The Nuggets Rout Yet Another Troubled Team in Denver, the Heat, 115-89

The Nuggets led from start to finish and the outcome was never in any doubt, as the hurting Heat had no chance in this game. The final score was 115-89. The Miami Heat looks like a has been team of aging veterans mixed with inexperienced young players. Both Shaquille O’Neal and Dwyane Wade are bothered by the lingering effects of injuries, and O’Neal seems to have the same problem that Nene has had: he’s overweight. Pat Riley is one of the best coaches in the NBA, but he will almost certainly be unable to turn his team around this year to any big extent.

Wade’s minutes per game are down from 27.4 ppg to 20.0 ppg, and his shooting percentage is down from .491 to .446 from last year to this. This drop off is so large, that Wade this season is scoring at a lower level than his overall career average. Furthermore, he is getting just 3.5 rebounds per game this season versus a career average of 4.9 rpg and 4.7 rpg last year. And he is making 5.4 assists per game versus a 6.3 apg career average and 7.5 apg last year. So his production is down 15-20% from his career averages, and since he is Miami’s most important scorer, the Heat are in deep trouble. In this particular game, between the heavy garbage time and committing 3 fouls in the 1st quarter, Wade played only 19 minutes. So he didn’t have a full opportunity to have a break out game.

I’ve been complaining about Carmelo Anthony being down a little in points and accuracy from last year to this, but fortunately his drop off is a walk in the park compared with Wade’s. Despite the small drop off in points and shooting accuracy from last year to this, he is still above his overall career averages in everything except rebounds. In accuracy, Melo so far this season is .469, versus .476 last season, but versus .456 career. In points per game, Melo so far this season is 25.3, versus 28.9 last season, but versus 24.2 for the career. So Melo is down about the same number of points per game that Wade is down by, but Melo’s level is 5 ppg higher, and Melo, unlike Wade, remains above his career averages in accuracy and points. So Denver has not been hurt by the Melo drop off as much as Miami has been hurt by the Wade drop off. However, the Nuggets are going to be hurt a lot more by the Melo decline in scoring when they meet the quality teams in the NBA, as we have already started to see with the disasters at Houston and Los Angeles.

In assisting, at 4.3 a game, Melo is well above both last year, 3.8 apg, and the career average, 3.0 apg. In rebounding, at 4.9 this season, Melo is below both last season, 6.0 rpg, and his career average, 5.6 rpg. This is why I have been calling Melo a little too mellow so far this season. He has not been as aggressive as he could and should be on the boards. Melo has been a card carrying member of the “let Camby take care of the rebounding” club. This club is responsible for 2-3 Nuggets losses already and should be disbanded and made illegal as soon as possible.

And now, time out for a Nene update: Nene has lost a substantial amount of weight and appears to have his weight down to the optimum, so that he will be able to hustle and maneuver as well as he can in the paint without being too thin, which would sacrifice the defensive power that comes from bulk alone. The Denver trainers have to work their heads off with this squad, but they appear to have done the job again. Without Nene, the Nuggets are all Camby all the time in rebounding, which is just not enough to compete with the good rebounding and penetrating teams.

A series of really troubled basketball teams have been appearing at the Pepsi Center in Denver over the last month, and the Nuggets have been feasting on them. To their great credit, they have taken every cream puff team the schedule coughed up for them in the season’s first month and pounded them into dust in the Mile High City. These routs have been every bit as large as or larger than corresponding routs done by teams like the Spurs and the Suns on these hurting teams.

But guess which team in the NBA has had the easiest schedule so far? You guessed it, the Nuggets. The Nuggets are in for quite a shock if they don’t know that the level of their opponents is going to be far higher in the weeks ahead than it has been during the first 5 weeks of the season.

As I write this, it is my sad duty to report that the Nuggets have not beaten a single winning team yet. Not even one. The Cavaliers, due to the sprained index finger of LeBron James, have dropped to 9-9, which is also the record of the Pacers whom the Nuggets beat with a massive 2nd half rally in Indianapolis. The Wizards, who briefly had a winning record, have dropped to 8-9. So it is really true, the Nuggets have not beaten any winning teams yet. And, although they have had some nice routs against losing teams, they have lost to two losing teams, the Clippers and the Knicks though, fortunately, both of these eggs were laid on the road.

Against winning teams, the Nuggets are 0-3 so far. Now this Wednesday, December 5, in Denver, the Nuggets have a golden opportunity to get their first win against a good, winning team, the Los Angeles Lakers. Not only will the Nuggets have home court, they will also be playing after two nights, whereas the Lakers will be playing on back to back nights. So if you think I am a grinch already, wait until you see me if the Nuggets lose this game. I think I will have turned into a real grinch at that point. But don’t worry, if I do become a real grinch, I’ll keep to myself for the holidays so I don’t disturb anyone’s festive cheer.

On a major forum I fleshed out my criticism of the benching of Yakhouba Diawara, and it’s too good not to put it out here at home:

Yak has gone from starting and playing 20-25 minutes a game to not playing at all except in garbage time. This is despite the fact that Yak is playing much better offensively this year than last. So if anyone ever wondered whether it’s really true that George Karl benches players even when they are playing well, and playing better than the year before, or better than their career average, if you prefer, the answer is a definite yes. We just caught him red handed at it.

Diawara’s FG% has exploded from .342 to .481. Even more amazing, his 3-pointer accuracy has exploded from .288 to .452. Yak has made 14/31 threes this season. Yak is now the 20th most accurate 3-point shooter in the NBA! Only J.R. Smith is better on the Nuggets, and the margin between the two is very, very small. Has any coach in the League made a more stupid benching decision lately than benching one of the current best 3-point shooters in the NBA? Is Greg Popovich going to bench Brent Barry anytime soon? I don’t think so.

Yak has been benched for no good reason, plain and simple. Why does it always have to be extremes with George Karl? He goes from playing Yak 20-25 minutes a game to not playing him at all. How about a happy medium of 10-15 minutes a game?

And how about having some real justification for completely benching a player? What I saw in the Denver Post was that Karl benched Yak because he didn't produce offensively for 3 games. That's false. In his last 20 minute game before he was benched, Yak had 7 points in 21 minutes, at Houston, on 50% shooting. Yak's main crime was that he didn't take enough shots in the minutes he was given in the games before his benching. And those minutes were slip sliding away as it was.

You can not win with Karl and his policies are contradictory. If you jack up shots aggressively you will get benched and very possibly criticized in the media if even a small percentage of those shots are considered poor. But if you play it conservatively as Yak has and avoid taking any off balance and well contested shots, and you don't get the ball enough due to shrinking minutes and the lack of sets where the ball is passed around, you end up benched because of the sheer lack of points.

The bottom line is that there is a common denominator here: the reserves can't win whether they improve or not, and whether they do what has been requested or not. So at the same time, the Nuggets can not win a series against any of the top 6-7 teams of the West unless the game and roster management improves. Justice is served.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of December 3, 2007

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

INJURIES
1. Nene injury 9 Points
2. Chucky Atkins injury 7 Points
4. Steven Hunter injury 3 Points

UNEXPECTED STAR PLAYER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
1. Carmelo Anthony a little off and a little inconsistent 2 Points
2. Inability of Melo, Kleiza, and Najera to give Camby enough rebounding and defending support inside 6 Points

BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the reserves 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. Karl will normally be in the 5-13 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 average level of the problem: 8 points.
2. Lack of adequate offensive schemes: 11 Points. This would be up to 17 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 who are panicking think it is. This is a relatively small problem.

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 46, 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

This feature is suspended and is under review. The only purpose for it is to prove mathematically that George Karl is an inferior Coach, but that should be obvious to close watchers of basketball without fancy statistical proof. The problem with it is that a lot of time is involved to produce a complex set of statistics that are no where else, for each game. About 30 minutes, to be exact. This might reduce the quality of these reports a little in other respects. The other problem with it is that it is even more complicated then I let on when I introduced it. I had to make some background calculations that I didn’t bore the reader with. And anyone without a good understanding of basic math and intermediate statistics will not understand the technicalities behind the system no matter how much I try to explain it, so they probably will not trust it. Furthermore, the technicalities are boring compared to basketball, let’s face it.

So in the days ahead, I will be thinking about how to compromise between the simple Reserve Watch that was done for a few games, which was quite honestly too simple to show how bad a Coach Karl is, and the much more complex Reserve Watch that was recently introduced and is now suspended. Once I have a good compromise between the too simple and the too complicated system, I’ll roll it out, hopefully before the end of the year.

Sorry to any reader who was gung ho for the complicated approach. Unless I can get the time to produce it cut down, I won’t be able to proceed with it. But now that I think of it, I might bring the full, complex system back for the playoffs, assuming the Nuggets make it to them.

George Karl’s relative incompetence drove me to develop it, but like so much that Karl generates, I fear the cost of it is greater than the benefit. I have to be careful, because if I don’t keep my guard up, just being indirectly associated with Karl is going to start to negatively affect my performance as a fan and a writer. In other words, I fear I may become yet another dude being jerked around something fierce by Karl’s inexplicable moves. To say that Karl is depressing is an understatement. It’s time for me to get another inoculation shot against becoming demoralized by his sorry performance.


GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
3.0 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!

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 6 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 48.1 Season 37.6
Kenyon Martin: Game 41.1 Season 17.8
Marcus Camby: Game 35.3 Season 32.8
Allen Iverson: Game 30.3 Season 36.9
Eduardo Najera: Game 21.0 Season 14.0
Anthony Carter: Game 19.4 Season 20.2
J.R. Smith: Game 16.7 Season 18.6
Linas Kleiza: Game 8.6 Season 16.8
Yakhouba Diawara: Game 0.7 Season 7.9

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

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

HEAT
Dwyane Wade: Game 19.9 Season 30.8
Alonzo Mourning: Game 18.9 Season 12.0
Dorell Wright: Game 17.3 Season 11.2
Jason Williams: Game 16.9 Season 20.0
Udonis Haslem: Game 16.1 Season 23.9
Chris Quinn: Game 14.1 Season 4.4
Alexander Johnson: Game 13.4 Season 3.4
Shaquille O’Neal: Game 12.4 Season 27.5
Ricky Davis: Game 10.1 Season 22.6
Daequan Cook: Game 9.5 Season 14.3
Anfernee Hardaway: Game 0.8 Season 9.5
Mark Blount: Game 0.7 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.

COMMENTS ON RATINGS: Melo and especially Kenyon Martin kicked it into high hear. Kleiza was off. Yakhouba Diawara’s rating was partly due to the fact that he played limited minutes in garbage time. As for the Heat, holy jeepers! This will undoubtedly be one of the worst games of the season for them. It was the nightmare to end all nightmares. It is a testimony to how good a coach Pat Riley is that the game was not even more of a rout. Riley was able to get decent performances from Dorell Wright, Chris Quinn, and Alexander Johnson to partly offset Dwyane Wade, Shaquille O’Neal, Udonis Haslem, and Ricky Davis being so far below normal.

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

Carmelo Anthony: +32
Marcus Camby: +30
Allen Iverson: +29
Anthony Carter: +22
Kenyon Martin: +16
Eduardo Najera: +10
Linas Kleiza: +10
J.R. Smith: +2
Yakhouba Diawara: -6

It was another downer on the J.R. Smith rollercoaster. Keep your seatbelts fastened at all times when you are watching this dude play. .

NUGGETS MADE WHAT?

Linas Kleiza played 19 minutes and was 3/7, 0/1 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 8 points, and he made 1 rebound and 1 assist.

Eduardo Najera played 22 minutes and was 3/6, 2/3 on 3’s, and 2/4 from the line for 10 points, and he made 5 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 steals.

Anthony Carter played 28 minutes and was 3/6 for 6 points. He also made 7 assists, 2 rebounds, and a steal.

Kenyon Martin played 25 minutes and was 9/13 and 2/3 from the line for 20 points, and he made 8 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, and a block.

J.R. Smith played 29 minutes and was 4/11, 0/4 on 3’s, and 3/3 from the line for 11 points, and he made 3 assists and 3 rebounds.

Marcus Camby played 31 minutes and was 1/7 and 5/8 from the line for 7 points, and he made 21 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 blocks, and a steal.

Allen Iverson played 36 minutes and was 9/19 and 2/3 on 3’s for 20 points, and he made 5 assists, 1 steal, and 1 rebound.

Carmelo Anthony played 27 minutes and was 12/19, 2/2 on 3’s, and 4/5 from the line for 30 points, and he made 6 rebounds, 3 assists, and a steal.

NEXT UP

The next game will be Wednesday, December 5, in Denver to play the Lakers at 7 pm mountain time. The Lakers will be playing on back to back nights, while the Nuggets will be not be. So the Nuggets will enjoy both the home court and the rest advantages.