Carmelo Anthony and Allen Iverson Lead the Nuggets to a Double Overtime Win Over the Rockets 112-111

In a struggle of a game that should have been an easy win for the Nuggets, it was instead an extremely difficult win and almost a loss. In double overtime, the Nuggets defeated the Houston Rockets 112-111. The Nuggets had the home court advantage. Also, the Rockets were playing on back to back nights, while the Nuggets were playing after an unusually long break of 3 nights off. And Houston was playing without their top scorer, Tracy McGrady. Finally, the Rockets just could not hit a lot of shots in this game. They ended up with a total of 40/102 made shots, or .402, which is generally not good enough to get a win or an overtime.

It could have been a truly classic game had the Rockets superstar tandem of Yao Ming and McGrady been in to battle the Nugget’s superstar tandem of Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony. But with McGrady out, the Rockets playing on the road, playing without rest, and missing too many shots, it should have been an easy victory for the Nuggets.

Why was it so difficult? This time, it was not all George Karl’s fault, though, as usual, he is to blame for not allowing the Nuggets 5th or 6th best player, J.R. Smith, to play at all. And since both Eduardo Najera and especially Linas Kleiza played poorly, this was another game tailor made for Bobby Jones to contribute to, but once George Karl has a player in bench mode, it simply doesn’t matter to what degree that player might be able to improve on someone else’s poor play in a particular game. If you’re benched under George Karl, you are not going to play unless hell freezes over.

But it wasn’t all Karl’s fault. The Nuggets were as dependent on two players to score as you can get in professional basketball. The entire Denver front court besides Melo was either injured, benched, or mostly unable to score. Keep in mind that this was a double overtime game when you consider the following small scoring outputs. Eduardo Najera scored just 7 points on 2/10 shooting. Linas Kleiza scored just 3 points on 1/3 shooting. Kenyon Martin scored just 8 points on 2/11 shooting. And Marcus Camby scored just 2 points on 1/7 shooting. Combined, every Nuggets power forward and center other than Anthony scored only 20 points on miserable 6/31 shooting.

So to win, both Iverson and Melo had to have big games, meaning that Melo would have to come out of his shooting and scoring slump. But Melo’s slump only got worse in the first half. He was just 2/17 from the field and just 4/9 from the line in the 1st half, although he did make 9 rebounds. But in the second half, he stormed back to be even better than the Carmelo Anthony all Nuggets fans have come to rely on for scoring in general and especially jump shot scoring when the paint is clogged. In the third quarter alone, Anthony was 8/8 for 15 points, and he made 2 steals, an assist, and a block. After coming back down to Earth in the 4th quarter, with a comparatively small 8 points on 2/6 shooting and 4/4 from the line, Melo was largely out of the offensive picture again. He took only 1 shot from the field in the 10 minutes of overtime and made it. When you add 3 of 4 made free throws, he scored 5 points in the 10 minutes of overtime.

Also needed for the Nuggets to even just barely beat the Rockets would be more than just Anthony Carter at the point. Just in time to the rescue was Chucky Atkins, who was making his first appearance as a Nugget. Atkins had been out with a groin injury since just before the season started. Although Carter has played relatively well for the Nuggets this year, and better than most expected, it remains true that Atkins is the better player. But naturally, as I predicted, Karl refused to start the returning Atkins. In regulation time, Carter played 33 ½ minutes, while Atkins played 16 minutes. This is roughly opposite what the allocation should have been. It seems to me that George Karl right now is one of only a very few people who believe that Anthony Carter is a better player than Chucky Atkins. Although ironically it was an Anthony Carter floater that won it for the Nuggets at the end of the second overtime, Chucky Atkins led the Nuggets in scoring during the overtimes, and made two clutch shots in the second overtime, one of which was a three.

Meanwhile, the Rockets, even without Tracy McGrady, were able to fight the Nuggets into two overtimes due to the giant Yao Ming, who scored 26 points and made 19 rebounds, which is just another day at the office for him, and to 3 other players who came up with mammoth games: Luther Head, Rafer Alston, and Bonzi Wells. Luther Head played so well in place of Tracy McGrady that it was practically like having McGrady himself out there. Head is a 3rd year SG and is not having a particularly great year. It’s just that the Nuggets in general and Iverson in particular did not guard him very well and he made 5 of 10 threes on the perimeter. Head must have had his best game of the season in this one. Veteran starting PG Rafer Alston, in his 9th year, made his mark by making 10 assists, 3 steals, and 7 rebounds, to go along with his 18 points on 7/18 shooting. 7 rebounds are huge for a point guard. Reserve G-F Bonzi Wells is playing just a little bit better than last year, and he’s average at best, but he made several fantastic cuts toward the basket that allowed a teammate, usually Yao Ming, to give him a pass inside for the easy score. Wells ended up with 8 rebounds, 2 steals, 1 assist, and 1 block to go along with his 17 points on 7/15 shooting. Wells productivity per minute was astounding.

So these four Rockets, Ming, Head, Alston, and Wells, all played brilliantly, but Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony are so good at what they do that they were able to carry the Nuggets to the win mostly by themselves, despite the usual poor coaching and the unusual collapse of inside scoring. The Nuggets ended up with just 30 points in the paint, whereas the Rockets scored 42 in the paint. Overall shooting was .402 to .366 in favor of the Rockets. The Rockets made 12/34 threes, or 35.5% of them, whereas the Nuggets made just 5/20 of theirs, or 25.0%. The Nuggets won the rebounding by just a little, and the assisting was roughly equivalent.

So the good news here is that Anthony emerged from his shooting slump, made a career high 16 rebounds, and, even more importantly, broke free from enough double teams and moved around and got Iverson’s attention enough to get the ball enough times to be able to be Iverson’s full partner in the task of beating the Rockets. Despite how ridiculously difficult the win was, there was a very good feeling about how Melo and Iverson both had huge games for a change.

As Carmelo Anthony’s slump was at its worse at the end of the 1st half of this game, he kept smiling with each missed shot. The cable broadcast commentator, Doug Collins, said that good players do this to try to hide how frustrated they are. I don’t think Melo was smiling to hide how frustrated he was, I think he was smiling because he loves basketball and smiles often during games. He was smiling more than usual because he knew that his slump was just a temporary thing and not worth getting all upset about. And he was smiling because he was thinking about how much fun it was going to be to be to eventually catch up with Allen Iverson and be again, at the least, the co-leader of the Nugget’s offense. Had he been smiling to hide something, he would not have exploded in the 2nd half.

Smiling when things are bad is much better than getting upset. Carmelo Anthony is mostly a simple player who doesn’t understand how, why, and to what extent some strategies, tactics, and coaches are better than others. But any great player who can, unlike most other players, smile at the darkest hour, when the bad stuff has accumulated to it’s highest level, is a player I would want on my team more than somebody who gets all upset and starts pointing fingers and spreading blame around. We Nuggets fans are pitiful as we keep following an extremely talented team that logic, however, tells us can not possibly win in the playoffs. Maybe we should do what Carmelo Anthony does when times are tough: just smile and think about how, win or lose, slump or no slump, we really are one of the very best teams in basketball. Smiling enough will make us just about as happy as we would be if we won our true fair share.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of December 21, 2007

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

INJURIES & SUSPENSIONS
1. Nene injury 9 Points
2. Steven Hunter injury 3 Points
3. Kenyon Martin during the game injury 8 Points

UNEXPECTED STAR PLAYER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
1. Carmelo Anthony’s jump shooting is a little off from recent years and he is still inconsistent in rebounding. Making matters worse, George Karl and Allen Iverson have decided that it is acceptable that Melo be removed from the heart of the Nugget’s offense, and that he frequently be little more than a decoy, so that the rest of the Nuggets on the court can run a 4 on 3 offense and hope that Iverson can keep them in the game. The combination of Melo’s accuracy drop off from last year, together with his partial marginalization, makes for a very substantial and worsening star player performance problem. 2 Points.

2. Inability of Nuggets forwards to consistently give Camby enough rebounding and defending support inside: 2 Points

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 12 points.

2. Lack of adequate offensive schemes: 8 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 against 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 like the Nuggets 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: Rockets 9 Nuggets 8
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Rockets 8 Nuggets 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)
1.0 He has absconded to Mexico with Najera’s wife.

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 58.1 Season 40.8
Carmelo Anthony: Game 53.9 Season 35.8
Marcus Camby: Game 27.7 Season 32.0
Kenyon Martin: Game 17.8 Season 20.5
Chucky Atkins: Game 17.1 Season 17.1
Anthony Carter: Game 15.8 Season 20.3
Eduardo Najera: Game 11.2 Season 14.4
Linas Kleiza: Game 5.3 Season 17.0

J.R. Smith: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Bobby Jones: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Yakhouba Diawara: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision:
Von Wafer: Did Not Play-Coach's Decision

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

ROCKETS
Yao Ming: Game 52.1 Season 39.2
Rafer Alston: Game 37.7 Season 18.6
Luther Head: Game 34.0 Season 7.7
Bonzi Wells: Game 29.9 Season 16.2
Shane Battier: Game 24.1 Season 16.5
Chuck Hayes: Game 14.2 Season 12.3
Aaron Brooks: Game 7.3 Season 2.3
Luis Scola: Game 5.3 Season 13.0
Mike James: Game 1.5 Season 12.4

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:
You can see that it was very touch and go for the Nuggets here. Iverson and Carmelo were huge, but no one else played particularly well and Kleiza was bad. Melo came out of his slump for at least this game, while Marcus Camby remained stuck in a shooting slump of his own. Nuggets PF Kenyon Martin left the game in the second half with a knee aggravation and did not return. He is questionable for Friday's game in Portland.

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 ranking 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.

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

Allen Iverson, Den 1.096
Carmelo Anthony, D 1.078
Bonzi Wells, Hou 1.068
Yao Ming, Hou 1.022
Chuck Hayes, Hou 0.888
Luther Head, Hou 0.829
Rafer Alston, Hou 0.769
Chucky Atkins, Den 0.713
Marcus Camby, Den 0.660
Kenyon Martin, Den 0.574
Shane Battier, Hou 0.536
Aaron Brooks, Hou 0.521
Linas Kleiza, Den 0.482
Anthony Carter, Den 0.479
Luis Scola, Hou 0.331
Eduardo Najera, Den 0.329
Mike James, Hou 0.250 Played only 6 minutes

OBSERVATIONS ON THE NUGGETS REAL PLAYER RATINGS
You can see here what I have been saying, that Chucky Atkins is a good point guard, better than Anthony Carter and about equal to Andre Miller. There is no excuse for George Karl if he refuses to start Chucky Atkins and give him more playing time than Anthony Carter starting with the next game. Atkins is completely recovered from his injury, and he played much better than Carter in his first game back, so if he does not start and play more than Carter, it is just plain stupidity on Karl’s part.

As you can see, there were four star performances in this game, by Iverson, Anthony, Yao Ming, and Bonzi Wells. The Rockets had the next three best players. Despite having 5 of the best 7 players on the court, the Rockets could not quite escape Denver with the win.

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: +12
Allen Iverson: +6
Chucky Atkins: +4
Kenyon Martin: +2
Eduardo Najera: +2
Anthony Carter: -5
Marcus Camby: -6
Carmelo Anthony: -10

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
Kleiza was just plain lucky here, because he did not play well himself. It was very nice to see Chucky Atkins come out with a + in his first game for the Nuggets. Carmelo Anthony was, strangely enough, the biggest minus. I don’t think there is much more than bad luck involved there.

NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
All Nuggets who played at least 6 minutes are shown. This game was a double overtime game, 58 minutes long.

Eduardo Najera played 36 minutes and was 2/10, 2/6 on 3’s, and 1/2 from the line for 7 points, and he made 6 rebounds and 2 blocks.

Anthony Carter played 36 minutes and was 3/8 for 6 points, and he made 8 assists and 4 rebounds.

Linas Kleiza played 13 minutes and was 1/3, 0/1 on 3’s, and 1/1 from the line for 3 points, and he made 3 rebounds and 1 steal.

Chucky Atkins played 24 minutes and was 5/11 and 3/9 on 3’s for 13 points, and he made 2 assists and 1 rebound.

Kenyon Martin played 31 minutes and was 2/11 and 4/6 from the line for 8 points, and he made 10 rebounds, 3 blocks, and 2 assists.

Marcus Camby played 42 minutes and was 1/7 for 2 points, and he made 18 rebounds, 6 blocks, 2 assists, and 1 steal.

Carmelo Anthony played most of the game, 51 minutes, and was 13/32 and 11/17 from the line for 37 points, and he made 16 rebounds, 3 steals, 2 blocks, and 2 assists.

Allen Iverson played for virtually the whole game, 57 minutes, and was 14/30, 0/4 on 3’s, and 8/8 from the line for 36 points, and he made 9 assists, 5 rebounds, and 2 steals. .

NEXT UP
The next game will be Friday, December 21 in Portland to play the Trailblazers at 8 pm mountain time. The Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights, while the Trailblazers will not be. Therefore, the Trailblazers will have both the home court and the rest advantages.