The Hawks Rout the Nuggets 104-93, and Part 1 of the George Karl Fiasco

Taking full advantage of the absences of the Nugget’s starting PF Kenyon Martin, the second PF Nene, and the theoretical starting PG Chucky Atkins, the young and energetic Atlanta Hawks routed the Nuggets in Atlanta, 104-93. The Hawks dominated the 1st half, and led 65-44 at the intermission. The outcome was never seriously in doubt. But you should never say die in sports. And sure enough, Carmelo Anthony, Allen Iverson, and J.R. Smith piloted a furious rally in the 4th quarter that was doomed to fall short and ended in a bizarre pair of missed calls by an inexperienced referee.

Hanging over the proceedings and making the game seem even more dismal than it was, Nene underwent surgery Monday in Denver to remove a testicular tumor. A biopsy will determine if it was cancerous

Amazingly, the Nuggets had 3 players who scored exactly 0 points: Anthony Carter in 26 minutes, Eduardo Najera in 22 minutes, and Yakhouba Diawara in 12 minutes of action. Just as amazingly, three Nuggets scored 84 of the Nugget’s 93 points: Carmelo Anthony scored 36, Allen Iverson scored 27, and J.R. Smith scored 21. Meanwhile, six Hawks scored in double digits. Iverson, with 21,816 career points, passed Larry Bird (21,791) and Gary Payton (21,813) for 21st place on the NBA all-time scoring list. Iverson began the day three points behind Bird and passed both Bird and Payton in the same game.

With J.R. Smith playing, the Nuggets are not one of the worst 3-point shooting teams, and one of the few categories in which the Nuggets were better than the Hawks in this game was in 3-point shooting. Smith was 4/8 and the Nuggets overall were 7/19 or 36.8% from downtown, while the Hawks were just 4/14 or 28.6%. The Hawks are just about the worst three-point shooting team in the NBA. Otherwise, this would most likely have been a monumental rout instead of just a garden variety rout.

The Hawks had a huge 33 assists, while the dysfunctional and depleted Nuggets made only 22 assists. The Hawks had 8 players who made 3 or more assists, something you very rarely see and are always very impressed by. The Nuggets did manage to have 5 players with 3 or more assists.

The Nuggets committed 17 turnovers, while the Hawks committed 13 turnovers. All losses are ugly to one extent or another, but this one was especially ugly.

The Nuggets managed only 8 fast break points, while the young and well managed Hawks had 27. And the Hawks, taking full advantage of the absence of Martin and Nene, outscored the Nuggets in the paint 48-34. But Camby, Anthony, and Kleiza enabled the Nuggets to stay a little better than even with the Hawks in rebounding.

Making the game even more tasteless was an incompetent referee. Iverson was blatantly shoved to the floor and out of bounds by Hawks PG Anthony Johnson with about a minute left in the game and the Nuggets trailing by 8. Iverson and Smith at the time were still in the midst of a furious comeback attempt that armchair fans watching knew was futile, because there simply wasn’t enough time left for the Nuggets to pull it out. Instead of making the obvious foul call on Johnson, the seemingly blind referee called Iverson out of bounds.

On the next Nuggets possession, with 38 seconds left, Johnson again obviously bumped Iverson as he was bringing the ball up in the backcourt, and Iverson lost the ball out of bounds. But once again, the same referee failed to call the foul on Johnson. Iverson was understandably enraged, not only because of the two blown calls both of which went against him, but also because it prematurely ended an especially intense and well played quarter for the Nugget’s scoring trio of himself, Smith, and Carmelo Anthony. To Iverson, even it was impossible for the Nuggets to win the game, the referee was disrespecting him and the Nuggets by not making the obvious foul calls against the Hawks. Iverson and Smith were in a high zone of peak performance when the seemingly blind referee made them look like fools.

Iverson was so enraged that his protestations earned him a double technical and an ejection with 38 seconds remaining. J.R. Smith, already mad about the blown calls against his team, then became even more enraged when Iverson was ejected, and was ejected himself.

It was a tasteless and demoralizing, but fitting end to a tasteless and demoralizing game. Iverson was probably more mad at a referee than he had been in years, and with good reason.

Now that the J.R. Smith Fiasco story has been completed for the time being, I am going to move on to the George Karl Fiasco story. Of course, I am always pointing out specific mistakes Karl has made in specific games. But in subsequent parts of the story, I will show why Karl should not have been hired as the Coach of the Nuggets, and I will go over in close detail the reasons why Karl is, at best, a slightly below average coach and, at worst, a very below average coach.

Today I will start the story by going over an extremely important subject that you must understand and always keep in mind if you want to know why and how Karl falls short. This is the root cause of most of Karl’s actual mistakes in actual games.

The most important thing to keep in mind about George Karl is that to him, abstract things such as philosophy and honor are more important than concrete things such as whether someone can bury a 3-point shot and whether the shooting guard out on the floor can successfully guard the opposing shooting guard. As a result, Karl has a bad relationship with the whole concept of talented, professional players. In his philosophy, all such players are small potatoes compared with the grandeur and glorious history and present day reality of basketball. If you don't worship basketball as a concept, it doesn't matter how talented or good a player you are, you are small in Karl's eyes.

Most coaches value players and what they do and what they might be able to do in the near future much more and abstract concepts much less than Karl does. Karl seems to think that if a team has the right philosophy, or in other words the right way of thinking, it can offset all kinds of other shortcomings. But to coin a phrase by twisting Shakespeare a little, there are more things important in basketball than Karl’s or Carmelo Anthony’s or J.R. Smith’s or anyone’s philosophy.

Unfortunately for the Nuggets, the two abstract concepts that are considered critical by most successful coaches, strategy and tactics, are not considered very important by Karl. So paradoxically, and very ironically, while the Nuggets have one of the most abstract coaches in pro basketball, they have one of the least developed and ineffective combination of strategies and tactics in the NBA. Because Karl’s favorite abstract concepts are not the ones that have the biggest payoffs in terms of wins.

Karl is always out for someone's blood for imagined slights against basketball honor, ethics, and morality as he defines them, and he is always playing damaging games of revenge with those who are the most lacking. J.R. Smith is by far the Nugget who Karl thinks commits the most offenses against basketball honor, tradition, and morality. And indeed, Smith, being nothing more than an impulsive 22 year old high school graduate who spends a lot of spare time playing video games and watching old movies, is about the last player you would think of when thinking of players who most epitomize the glory and honor of basketball and the history of basketball.

But who other than Karl really cares that Smith doesn’t fit the honor and tradition of basketball? To me, what is far more important is whether Smith can score and whether he can defend his man. And what is more important than having honorable and right thinking players who reflect well on the great sport of basketball is whether those players have been given some strategy and a few tactics which they can use to win games. Sorry if it seems selfish or crass to want to win more than to want to represent the glory and great traditions of the game, but that’s the way I see it and I am sticking to it.

So J.R. Smith is George Karl’s worst nightmare. Smith to Karl is seemingly someone whose every action or inaction seems to be an affront to the wonderful and glorious history and present day reality of the game. Karl seethes about it, and then overestimates Smith’s negatives and underestimates Smith’s positives. Then he takes the next logical action, which is to bench Smith, or at least partly bench him. Realistically, the only hope for Smith to get playing time often is if a key player is out with an injury or a sickness. The Chucky Atkins hernia was just what Smith needed to stand a chance to get good playing time from Karl, even though he is hated by Karl.

The continual benching and partial benching of JR Smith is just one example of how Karl's belief system produces for him a different reality from the one that the average fan sees. He literally sees things differently than most others do. There are many other, more subtle things that go on in the management of the Nuggets that make the team quite a bit different in actual games from how it would be if it were coached by most other possible alternative coaches. I will point out a few of those things when this story continues in the next report.

INJURY SUMMARY: PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE

NUGGETS
Kenyon Martin: A staph infection.
Chucky Atkins: He was diagnosed with a right groin/abdominal strain (Sports Hernia) on 1/9 and underwent successful surgery on 1/11. He is expected to be sidelined a minimum of eight weeks.
Nene: He has taken an indefinite leave to tend to a tumor growth.

HAWKS
Speedy Claxton: He is still unable to even practice with the team as he continues his recovery from off-season knee surgery. There are also conflicting reports stating he's away from the team for personal reasons
Salim Stoudamire: He sustained a sprained ankle on Dec. 14. He is still unable to cut and is not traveling with the team.
Zaza Pachulia: He was forced to sit after a doctor's visit revealed an ingrown toenail on his left foot. He should be ready to return to action soon.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of January 16, 2008

The Nuggets are under an ORANGE ALERT, on account of the following problems.

INJURIES & SUSPENSIONS
1. Kenyon Martin illness 22 points
2. Chucky Atkins injury 18 points
3. Nene illness 14 points

SEVERE AND UNEXPECTED PLAYER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
There are none at this time: 0 points.

BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl has completely benched one or more players who should not be benched due to his incompetence, hatred of the player, and/or his having the ulterior motive of forcing the player off the team. The problem points would be the points you would have if the player were injured.

No one is currently completely benched who should not be: 0 points.

2. One or more players are partially benched; their minutes are being artificially limited due to abstract and subjective factors that the Denver Coaches believe are more important than performance on the court.

J.R. Smith was partially benched: 2 points.

2. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 1-12 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. 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 4 points. Steven Hunter should have played a little.

3. The Nuggets have extreme inconsistency and a truly excessive number of turnovers because they have neither a system nor even a partial system on offense. The damage caused by this would be up to 20 points, except that Iverson reduces the damage. In broad terms, 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. More specifically, the Nuggets lack enough tried and tested offensive plays that they can run game after game, perfecting them as they go, and having everyone automatically on the same page for those plays.

Lack of an adequate number of offensive plays and schemes: 9 Points

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 sometime think it is.

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 69, which constitutes ORANGE ALERT.

ORANGE ALERT (55-74): Moderate damage is occurring to the season. The entire season is under serious threat, and you can just about forget about beating quality teams. About 3/4 of all wins against good teams will now be losses. Beating mid-level teams is much more difficult. About 1/2 of games against mid-level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. Even poor teams can often beat an otherwise good team that is under this alert. Close to 1/4 of games against low level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. A good team has been reduced to being a mid-level team, at best, when it is under this alert.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE ALERT STATUS
Injury and illness disaster has once again struck the Nuggets, with Kenyon Martin, Chucky Atkins, and Nene all out. The losses to the Bobcats and then to the Hawks in what would have been relatively easily won games had the alert status been green, grey, or even yellow illustrate the usefulness and accuracy of the alert system. When you reach ORANGE ALERT, you start losing a substantial number of games that you would win normally, it’s that simple.

RESERVE WATCH
Number of Players Who Played 6 or more Minutes: Nuggets 8 Hawks 8
Number of Players Who Played 10 or more Minutes: Nuggets 8 Hawks 8

Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 26
Hawks Non-Starters Points: 28

Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 11
Hawks Non-Starters Rebounds: 8

Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 4
Hawks Non-Starters Assists: 11

This feature is under development, and it will be gradually expanded. The complications involved explain why there are no formal statistics anywhere on the internet on the subject of how much non-starters contribute to different teams, and also 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: He's hiding under his seat on the sidelines

PLAYER RATINGS FOR THIS GAME:
You can tell how well every player 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 PLAYER RATINGS
Carmelo Anthony: Game 55.2 Season 38.6
Allen Iverson: Game 32.6 Season 41.3
J.R. Smith: Game 29.6 Season 15.4
Marcus Camby: Game 24.4 Season 33.3
Linas Kleiza: Game 10.7 Season 18.5
Anthony Carter: Game 8.1 Season 21.2
Yakhouba Diawara: Game -0.5 Season 5.4
Eduardo Najera: Game -0.7 Season 12.9

Kenyon Martin: Did Not Play-Illness
Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Nene: Did Not Play-Illness

Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Von Wafer: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision

HAWKS PLAYER RATINGS
Marvin Williams: Game 40.1 Season 26.6
Joe Johnson: Game 33.7 Season 32.8
Josh Childress: Game 29.6 Season 21.9
Anthony Johnson: Game 29.0 Season 17.0
Al Horford: Game 25.3 Season 21.8
Josh Smith: Game 22.3 Season 34.3
Acie Law: Game 11.5 Season 8.4
Tyron Lue: Game 7.4 Season 9.5

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 Nuggets had by far the best player on the court, Anthony, but still lost the game. As you can see, the Nuggets had only 4 players who were moderately or more productive, while the Hawks had 6. Kleiza and especially Carter could not get it done. Both of these, especially Carter, seem to be negatively affected by playing on the road. But J.R.Smith who we know doesn’t care too much about the substantial amount of negativity he generates by his style and off the court problems, also doesn’t seem to be affected much by the negative vibes that flow from the arena when playing on the road. This is yet another reason why Smith is valuable in the playoffs; he is one of the few players the Nuggets have who plays about as well on the road as he does at home.

At the bottom, the Hawks two least important players, Lue and Law, out produced the Nuggets two least important, Diawara and Najera, by a wide margin.

Important to note here too is that the Nugget’s power forward, Najera, and the center, Camby, were extremely below and well below normal respectively, while the Hawk’s PF Marvin Williams was way above normal and the center Al Horford was a little above normal. So the Nuggets were heavily dominated in the front court, due not only to Martin and Nene being out, but also due to Camby having an off night. The only way the Nuggets could avoid being routed was with stellar play from their guards and from Anthony, which they did get.

NUGGETS REAL PLAYER RATINGS—EXPLANATION
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 Rare Superstar Plus-Above Normal Even For Michael Jordan
1.40 1.60 Superstar Performance Plus-A Michael Jordan Type Game
1.20 1.40 Spectacular Performance-Star Plus
1.05 1.20 Star Performance
0.90 1.05 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 Bad Game-Near Disaster
Less 0.25 Total Disaster

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

1. Carmelo Anthony, Den 1.284
2. Marvin Williams, Atl 1.215
3. Anthony Johnson, Atl 1.115
4. J.R. Smith, Den 1.057
5. Josh Childress, Atl 0.846
6. Joe Johnson, Atl 0.802
7. Al Horford, Atl 0.791
8. Josh Smith, Atl 0.743
9. Allen Iverson, Den 0.741
10. Marcus Camby, Den 0.659
11. Tyronn Lue, Atl 0.617
12. Acie Law, Atl 0.523
13. Linas Kleiza, Den 0.382
14. Anthony Carter, Den 0.312
15. Eduardo Najera, Den -0.032
16. Yakhouba Diawara, Den -0.042

OBSERVATIONS ON THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Anthony for the Nuggets and Williams for the Hawks were star plus, while Johnson for the Hawks and Smith for the Nuggets were stars. The Hawks had 6 of the top 9 performing players in this game, which is way more lopsided than most NBA games are. It is almost impossible to win a game with that amount of disparity. Camby must have been slightly worn out playing on the second straight night following his superstar performance the night before in Charlotte.

The Nuggets had 4 no shows. Kleiza and Carter were near disasters, and Najera and Diawara were actual disasters, although the latter two are good defenders and probably made at least a handful of made you miss defenses that do not show up in the measurement. So if you counted those, they would probably be near disasters or possibly in the very poor zone. By contrast, the Hawks had no disasters or near disasters. Their worst player, Law, was poor, which is substantially better than near disaster.

The Hawk’s Coach deserves a lot of credit for having had 7 players playing mediocre or better; it shows that there is a lot of coordination, sharing of possessions, and well defined roles on this team. That would go a long way to explaining why the Hawks might surprise and get a playoff berth this year.

NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court. All Nuggets who played at least 10 minutes are shown.

J.R. Smith: +4
Linas Kleiza: -5
Carmelo Anthony: -5
Anthony Carter: -7
Marcus Camby: -9
Allen Iverson: -10
Eduardo Najera: -11
Yakhouba Diawara: -12

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
It’s so nice to see Smith at the top and the only plus in this game, because as you know, I have been working my rear end off to prove that he should never be benched and should get a lot more playing time then he has been getting. Meanwhile, there is a surprisingly and annoyingly large minority of forum goers around the internet who have been supporting Karl’s periodic decisions to bench Smith completely. Sorry, but I think you are kind of blind and very biased when you agree with Karl on this.

Anthony played extremely well, and Kleiza did not, but they both ended up next down the line with -5 each. Diawara was a total non-factor other than make you miss defending, and since the Hawks made 52% of their shots, I doubt Diawara made too many made you misses in this game. 9 times out of 10, if a defensive oriented player does not get a substantial number of rebounds or steals, he has not gotten a substantial number of made you miss defenses, either, although Diawara can be an exception to the rule sometimes. In this game, Diawara made only 1 block and 2 rebounds

NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
All Nuggets who played at least 5 minutes are shown. The order is from lowest to highest in real player rating.

Yakhouba Diawara played 12 minutes and was 0/4 and 0/1 on 3’s for 0 points, and he made 12 rebounds and 1 block.

Eduardo Najera played 22 minutes and was 0/5 for 0 points, and he made 4 rebounds.

Anthony Carter played 26 minutes and was 0/5 and 0/1 on 3’s for 0 points, and he made 7 assists and 3 rebounds.

Linas Kleiza played 28 minutes and was 2/8 and 1/4 on 3’s for 5 points, and he made 8 rebounds and 1 assist.

Marcus Camby played 37 minutes and was 2/6 for 4 points, and he made 12 rebounds, 4 steals, 3 assists, and 1 block.

Allen Iverson played for virtually the whole game, 44 minutes, and was 9/18, 2/4 on 3’s, and 7/11 from the line for 27 points, and he made 4 assists and 1 block.

J.R. Smith played for 28 minutes and was 7/15, 4/8 on 3’s, and 3/3 from the line for 21 points, and he made 3 assists, 1 block, and 1 rebound.

Carmelo Anthony played for most of the game, 43 minutes and was 14/24, 0/1 on 3’s, and 8/12 from the line for 36 points, and he made 11 rebounds, 4 assists, and 2 steals.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Thursday, January 17 in Denver to play the Jazz at 7 pm mountain time. Neither the Nuggets nor the Jazz will be playing on back to back nights.