The Wild West Game: The Nuggets Narrowly Beat the Warriors 124-120

The Nuggets and Warriors, who along with the Lakers and Suns are the highest scoring teams in the NBA, played the kind of up tempo game that folks like Carlos Boozer, Tim Duncan, Bruce Bowen, Antonio McDyess, Kevin Garnett, Chuck Hayes, and Yao Ming are so good at slowing down in the playoffs. With Kenyon Martin back out with an injury again, and this time just a hamstring and not a damaged knee, we have been told, with Nene just back from thumb surgery and playing limited minutes, with Melo focusing more on offense and less on defense again, and with Camby alone not being enough to slow a run and gun team down, the Nuggets gave in to the temptation to allow the Warriors to dictate the pace and the flow of the game. Had either one of the superstars Allen Iverson or Carmelo Anthony not had the scoring touch, the Nuggets would have lived to regret being unable to slow the pace and being without Kenyon Martin.

For the third time in the last 5 games, the Nuggets came away with a very close win. The Warriors, who live and die with the three point shot, were unable to hit three point shots when it was most critical to do so, in the 4th quarter. The Nugget’s record of 18-11 is not that bad for a team that has been one of the more banged up teams in the League, and for a team that can’t deploy strategies that would allow them to win over the best teams in the NBA. Allen Iverson and Linas Kleiza are the Nuggets playing a little better this year than last year, and it is those improvements which are the most important reasons why the Nuggets are winning the close games that they mostly lost last year.

The game was close from start to finish. The Nuggets led 71-64 at the half, and 102-97 at the end of 3 quarters. The Warrior’s defense is as simplistic as the Nugget’s offense is, and they don’t usually bother with double teams. Carmelo Anthony took advantage of his holiday away from being double teamed, and he took what the defense was giving to him, which was almost everything, and made a lot of easy, short jumpers.

Allen Iverson was repeatedly hacked by increasingly desperate defenders, but the referees and Iverson made the Warriors pay, as Iverson made 13 of 15 free throws. Melo was 8/8 from the line, and even Linas Kleiza, the most improved Nugget from last year, got to the line a lot, and he was 8/8 from there as well. Altogether, the Nuggets were 33/37 from the line, whereas the Warriors were just 18/23. Simple math tells you that if the Nuggets had hit a more usual 80% of free throws instead of the 90% that they did hit, or 4 fewer, then this game would probably have been won by the Warriors. So the fact that Iverson, Kleiza, and Melo were a combined 29/31 on free throws is more important than it might seem, as is the fact that Camby, who has been mostly horrible at free throw shooting this year, was able to make 3/4 of them in this game.

It is the Nuggets who are guilty of leading the NBA in committing fouls, but in this game, at least, they were able to avoid an excessive number of them, while Iverson, Kleiza, and Anthony were able to draw fouls. On the other hand, though, Carmelo Anthony did get into foul trouble, which cost the Nuggets about 7 minutes of Melo playing time.

The Nuggets led by 5 with 5 minutes to go and by 6 with 3 minutes to go. But then the Warriors, who made the majority of their threes in the first half, and fell on serious hard times in the 2nd half, decided to start driving the ball to the hoop for layups. Two of those, along with a Baron Davis block on Carmelo Anthony, made it 118-116 Nuggets with about 2 minutes left. Then center Andris Biedrins blocked Anthony on a mini-jumper, and then a tired Iverson badly missed a three. Baron Davis put in a little jumper, so now the Warriors had tied the game at 118 with 1:25 to go, and the Nuggets were down to just luck again as their only strategy.

And luck is exactly what they received. Iverson made a little 9-footer, and then Baron Davis lost it to Anthony Carter. Then Anthony sunk two free throws after he was fouled on a layup by Stephen Jackson, so now it was 122-118 Nuggets with 53 seconds left.

But Davis made a nice 21 footer, and Melo missed a 12 footer, and the Warriors called timeout with 21 seconds to go down by only 2 points. The Nuggets were saved when Stephen Jackson missed an open look 3-pointer with 11 seconds left, and Camby was there for the rebound. Camby then made not one but both free throws to ice the game for the Nuggets, which was yet more luck for the Nuggets, considering how much trouble Camby has had at the line this season. Since the Nuggets were up by only 2 when Camby was intentionally fouled, the Warriors would have been able to send the game into overtime had Camby missed one of the free throws and had the Warriors then hit on a three. But Camby calmly sunk both free throws, and the Nuggets put yet another close game in the win column, with even more assistance from good luck.

The Warrior’s all guns blazing style works very well on offense but, unfortunately, there is no defensive version of it that works. The Warriors are generally unable to make anyone miss much, not only because they lack great defenders who make shooters miss without fouling excessively, but also because they lack the clutch rebounding and blocking that can prevent easy late scores in the paint. The Warriors are the NBA’s 3-pointer maniacs, the team that can beat anyone if enough threes go in, but lose to anyone if they don’t. Instead of getting uptight like the Nuggets do these days about their frequent lack of aggressive and smart defending, the Warriors just jack up another three. Their fans love the “don’t worry, be happy” style, simplistic though it may be.

Don’t feel sorry for the Warriors, because the Nuggets are worse off, since they no longer really have a style. You don’t know anymore how well the Nuggets are going to play on offense in a given game. In the early part of the 2006-07 season, the Nuggets had a run and gun offense similar to that of the Warriors, even though they never had anywhere near the 3-point shooting potential the Warriors do, with only J.R. Smith and Linas Kleiza available to shoot 3’s in those days. The brawl in New York, the mega suspensions, and the gradual banishment of J.R. Smith from the lineup brought the run and gun wildness to a gradual end, to be replaced by the all Iverson all the time offense in some games, and with the Carmelo Anthony and Allen Iverson score as much as possible while passing as little as possible offense in others. The Nuggets now are in a fantasy world if they think they are a true run and gun team, or if they are wild in a good way on offense. No they are wild mostly in a bad way, as they lead the NBA in turnovers.

The Nugget’s offense is so simplistic that it really should not be called a style at all, especially since, if Anthony or Iverson are not hitting shots, the offense collapses completely, whereas, for example, with a motion offense featuring a lot of picks and rolls, and passing to the open man on the perimeter, players who are not hitting shots can simply give up a few shots they might otherwise take to teammates who are making shots.

For example, for the Spurs, some nights Tony Parker and Michael Finley might be hitting, whereas other nights Manu Ginobili, Bruce Bowen, and Brent Barry might be the ones to get the job done. The smartest, best managed teams have offensive schemes in place that allow for some flexibility in who takes the most shots. The Nuggets have almost none of this critical flexibility, so they live and die mostly based on whether Carmelo Anthony and Allen Iverson have the shooting touch or not. Linas Kleiza, though improved from last year, is simply not experienced or good enough yet to make up for a severe Melo or Iverson shooting slump, Camby and Najera are inconsistent. Kenyon Martin can’t stay healthy, Nene is an unknown quantity, and J.R. Smith is mostly benched.

An offense featuring a lot of isolation plays is nothing more than Russian roulette with a gun where, if the star player who is supposed to make all the buckets starts missing, your team has just shot itself in the head. Would any truly good coaching staff put an offense like that on the court in the NBA and expect to be competitive in the playoffs? Of course not.

Despite the apparent insanity of their offenses, the Nuggets thanks to Anthony and Iverson have been able to just about keep up with the Warriors in terms of point production, while developing some defensive presence that the Warriors couldn’t care less about. The trouble is, neither the Warriors nor the Nuggets have an offense that has enough variety in it to be able to beat a good team in the playoffs, such as the Phoenix Suns or San Antonio Spurs. Last year, Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks choked when the Warriors started hitting a lot of threes. Inexperienced Dallas Coach Avery Johnson could not figure out a way to slow the games down enough or to reduce the number of wide open threes, many of which were made off of picks and rolls.

But when the victorious Warriors went on the play Utah, a team most thought was not quite as good as the Mavericks, they met up with one of the better defensive and overall coaches in the League, Jerry Sloan, Sloan had his squad slow down the games, kept everyone calm, focused, and on plan, and kept the number of open threes attempted by the Warriors within reason. When these simple but crucial steps were taken, the Warriors were easily defeated by the Jazz.

Meanwhile, the Nuggets were just as easily defeated by the Spurs, whose Coach Greg Popovich did not have to do much of anything out of the ordinary to shut down the Nugget’s offense, since the Nuggets themselves were helping to shut the Nuggets offense down, by running an offense featuring two star players in a lot of isolation scoring attempts, and by making roster and motivation blunders that directly led to the complete collapse of their 3-point shooting potential. But simplistic offenses and lack of 3-point shooting both spell certain and quick doom in the playoffs.

In summary, the Warriors and Nuggets are fun to watch, but until and unless one of them gets extremely lucky, as in once in 100 years lucky, their simplistic offensive schemes and inconsistent defensive efforts will lead to inevitable early outs in the playoffs to teams with full scale offensive and defensive strategies and players.

But considering that both the Nuggets and the Warriors have been winning some lucky games lately, maybe this is the 100th year for one of them.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of December 27, 2007

The Nuggets are under an unusually dangerous and damaging alert status, so the following update is provided.

INJURIES & SUSPENSIONS
1. Kenyon Martin injury 19 Points
1. Steven Hunter injury 4 Points

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

BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 5-20 Points. The severity varies depending on the circumstances, mainly Karl’s beliefs and moods, and whether the other team is playing well enough to take advantage of the Nuggets playing with not enough breathers, with too many fouls, and so forth. Karl will normally be in the 5-15 range, but it could spike to as much as 20 in the event of the benching of a major player such as Kenyon Martin. The current points reported are for the use, or should I say the misuse, of the reserves for the most recent games, with the most weight being given to the game being reported on here. The bad use of reserves score for this game is 11 points.

2. Lack of adequate offensive schemes: 10 Points. This would be up to 20 points, except that Iverson reduces the damage. Another way of describing this is that the team has failed to decide whether it wants Melo alone, Iverson alone, Melo and Iverson together, or neither of them to be firstly responsible for scoring enough points to keep the Nuggets in the game. If it were neither, I call the name of that strategy the "share the wealth" strategy.

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

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 44, which constitutes YELLOW ALERT.

YELLOW ALERT (40-54): Minor damage is occurring to the season. The entire season is under medium threat. Beating quality teams is much more difficult and will be pretty rare. About 1/2 of all wins against good teams will now be losses. Beating mid-level teams is a little more difficult. About 1/4 of games that would be wins agsinst mid-level teams will now be losses. Beating low level teams is still relatively easy, but no longer almost a sure bet. A good team has become in between a good team and a mid-level team when it is under this alert.

We are in yellow alert with Martin or Nene out and orange alert if they are both out.

RESERVE WATCH

Number of Players Who Played at Least 6 Minutes: Nuggets 9 Warriors 8
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 8 Warriors 8

Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 32
Warriors Non-Starters Points: 23

Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 16
Warriors Non-Starters Rebounds: 13

Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 1
Warriors Non-Starters Assists: 4

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

GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
2.0-He's making a run for the exits.

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

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

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

NUGGETS
Allen Iverson: Game 55.1 Season 40.9
Marcus Camby: Game 40.0 Season 32.7
Carmelo Anthony: Game 38.7 Season 38.1
Linas Kleiza: Game 24.7 Season 18.0
Anthony Carter: Game 20.5 Season 20.0
Nene Hilario: Game 12.2 Season 12.2
J.R. Smith: Game 9.9 Season 15.3
Chucky Atkins: Game 9.1 Season 8.6
Eduardo Najera: Game 6.0 Season 13.8

Bobby Jones: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Yakhouba Diawara: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Jelani McCoy: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Von Wafer: Did Not Play-Coach's Decision

Kenyon Martin: Did Not Play-Injury
Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Injury

WARRIORS
Baron Davis: Game 60.1 Season 40.1
Stephen Jackson: Game 42.2 Season 31.8
Andris Biedrins: Game 32.7 Season 26.3
Monta Ellis: Game 23.8 Season 28.2
Al Harrington: Game 16.8 Season 23.6
Matt Barnes: Game 15.0 Season 17.0
Kelenna Azubuike: Game 13.1 Season 18.2
Mikael Pietrus: Game 9.9 Season 10.8

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

OBSERVATIONS ON RATINGS:
Another one of those monster games from Iverson here, which is good for what ails you, but this dose came without the frequent nasty side effect of Melo’s game going into the tank. You can have your cake and eat it too with the Warriors happy go lucky approach to the game. Baron Davis did slightly more than Iverson, and Stephen Jackson did slightly more than Carmelo Anthony.

NUGGETS REAL PLAYER RATINGS—EXPLANATION
A Great New Feature from Nuggets 1

The straight up player rankings are obviously heavily affected by how many playing minutes the various players get. With many teams, you can rely on the coach to give his various players roughly the playing time that makes the most sense for his team. Unfortunately, you can not rely on George Karl to award playing time in just about the best way possible. He brings other factors besides actual performance into his rotation decisions. Therefore, it makes good sense to introduce a new and very important statistic that Nuggets 1 will call the Real Per Minute Player Rating which, as the name implies, is the gross ESPN player rating divided by the number of minutes. The statistic is called Real Player Rating for short.

This statistic allows everyone to see whether or not players who play only a small number of minutes are doing better than their low gross rating will indicate. At the same time, it will allow everyone to see whether players with a lot of minutes are playing worse than, as well as, or better than their gross rating shows. This is another big improvement in the Nuggets 1 never ending quest to give readers total information about the Nuggets. This statistic allows the reader, at a glance, to see exactly how well each player is doing without regard to playing time. So it gives you pure knowledge not available anywhere else..

SCALE FOR THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
1.60 More Superstar Performance beyond the Michael Jordan Level
1.40 1.60 Superstar Performance-Michael Jordan Level
1.20 1.40 Superstar Performance
1.00 1.20 Star Performance
0.90 1.00 Outstanding Game
0.80 0.90 Very Good Game
0.70 0.80 Good Game
0.60 0.70 Mediocre Game
0.50 0.60 Poor Game
0.40 0.50 Very Poor Game
0.25 0.40 Near Disaster
Less 0.25 Total Disaster

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

1. Baron Davis, GS 1.541
2. J.R. Smith, Den 1.238…Smith played only 8 minutes
3. Allen Iverson, Den 1.224
4. Carmelo Anthony, Den 1.173
5. Andris Biedrins, GS 1.168
6. Marcus Camby, Den 1.053
7. Linas Kleiza, Den 1.029
8. Stephen Jackson, GS 0.898
9. Anthony Carter, Den 0.759
10. Kelenna Azubuike, GS 0.728
11. Mickael Pietrus, GS 0.707
12. Nene Hilario, Den 0.678
13. Matt Barnes, GS 0.625
14. Monta Ellis, GS 0.610
15. Al Harrington, GS 0.542
16. Chucky Atkins, Den 0.433
17. Eduardo Najera, Den 0.231

OBSERVATIONS ON THE NUGGETS-WARRIORS REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Once again, George Karl looks like an idiot for not playing J.R. Smith for more minutes. Baron Davis was by far the best player on the court, but Allen Iverson and Carmelo Antony were both extremely good as well. Andris Biedrins slightly outplayed Marcus Camby, but who cares what the centers are doing in a game like this?

NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court. All Nuggets who played at least 6 minutes are shown.

Anthony Carter: +8
Eduardo Najera: +6
Marcus Camby: +6
Carmelo Anthony: +4
Allen Iverson: +2
J.R. Smith: +0
Linas Kleiza: +0
Nene: -2
Chucky Atkins: -4

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
The game was close the whole way through, so you can’t really tell very much from the plus-minus. You can see that Anthony Carter once again outplayed Chucky Atkins, meaning we are going to be stuck with Carter starting instead of Atkins for who knows how long.

NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
All Nuggets who played at least 6 minutes are shown. The order is from lowest to highest in real player rating.

Eduardo Najera played 26 minutes and was 1/4 and 0/2 on 3’s for 2 points, and he made 2 steals, 2 rebounds, and 1 assist.

Chucky Atkins played 21 minutes and was 2/6 and 2/5 on 3’s for 6 points, and he made 4 rebounds.

Nene played 18 minutes and was 2/5 and 1/2 from the line for 5 points, and he made 6 rebounds and 2 blocks.

Anthony Carter played 27 minutes and was 3/6 for 6 points, and he made 7 rebounds, 4 assists, and 2 steals.

Linas Kleiza played 24 minutes and was 3/7, 1/4 on 3’s, and 8/8 from the line for 15 points, and he made 5 rebounds, 1 block, and 1 steal.

Marcus Camby played 38 minutes and was 6/10 and 3/4 from the line for 15 points, and he made 16 rebounds, 2 blocks, 2 steals, and 1 assist.

Carmelo Anthony played 33 minutes and was 11/22, 0/2 on 3’s, and 8/8 from the line for 30 points, and he made 8 rebounds.

Allen Iverson played for virtually the whole game, 45 minutes, and was 12/21, 2/4 on 3’s, and 13/15 from the line for 39 points, and he made 6 assists, 2 rebounds, and 1 steal.

J.R. Smith played for 8 minutes and was 3/4 for 6 points, and he made 1 assist and 1 rebound.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Sunday, December 30 in Denver to play the Warriors at 6 pm mountain time. Neither the Nuggets nor the Warriors will be playing on back to back nights.

The Nuggets' Best 8 Players Are Exactly as Good as the Spurs' Best 8, But...

It's time to see how the Nuggets stack up against the boogeyman, the San Antonio Spurs.

ABOUT THE REAL PLAYER RATING
1 The real player rating is calculated for the top 300 players ranked according to gross player rating.
2 A player must have at least 8 minutes per game to be included.
3 A player must have played in at least 1/4 of the number of games that the player or players who have played in the most games have played to be included.
4 Real Player Rating = Gross Player Rating / Minutes Per Game.
5 Gross Player Rating is the net total of the following:

ADD THE FOLLOWING
Points
Rebounds
1.4 X Assists
Steals
1.4 X Blocks
# of Field Goals Made
0.5 X # of 3-Pointers Made
0.25 X # of Free Throws Made

SUBTRACT THE FOLLOWING
0.7 X Turnovers
0.8 X # of Missed Field Goals
0.8 X # of Missed Free Throws

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

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

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

Rank, Player, Team, Pos., Real Player Rating
DENVER NUGGETS
13 Carmelo Anthony, Den SF 1.024
19 Allen Iverson, Den G 1.002
29 Marcus Camby, Den C 0.948
101 J.R. Smith, Den SG 0.776
112 Kenyon Martin, Den PF 0.764
116 Linas Kleiza, Den GF 0.759
146 Anthony Carter, Den PG 0.708
225 Eduardo Najera, Den F 0.606

SAN ANTONIO SPURS
8 Tim Duncan, SA FC 1.116
10 Manu Ginobili, SA SG 1.090
22 Tony Parker, SA PG 0.994
125 Brent Barry, SA G 0.740
133 Fabricio Oberto, SA C 0.727
151 Matt Bonner, SA FC 0.705
219 Ime Udoka, SA SF 0.616
234 Michael Finley, SA GF 0.595
248 Francisco Elson, SA FC 0.573
270 Jacque Vaughn, SA PG 0.527
289 Bruce Bowen, SA SF 0.412

Now if you compare the 8 Nuggets who are among the 290 NBA players good enough to be ranked to the BEST 8 Spurs, by taking the averages of the player ratings, this is what you get:

Nuggets: 0.823
Spurs: 0.823

The two teams best 8 players are exactly equal as of December 28, 2007. But that's it for the Nuggets. The Spurs have three more players who are ready right now to play in the playoffs and the Nuggets technically have none. On the bright side, both Nene and Chucky Atkins are back from long injury outs and, as long as these two get back into gear, the Nuggets will have 9, only 1 fewer than the Spurs.

However, if George Karl goes ballistic again and benches anyone for the playoffs, then the Spurs would enjoy the 10-8 advantage in players ready to bring home another series win for San Antonio, as if they need one.

In any event, no matter how many good players Karl has on paper, he usually can only figure out a way to use 8 of them effectively in games anyway, and sometimes only 7. Coach Greg Popovich of the Spurs almost always makes use of 9 players in individual games, and sometimes even 10.

The other caution to keep in mind is that neither this nor any other statistic measures the intensity and quality of defending, and everyone knows that the Spurs have some of the best defenders in the NBA, whereas the Nuggets are just a little above average in made you miss defending at best.

NBA Real Player Ratings as of December 28, 2007: The Real Truth About How Good Each Player Is

Who are really the best players in the NBA? You came to the right place to find out. The Nuggets 1 Real Player Rating has been calculated for the top 300 players according to gross player rating.

ABOUT THE REAL PLAYER RATING
1 The real player rating is calculated for the top 300 players ranked according to gross player rating.
2 A player must have at least 8 minutes per game to be included.
3 A player must have played in at least 1/4 of the number of games that the player or players who have played in the most games have played to be included.
4 Real Player Rating = Gross Player Rating / Minutes Per Game.
5 Gross Player Rating is the net total of the following:

ADD THE FOLLOWING
Points
Rebounds
1.4 X Assists
Steals
1.4 X Blocks
# of Field Goals Made
0.5 X # of 3-Pointers Made
0.25 X # of Free Throws Made

SUBTRACT THE FOLLOWING
0.7 X Turnovers
0.8 X # of Missed Field Goals
0.8 X # of Missed Free Throws

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

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

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

Nuggets players are highlighted in yellow.

TO LOCATE A PLAYER QUICKLY, USE THE FIND FUNCTION. (PRESS THE CONTROL KEY AND THE F KEY AT THE SAME TIME.)

Rank, Player, Team, Pos., Real Player Rating

1 LeBron James, Cle SF 1.261
2 Carlos Boozer, Uta FC 1.253
3 Amare Stoudemire, Pho C 1.196
4 Chris Paul, Nor PG 1.161
5 Kobe Bryant, LAL SG 1.151
6 Dwight Howard, Orl C 1.145
7 Steve Nash, Pho PG 1.145
8 Tim Duncan, SA FC 1.116
9 Kevin Garnett, Bos F 1.110
10 Manu Ginobili, SA SG 1.090
11 Yao Ming, Hou C 1.032
12 Dirk Nowitzki, Dal PF 1.027
13 Carmelo Anthony, Den SF 1.024
14 Al Jefferson, Min FC 1.022
15 Andrew Bynum, LAL C 1.017
16 T.J. Ford, Tor PG 1.015
17 Chris Bosh, Tor FC 1.012
18 Baron Davis, GS PG 1.003
19 Allen Iverson, Den G 1.002
20 Dwyane Wade, Mia G 0.995
21 Tracy McGrady, Hou GF 0.994
22 Tony Parker, SA PG 0.994
23 Chauncey Billups, Det PG 0.979
24 Deron Williams, Uta PG 0.979
25 Chris Kaman, LAC C 0.972
26 Jose Calderon, Tor PG 0.960
27 Josh Smith, Atl F 0.957
28 Caron Butler, Was SF 0.956
29 Marcus Camby, Den C 0.948
30 Josh Howard, Dal GF 0.942
31 Shawn Marion, Pho F 0.932
32 Jermaine O'Neal, Ind FC 0.926
33 Vince Carter, NJ GF 0.918
34 Michael Redd, Mil GF 0.916
35 Andris Biedrins, GS C 0.915
36 Zach Randolph, NY PF 0.915
37 Shaquille O'Neal, Mia C 0.901
38 Paul Pierce, Bos GF 0.901
39 Antawn Jamison, Was F 0.897
40 Mike Dunleavy, Ind GF 0.889
41 Sam Cassell, LAC PG 0.888
42 Jason Kidd, NJ PG 0.887
43 Pau Gasol, Mem FC 0.884
44 Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Cle C 0.883
45 Corey Maggette, LAC GF 0.880
46 David West, Nor PF 0.879
47 Richard Jefferson, NJ SF 0.869
48 Kevin Martin, Sac SG 0.865
49 Stromile Swift, Mem FC 0.865
50 LaMarcus Aldridge, Por FC 0.862
51 Leandro Barbosa, Pho G 0.861
52 Hedo Turkoglu, Orl GF 0.856
53 Brandon Roy, Por G 0.853
54 Al Harrington, GS FC 0.852
55 Rudy Gay, Mem GF 0.843
56 Brendan Haywood, Was C 0.835
57 Jamaal Tinsley, Ind PG 0.834
58 Rasheed Wallace, Det FC 0.834
59 Gilbert Arenas, Was PG 0.828
60 Andre Miller, Phi PG 0.825
61 Chris Wilcox, Sea FC 0.825
62 Kevin Durant, Sea GF 0.824
63 Grant Hill, Pho GF 0.821
64 Andres Nocioni, Chi F 0.821
65 Richard Hamilton, Det SG 0.819
66 Louis Williams, Phi G 0.819
67 Craig Smith, Min FC 0.817
68 Andre Iguodala, Phi GF 0.816
69 Joe Johnson, Atl G 0.816
70 Brian Skinner, Pho FC 0.816
71 Jordan Farmar, LAL G 0.816
72 Gerald Wallace, Cha F 0.815
73 Kris Humphries, Tor F 0.815
74 Ron Artest, Sac SF 0.811
75 Mo Williams, Mil PG 0.809
76 Monta Ellis, GS G 0.809
77 Devin Harris, Dal PG 0.806
78 Tyson Chandler, Nor C 0.805
79 Emeka Okafor, Cha FC 0.805
80 Amir Johnson, Det F 0.802
81 Jason Terry, Dal G 0.801
82 Andrei Kirilenko, Uta F 0.799
83 Andray Blatche, Was FC 0.797
84 Marquis Daniels, Ind GF 0.797
85 Mike Miller, Mem GF 0.797
86 Jose Juan Barea, Dal G 0.794
87 Luol Deng, Chi GF 0.794
88 Nick Collison, Sea FC 0.793
89 Joe Smith, Chi PF 0.793
90 David Lee, NY F 0.789
91 Troy Murphy, Ind FC 0.789
92 Sean Williams, NJ FC 0.788
93 Hakim Warrick, Mem F 0.787
94 Andrew Bogut, Mil C 0.784
95 Jason Maxiell, Det FC 0.784
96 Derek Fisher, LAL PG 0.781
97 Paul Millsap, Uta F 0.780
98 Stephen Jackson, GS GF 0.779
99 Jameer Nelson, Orl PG 0.777
100 Samuel Dalembert, Phi C 0.777
101 J.R. Smith, Den SG 0.776
102 Danny Granger, Ind F 0.775
103 Channing Frye, Por FC 0.775
104 Sasha Vujacic, LAL G 0.773
105 Jason Richardson, Cha GF 0.772
106 Trevor Ariza, LAL SF 0.770
107 Alonzo Mourning, Mia C 0.769
108 Brad Miller, Sac C 0.769
109 John Salmons, Sac GF 0.768
110 Ray Allen, Bos SG 0.766
111 Antonio McDyess, Det PF 0.765
112 Kenyon Martin, Den PF 0.764
113 Wally Szczerbiak, Sea GF 0.764
114 Tyrus Thomas, Chi F 0.762
115 Travis Outlaw, Por F 0.761
116 Linas Kleiza, Den GF 0.759
117 Nazr Mohammed, Cha C 0.759
118 Joakim Noah, Chi FC 0.758
119 Raymond Felton, Cha G 0.755
120 Francisco Garcia, Sac GF 0.755
121 Shawne Williams, Ind F 0.750
122 Marvin Williams, Atl GF 0.743
123 Bonzi Wells, Hou SG 0.741
124 Antoine Walker, Min F 0.740
125 Brent Barry, SA G 0.740
126 Charlie Villanueva, Mil F 0.739
127 Rashard Lewis, Orl F 0.737
128 Lamar Odom, LAL F 0.735
129 Matt Harpring, Uta GF 0.731
130 Drew Gooden, Cle PF 0.729
131 Ronnie Brewer, Uta GF 0.729
132 Jeff Foster, Ind FC 0.728
133 Fabricio Oberto, SA C 0.727
134 Kyle Lowry, Mem G 0.726
135 Eddie House, Bos SG 0.725
136 Eddy Curry, NY C 0.724
137 Brandon Bass, Dal F 0.724
138 Nate Robinson, NY G 0.723
139 C.J. Miles, Uta G 0.720
140 Ronald Murray, Det SG 0.720
141 Luis Scola, Hou F 0.719
142 Rajon Rondo, Bos G 0.715
143 Ronny Turiaf, LAL F 0.715
144 Matt Barnes, GS SF 0.713
145 Rashad McCants, Min G 0.712
146 Anthony Carter, Den PG 0.708
147 Yi Jianlian, Mil PF 0.707
148 Delonte West, Sea G 0.707
149 Jake Voskuhl, Mil C 0.706
150 Tayshaun Prince, Det SF 0.705
151 Matt Bonner, SA FC 0.705
152 Carlos Delfino, Tor SG 0.703
153 Glen Davis, Bos F 0.702
154 Thaddeus Young, Phi F 0.702
155 James Jones, Por SF 0.700
156 Al Horford, Atl FC 0.699
157 Jamal Crawford, NY SG 0.696
158 Juan Dixon, Tor G 0.695
159 Gerald Green, Min GF 0.692
160 Aaron Gray, Chi C 0.692
161 Ben Gordon, Chi SG 0.689
162 Damon Stoudamire, Mem PG 0.688
163 Stephon Marbury, NY PG 0.688
164 Marko Jaric, Min GF 0.687
165 Josh Childress, Atl GF 0.686
166 Dorell Wright, Mia GF 0.686
167 Erick Dampier, Dal C 0.681
168 Udonis Haslem, Mia PF 0.680
169 Kelenna Azubuike, GS GF 0.676
170 Beno Udrih, Sac PG 0.675
171 Luke Ridnour, Sea PG 0.672
172 Earl Watson, Sea PG 0.671
173 Jeff Green, Sea F 0.670
174 Juan Carlos Navarro, Mem G 0.669
175 David Harrison, Ind C 0.669
176 Vladimir Radmanovic, LAL PF 0.667
177 Joel Przybilla, Por C 0.667
178 Kirk Hinrich, Chi G 0.665
179 Carlos Arroyo, Orl PG 0.663
180 James Posey, Bos GF 0.662
181 Keyon Dooling, Orl PG 0.661
182 Tim Thomas, LAC F 0.660
183 Jared Dudley, Cha F 0.659
184 Damien Wilkins, Sea GF 0.658
185 Melvin Ely, Nor FC 0.658
186 Mehmet Okur, Uta FC 0.657
187 Anderson Varejao, Cle FC 0.656
188 Willie Green, Phi SG 0.655
189 Daequan Cook, Mia G 0.654
190 Luke Walton, LAL SF 0.652
191 Peja Stojakovic, Nor GF 0.651
192 Ryan Gomes, Min F 0.650
193 Antonio Daniels, Was PG 0.647
194 Damien Wilkins, Sea GF 0.646
195 Daniel Gibson, Cle G 0.644
196 Nick Young, Was GF 0.643
197 Eddie Gill, NJ PG 0.643
198 Jerry Stackhouse, Dal GF 0.639
199 Ricky Davis, Mia GF 0.635
200 Jason Kapono, Tor GF 0.633
201 Chris Mihm, LAL FC 0.632
202 Andrea Bargnani, Tor FC 0.631
203 Roger Mason, Was PG 0.631
204 DeSagana Diop, Dal FC 0.631
205 Johan Petro, Sea C 0.630
206 Marcus Banks, Pho PG 0.630
207 Jarrett Jack, Por PG 0.628
208 Jamario Moon, Tor SF 0.628
209 Anthony Johnson, Atl PG 0.627
210 Mickael Pietrus, GS GF 0.626
211 Kendrick Perkins, Bos C 0.625
212 Dan Dickau, LAC PG 0.624
213 Jarvis Hayes, Det SF 0.624
214 Sebastian Telfair, Min PG 0.623
215 Anthony Parker, Tor GF 0.623
216 Bostjan Nachbar, NJ SF 0.622
217 Luther Head, Hou G 0.622
218 Mike James, Hou PG 0.619
219 Ime Udoka, SA SF 0.616
220 Shannon Brown, Cle GF 0.614
221 Martell Webster, Por GF 0.613
222 Rafer Alston, Hou PG 0.612
223 Al Thornton, LAC F 0.611
224 Royal Ivey, Mil PG 0.606
225 Eduardo Najera, Den F 0.606
226 Boris Diaw, Pho FC 0.605
227 Bobby Jackson, Nor PG 0.604
228 Chris Duhon, Chi PG 0.603
229 Ryan Hollins, Cha C 0.600
230 Morris Peterson, Nor GF 0.599
231 Josh Boone, NJ FC 0.599
232 Ruben Patterson, LAC GF 0.599
233 Malik Allen, NJ PF 0.598
234 Michael Finley, SA GF 0.595
235 Rasho Nesterovic, Tor C 0.594
236 Kareem Rush, Ind SG 0.592
237 Cuttino Mobley, LAC SG 0.591
238 Jason Williams, Mia PG 0.588
239 Steve Blake, Por PG 0.587
240 Shelden Williams, Atl F 0.586
241 Zaza Pachulia, Atl FC 0.585
242 Kyle Korver, Phi SF 0.584
243 Darko Milicic, Mem FC 0.580
244 Desmond Mason, Mil GF 0.579
245 Mikki Moore, Sac FC 0.578
246 Jason Smith, Phi F 0.576
247 Rodney Carney, Phi GF 0.575
248 Francisco Elson, SA FC 0.573
249 Darius Songaila, Was PF 0.569
250 Jannero Pargo, Nor PG 0.564
251 Chuck Hayes, Hou F 0.563
252 Brevin Knight, LAC PG 0.562
253 Steve Francis, Hou PG 0.560
254 Chris Quinn, Mia G 0.558
255 Matt Carroll, Cha GF 0.557
256 Ira Newble, Cle GF 0.557
257 Maurice Evans, Orl GF 0.556
258 Joey Graham, Tor GF 0.556
259 Raja Bell, Pho SG 0.554
260 Hilton Armstrong, Nor FC 0.554
261 Tony Allen, Bos G 0.548
262 Reggie Evans, Phi PF 0.548
263 Keith Bogans, Orl GF 0.545
264 Larry Hughes, Cle G 0.542
265 DeShawn Stevenson, Was SG 0.536
266 Devin Brown, Cle SG 0.536
267 Arron Afflalo, Det G 0.535
268 Tyronn Lue, Atl PG 0.535
269 Ben Wallace, Chi C 0.533
270 Jacque Vaughn, SA PG 0.527
271 Derek Anderson, Cha GF 0.526
272 Fred Jones, NY GF 0.506
273 Antoine Wright, NJ GF 0.497
274 Shane Battier, Hou SF 0.493
275 Charlie Bell, Mil GF 0.487
276 Bobby Simmons, Mil GF 0.486
277 Greg Buckner, Min GF 0.480
278 Quinton Ross, LAC GF 0.478
279 Rasual Butler, Nor GF 0.475
280 Corey Brewer, Min GF 0.473
281 Anfernee Hardaway, Mia GF 0.466
282 Damon Jones, Cle PG 0.459
283 Quentin Richardson, NY GF 0.458
284 Nenad Krstic, NJ FC 0.454
285 Acie Law, Atl G 0.453
286 Jeff McInnis, Cha PG 0.452
287 Smush Parker, Mia PG 0.417
288 Eddie Jones, Dal GF 0.412
289 Bruce Bowen, SA SF 0.412
290 Sasha Pavlovic, Cle GF 0.411

There was 1 player who could not be included because his minutes are less than 8 per game.
There were 9 players who could not be included because they have appeared in fewer than 8 games.

The Nuggets Rout Another Lottery Team in the Mile High City, the Bucks, 125-105

According to the under development Real Team Ratings, which no one has seen yet because they have yet to be posted for the first time, there are only 5 teams in the NBA worse than the Milwaukee Bucks. So since the Nuggets, unlike last year when they could and did lose to anyone anywhere, have been going to town on almost all of the lottery teams that have come to the Mile High City, it was no surprise that the Nuggets routed the Bucks 125-105. The Nuggets assumed the lead 5 minutes into the game on a mid-range Allen Iverson jumper and never looked back.

The Nuggets led 28-17 after the 1st quarter, 68-38 at halftime, and 95-66 after 3 quarters. Therefore, the entire 4th quarter was garbage time, also known as J.R. Smith time in George Karl’s brain. The Nuggets defeated the lottery bound Bucks 125-105 after surrendering 39 points in garbage time with garbage defense, while scoring 30 in that period themselves.

The Bucks had no injuries to key players, a situation that the Nuggets almost but not quite enjoyed for the 1st time this season, but since Michael Redd, by far their scoring leader, had one of the worst games of his career, the Bucks never had a chance in this game. Redd was 1/8, 0/3 on 3’s, and 7/8 from the line for 9 points, not exactly typical for one of the top ten scorers in the League. Maybe he had too much wine or turkey during the holiday the day before. But his teammates and coaches were of no assistance in getting the ball to him, so they bear a large part of the blame.

The Nuggets were not quite injury free, because Kenyon Martin’s hamstring problem limited his playing time and production severely.

PG Mo Williams was by far the best Buck in this game. He made 7 assists, 3 rebounds, and 2 steals to go along with his 28 points on 12/24 shooting. One of his point guard backups, Royal Ivey, also played extremely well in limited minutes. William’s other PG backup, Charlie Bell, played well, as did PF Charlie Villanueva. But that was it for the Bucks, so the shortage of Bucks playing well and the Redd disaster made it oh so easy for the Nuggets to showboat (in a good way) to the easy win.

If you are wondering what ever happened to Earl Boykins, who played very well for the Nuggets at the point early in the 2006-07 season, he decided to become a free agent, rather than to fulfill the option year on his 2 year contract with the Bucks. No team has signed him since that questionable decision. Maybe this was his round about way of retiring?

The high flying Nuggets had a huge 44 fast break points in this game, while keeping their turnovers within reason. The Nuggets demolished the Bucks in the paint 54-34, and almost managed a rare instance of having their reserves score more points than the reserves of their opponent. Howver, the Buck’s reserves defeated the Nugget’s reserves 52-49.

Yi Jianlian, the rookie starting power forward for the Bucks, made his first appearance in the Mile High City, but didn’t play well at all. On the season, though, Jianlian has earned his role as a starter. He’s only 7 feet instead of 7 ½ feet like Yao Ming, but he makes threes and other jump shots better than Yao does. Right now he’s just a poor man’s Yao, but he will definitely get better, and most likely become one of the top dozen power forwards within half a decade or so.

But in this game, Jianlian and the Center, Andrew Bogut, who played better than Jianlian but still not very well, could have learned some things from Marcus Camby, who made 10 blocks and 11 rebounds to go along with 10 points, 5 assists, and 2 steals. I think we should just give Camby the defensive player of the year award right here and now because it’s obvious he’s the NBA’s top man on defense. The Spurs may have the team as far as defense is concerned, but the Nuggets clearly have the man. And if Nene and Kenyon Martin were to both be healthy come playoff time, which I know is like asking for the moon, and if Anthony were to continue to keep his rebounding up, which may be asking for another moon, the Nuggets could then maybe have a defense that Camby could be proud of.

When you write about a sports team and you watch for every little thing, you sometimes get annoyed that a player has caused you to start putting out complaints and warnings that later turn out to be a lot to do over relatively little. In this case I’m talking about the Carmelo Anthony slump, and how it seemed like the world was coming to an end because Allen Iverson, Anthony Carter, and George Karl had taken over the Denver offense, left Anthony out of the front seat, and were destined to drive the team into the ditch. Karl himself was quoted as saying that he was going to figure out what to do to bring Carmelo Anthony back into the central flow of the Nugget’s offense.

We now know for sure that Carmelo was trying to be a superstar on the cheap during the slump days. What seems to have happened is that Anthony finally realized that if you base most of your worth as a player on your scoring, and you think you are one of the greatest jump shooters of all time, but then you start missing a few jumpers that normally go in every game, suddenly you are just an ordinary player and Allen Iverson has completely taken over the show. Realizing that the Carmelo Anthony show just didn’t have enough variety in it, and was getting trashed in the ratings by the Iverson show, Anthony set about to expand out the variety in his production. Starting with the December 20 Rockets game, Melo switched from a score as much as possible and assist on the side overall approach to a score and rebound aggressively and assist on the side overall approach.

When he started rebounding big, everything on the points side came back to him, including the seemingly unrelated jumpers. But nothing is unrelated in basketball. If a player cheats any aspect of his game, from time to time other aspects of his game will suffer, as if the player was being punished by his own soul for bringing a cheap version of his game to the court. The usual mechanism for that is that teammates sense intuitively whether a player is going all out or not, and if they feel he is not, they won’t make as much effort to get the ball to him in easy scoring situations. In this case, specifically, Melo has been rewarded for this rebounding by players such as Iverson, Carter, and Camby, who have become more willing to get the ball to him, despite the frequent double teaming of Anthony.

This is a much more likely reason for the new Melo than thinking that Karl did anything big about stopping the developing all Iverson all the time train wreck that was threatening to destroy the Nuggets. When was the last time Karl used a basketball strategy to solve a tough basketball problem? No, all Karl did was to tell Melo to rebound more. Since Anthony is not an idiot, I am sure he could, and in fact did, figure out on his own the how to get the ball more equations I just discussed here.

And the referees, like teammates, also respond favorably when they see a player who can be kind of lazy sometimes fighting for rebounds and loose balls. They reward that player with more trips to the foul line and a break here and there on turnover calls against him such as offensive fouls. The refs don’t even know they are doing it; they do it unconsciously.

J.R. Smith was actually fully back in the doghouse with the returns of Nene and Chucky Atkins, but he got to play anyway during the extensive garbage time in the 4th quarter. When Karl thinks of garbage time, he thinks of J.R. Smith, and when he thinks of J.R. Smith, he thinks of garbage time. But objective analysis shows that Smith can not possibly be worse than the 6th best player on the Nuggets. Smith had that tragic and asinine traffic accident this past summer, and that bizarre and asinine incident in the Denver bar, but his biggest mistake career wise is thinking that he will ever get good playing time under George Karl. It just isn’t going to happen ever, no matter what.

One of the delights I will have sometime in the next few years will be to see Smith’s performances go up when he is on another team. Now that the Nuggets are winning all the games for which they have a large skills advantage, George Karl is probably not going to be fired even if, for the zillionth straight year, the Nuggets bow out quickly in the 1st round of the playoffs. So unless Smith wants to keep playing less than 20 minutes a game when he could be playing about 30 minutes a game elsewhere, he and his agent are going to have to find another team for the video game playing guy with the odd personality that makes Karl’s skin crawl.

The Nuggets had the luxury of Allen Iverson playing very well, but seemingly not needing him all that much to win this game. In a post game interview, Iverson was quoted: "My concern is never our offense because we can score with the best of them. If we get any type of defensive mentality, and we take it personally night in and night out, teams are not going to score big on us, and we can be dangerous." And I’m thinking, I’d be happy if Camby, Nene, Martin and Anthony are completely free of physical ailments come playoff time. Because you don’t have to worry too much about the brains working durng an athletic contest, whereas a bad hamstring means the player will not be on the court.

And there is no injury list for brains that are not thinking straight, though if there were one, I know for a fact that George Karl thinks that J.R. Smith would be on it most of the season.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of December 27, 2007

The Nuggets are under an unusually dangerous and damaging alert status, so the following update is provided.

INJURIES & SUSPENSIONS
1. Steven Hunter injury 3 Points

UNEXPECTED AND SEVERE PLAYER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
None

BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 5-20 Points. The severity varies depending on the circumstances, mainly Karl’s beliefs and moods, and whether the other team is playing well enough to take advantage of the Nuggets playing with not enough breathers, with too many fouls, and so forth. Karl will normally be in the 5-15 range, but it could spike to as much as 20 in the event of the benching of a major player such as Kenyon Martin. The current points reported are for the use, or should I say the misuse, of the reserves for the most recent games, with the most weight being given to the game being reported on here. The bad use of reserves score for this game is 9 points.

2. Lack of adequate offensive schemes: 10 Points. This would be up to 20 points, except that Iverson reduces the damage. Another way of describing this is that the team has failed to decide whether it wants Melo alone, Iverson alone, Melo and Iverson together, or neither of them to be firstly responsible for scoring enough points to keep the Nuggets in the game. If it were neither, I call the name of that strategy the "share the wealth" strategy.

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

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 22, which constitutes GREEN ALERT.

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

Man, the first ever green alert, but it’s probably a fly by night one because Kenyon Martin is probably more or less injured again for at least another win, which will push it very close to yellow alert.
RESERVE WATCH

Number of Players Who Played at Least 6 Minutes: Nuggets 11 Bucks 11
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 10 Bucks 9

Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 49
Bucks Non-Starters Points: 52

Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 18
Bucks Non-Starters Rebounds: 14

Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 14
Bucks Non-Starters Assists: 11

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

GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
3.0- He’s hiding under his seat and he’s thinking seriously of and getting ready to make a break for the exits.

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

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

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

NUGGETS
Carmelo Anthony: Game 50.4 Season 38.0
Marcus Camby: Game 42.6 Season 32.8
Allen Iverson: Game 36.7 Season 41.6
Anthony Carter: Game 35.4 Season 20.5
Linas Kleiza: Game 24.9 Season 17.6
Nene Hilario: Game 20.8 Season 13.7
J.R. Smith: Game 18.1 Season 15.0
Chucky Atkins: Game 16.2 Season 10.3
Eduardo Najera: Game 6.9 Season 13.8
Yakhouba Diawara: Game -1.2 Season 6.0
Kenyon Martin: Game -1.9 Season 19.4

Bobby Jones: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Jelani McCoy: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Von Wafer: Did Not Play-Coach's Decision

Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Injury

BUCKS
Mo Williams: Game 47.2 Season 30.3
Charlie Villanueva: Game 25.6 Season 14.7
Royal Ivey: Game 22.5 Season 8.0
Charlie Bell: Game 18.3 Season 9.2
Andrew Bogut: Game 16.1 Season 25.7
Michael Redd: Game 13.3 Season 35.9
Dan Gadzuric: Game 11.8 Season 6.5
Jake Voskuhl: Game 11.0 Season 7.0
Yi Jianlian: Game 10.2 Season 19.9
Awvee Storey: Game 5.2 Season 4.3
Bobby Simmons: Game 1.4 Season 10.0

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

OBSERVATIONS ON RATINGS:
LeBron James and Kobe Bryant get a substantial number of 50+ games, but Carmelo Anthony has been content with very few of them. Could this be the start of Melo finally bringing his Team USA mentality to the lowly Nuggets? Time will tell.

Anthony Carter had a superb game and Linas Kleiza was outstanding yet again.

For the Bucks, only Mo Williams was huge, and Michael Redd should have stayed in Milwaukee.

NUGGETS REAL PLAYER RATINGS—EXPLANATION
A Great New Feature from Nuggets 1

The straight up player rankings are obviously heavily affected by how many playing minutes the various players get. With many teams, you can rely on the coach to give his various players roughly the playing time that makes the most sense for his team. Unfortunately, you can not rely on George Karl to award playing time in just about the best way possible. He brings other factors besides actual performance into his rotation decisions. Therefore, it makes good sense to introduce a new and very important statistic that Nuggets 1 will call the Real Per Minute Player Rating which, as the name implies, is the gross ESPN player rating divided by the number of minutes. The statistic is called Real Player Rating for short.

This statistic allows everyone to see whether or not players who play only a small number of minutes are doing better than their low gross rating will indicate. At the same time, it will allow everyone to see whether players with a lot of minutes are playing worse than, as well as, or better than their gross rating shows. This is another big improvement in the Nuggets 1 never ending quest to give readers total information about the Nuggets. This statistic allows the reader, at a glance, to see exactly how well each player is doing without regard to playing time. So it gives you pure knowledge not available anywhere else..

SCALE FOR THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
1.60 More Superstar Performance beyond the Michael Jordan Level
1.40 1.60 Superstar Performance-Michael Jordan Level
1.20 1.40 Superstar Performance
1.00 1.20 Star Performance
0.90 1.00 Outstanding Game
0.80 0.90 Very Good Game
0.70 0.80 Good Game
0.60 0.70 Mediocre Game
0.50 0.60 Poor Game
0.40 0.50 Very Poor Game
0.25 0.40 Near Disaster
Less 0.25 Total Disaster

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

1. Dan Gadzuric, Mil 1.686…Played only 7 minutes
2. J.R. Smith, Den 1.645
3. Carmelo Anthony, Den 1.626
4. Anthony Carter, Den 1.475
5. Marcus Camby, Den 1.420
6. Mo Williams, Mil 1.388
7. Linas Kleiza, Den 1.311
8. Royal Ivey, Mil 1.250
9. Nene Hilario, Den 1.224
10. Jake Voskuhl, Mil 1.222…Played only 9 minutes
11. Allen Iverson, Den 1.019
12. Charlie Villanueva, Mil 0.948
13. Charlie Bell, Mil 0.796
14. Chucky Atkins, Den 0.771
15. Andrew Bogut, Mil 0.596
16. Awvee Storey, Mil 0.520
17. Michael Redd, Mil 0.475
18. Yi Jianlian, Mil 0.352
19. Eduardo Najera, Den 0.300
20. Bobby Simmons, Mil 0.052
21. Yakhouba Diawara, Den -0.150…Played only 8 minutes
22. Kenyon Martin, Den -0.127

OBSERVATIONS ON THE NUGGETS-TRAILBLAZERS REAL PLAYER RATINGS
With the fast pace and the lack of lock down defenders in the game, it was everyone can be like Mike day at the Pepsi Center. That is, a lot of players could put out the performance of a Michael Jordan if they really had the right stuff and the right effort. There were essentially 5 players who played at Michael Jordan’s level, if only for a night, and 4 of them were Nuggets: J.R. Smith, Carmelo Anthony, Anthony Carter, and Marcus Camby. For the Bucks, Mo Williams was the Michael Jordan designate for the night after Christmas offensive fireworks.

Aside from the Jordans, for the Nuggets, Kleiza played lights out and Nene was huge, especially considering this was his first game back after 7 weeks out of action due to a thumb injury. For the Bucks, Royal Ivey played extremely well, but not quite up to the Michael Jordan level. Oh well, he can go for it again when the Bucks play the Timberwolves or the Knicks.

NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court. All Nuggets who played at least 6 minutes are shown.

Carmelo Anthony: +26
Allen Iverson: +22
Eduardo Najera: +19
Kenyon Martin: +17
Marcus Camby: +16
Anthony Carter: +16
Linas Kleiza: +3
Chucky Atkins: +2
Nene: -2
Yakhouba Diawara: -7
J.R. Smith: -10


OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
The Bucks were so depleted that, for a change, neither Linas Kleiza nor Eduardo Najera led the plus-minus. It was Anthony and Iverson on top, simply because they played the most minutes in the three quarter rout leading up to garbage time. .

NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
All Nuggets who played at least 6 minutes are shown.

Yakhouba Diawara played 8 minutes and was 0/1 for 0 points, and he made 1 rebound.

Eduardo Najera played 23 minutes and was 1/5 and 0/1 on 3’s for 2 points, and he made 4 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 steal.

Nene played 17 minutes and was 3/4 and 5/8 from the line for 11 points, and he made 7 rebounds, 1 assist, and 1 steal.

Chucky Atkins played 21 minutes and was 2/6 and 2/5 on 3’s for 6 points, and he made 6 assists, 1 steal, and 1 rebound.

Anthony Carter played 24 minutes and was 6/7 and 1/2 from the line for 13 points, and he made 6 assists, 6 rebounds, and 4 steals.

Kenyon Martin played 15 minutes and was 0/4 for 0 points, and he made 2 rebounds.

J.R. Smith played 11 minutes and was 3/6, 2/4 on 3’s, and 4/4 from the line for 12 points, and he made 2 assists and 1 block.

Linas Kleiza played 19 minutes and was 4/6, 2/4 on 3’s, and 3/4 from the line for 13 points, and he made 5 rebounds and 3 assists

Marcus Camby played 30 minutes and was 4/7, 1/1 on 3’s, and 1/4 from the line for 10 points, and he made 11 rebounds, 10 blocks, 5 assists, and 2 steals.

Carmelo Anthony played 31 minutes and was 11/16 and 7/8 from the line for 29 points, and he made 10 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 steals.

Allen Iverson played 36 minuets and was 11/21, 0/1 on 3’s, and 2/3 from the line for 24 points, and he made 6 assists, 2 steals, and 1 rebound.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Friday, December 28 in Oakland to play the Warriors at 8 pm mountain time. Neither the Nuggets nor the Warriors will be playing on back to back nights.

Supernatural Luck Was Needed, but Linas Kleiza and the Nuggets Defeat the Kings 106-105

SF Carmelo Anthony and C Marcus Camby played well enough to just about offset the best Kings, SF Ron Artest and C Brad Miller, and Nuggets F-G Linas Kleiza came up huge in the game as a whole, and in making the buzzer beater shot, as the Nuggets were behind all game long, but defeated the Sacramento Kings 106-105. Kleiza is one of three Nuggets playing better this year than he did last year, the other two being Allen Iverson and Yakhouba Diawara. Kleiza’s big improvement has more than made up for the small drop in the performance of J.R. Smith.

The Nuggets played poor defense in the 1st half, but stepped it up somewhat in the second half. On offense, Iverson played very poorly in the 1st half but much better in the second half, whereas both Carmelo Anthony and Marcus Camby, the other two Nuggets who played most of the game, were consistent on offense throughout the game.

Although the Nuggets, led by Melo, Camby, and Kleiza, took the 3rd quarter 26-21, the Kings still led 87-77 going into the last quarter. Chucky Atkins made his only shot of the night, a three, to start off the 4th quarter, but Francisco Garcia answered that shot with a three of his own. A Kleiza three and an Iverson drive for a layup reduced the Kings lead to 6 with about 9 minutes to play. The two teams then traded a few baskets, and the Kings still had a fairly good lead, 101-94, with 3:38 left. But then Allen Iverson made a critical three for 101-97 Kings.

After Anthony blocked a little Garcia jumper, he missed a three. Ron Artest took the rebound and made a layup to give the Kings a 103-97 lead with 2:29 left. PG Beno Udrih, who played poorly in the game as a whole, then fouled Allen Iverson on a good layup, and A.I. almost never misses clutch free throws, so it was 103-100 Kings. Then Udrih turned it over via an offensive foul, and Kleiza made a short jumper to make it 103-102 Kings with 1:53 left. The Kings lead was gone and the Nuggets finally were in position to win it.

After Brad Miller missed a jumper and Iverson got a piece of a John Salmons jump shot, Camby traveled and then Udrih pumped in a long two to make it 105-102 Kings with 53 seconds left. After a Denver timeout, Kleiza missed a long range shot, but Beno Udrih bricked two free throws when he was fouled by Anthony Carter. It was still 105-102 Kings with 34 seconds to go. After the Denver 20 second timeout, Melo drove it in for 105-104 Kings with 17 seconds left.

For the second straight game, the Nuggets passed up a three attempt while down by three with fewer than 24 seconds left. But this time, the gamble paid off, as Brad Miller clunked two free throws off the intentional foul. With 3 seconds left, Iverson missed a short jumper, but Camby deflected the ball and it fortunately went out to Kleiza near the top of the key, and he cleanly drained a buzzer beater shot to give the banged up and mismanaged Nuggets the unlikely win over the couldn’t make a free throw Kings.

For the third straight game, Carmelo Anthony was in double digits for rebounding, with 12, and Eduardo Najera had a rare 11 rebounds, as these two made up for the absences of Kenyon Martin and Nene. I have been complaining about the lack of assistance for Camby on the boards during the power forward injuries, and my wish that Camby get badly needed help in scrambling for rebounds finally was fulfilled. Overall, the Nuggets pulled down a big 53 rebounds in this game, versus 46 for the Kings.

But Nuggets won this on the cheap offensively, having made only 39/91 shots, or 42.9%. But the Kings were in just about the same dismal boat, as they made 39/90 shots or 43.3%. The Nuggets made 9/28 threes, as J.R. Smith came out of his shooting slump to make 4 of 8 of them. The Kings made 8/23 threes; SF Francisco Garcia led with 3/6. Another cheap aspect of the win was that the Nuggets actually had more turnovers, 19, than they had assists, 18. The Kings beat the Nuggets on assists, with 23-19, and also on turnovers, 15-19, although they committed several turnovers in the 4th quarter at the worst possible time, which helped them to lose the game.

Both teams are banged up. Denver's starting PF Kenyon Martin missed his second straight game with a strained right hamstring, which he injured Thursday in Denver against Houston. The second PF, Nene, remained out, as did back up center Steven Hunter. For the Kings, PG Mike Bibby has been out all year after suffering a preseason torn ligament in his right thumb. He is expected to return in January. PF Shareef Abdur-Rahim has been plagued by knee trouble. And leading scorer SG Kevin Martin is out until sometime in January with a groin injury.

One thing I like about sports is that he who is top of the heap today is not necessarily top of the heap tomorrow. If somebody plays well enough, they take over as top dog. With this game, Carmelo Anthony completed a huge recovery from his early December slump and, for now at least, reclaimed his position at the heart of the Nuggets’ offense, joining Allen Iverson, Anthony Carter, and Linas Kleiza there. Melo’s recovery has been spectacular and very quickly accomplished. As recently as December 16 versus the Trailblazers in Denver, Melo was out of the main flow of the Iverson-Carter centered Nuggets offense, and played at a mediocre level, which is not good enough to win many games in the NBA, and is completely out of whack for an all-star caliber player.

In the first half of the ensuing game on December 20 against the Rockets, Melo was still missing every shot, but he got a huge number of rebounds and you could tell from his smile while missing a large number of 1st half shots that he knew he was about to come out of his shooting slump. Sure enough, he then hit 7 straight shots in the second half, and finished the double overtime game having put in a star performance, and having finally drawn even with Iverson for the first time in over two weeks.

Following this pulling even with Iverson, Melo had his first game in too long that was clearly better than Iverson’s game the next night, December 21, at Portland against the Trailblazers. This was a superstar performance. Melo’s December 23 game at Sacramento was merely a star performance instead of a superstar one, while Iverson was just good, which is bad for Iverson, well below his normal. But Nuggets fans don’t have to worry, like they did and may in the future have to worry with respect to Anthony, that Iverson will to any degree become marginalized or kept out of the main flow of the offense. Iverson will always be in the main flow of the offense, no matter exactly how well he plays, because of the position he plays, because of how aggressively he plays, and because the Coach is comfortable with him running things on offense.

Now Nuggets fans merely have to hope that Carmelo Anthony does not repeat any time soon the same mistakes he made when he fell out of the flow and into a major slump. He needs to keep hustling, to keep going for more rebounds than in the past, to keep defending better as possible and, most importantly, to keep shaking off defenders more often, so his pass and turnover challenged teammates are not afraid to pass to him. If Melo does most of these things most of the time, as in the past 3 games, he will get the ball much more often than he got it during his slump, even if the opposing teams religiously double team him.

In a word, Iverson is automatically at the center of the Denver offense, whereas Carmelo Anthony has to hustle and scrap a little more than he may want to in order to stay in the center of the Denver offense. It is almost obvious that the only way the Nuggets can win in the playoffs is if both Melo and A.I. are equally at the center of the offense, so what we are discussing is very important to say the least.

I am scratching my head trying to figure out why Yakhouba Diawara was brought out of mothballs to start at small forward, with PF Kenyon Martin and PF Nene both still out with injuries, while Carmelo Anthony was slid over to the power forward position. First, why would you want to move your star forward to another position for a road game unless you are forced to? Second, why would you think you would be successful taking a player who hasn’t played much since late November and inserting him as a starter? Which is it, is Diawara really bad and someone who should be mostly benched, or is he really good and worthy of starting in place of Melo small forward?

Is Karl using his moods instead of his brain to make decisions like this? Why is it so often one extreme or another with Karl and the reserves? Why can’t Diawara play 10-12 minutes or so most games, instead of just garbage time at one extreme, or starting and playing 15-25 minutes at the other extreme?

In this game, Karl was apparently fighting a war with himself regarding whether and to what extent Diawara should play. First he went to the extreme of starting him. Then, when Diawara did almost nothing in the first 6 minutes of the game and had his head handed to him by Ron Artest, Karl predictably panicked and took out Diawara and didn’t dare reinsert him for the entire rest of the game. So much for trying to restore Diawara’s confidence and his sharpness for dealing with real games instead of just practices. The Kings blitzed to a 20-10 lead during the 6 minutes. The Diawara-Ron Artest 3-spot match up with which the Nuggets started this game will be one of the most lopsided starting lineup matchups in the NBA this year. It’s kind of embarrassing even to be just a fan of a team that sometimes does stuff this stupid.

For the record, obviously, Melo should have started at small forward, with either Eduardo Najera or Linas Kleiza starting at power forward. My preference would be Najera, but Karl almost never does what I want him to do, so it would have been Kleiza starting if Diawara had not started. But if Najera is not good enough to start at power forward in an emergency, then why does he get all the playing time he enjoys?

Both Beno Udrih and Brad Miller are 80% free throw shooters, so how they missed 4 straight crucial free throws is beyond me and anyone else. The Nuggets were just plain beyond lucky to win this game. They now have a lucky win in the bank that they can use to offset an unlucky loss down the road, when it happens. Don’t worry, it will happen.

Winning this game was an unexpected holiday gift for Nuggets fans. I think they earned it, given all the injuries and Karl mistakes they have had to endure already, with the season not even half over yet. Being a Nuggets fan is truly miserable sometimes, and we deserved the extra gift that was put under the tree when those 4 free throws were missed and when Kleiza swished the buzzer beater. Something or somebody was watching over us.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of December 24, 2007

The Nuggets are under an unusually dangerous and damaging alert status, so the following update is provided.

INJURIES & SUSPENSIONS
1. Kenyon Martin injury 13 Points
2. Nene injury 9 Points
3. Steven Hunter injury 2 Points

UNEXPECTED STAR PLAYER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
None

BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 5-20 Points. The severity varies depending on the circumstances, mainly Karl’s beliefs and moods, and whether the other team is playing well enough to take advantage of the Nuggets playing with not enough breathers, with too many fouls, and so forth. Karl will normally be in the 5-15 range, but it could spike to as much as 20 in the event of the benching of a major player such as Kenyon Martin. The current points reported are for the use, or should I say the misuse, of the reserves for the most recent games, with the most weight being given to the game being reported on here. The bad use of reserves score for this game is 11 points.

2. Lack of adequate offensive schemes: 9 Points. This would be up to 18 points, except that Iverson reduces the damage. Another way of describing this is that the team has failed to decide whether it wants Melo alone, Iverson alone, Melo and Iverson together, or neither of them to be firstly responsible for scoring enough points to keep the Nuggets in the game. If it were neither, I call the name of that strategy the "share the wealth" strategy.

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

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 44, which constitutes YELLOW ALERT.

YELLOW ALERT (40-54): Minor damage is occurring to the season. The entire season is under medium threat. Beating quality teams is much more difficult and will be pretty rare. About 1/2 of all wins against good teams will now be losses. Beating mid-level teams is a little more difficult. About 1/4 of games that would be wins agsinst mid-level teams will now be losses. Beating low level teams is still relatively easy, but no longer almost a sure bet. A good team has become in between a good team and a mid-level team when it is under this alert

RESERVE WATCH

Number of Players Who Played at Least 6 Minutes: Nuggets 9 Kings 8
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 9 Kings 8

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

GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
2.0-He's making a run for the exits

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

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

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

NUGGETS
Carmelo Anthony: Game 48.4 Season 37.5
Marcus Camby: Game 40.4 Season 32.2
Allen Iverson: Game 31.2 Season 41.3
Linas Kleiza: Game 28.4 Season 17.0
Eduardo Najera: Game 19.7 Season 14.3
J.R. Smith: Game 17.7 Season 15.1
Anthony Carter: Game 6.3 Season 19.4
Chucky Atkins: Game 5.8 Season 8.7
Yakhouba Diawara: Game -1.6 Season 6.3

Bobby Jones: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Jelani McCoy: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Von Wafer: Did Not Play-Coach's Decision

Kenyon Martin: Did Not Play-Injury
Nene: Did Not Play-Injury
Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Injury

KINGS
Ron Artest: Game 51.1 Season 33.5
Brad Miller: Game 39.0 Season 27.7
John Salmons: Game 23.3 Season 26.9
Mikki Moore: Game 22.8 Season 16.0
Francisco Garcia: Game 19.4 Season 19.8
Beno Udrih: Game 17.3 Season 24.4
Quincy Douby: Game 11.5 Season 5.6
Spencer Hawes: Game 5.2 Season 5.6

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

OBSERVATIONS ON RATINGS:
After about half a dozen games with Iverson doing more than Anthony, and two games where they were even, this game featured Anthony doing substantially more than Iverson for a change. Camby, back from missing the Trailblazers loss with a relatively minor back contusion problem, was huge in this game, with 19 points on 8/13 shooting to go along with 14 rebounds and 3 blocks. I guess Camby did not want to be the only Nugget still in a scoring slump over the Christmas holiday. Iverson missed 14 of 18 jump shots, though he made 6 assists and 3 steals. Linas Kleiza did a lot more than make the game winning shot at the final buzzer. He was as much above his average as Melo was above his. The Nuggets were kept in this game mainly by the tenacity and confidence of Camby, Anthony, and Kleiza.

For the Kings, Ron Artest was huge, and Brad Miller was big, but the absence of the injured starting SG, Kevin Martin, who is the leading scorer for Sacramento, was very damaging to the Kings in this game. Had Martin played, the Kings would most likely have been able to defeat at home the banged up and mismanaged Nuggets.

NUGGETS REAL PLAYER RATINGS—EXPLANATION
A Great New Feature from Nuggets 1

The straight up player rankings are obviously heavily affected by how many playing minutes the various players get. With many teams, you can rely on the coach to give his various players roughly the playing time that makes the most sense for his team. Unfortunately, you can not rely on George Karl to award playing time in just about the best way possible. He brings other factors besides actual performance into his rotation decisions. Therefore, it makes good sense to introduce a new and very important statistic that Nuggets 1 will call the Real Per Minute Player Rating which, as the name implies, is the gross ESPN player rating divided by the number of minutes. The statistic is called Real Player Rating for short.

This statistic allows everyone to see whether or not players who play only a small number of minutes are doing better than their low gross rating will indicate. At the same time, it will allow everyone to see whether players with a lot of minutes are playing worse than, as well as, or better than their gross rating shows. This is another big improvement in the Nuggets 1 never ending quest to give readers total information about the Nuggets. This statistic allows the reader, at a glance, to see exactly how well each player is doing without regard to playing time. So it gives you pure knowledge not available anywhere else..

SCALE FOR THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
1.60 More Superstar Performance beyond the Michael Jordan Level
1.40 1.60 Superstar Performance-Michael Jordan Level
1.20 1.40 Superstar Performance
1.00 1.20 Star Performance
0.90 1.00 Outstanding Game
0.80 0.90 Very Good Game
0.70 0.80 Good Game
0.60 0.70 Alright Game
0.50 0.60 Mediocre Game
0.40 0.50 Poor Game
0.30 0.40 Very Poor Game
0.20 0.30 Near Disaster
Less 0.20 Total Disaster

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

1. Ron Artest, Sac 1.161
2. Carmelo Anthony, Den 1.152
3. Quincy Douby, Sac 1.150
4. Marcus Camby, Den 1.063
5. Linas Kleiza, Den 1.052
6. Brad Miller, Sac 1.026
7. J.R. Smith, Den 0.983
8. Mikki Moore, Sac 0.814
9. Eduardo Najera, Den 0.758
10. Allen Iverson, Den 0.709
11. Francisco Garcia, Sac 0.693
12. John Salmons, Sac 0.597
13. Spencer Hawes, Sac 0.520
14. Beno Udrih, Sac 0.455
15. Anthony Carter, Den 0.332
16. Chucky Atkins, Den 0.290
17. Yakhouba Diawara, Den -0.267

OBSERVATIONS ON THE NUGGETS-TRAILBLAZERS REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Each team had 3 players who played extremely well, though no one had a “Michael Jordan zone” type of game. However, one of the 3 Kings stars, Quincy Douby, played only 10 minutes. Anthony and Camby roughly cancelled out Artest and Miller, so Kleiza was the x-factor that paved the way for the Nuggets to win. Both Anthony Carter and Allen Iverson played much worse than usual.

Also, although for the second straight game the Nuggets had most of the worst players on the court, the Nuggets did better in the middle range of players, as J.R. Smith and Eduardo Najera were a little better than Mikki Moore, Francisco Garcia, and John Salmons.

NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court. All Nuggets who played at least 6 minutes are shown.

Linas Kleiza: +10
J.R. Smith: +8
Eduardo Najera: +7
Marcus Camby: -2
Carmelo Anthony: +0
Chucky Atkins: +0
Allen Iverson: -1
Anthony Carter: -6
Yakhouba Diawara: -11

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
This reading frequently but not always gives you clues about who should be playing more and who should be playing less. Linas Kleiza has been often coming out strong on the plus-minus very often lately, since he is hustling on defense and hitting shots, while usually avoiding a lot of fouls and almost always avoiding a lot of turnovers. The up and down J.R. Smith, who was more down than up in the last month, was up in this game. Anthony Carter was badly off, and Diawara was destroyed by Ron Artest and company in his measly 6 minutes.

NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
All Nuggets who played at least 6 minutes are shown.

Yakhouba Diawara played 6 minutes and was 0/2 and 0/1 on 3’s for 0 points.

Eduardo Najera played 26 minutes and was 2/4 and ½ from the line for 5 points, and he made 11 rebounds, 2 blocks, and 1 steal.

Anthony Carter played 19 minutes and was 1/2 for 2 points, and he made 3 assists, 1 steal, and 1 rebound.

Chucky Atkins played 20 minutes and was 1/7 and 1/5 on 3’s for 3 points, and he made 2 assists, 2 steals, and 2 rebounds.

Linas Kleiza played 27 minutes and was 5/12 and 2/5 on 3’s for 12 points, and he made 9 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 blocks.

J.R. Smith played 18 minutes and was 5/9 and 4/8 on 3’s for 14 points, and he made 2 rebounds.

Marcus Camby played 38 minutes and was 8/13 and 3/5 from the line for 19 points, and he made 14 rebounds, 3 blocks, and 2 assists.

Carmelo Anthony played most of the game, 42 minutes, and was 11/21, 0/2 on 3’s, and 8/8 from the line for 30 points, and he made 12 rebounds, 2 blocks, and 2 assists.

Allen Iverson played virtually the entire game, 44 minutes, and was 6/21, 2/7 on 3’s, and 7/7 from the line for 21 points, and he made 6 assists, 3 steals, 2 rebounds, and 1 block.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Wednesday, December 26 in Denver to play the Bucks at 7 pm mountain time. Neither the Nuggets nor the Bucks will be playing on back to back nights.