggle Nene has been; had Nene been an actual NBA player instead of a man with various health problems, the Nuggets, amazingly, would have been a real contender despite not having a real point guard or a center with a great post presence. Although the positions had to be juggled around a little, in effect, Anthony Carter was the replacement for Nene as the 8th man.

Now the next thing you have to understand is how important experience is to both the actual and the relative cost of a player. The more experience a player has, the higher the cost of that player. And the difference in cost relative to rating between younger stars such as JR Smith and older stars such as Marcus Camby and Carmelo Anthony is huge. As you can see, Smith cost $2.4 million relative to his rating, whereas Camby cost 11.2 million relative to his rating and Melo cost 12.9 million relative to his performance rating.

Despite all of the tricky and hard to keep track of exceptions, an NBA team is at root a salary capped enterprise, so a team must have cheap but high performing players such as JR Smith on its roster if it is going to have a chance of being a contender, because there isn't enough money in the cap, whether you are paying the luxury tax or not, to put a contending team on the court which uses only the high cost veterans. Now although the Nuggets had JR Smith on the roster, they made the mistake of not using him enough, which cost them dearly. But as you can see, the Nuggets had five super expensive veterans and superstars on its roster, each costing more than $10 million relative to performance, whereas four is most likely the maximum you can afford, with three being better, if you want to be a contender without paying a huge luxury tax every year.

Not only did the Nuggets have one or two too many high performing but very expensive veterans and superstars, they also had among their five very expensive players an ultra expensive player, Allen Iverson, whose cost of $21.2 million relative to performance was almost double the cost of the costly Marcus Camby. In the NBA, there is the luxury tax and then there are luxury players. Any player who costs more than about $15 million relative to his performance rating is a luxury player, and that player had better bring even more to his team than just his high performance to justify the massive amount of money.

Iverson could have delivered the extra value needed only if he had on his own or, obviously better, in conjunction with the coaches, provided the point guard role that the Nuggets, amazingly, lacked despite their massive payroll. How a team with an $83 million payroll could lack a real, designated point guard for the playoffs is something which is going to have real basketball people scratching their heads for many, many years. When you factor in the economics, not having Iverson as the point guard was one of the biggest coaching errors in the history of basketball. Since Iverson did not provide much if any extra value aside from his actual performance, the Nuggets were literally throwing money out the window by paying Iverson's massive contract, while having him do nothing other than take as many shots as he felt like while play 2-guard.

Another way to provide extra value is to get seats filled that would not otherwise be filled, and to get merchandise sold that would not otherwise be sold. But there is little evidence that Iverson has provided substantial benefits in Colorado in either category. Denver fans did not go to games much more after Iverson arrived. In fact, the majority of fans in Denver secretly had it in for Iverson since he arrived, and they gradually became more and more of them are out in the open hoping and praying that he is gone as soon as possible.

Yet another way for an ultra expensive, luxury player to deliver extra value to the team and to justify the big extra money paid to him is to provide leadership, and some assistance for the coaches in getting the team in sync and ready to roll every game. Chris Bosh and Kevin Garnett are good examples of these kinds of players.

So it was not just Nuggets owner Stanley Kroenke cutting and running from paying the luxury tax that self-destructed the Nuggets for the long term, their fast 2008-09 start notwithstanding. Although any owner should be willing to pay a small luxury tax (up to about $5 million) if circumstances warrant, no owner should be obligated to pay the kind of 8 figure luxury tax that Mr. Kroenke was paying before he bailed just to be able to be a contending NBA team. If you manage the team correctly, you do not have to pay a large luxury tax to become a real contender in the NBA; though as I said small luxury tax payments are probably going to be ocassionally necessary.

So aside from Kroenke cutting and running, the Nuggets self-destructed because they failed to acquire enough younger, low cost but high performing players, to go along with JR Smith and Linas Kleiza, who was even more of a bargain than was Smith. The George Karl fiasco rears its ugly head here, as you might suspect, because Karl is notorious for being biased against younger players, especially any younger player who has a raw, unrefined, or "new school" style. Players such as JR Smith, Bobby Jones, and Taurean Green were sitting ducks to be trashed and/or marginalized by Karl. If there was no salary cap at all, Karl's refusal to develop or give the benefit of the doubt to star players in the making could be offset by a massive team salary. But since there is a salary cap, Karl's bias against the bargains is a real franchise killer.

How do you get younger, talented players, who will break through and get that .750 or .850 or even .900 rating? First, you absolutely can not have a coach biased against those players like George Karl, which needs no further explanation. Second, you absolutely must get your share of players who reach that level from the NBA draft. Aside from drafting them in the first place, you must not trade in a short few years almost all of your acquisitions away (and the Nuggets are as guilty as sin on that).

Rather, you have to know, for each of your draft picks, after a year of NBA experience, whether the pick that you made is or will soon be a high performing player, and then you need to make darn sure that that high performing player is worked into your offensive and defensive schemes. If you keep few if any drafted players on your team, there is something very wrong with your franchise, and you will never be a real contender until you get the financial and basketball double advantage that you can get from drafted players if you manage things correctly.

Third, since so many players who are drafted never reach the high performance level, you have to always be in the market for players such as JR Smith through free agency. This can be thwarted by the restricted free agency matching rule, however. Fourth, you should always be trying to see if you can bring in a younger, bargain, high performing player via a trade. Trying to get such a player via trade is difficult but not anywhere near impossible. Often, when there is a major trade, it is the younger player(s) involved in the trade, that hardly anyone is talking about, that are the real secrets behind how a team is setting itself up to succeed with that trade.

So how have the Nuggets been doing with respect to getting their share of high performing, bargain players? They have been doing about as badly as you can do, quite honestly! They have Karl as the Coach, which is strike one. Not only have they traded away many of their draft picks before they made them, but every one of the players they did draft in recent years except for Carmelo Anthony and Nene have been traded away as well! So that's strike two. (It really is strike three, because the draft thing is worth two strikes, and the Nuggets have totally blown it with respect to drafting.)

JR Smith was picked up by accident when the Chicago Bulls offloaded him. That's right, Smith fell into the Nuggets lap; they didn't do much of anything to get him. Linas Kleiza was acquired via a draft day trade with the Trail Blazers. And that is it for high performing bargains acquired by the Nuggets via free agency or via trading in recent years. It's not enough, so that's strike four.

In between the bargain young stars and the very expensive veterans, you have mid-level players, who can be mid-age or older veterans, such as, on the Nuggets, Eduardo Najera, Steven Hunter, and Chucky Atkins. These players can frequently be weak spots for secondary franchises, because these players may not be totally qualified performance wise, while still costing a lot of money. For the Nuggets, Atkins was a bust due to health, and Hunter did not play much, so only Najera worked out for them to any extent in this expense range in 2007-08.

Often, these mid-level players are nothing more than expensive, seldom-played standbys for the starting five. But they won't sit on the bench as starter fill-ins unless you pay them roughly five million dollars, which obviously is a financial drain for any team. The solution is to keep the number of these players fewer than the number of young bargains you have, which the Nuggets failed to do. They had only Smith and Kleiza as young bargains, while they had Najera, Hunter, and Atkins as mid-level expense players.

The better managed franchises would have at least 8 high performing players (starters and top reserves, with ratings as discussed above). Among these eight, there needs to be three or four very expensive veterans, three or possibly even four young bargains, and one or more likely two mid-level, high but not super high performing veterans. Quite honestly, no matter how good your general manager and coach are, you are not often going to achieve four high performing young bargains, three though is very doable for franchises such as the Lakers, the Jazz, and the Pistons.

The Nuggets, for their highest performing eight players, featured five very expensive veterans and superstars, just two young bargains, and one mid-level veteran, Najera. They were one one very expensive veteran over the limit and they were one young bargain short.

It seems like such a small, innocent thing, doesn't it: just one player of one type too many and one type of another type too few. But when you make a mistake like this, you are dead meat in the NBA. And now the Nuggets are in danger of becoming a 25-57 type team within a year or two as they go about unraveling their overload of very and ultra expensive (that's you AI, you are the ultra expensive one!) veteran high performers.

In a simple, easy to remember phrase, the economics of managing a NBA team is all about maintaining balance: the balance between expensive and cheap, between older and younger, and between relying on the draft and relying on wheeling and dealing. The less you are balanced in those ways, the worse off you are. The more you are balanced in those ways, the better off you are. You have no choice but to strive for all these balances, due to the cap rules, the salary rules, and the actual player salaries that exist.

What I have done with this article is to combine basketball and economics: salary cap and player salary economics to be exact, and you can bet I will be working on this some more.

Fast Break: Renaldo Balkman's Style and Why the Nuggets are Overdosing On It

Renaldo Balkman is the perfect example of a player who has an appealing style to the kinds of basketball fans who think style is more important than things that the scorekeepers keep track of. He is a minor factor offensively to put it nicely, a net negative offensively to put it more bluntly. But on defense he is a clawing tiger who creates disruption and confusion within the offense of the other team. Once Balkman has disrupted things enough, either he himself or a teammate is much more likely than otherwise to get a steal, a block, or both in the same possession. Balkman type players also force some shot clock violations from time to time.

And following direct or indirect Balkman steals of course, a fast break can result in an easy dunk. So technically, it is oversimplified to call a player such as Balkman as defense only, since he indirectly generates some offense.

But you have to be very, very careful on this subject to avoid being fooled. An offensively limited player who plays great defense and who can generate indirect offense is less valuable than a player who plays "merely" good defense and who can generate a good amount of direct offense. Because it is going way to far to say that defense in general and players such as Balkman in particular can shut down a good offense to the point where games against good teams can be reliably won by a core group of players like that.

Good offenses can be slowed down but not stopped. You might, for example, be able to prevent 10 points of scoring with a bunch of players such as Balkman. But if the good offense team is starting from a base of 115 points, they can still beat you with 105 points while playing good defense, because all they need is just reasonably good defense against your offensively challenged team to keep you below 100 points. In other words, when you have a poor offense, you make it too easy for the other team defensively. A team that is just putting in an ordinary, ho hum defensive effort can look like a defensive power against a poor offensive team.

Have you ever heard basketball game announcers say, when they are trying to explain why one team has not scored well in a game, something like: "I wouldn't blame the offense (or bad shooting) all that much; it's more that (the other team) is playing some great defense in this game." And in reality the other team has only been playing decent, ordinary defense, because they didn't need any big defensive effort to beat your offensively challenged team. The 2008-09 Nuggets are that team with the underperforming offense that makes other defenses look better than they are.

Unfortunately, the Nuggets have gone in the space of a few months from being a team with massive offensive potential to a team with little. They have made the same huge mistake as the Suns have made, though on a smaller scale in the sense that the old Suns were better than the old Nuggets and, sure enough, the new Suns are probably better than the new Nuggets.

Along with Balkman, the Nuggets have brought two other hustling, defensive wildcats onto their team: Chris Anderson and Dahntay Jones. Of course, Coach Karl loves giving all three of these players plenty of playing time. Although you will sometimes get surprising mileage from this strategy in the regular season, by overdosing on these mostly defensive players, you have unfortunately left your offense unqualified to compete in the playoffs. Making offensive potential even more dismal, Carmelo Anthony has been explicity told by Karl to "not worry about scoring" very much! Were it not for the fact that Nene is a substantial upgrade offensively over Camby, the Nuggets' offense would be currently one of the worst in the League instead of just being well below average.

Chauncey Billups will improve the Nuggets offense as the season goes along, but the Nuggets' overall offensive potential is too limited for them to become a great offensive team. The main problems are thin offensive talent and even thinner offensive coaching quality.

But at least the Nuggets seem to know that they no longer have the right personnel to be a great offensive team, and so they are not wasting much time practicing offensively. Instead, they are spending a big majority of their practice time on defense, and so I guess that they are making the best of an overall bad situation by maximizing their defensive potential. Had the Nuggets not dramatically shifted from being offensively focused to being defensively focused, they almost certainly would not have had the chance of being a winning team this year. And while the Nuggets no longer have enough offensive potential to be qualified to possibly win a playoff series, they do have enough defensive potential to be qualified to win a couple of playoff games or so.

But overall, the prognosis for the Nuggets for the next few years is not good. Aside from making a damaging sudden lurch from one extreme to the other financially, the Nuggets have elected to try to capture the consolation prize for failing at the Iverson game. They have elected to try to please their fans by bringing in a bunch of players with appealing "styles." But fans who put style above actual impact on the score of games are actually dangerous to teams in my opinion, because to the extent that front offices put style above substance (impact on game scores) and bring in the relatively inexpensive players who are big on style and not so big on substance, they are working against their own best interests. There is a reason why players with "impressive styles" such as Renaldo Balkman come with relatively small price tags and do not have very many teams demanding their services.

In my view, objective number one is always going to be winning as many games as possible. So to me, you should avoid ending up with more than one or two players who hustle and scrap and are appealing to those who like players who hustle and scrap, but are not true offensive weapons.

Sorry, but this is the reality that means you must be very careful about falling in love with a player's style: basketball is a statistical game made up of stuff like scores and blocks and steals and turnovers. The score determines who wins, and the score, in turn, is determined mostly by things that you can keep track of with statistics. If you want your team to win a Championship, you better hope they are able to get the things that the scorekeepers keep track of, because you sure as heck are not going to win a Championship with a core of players who scrap, hustle, and aggressively defend, but who can not excel in producing what the scorekeepers keep track of.

Editorial Note:
A "Fast Break" is a short and quick preview of some of the topics that will be explored and proved in more detail in upcoming regular reports. Fast Breaks will often reappear in full reports with only minor reediting, but there will be more important details, more evidence, and more implications and explanations in the full reports. Moreover, there will be topics that never appear in any Fast Break in a full Report.

Fast Breaks are especially useful for the first few days after major news breaks. They are also very useful for people who will seldom or never have enough time to read a full Game/Team/League Report. Fast Breaks are the type of article that more typical web logs feature almost all or all of the time.

New Nugget Renaldo Balkman Versus Previous Nugget Eduardo Najera

At the end of July, Renaldo Balkman was brought on to the Nuggets to replace Eduardo Najera as designated defensive, disruption, and hustling specialist. I compared Balkman, Najera, and Bobby Jones, another player known as a good and energetic defender. Jones was the kind of younger player who under the regime of George Karl was probably doomed from the start to never be able to remain on the Nuggets.

Regarding Renaldo Balkman, the replacement for Eduardo Najera, the first problem is that the Nuggets have, as they are doing financially, gone from one extreme to another experience wise. Balkman has about 2,000 minutes of experience in banging, while Najera has over 9,500 minutes.

Let's compare Balkman, Najera's replacement, with Najera himself, and also with who would have been a partial replacement for Najera had he been kept, Bobby Jones, who was traded for Balkman.

On threes, Najera has hit on .3 threes per 36 minutes with a percentage of .332. Balkman has hit on .1 threes per 36 minute for a non-competitive percentage of .154. Jones has made .8 threes with a % of .306. Jones has a three-point shot, Balkman does not, and Najera has one but has never used it much.

Overall shooting shows Najera making 4 field goals per 36 minutes with a percentage of .493. Balkman is essentially identical, 4.1 field goals per 36 minutes with a percentage of .499. Bobby Jones also makes about 4 shots per 36 minutes, with a percentage of .442. So they all score about the same, but Jones misses a few jumpers never attempted by Najera or Balkman.

On getting to the line, Najera has the better "style." Najera has earned 1.9 free throws per 36 minutes, and has made .686 of them. Balkman has earned 1.6 free throws per 36 and has made .497 or half. Jones earns 2.6 free throws per 36, and makes .685 of them. Jones is the best slasher to the rim of the three.

Najera is exactly twice the rebounder Balkman is so far, 7.6 rebounds per 36 minutes versus 3.8. For the first time in many years, it looks like Denver is going to be a relatively poor rebounding team this year. Bobby Jones, who was lost in this trade, has been making 6.2 rebounds per 36 minutes, closer to Najera than Balkman. The Marcus Camby rebound rate is 11.4.

With regard to moving and making decisions with the basketball, Najera, never worked into an offense to any extent, has made 1.6 assists per 36 minutes with 1.3 turnovers per 36. Balkman has made 1.5 assists per 36 minutes with 1.5 turnovers per 36. Jones has made 1.8 assists per 36 minutes, with 1.9 turnovers. George Karl refused to play Jones much largely due to that turnover rate. Najera was and is slightly better than Jones in handling and making decisions with the ball, due to experience I would think. Balkman has about the same relatively dismal assist/turnover ratio as Jones, at a lower level of handling the basketball. So Najera is the best of the three by a small amount, while Balkman and Jones are about even up.

With regard to steals and blocks, Najera has made 1.4 steals and .8 blocks per 36 minutes, while Balkman has made 1.8 steals and 1.3 blocks per 36 minutes. Jones has made 1.1 steals and only .2 blocks per 36. If a player is described as a hustle type player, you hope that it shows up somewhere in what can be measured. And with Balkman it shows up with his block rate, which is far higher than Najera's and is almost infinitely higher than Jones' block rate, since Jones does not block shots very much. The gold standard of blocking is the Marcus Camby blocked shot rate, which is 3.1 per 36. So Balkman is a little more than 4/10 the shot blocker that Camby is, which is actually kind of impressive.

Since both Najera and Balkman are regarded as defensive players, it is interesting to note that Balkman is well ahead of Najera in defending that you can measure, so the Nuggets made a fairly good trade with respect to making up for the loss of Najera. The funny thing is, Jones "hustles" on defense also, but he doesn't get anywhere near the actual steals or blocks that a Najera or a Balkman get, so the Nuggets would have been worse off defensively had they not traded Jones for Balkman. The Nuggets lose some offense, but Jones is too young to be a core offensive player for George Karl, so overall it was a good trade for the Nuggets. Due to Karl, the Nuggets were never going to take advantage of the offensive potential of Bobby Jones that much.

However, if the Nuggets are unable to largely make up for the loss of Camby and become a full scale poor rebounding team, the trade was about a wash.

On made them miss defending, we can speculate that Balkman and Najera are about even in that, with Jones actually not too far behind; Jones is a good defender in terms of forced misses, even though he does not actually block many shots.

On the style front, folks who consider style important like Balkman at least as much as they do Najera, while Jones' style is not all that much liked.

But the bigger picture remains that the Nuggets have no future as a playoff team after the loss of Camby, and though Balkman is a very good defender, he is not a very good rebounder, so the Nuggets rebounding is now most likely going to be a problem; how serious will depend of course on how much Nene plays and how much Carmelo Anthony and Kenyon Anthony full in the huge rebounding gap left with Camby's departure.
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Editorial Notes: A "Fast Break" is a short and quick preview of some of the topics that will be explored and proved in more detail in upcoming regular reports. Fast Breaks will often reappear in full reports with only minor reediting, but there will be more important details, more evidence, and more implications and explanations in the full reports. Moreover, there will be topics that never appear in any Fast Break in a full Report.

Fast Breaks are especially useful for the first few days after major news breaks. They are also very useful for people who will seldom or never have enough time to read a full Game/Team/League Report. Fast Breaks are the type of article that more typical web logs feature almost all or all of the time.