The Nuggets Beat the Unimpressive Hawks 107-100, and The George Karl Fiasco Story Part 4: The Resume

Carmelo Anthony sprained his ankle in Los Angeles two nights earlier and joined Nene and Chucky Atkins on the Red Cross list for this game. But the Denver Nuggets led from 8 minutes into the game to the final buzzer, as the Hawks failed to produce enough offense to overcome the decent if not spectacular defense of Marcus Camby, Eduardo Najera, and Kenyon Martin. The Nuggets led 29-17 after one quarter, 52-42 at the half, and 78-70 after 3 quarters. The Nuggets defeated the Hawks, with neither team playing on back to back nights, but neither team playing all that great quite honestly, 107-100. The Hawks drew to within 4 points in the 4th quarter, but the Nugget’s win was never in any true jeopardy because Atlanta didn’t have enough players playing at the higher performance levels.

On offense, Iverson shot very poorly from the field, but made 15/18 free throws to largely make up for it. Linas Kleiza and Kenyon Martin were solid if not outstanding on offense, and both of them, like Iverson, made a fairly large number of drives to the hoop. Iverson scored 29 on 6/21 shooting, Kleiza scored 23 on 9/18 shooting, and Martin scored 20 on 7/14 shooting. Camby added 13 points on 4/7 shooting. NBA rebounding and blocking leader Camby also made 21 rebounds, 4 blocks, and 4 assists in this game.

The Hawks made slightly more rebounds, 61-54, and slightly more assists, 29-26, and turnovers were also slightly in favor of Atlanta, since the Hawks committed 15 turnovers while the Nuggets committed 17 of them.

This was a game where Atlanta slightly outplayed the Nuggets from a technical standpoint, but the Nuggets had a decisive advantage in terms of the number of players who were playing, using the real player ratings, at the outstanding level or better. While the best players on the court were both Hawks: Center Al Horford and PF Josh Smith, both of whom played at the star-plus level, the Hawks had no other outstanding or better players. But the Nuggets had 3 players playing outstanding ball, Martin, Najera, and Kleiza, and they enjoyed a star performance from Camby.

Had anyone among PG Tyronn Lue, SF Josh Childress, PG Anthony Johnson, PF Marvin Williams, or SG Joe Johnson been outstanding or better, the Hawks could have at the very least threatened to send this game into overtime, because Iverson was off and Carmelo Anthony was out with the ankle sprain. So the Hawks missed a golden opportunity to win on the road in Denver, because they could have done so had any one of those five players stepped up. So this was yet another in an already surprising list of games that the Nuggets won without playing all that great, thanks to an opponent not playing as well as they could and in fact do on other occasions. Added to those wins would be the surprising list of lucky wins, including the 1 point win from the Kleiza buzzer beater in Sacramento on December 23. In total, the Nuggets have won at least 6 games so far, any combination of which could easily have been losses, while losing only one game that could easily have been a win, the Lakers game where Iverson scored 51 points.

With almost every Coach Karl quote I can extend or at least confirm my understanding of how he thinks. Karl was quoted as follows after this game: "We probably don't win that game tonight without Linas. A.I. had another gutty performance. Marcus was remarkable and Kenyon played good defense. Without Nene (testicular tumor surgery), Melo and Chucky Atkins (sports hernia operation), we are kind of in survival mode." Iverson actually did not play all that well, so you can see Karl’s bias in favor of the living legend here. Kenyon Martin played good defense and good offense, but Karl would not give him a sweeping endorsement like he did to Iverson and Camby, because in Karl’s world Martin is not an “historical great” of basketball. The comment about Linas is meaningless since; obviously, the Nuggets would have lost had Kleiza not been available. The comment about being in “survival mode” is a classic Karl quote revealing his high level of insecurity regarding the fate of the Nuggets. If you still have Camby, Martin, and Iverson, you can not be in just survival mode. At least 12 teams in the League would trade their best three players for those three in a heartbeat, and they would then expect to be in a much better mode than survival.

THE GEORGE KARL FIASCO PART 4

In the first three parts, I focused on the present day thinking and decisions of George Karl. In the next 6 parts, parts 4-9, I will explore the past and explain why Karl should not have been hired by the Nuggets in January 2005. In part 4, I lay out and discuss Karl’s coaching resume, with specific attention paid to the regular season win-loss records and patterns of his teams.

In Parts 6-9, we will look in greater detail at Karl’s previous years as a head coach. We will go over his best players and his teams winning and losing year by year. In other words, we will be giving a narrative complement to the earlier statistical presentation. When we are through, every reader will be extremely well informed about Karl’s history, and what it says about his strengths and weaknesses, from both a statistical and from a historical perspective.

GEORGE KARL’S REGULAR SEASON WIN LOSS RECORDS:
1984-85 Cleveland Cavaliers 82 games, 36-46 .439
1985-86 Cleveland Cavaliers 67 games, 25-42 .373; fired during season
1986-87 Golden State Warriors 82 games, 42-40 .512
1987-88 Golden State Warriors 64 games, 16-48 .250; fired during season
1988-89 Did Not Coach
1989-90 For a short time, Karl was an Assistant Coach for the Jazz, but was fired.
1990-91 Did Not Coach in the NBA; coached Albany in the CBA.
1991-92 Seattle Supersonics 42 games, 27-15 .643
1992-93 Seattle Supersonics 82 games, 55-27 .671
1993-94 Seattle Supersonics 82 games, 63-19 .768
1994-95 Seattle Supersonics 82 games, 57-25 .695
1995-96 Seattle Supersonics 82 games, 64-18 .780
1996-97 Seattle Supersonics 82 games, 57-25 .695
1997-98 Seattle Supersonics 82 games, 61-21 .744; voluntarily left the Supersonics to coach the Bucks at the end of the season.
1998-99 Milwaukee Bucks 50 games, 28-22 .560
1999-00 Milwaukee Bucks 82 games, 42-40 .512
2000-01 Milwaukee Bucks 82 games, 52-30 .634
2001-02 Milwaukee Bucks 82 games, 41-41 .500
2002-03 Milwaukee Bucks 82 games, 42-40 .512; fired at the end of the season.
2003-04 Did Not Coach
2004-05 Denver Nuggets 40 games, 32-8 .800
2005-06 Denver Nuggets 82 games, 44-38 .537
2006-07 Denver Nuggets 82 games, 45-37 .549
2007-08 Denver Nuggets 45 games, 27-18 .600

OBSERVATIONS ON KARL’S REGULAR SEASONS
The most obvious thing to note from his early years is that Karl twice, for two different teams, had a big drop off from the first year to the second year. The second time, with the Warriors, the drop off was truly massive. In both instances, he was fired before the 2nd season was over.

Following these two similar episodes, Karl could not get a coaching job at all in 1988-89. In 1989, Karl was an assistant Coach under Jerry Sloan in Utah for part of the season, but he was once again fired from that job before the season was over. After being fired from Jerry Sloan's staff in Salt Lake City, Karl returned to the Continental Basketball Association as coach of the Albany Patroons for 1990-91, winning the coach of the year award in 1991. He had been a CBA coach in Montana prior to his first NBA head coach position with the Cavaliers. Under Karl, the Patroons completed a 50-6 regular season, including winning all 28 of their home games.

Karl’s dour personality and his hard work produced a huge success in the CBA, which made it theoretically possible for Karl to be invited to return to head coaching in the NBA. And that is exactly what happened. The overall shortage of experienced coaches made Karl an attractive candidate for the Seattle Supersonics in late January of 1992, after they fired Coach K.C. Jones.

Karl’s tenure with the Supersonics, in the regular season at least, turned out to be the opposite, in terms of the win-loss record and in terms of the stability of the winning from season to season, of his time with the Cavaliers and his time with the Warriors. The Sonics during every one of Karl’s 6 ½ years as Head Coach were a rock solid regular season team, with winning percentages ranging from .643 to .780. The Sonics earned home court advantage in round one, at a minimum, in every one of the Karl years.

But the postseasons were entirely another matter and the Supersonics were more like jelly than rock solid in many of the 7 postseasons under Karl. In the next report, which will be for the Nets game, we will look at Karl’s postseason coaching, both for the Supersonics and all the other teams he has coached.

At the end of the 1997-98 season, Karl voluntarily chose to leave the Sonics to assume the head coaching duties for the Milwaukee Bucks. Quite honestly I have not been able to determine Karl’s reason(s) for this move, but if I had to wager I would say that he was most likely not getting along all that well with the Sonics’ front office at the time.

Karl’s performance in Milwaukee ended up about half way between his terrible start as a head coach while coaching the Cavaliers and Warriors on the one hand, and his perfectly rock solid 7 regular seasons with the Supersonics on the other hand. His overall record while Coach of the Bucks was 205-173, not bad but not great either. And his playoff record for the Bucks was mixed as well, even relative to the lower postseason expectations the Bucks had compared with the Supersonics.

At the end of the 2003 season, following a lackluster regular season and a quick exit in the playoffs, Karl was fired for the third time in his head coaching career, as the Bucks hired Terry Porter to replace him. Karl did not coach in the NBA during 2003-04, nor did he during the first few months of the 2004-05 season.

Then on January 28, 2005, Karl was again brought out of mothballs, this time by the Nugget’s organization. With Carmelo Anthony as the cornerstone, the Nuggets were aggressively maneuvering through front office and roster changes to rapidly rise up from being about the worst team in the League to, hopefully, one of the best. The Nuggets organization was extremely ambitious at that time, and Bzdelic did not seem to have the potential to pilot the Nuggets optimally in the great seasons that the front office was dreaming of. The Nuggets front office thought of the franchise as a rising star, and thought of Bzdelic as lacking star power so to speak.

So even though Coach Jeff Bzdelic was good enough to oversee the Nuggets going from 17-65 in 2002-03 to 43-39 in 2003-04, he was given the heave out the door after a 13-15 start in 2004-05. The Nuggets’ front office gambled that Karl’s Seattle regular season performances are more representative of his real abilities than were his other performances. In other words, the front office gambled that Karl was a star coach who had no luck when he was at Cleveland and Golden State. So Karl was handed a talented team that became even more talented, extremely talented in fact, during the next two seasons, 2005-06 and 2006-07.

With the Nuggets maxed out financially, and with the owner in fact paying a luxury tax for running an oversized payroll, the 2007-08 Nuggets of the here and now are loaded to the rafters with talent and skill. The team is a kind of coach’s dream, in that the skills and talents of the best 4 or 5 players are so stratospheric, that a coach can be lazy and/or incompetent to one extent or another and few will notice, because the team will be winning often just from the talents and skills of those superstar and star players.

Despite the overload of talent, Karl and the Nuggets have as yet failed to win more than a single postseason game in each of the three years that the Nuggets have been coached by Karl: 2005, 2006, and 2007. Now here in 2008, there is almost no evidence to suggest that the Nuggets are going to do much better than 1 postseason win this year. Worse still, there is at least a 50/50 chance that the Nuggets will not make the playoffs at all this year, thanks to the Nugget’s inability to make headway against the top half dozen teams of the West. The Nuggets are in real danger of not making the playoffs, thanks to the amazing New Orleans Hornets, who apparently now are one of those top teams, thanks to the again explosively dangerous Golden State Warriors, thanks to Rick Adelman who is most likely going to maneuver his Rockets into one of the playoff slots, and thanks even to the stunning performance of the Portland Trailblazers, despite the fact that they lost Greg Oden to an injury for the entire season.

Assuming that the Suns, the Hornets, the Lakers, the Mavericks, the Spurs, and the Jazz are all playoff locks, the Nuggets are going to have to finish ahead of two out of three between the Warriors, the Rockets, and the Trailblazers, or they are going to go down in history as the most talented team to fail to make the playoffs in the history of the NBA. Since 16 out of 30 teams make the playoffs in the NBA, it is not supposed to be difficult for a highly talented team to at least get a low seed. But for the Nuggets, and this is smoking gun evidence that Karl’s coaching skills are limited, it is and will most likely continue to be, for the duration of the season, dangerously difficult.

To summarize, during his NBA head coaching career, Karl has been fired three times and voluntarily quit a team, the Supersonics, once. During his 20 year coaching career spanning 24 years, (the 4 years difference is because he was not the head coach of any NBA team during 4 years) Karl’s record to the present moment is 856-600, for a percentage of 58.8%. That’s good, but the bulk of the excess of wins over losses was provided by the Sonics gig, and to a lesser extent by the Nuggets gig. And both of these teams were. and are, known as having extremely talented players who can win games without quality coaching. Consider this summary of wins and losses:

GEORGE KARL WINS AND LOSSES BY “PHASE”
Phase 1: 1984-1988 Cavaliers-Warriors 119-176, or 40.3%
Phase 2: 1991-1998 Seattle Supersonics 384-150, or 72.4%
Phase 3: 1998-2003 Milwaukee Bucks 205-173, or 52.4%
Phase 4: 2005-2008 Denver Nuggets 148-101, or 57.1%.

When Karl was brought out of the unemployment wilderness by the Nuggets, his cumulative win-loss record was 708-499 or 58.7%. But this was composed of three phases of his career, one of which was a major failure, one of which was in between a failure and a success, a slight success at best, and the other one of which was a huge success. But another very plausible way of looking at the Sonics years is to hypothesize that they were relatively easy teams to coach because they were very talented and self-motivated teams, with such famous and semi-famous players as Sean Kemp, Gary Payton, Nate McMillan, Sam Perkins, Detlef Schrempf, and Vin Baker.

Even if you give Karl huge credit for the Sonics years, his history is a totally inconsistent mishmash of results. This is precisely why you have to consider the “Sonics were easy to coach” theory as stronger and stronger with each passing month that the current Denver Nuggets fail to break through to the top of the Western Conference by being able to beat the best teams in the West on occasion by more than a bucket or two. If the Sonics were relatively easy to coach, and the Nuggets, who I readily admit are not easy to coach, continue to fail to be fully competitive with the top teams of the West, the inescapable conclusion will be that, even though he is a gentleman and someone who means to do well, George Karl was and is a failure at the task of putting a very talented basketball team in a position to win at the highest levels of pro basketball.

Technically the jury is still out, because the 2008 fate of the Nuggets is yet to be seen. But a lot of evidence has already been introduced against Karl, and no one least of all myself will be surprised if the jury returns a verdict of “a gentleman but guilty of not being capable of coaching successfully at the advanced level of pro basketball competition.” If Karl is convicted of that as seems all too likely, Allen Iverson and the rest of the Nuggets will pay the price as victims. They will never experience the thrill and honor of playing in the Western Conference finals or the NBA Championship, which they theoretically could have with the assistance of a highly skilled head coach and able assistant coaches.

PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE

NUGGETS INJURIES AND OUT SICKS
Carmelo Anthony: Suffered a left ankle sprain at L.A. Lakers on 1/21
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. Atkins is out until at least late March. With any luck, he will be back in the Nuggets lineup in early April.
Nene: underwent successful surgery to remove a testicular tumor on 1/14. A timeline for his return is still unknown. He is out until at least late February, but could be out for the entire rest of the season.

HAWKS INJURIES AND OUT SICKS
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. He is out indefinitely.
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, maybe on Jan. 25 at Seattle. .

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of January 24, 2008

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

INJURIES & SUSPENSIONS
1. Carmelo Anthony injury 34 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 incorrect calculation of the benefits and costs of that player, his 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: 10 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 0 points.

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: 7 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: 83, which constitutes RED ALERT.

RED ALERT (75-99): Serious damage to the season is occurring now. Beating quality teams is almost impossible. Beating mid-level teams is extremely difficult and will be unusual. About 3/4 of games against mid-level teams that would have been won will be lost if there is a RED ALERT. The result against low-level teams is on a case by case basis. Close to 1/2 of games against low level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. Essentially, a RED ALERT means that an otherwise good team has been reduced to being a poor or low level team.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE ALERT STATUS
The Nuggets now have their first RED ALERT of the 2007-08 season. Injury and illness disaster has once again struck the Nuggets, with Carmelo Anthony, Chucky Atkins, and Nene all out. Anthony is likely to be back for the Sunday Jan. 27 game in Dallas versus the Mavericks, which will put the Nuggets back into the more manageable ORANGE ALERT status for that game. However, both Atkins and Nene are definitely going to be out for many weeks, and either one of them or both of them could easily be out for the entire rest of the season. And George Karl is definitely not going to pull a few offensive set plays out of a hat any time soon. Therefore, the Nuggets, unless they make a trade and/or acquire a diamond in the rough player, are doomed to be in ORANGE ALERT or YELLOW ALERT for the rest of the season, which endangers their chances of making the playoffs. Hollinger at ESPN has the odds that the Nuggets will make the playoffs at exactly 50% right now.

The recent losses to the Bobcats and the Hawks, and the close calls at home against the Wolves and the Hawks, in games that should have and probably would have been relatively easy wins had the alert status been green, grey, or even yellow, illustrate the usefulness and accuracy of the alert system. When you reach ORANGE ALERT or RED ALERT, you start losing a substantial number of games that you would normally win. It’s that simple, and there is little anyone can do about it.

RESERVE WATCH
Number of Players Who Played at Least 6 Minutes: Nuggets 7 Hawks 8
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 7 Hawks 7

Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 14
Hawks Non-Starters Points: 18

Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 4
Hawks Non-Starters Rebounds: 15

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

George Karl was lucky to get this win “on the cheap”; he got away with playing only 7 players compared with 8 for the Hawks. Also, the Hawks had two other players who played 4 minutes each while the Nuggets had just one other player who played 4 minutes, J.R. Smith.

The reserve watch 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)
2: He's making a run for the exits

PLAYER RATINGS EXPLAINED
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
Marcus Camby: Game 44.8 Season 33.8
Allen Iverson: Game 36.7 Season 41.1
Kenyon Martin: Game 36.4 Season 20.8
Linas Kleiza: Game 36.3 Season 19.1
Anthony Carter: Game 22.4 Season 21.0
Eduardo Najera: Game 16.4 Season 13.1
Yakhouba Diawara: Game 6.6 Season 5.4

Carmelo Anthony: Did Not Play-Injury
Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Nene: Did Not Play-Illness

HAWKS PLAYER RATINGS
Josh Smith: Game 49.8 Season 35.4
Al Horford: Game 36.7 Season 22.1
Marvin Williams: Game 28.3 Season 26.1
Anthony Johnson: Game 24.0 Season 16.6
Joe Johnson: Game 23.5 Season 33.3
Josh Childress: Game 20.1 Season 21.1
Tyronn Lue: Game 14.6 Season 10.7
Solomon Jones: Game 1.8 Season 2.0

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 THE RATINGS:
For the Hawks, PF Josh Smith, C-F Al Horford, and PG Anthony Johnson were the key performers, while Joe Johnson was the lone disappointment. Johnson missed 8 of 10 jump shots from inside the arc, while he did succeed at making 2/4 threes.

For the Nuggets, Camby, Martin, and Kleiza were the power performers, while Iverson, Carter, and Najera were more or less normal.

REAL PLAYER RATINGS EXPLAINED
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
1.80 More Amazing Happens, but only certain players can ever fly this high
1.60 1.79 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. Al Horford, Atl 1.266
2. Josh Smith, Atl 1.215
3. Marcus Camby, Den 1.093
4. Eduardo Najera, Den 0.965
5. Kenyon Martin, Den 0.958
6. Linas Kleiza, Den 0.908
7. Allen Iverson, Den 0.816
8. Tyronn Lue, Atl 0.811
9. Josh Childress, Atl 0.804
10. Marvin Williams, Atl 0.786
11. Anthony Johnson, Atl 0.706
12. Anthony Carter, Den 0.640
13. Joe Johnson, Atl 0.588
14. Yakhouba Diawara, Den 0.330
15. Solomon Jones, Atl 0.200…Jones played only 9 minutes.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Although Camby played very well and was a star, the young Hawks star center Al Horford did him one better, as he was a star-plus. In 29 minutes, the rookie Horford was a very efficient 6/8 and 2/5 from the line for 14 points, and he added 11 rebounds, 5 steals, 2 assists, and 1 block. Horford, who was born in the Dominican Republic and went to high school in Michigan, also did Carmelo Anthony one better, because he led his college team to TWO National Championships instead of just one, as Anthony did for the Syracuse Orangemen. As a college rookie, Horford helped the Florida Gators win the 2005 SEC divisional Championship. The following year, 2005-06, the Gators, who lost 3 starters from the previous year, vastly exceeded expectations by winning it all. Horford led Florida as they defeated George Mason in the final four and then defeated UCLA in the 2006 NCAA Championship. Next year, which was this past season, on April 2, 2007, Horford and the rest of the Gators became the first team to repeat as national Champions since the 1991-1992 Duke Blue Devils, and the first ever to do so with the same starting lineup. Horford left the Gators after his junior year, and was selected 3rd overall this past June by Atlanta Hawks in the 2007 NBA Draft.

As of the December 28 NBA Real Player Ratings, Horford was the 156th best player in the NBA this year. Expect him to reach at least the top 130 by the end of the season.

Other than Horford, PF Josh Smith was the other spectacular player in this game. The Hawks could not win it despite having the best two players on the court, because the Nuggets had all 5 of the next best players on the court: Camby, Najera, Martin, Kleiza and Iverson. Among all players who were very good or better, the Nuggets had those five, while the Hawks had four: Horford, Smith, Tyronn Lue, and Josh Childress.

Carter was only mediocre, but he made enough assists to avoid being a major drag for the Nuggets and, unlike his scoreboard goose egg in the previous game in Los Angeles, he scored 8 points in this game. Yakhouba Diawara played very well defensively in this game, and helped to make up for the absence of Nene with his high quality defending.

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.

Yakhouba Diawara: +13
Marcus Camby: +9
Kenyon Martin: +4
Linas Kleiza: +3
Allen Iverson: +3
Eduardo Najera: +1
Anthony Carter: -2

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
Diawara racked up his +13 in just 20 minutes, and Camby cleaned up against the very young Atlanta front court. In yet another small signal of the doom that awaits the Nuggets in the playoffs, assuming they make the playoffs, is the -2 for their starting point guard, Carter. Can you win a Western Conference playoff series without an above average, or at the very least, an average point guard who has playoff experience? The answer is no, unfortunately. Therefore, the Atkins “sports hernia” most likely spells a very quick out in the playoffs for the Nuggets, assuming the Nuggets get to play in the playoffs. The absence of Nene on top of the absence of Carter increases the odds to at least 50/50 that the Nuggets will fail to make the playoffs.

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 20 minutes and was 2/4, 0/1 on 3’s, and 1/2 from the line for 5 points, and he made 1 assist and 1 steal.

Anthony Carter played 35 minutes and was 3/8, 0/1 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 8 points, and he made 9 assists, 3 rebounds, and 1 block.

Allen Iverson played for virtually the whole game, 45 minutes, and was 6/21, 2/5 on 3’s, and 15/18 from the line for 29 points, and he made 6 assists, 3 steals, and 2 rebounds.

Linas Kleiza played most of the game, 40 minutes, and was 9/18, 2/5 on 3’s, and 3/4 from the line for 23 points, and he made 5 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 steals.

Kenyon Martin played 38 minutes and was 7/14 and 6/6 from the line for 20 points, and he made 10 rebounds, 2 blocks, and 1 assist.

Eduardo Najera played 17 minutes and was 2/2, 1/1 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 7 points, and he made 4 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 steal.

Marcus Camby played most of the game, 41 minutes, and was 4/7, 0/1 on 3’s, and 5/6 from the line for 13 points, and he made 21 rebounds, 4 blocks, 4 assists, and 1 steal.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Friday, January 25 in Denver to play the Nets at 7 pm mountain time. The Nets will be playing on back to back nights but the Nuggets will not be. So the Nuggets will enjoy both the home court and the extra rest advantages.