The Denver Big 3 Defense Emerges and the Spurs are the First Victims, 80-77

The Nuggets made an outstanding series of smart, key plays in the last few minutes of the game to defeat the Ginobili-less San Antonio Spurs 80-77 in Denver. The Spurs predictably shut down the potentially high flying Nuggets offense as they almost always do, but PF Tim Duncan and especially C Fabricio Oberto were throttled back themselves by the suddenly dangerous Denver defensive Big 3: Marcus Camby, Kenyon Martin, and Nene. The Big 3 won it for the Nuggets by blocking the Spurs 14 times. Martin made a career high 7 blocks, Camby made 4 blocks, and Nene made 3 blocks in 20 minutes. Tony Parker was the primary victim of this onslaught of shots interrupted, as 7 of his shots were ruined. Duncan was also a major victim though, as 5 of his shots were mangled. All of a sudden, the Nuggets had something like a meat grinder defense out there, something rarely if ever seen in Denver pro basketball.

It seems like at least one of those and frequently two of those three expensive Nuggets defensive specialists have been out with an injury since the end of the Carter administration. When you see all three of them playing in the same game, and all playing well, no less, you have to rub your eyes and look again to make sure you are not seeing things. That all three will be injury free for the playoffs is almost every Nuggets fan’s number one dream. But it’s still only a dream, I am afraid, as all three have histories of being more injury prone than average.

If you think the Nuggets were offensively shut down in this game, consider the Spurs. They were offensively returned to the Stone Age. They had just 16 points in the paint while the Nuggets managed to scrape up 36. And the Spurs had just 6 fast break points, while the Nuggets cobbled together 15 fast break points. Overall, while the Nuggets were just 32/80 from the field, or 40.0%, the Spurs were 27/73, or 37.0%.

The Big 3 alone practically out rebounded the entire Spurs team, 31-35, and Carmelo Anthony added 9 more rebounds. The Nuggets, including team rebounds, out rebounded the Spurs overall 59-49. The Spurs were almost entirely shut off from second chance scoring opportunities by the Big 3 and Melo, as they made only 5 offensive rebounds, while the Nuggets came up with 10. If you put all the pieces together, the resulting picture was of a Nuggets team that had the weapons and the determination to suffocate the Spurs for scoring opportunities. The mere 73 shots on goal that the Spurs had was a statement made by the Nuggets that being without basketball strategies doesn’t mean much on defense. Unlike with offense, if you have the defensive weapons, you don’t necessarily need involved strategies to be successful.

Though the Spurs, as always against the Nuggets, made fewer errors and were called for fewer fouls, Duncan turned it over 4 times and the San Antonio personal foul advantage, 20-17, was less than the usual rout they, with assistance from the referees who frequently much admire the defending style and aggressiveness of the Spurs, run up on the Nuggets. To make matters worse for the Spurs, they were just 17/27 from the line, with Tony Parker and Tim Duncan an uncharacteristic 10/17 combined from there. Maybe the altitude got them, because neither team was playing on back to back nights. Or maybe they were rattled by the appearance of Camby, Martin and Nene on the same team in the same game, something considered as only a remote possibility by many.

Meanwhile, the Nuggets got the job done, or should I say Iverson got the job done, with their smaller number of free throws. The Nuggets overall were 13/17 from the line, with Iverson a perfect 8/8. Anthony was 3/5 and he, as is the norm in a Spurs game, didn’t get many friendly whistles on his trips to the hoop. Melo made just enough drives to the hoop to avoid getting his fans nervous that he was settling for too many jump shots, as he sometimes does.

Iverson’s 4-year-old son, Isaiah, fell face-first from a stool early last Monday morning and required plastic surgery. As a result, Iverson missed the practices this week. Practice? We’re talking about practice. Coach George Karl worships at the alter of the Practice. But as Iverson says, much more important than how hard or how much a player practices is for a player to play every game like it’s his last, and for him to do everything possible to win in the actual games. Iverson is a renegade in Karl’s world, but he is a renegade who has been given almost complete control over the Nugget’s offense in the ugly black hole created by the “we don’t really care how it’s done” offensive non-strategy of the Nuggets coaches.

Meanwhile, J.R. Smith, another renegade to Karl, but only a renegade in a bad way, was bumped completely out of all playing time with the return of all 3 of the players who were out with injuries: Nene, Atkins, and Martin. Smith is a kind of more loosely wired and far less experienced Iverson. He lacks the grounding of any College experience, and often doesn’t seem to be grounded by much of anything else. He actually has at least as many athletic skills as Iverson but far less ability as of yet to use those skills, or even to pick the right ones to use, in key situations. Smith all too often substitutes impulsiveness for using his skills according to experience and intelligence, and impulsiveness is the ultimate crime if you are playing for Karl.

So Smith in Karl’s world is a renegade only in a bad way, whereas Iverson is a renegade in a good way. But how can any renegade be good to Karl? That is simple. History is all important to Karl, and Iverson’s legendary playing track record is enough to offset his track record as a renegade.

But it looks as if J.R. Smith won’t be able to get much of a playing track record until he gets away from Karl and his extremely strict treatment of renegades without legendary track records. Smith is caught in a catch-22. Karl needs an incredible amount of redundant proof to understand his value in games, but is perversely seeing to it that he won’t get that proof by having Smith waste away on the bench.

Very unfortunately for the Nuggets, they will most likely not be able to win a playoff series without the fast breaks, quick drives through gaps to the hoop, steals and, especially, the excellent 3-point shooting of J.R. Smith. The fate of the Nuggets is being held hostage by the huge overreaction of Karl to the ocassional impulsiveness of J.R. Smith. It really is that simple, and that stupid. The Nuggets have weapons coming out of the woodwork, but the one thing they definitly lack and will definitly need in the playoffs, with Smith out, is solid 3-point shooting.

The Nuggets led 33-17 midway through the 2nd quarter but, predictably, Duncan, Parker, and SG Michael Finley, who was playing the role of the absent Manu Ginobili, led the Spurs back by their usual perfectly mixed blend of layup drives with frequent free throws on top, Parker and Duncan jumpers, and ace three point shooting. During the big Spurs run, George Karl did nothing in terms of calling time outs and changing defensive or offensive tactics, as the on the fly Nuggets offense floundered into a quicksand of missed shots and turnovers. It was 42-40 Nuggets at the half and 60-59 Nuggets after each team continued to grind the gears of the other in the 3rd quarter.

With the Nuggets mostly living off of blocks, they led the game 71-67 half way through the final quarter. Then, however, Chucky Atkins, Camby, and Anthony missed on successive jumpers, while Finley and Duncan were 3/3 for the Spurs, so it was 73-71 Spurs with 4:22 left. Then Tony Parker, apparently rattled by the shocking new Denver defense provided by the Nugget’s sports medicine experts, missed a couple of free throws and Melo laid it in for a 73-73 tie with 3:29 to go. Then Denver called timeout down by two points after Duncan, fed by Parker, laid it in, and Melo missed a long 2-jumper.

After the timeout, Duncan and Martin traded midrange misses, and then Parker from Finley was good enough for a layup and 77-73 Spurs with 1:42 to play. It seemed that, despite the newly dangerous Denver defense, the Spurs were going to win the game anyway, with an even more grind it out method than usual, on account of the absence of Ginobili.

But the Greg Popovich script for winning this game was not accepted by the Nuggets in general and by Kenyon Martin and Anthony Carter in particular. And the Spurs, thinking that the Nuggets are not completely insane on offense and would go through Melo and/or Iverson to try to make a last minute comeback, were stunned when an open Anthony Carter swished a three from the outer left side of the arc for 77-76 Spurs with 1:23 left. Then Tim Duncan, who has been known to choke in prior years when an unexpected and superior force is presented to him, lost the handle at the other end, and the very same Anthony Carter came up with the ball, raced down to the other end, and made a great pass to Martin who was open under the hoop due to a disorganized San Antonio defense, and Martin made an easy layup for a 78-77 Nuggets lead with 45 seconds left.

But you need more than a couple of heroics to beat the Spurs. You need repeated outstanding plays to destroy their best laid plans. Yet another outstanding play is exactly what Kenyon Martin provided, as he rejected a driving Parker yet again. The ball rebounded out to Bruce Bowen, who is actually a fairly good shooter contrary to his reputation as a defensive specialist only, but he was wildly off the mark, and Melo took the rebound.

A.I. made both free throws off the ensuing intentional foul, so now the Nuggets led by 3 with 6 seconds left. Camby rushed out to closely defend Finley in the left corner, and he was not even close with a three pointer that, had it been successful, would have sent the game into overtime. Camby, Martin, and Nene had won the game by force feeding the Spurs more of their own medicine than they could swallow.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of January 4, 2008

The Nuggets are under a GREEN ALERT, on account of the following problems.

INJURIES & SUSPENSIONS
1. Steven Hunter injury 4 Points

SEVERE AND UNEXPECTED 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: 5-25 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 25 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 10 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 games. 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 are lacking: 0 Points. It’s not anywhere near as bad as some fans think it is.

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 24, 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.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE ALERT STATUS
Praise be to the most high, if there is a most high, because the Nugget’s front court is all playing now, no important player is having any serious slump problems, and the Nuggets are no longer in yellow alert or worse. But don’t party too hard yet. We will be back in a damaging yellow alert if and when either the injury prone Martin or the injury prone Nene go out again, and in a very damaging orange alert if they are ever both out. As this game showed, you need both Martin and Nene to beat the Spurs.

RESERVE WATCH

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

Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 17
Spurs Non-Starters Points: 15

Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 14
Spurs Non-Starters Rebounds: 6

Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 5
Spurs Non-Starters Assists: 3

This feature is under development, and it will be gradually 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)
4: He's hiding under his seat on the sidelines.

Wow, the first ever 4 rating on the Karl confidence index, as one of the NBA’s most defensively dominant front courts is enough to instill a small amount of confidence into Coach “Tremble”.

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 39.6 Season 41.0
Carmelo Anthony: Game 32.2 Season 38.0
Marcus Camby: Game 30.3 Season 32.5
Nene Hilario: Game 19.3 Season 12.6
Kenyon Martin: Game 18.1 Season 19.5
Anthony Carter: Game 11.2 Season 20.7
Eduardo Najera: Game 10.8 Season 13.7
Chucky Atkins: Game 6.1 Season 7.0
Linas Kleiza: Game 0.1 Season 17.7

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

Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Injury

SPURS
Tony Parker: Game 35.0 Season 33.2
Tim Duncan: Game 33.7 Season 35.6
Michael Finley: Game 31.5 Season 17.3
Matt Bonner: Game 15.1 Season 13.3
Bruce Bowen: Game 7.3 Season 12.4
Jacque Vaughn: Game 4.3 Season 8.3
Robert Horry: Game 3.1 Season 5.6
Fabricio Oberto: Game 2.2 Season 14.7
Ime Udoka: Game -2.0 Season 6.5

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:
The defensive struggle prevented everyone except for Michael Finley from having a game well above his normal performance. And Finley played a lot more minutes than usual, so there really were no players who were big in the defensive meat grinder of a game. Nene doesn’t count as above normal because his normal is artificially low due to his small number of games coming off the long thumb injury out. Nene’s performance in this game is what the Nuggets expect and are counting on from the Brazilian PF.

Kleiza always seems to play horribly against the Spurs, and Anthony Carter’s poor outing is a forerunner of what I am predicting will be his poor performance in the playoffs.

As you can see, the Spurs had 5 players held below their normal outputs mostly by the power and quality of the Denver defense, while the Nuggets had just 2 players held below their normal outputs, Anthony Carter and Linas Kleiza. However, since like Nene, Chucky Atkin’s rating is artificially low because he has just come back from a long injury out, you could argue that he was actually the third Nugget whose performance was well below normal.

For the Spurs, the biggest disappointments were Jacque Vaughn and especially Fabricio Oberto.

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

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.

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. Nene Hilario, Den 0.965
2. Tony Parker, SA 0.897
3. Allen Iverson, Den 0.880
4. Carmelo Anthony, Den 0.870
5. Tim Duncan, SA 0.864
6. Marcus Camby, Den 0.842
7. Eduardo Najera, Den 0.831
8. Michael Finley, SA 0.829
9. Kenyon Martin, Den 0.670
10. Matt Bonner, SA 0.629
11. Anthony Carter, Den 0.400
12. Jacque Vaughn, SA 0.331
13. Chucky Atkins, Den 0.305
14. Robert Horry, SA 0.238
15. Bruce Bowen, SA 0.183
16. Fabricio Oberto, SA 0.129
17. Linas Kleiza, Den 0.007
18. Ime Udoka, SA -0.182

OBSERVATIONS ON THE NUGGETS-WARRIORS REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Nobody will play like Mike very often when you have a healthy Denver front court playing well and when you have the quality defending, low foul frequency Spurs up against the unstructured Nuggets offense. The Nuggets won the game by having 5 players playing very well, versus just 3 for the Spurs, Parker, Duncan, and the ultimate Nuggets killer in the playoffs: GF Michael Finley.

Three Nuggets out of 9 were more or less shut down during the big man oriented defensive struggle of a game: Anthony Carter, Chucky Atkins, and Linas Kleiza. The Spurs though, had 5 of their total of 9 players unable to contend much with the suddenly dangerous Denver defense

As for Nene, a lot was accomplished in just 20 minutes, but it is still too early to start being confident that his conditioning and skills are back to the high level they were at last Spring, including in the Spurs series, when he did a lot to contain the Spurs front court leader, Tim Duncan. But it sure as heck beat the recent Nene disasters, when it looked like he was a second stringer on a D-League team at times.

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.

Allen Iverson: +9
Eduardo Najera: +6
Linas Kleiza: +6
Nene: +5
Chucky Atkins: +4
Anthony Carter: -1
Marcus Camby: -1
Kenyon Martin: -6
Carmelo Anthony: -7

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
Sometimes you can see some logic in the plus-minus and sometimes you can’t. I think this is one of those times you can’t get a whole lot from them, because the teams were evenly matched and no one led by more than 16, which may sound like a lot, but is not really a dominant lead in the NBA. You need an 18 or 20 point lead before you can really start believing that you have a lead and before you can even think of trying to milk the clock.

The one important thing that this plus-minus shows you that reflects reality is that Iverson outplayed Carmelo Anthony in this game. And A.I. did it without going very far into that desperate, “I’m going to look for a shot every time up the court” mode that he is prone to get into. It was an extremely solid, business like game from Iverson.

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

Linas Kleiza played 15 minutes and was 0/5 and 0/2 on 3’s for 0 points, and he made 2 rebounds and 2 assists.

Chucky Atkins played 20 minutes and was 2/8 and 1/4 on 3’s for 5 points, and he made 2 rebounds and 1 assist.

Anthony Carter played 28 minutes and was 3/6 and 1/1 on 3’s for 7 points, and he made 2 assists and 1 steal.

Kenyon Martin played 27 minutes and was 2/8 and 0/2 from the line for 4 points, and he made 7 rebounds, 7 blocks, 2 assists, and 1 steal.

Eduardo Najera played 13 minutes and was 3/4 and 0/1 on 3’s for 6 points, and he made 4 rebounds.

Marcus Camby played 36 minutes and was 2/6 and 2/2 from the line for 6 points, and he made 18 rebounds, 4 blocks, and 2 assists.

Carmelo Anthony played 37 minutes and was 7/17 and 3/5 from the line for 17 points, and he made 9 rebounds, 6 assists, and 1 steal.

Allen Iverson played for virtually the whole game, 45 minutes, and was 10/18, 1/3 on 3’s, and 8/8 from the line for 29 points, and he made 3 assists and 1 steal.

Nene played 20 minutes and was 3/8 for 6 points and he made 6 rebounds, 3 blocks, 2 assists, and 2 steals.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Friday, January 4 in Minneapolis to play the Timberwolves at 6 pm mountain time. The Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights, while the Timberwolves will not be, so the Timberwolves will enjoy both the home court and the extra rest advantages.