The Real Defending Champion Suns Shoot the Lights Out on the Nuggets in Phoenix, 137-115

The Phoenix Suns would be the defending Champions of the NBA were it not for what was apparently a taunting ploy done by ace actor Robert Horry of the Spurs in last spring’s Suns-Spurs series. Horry flagrantly fouled Suns all-star PG Steve Nash in such a way that the Suns thought he might be injured and removed from the series. Then the resulting potential fight situation induced Boris Diaw and Amare Stoudemire to leave their seats on the Phoenix bench and to come on to the court a few feet. Then these two players were not allowed to play in the next game of the evenly matched and fiercely competitive series, which was up until then the best playoff series of the year. Horry, of course, was also suspended, but Horry was maybe 15% of the combined value of Diaw and Stoudemire.

So San Antonio then had a major artificial edge in the next game, which was in Phoenix and which was game 5 of a best of 7 series that was tied 2 games a piece. As sports fanatics will tell you, game 5 of a best of 7 series that is tied 2 games a piece is usually the most important game of the series, because the team that loses that game would have to win two straight after that in order to win the series, which is extremely difficult when you have two evenly matched teams.

Sure enough, the Spurs won game 5, with a huge 4th quarter comeback against the Suns, who had been reduced by that quarter from being the best offensive squad in basketball to being offensively challenged. The Spurs prefer to grind out their wins and, once Diaw and Stoudemire were removed from the scene, that is exactly what they were able to do without too much trouble in that decisive game 5. Then in game 6 back in San Antonio, the Spurs used the “6th man,” their crowd, and the home court advantage in general, to get their shooting mojo on, and they eliminated the cheated Suns 114-105.

There was to be no glorious game 7 due to what could be called the “Horry and Stern incident.” For anyone who doesn’t know, David Stern is the Commissioner of the NBA, who threw the book at the Suns and was very sarcastic toward the Suns and their fans to boot. Stern had to cancel his planned trip to Phoenix to watch game five, for fear that his mere presence might ruin the whole atmosphere and possibly be a security risk. Horry and the Spurs won yet another Championship, which was almost meaningless since he and they already had several, and because of the virtual or actual cheating. And Horry’s flagrant foul led to the partial ruination of the 2008 playoffs.

Many, many folks in Phoenix will always believe that the foul on Nash was staged to generate suspensions of Suns players and, even if it wasn’t, the rule should not have been enforced because Diaw and Stoudemire never went more than about 10 feet on to the court, and because they never came close to other players who were considering whether to fight, and there wasn’t actually a fight anyway.

Still others think that the rule is completely asinine and should be thrown out completely. They think of it as a free speech type issue: what is the harm of a player coming on to the court as long as he doesn’t fight? How do you know that a player coming on to the court might reduce the chance of a fight amongst the players who were out there during the incident, rather than increase the chance?

There was speculation after Phoenix was cheated that the rule would be modified but inertia and other bureaucratic and public relations factors made that a long shot and, sure enough, the same relatively stupid rule is still in effect.

Once the Suns were eliminated by the Spurs back in San Antonio in game 6, most close NBA observers, including yours truly, concluded that the Spurs could not possibly lose in the West finals or in the NBA Championship. And we also concluded that the Spurs did not really deserve to be the 2008 Champions, because they did not at all defeat the Suns in a fair fight. Whether they actually cheated their way to victory or not, the end result was as if they did cheat. Ratings were down a little, but only a little, because most fans of the NBA are too casual to know in advance, for example, that LeBron James and his Cavaliers had no chance against the Spurs in the best of 7 games Championship.

So in my view, the Suns are the real defending Champions of the NBA this year, because I am convinced the Suns would have won the series 4 games to 3, and possibly even 4 games to 2, had the critical 5th game been played in Phoenix without any Suns suspensions. Therefore, I am reporting that the real defending Champion Phoenix Suns buried the Nuggets in Phoenix 137-115.

The Nuggets were playing on back to back nights, having flown down to Phoenix overnight shortly after having beaten the 76’ers in Denver. The Suns, who lost at home to the Hornets two nights earlier, and who were charged up by a morale booster speech given to them by their General Manager Steve Kerr, were in no mood to mess around, and they immediately set about the routing of the Nuggets with an incredible display of the art of jump shooting and especially 3-point jump shooting. The Suns made 9 of their first 10 shots, and they scored 46 points in the 1st quarter, although the soon to be subdued Nuggets scored 36 themselves in the 1st.

It was 78-59 Suns at the half and 106-90 after 3 quarters. But the Nuggets were not going to stop a runaway locomotive in the 4th quarter, and the outcome was never in any doubt. The last 6 minutes was garbage time.

The Suns, led by Marcus Banks, who was 7/8, were 20/31 from long range, or 64.5%. The Nuggets, who are poor in 3-point shooting without J.R. Smith playing, were just 4/13, or 30.8%.

Overall, the Suns shot the Nuggets right out of their arena and into the desert, as they made 50 of 93 shots overall, or 53.8%. The Nuggets made 41/96 of their shots, for 42.7%. You very seldom see a shooting percentage gap exceeding 10% in a game, but you did in this one as the Suns played like the Champions that I believe they really are.

The Nuggets made 23 offensive rebounds as they missed about a dozen layups. Carmelo Anthony made 14 rebounds, 7 of which were offensive, but he himself was 6/10 on layups. Allen Iverson, who seems to always shoot just as well as usual even in the face of a monster team, was 7/15, whereas Carmelo Anthony, who is lucky to shoot as well as usual when up against a monster team, was just 6/10 on layups, 2/6 on jumpers, 2/4 from the line, and 9/21 overall for 20 points. So Melo went to the line just twice, while the business as usual in the face of a monster team Iverson was 10/20 overall, and 10/13 from the free throw line, for 32 points.

Melo took a few shots that Carter has been taking lately, as Carter was too busy trying to defend the likes of Steve Nash and the 7/8 from downtown Marcus Banks. Welcome to Phoenix, Mr. Carter. It’s definitely not a lottery type of team that you are up against this time. G-F Linas Kleiza was even more shut down than Carter was, by the likes of Grant Hill and Leandro Barbosa. Both Carter and Kleiza ended up with very poor game ratings according to the Nuggets 1 Real Player Ratings.

Marcus Camby, who has seen monster teams many times in his career and can not be put off by them, was 5/8 on jumpers and 6/11 overall, for 13 points. Camby made 3 blocks, as he continues to lead the NBA by a wide margin in blocks. Camby’s front court assistant Nene was excellent in this game, with 9 rebounds and 12 points on 5/10 shooting in just 23 minutes. But Kenyon Martin was no where near his usual.

As he so often is by the best teams, Anthony Carter was partly shut down, specifically in this case by Nash and Banks, and his ability to distribute to his teammates was very negatively impacted. The Nuggets made just 17 assists in total, while the in the zone Suns wowed their fans and their coaches with 32 assists. Both teams had their turnovers under control, which was one of the few notable good features of this game for the Nuggets.

When will Nuggets other than Camby, Anthony, Iverson, Martin, Smith, Nene, and sometimes Najera be able to play well against a great team? When they get a new coaching staff which can teach and motivate them to hold their ground in the face of a monster team? Yes, I think that’s the answer. Or can Kleiza and Carter teach themselves to play the same way against a monster team that they do against a poor team? No, generally young or inexperienced players don’t teach themselves, unfortunately, though it would be nice if they did. In fact, Mr. Karl would be a wonderful Coach if youngsters would only teach themselves.

The 3rd installment of the report on the J.R. Smith fiasco has been postponed to the next game report, the one for the Magic game. In it, I will show why the Nuggets will lose in the 1st round unless J.R. Smith is ready and able to sink threes and to get his layups, dunks, and steals as well.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of January 8, 2008

The Nuggets are under a YELLOW 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 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 just about the points you would have if the player were injured. J.R. Smith is benched and should not be: 16 points.

2. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 5-30 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 5-20 range, but it could spike to as much as 30 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.

3. Lack of adequate offensive schemes: 10 Points. This would be up to 20 points, except that Iverson reduces the damage. In general 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.

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 sometimes think it is.

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 40, which constitutes YELLOW ALERT.

Since we are on the border between grey and yellow alert, both are described here:

GREY ALERT (30-39): There are relatively minor problems leading to a small threat against the success of the entire season. It is still possible to beat quality teams, but it will be more unusual to beat a quality team, because about 1/4 of what would have been wins against good teams will now be losses when there is a GREY 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 agsinst 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 has become in between a good team and a mid-level team when it is under a YELLOW ALERT.

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, and no important player is having any serious slump problems, and because the Nuggets are therefore no longer in yellow alert or worse. The Nuggets are just borderline yellow alert at the moment. 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. And as the Spurs game on January 3 showed, the Nuggets need both Martin and Nene in to make up for their offense being trashed by a quality defensive team.

Another reason not to party about the sports medicine miracles is that the alert status has moved from green alert to borderline yellow alert as a result of an increase in the actual and, more importantly, the projected damage caused by George Karl’s rotation mistakes. He has now totally removed J.R. Smith and largely removed Chucky Atkins from playing time, and that spells d-o-o-m for the playoffs, pure and simple. Carter is playing very well against lottery and mid-level teams here in the regular season, but he will be no match for the top flight guards that he will come up against in the playoffs, whereas Atkins does have some playoff experience with the Lakers. And the Nuggets will not be able to offset the very tough defending they will face in the playoffs without good 3-point shooting and, quite honestly, they have to have Smith just to be assured of being mediocre in 3-point shooting. Being good would require someone else to step up and join Smith and Kleiza as major players on the Nugget’s 3-point shooting squad.

RESERVE WATCH

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

Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 34
Suns Non-Starters Points: 50

Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 22
Suns Non-Starters Rebounds: 8

Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 5
Suns Non-Starters Assists: 13

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
Allen Iverson: Game 40.6 Season 41.5
Carmelo Anthony: Game 32.6 Season 38.2
Marcus Camby: Game 27.6 Season 32.4
Nene Hilario: Game 24.9 Season 14.0
Kenyon Martin: Game 15.0 Season 19.6
Eduardo Najera: Game 15.5 Season 13.4
Anthony Carter: Game 14.0 Season 22.0
Linas Kleiza: Game 10.2 Season 17.7
J.R. Smith: Game 9.7 Season 14.6
Yakhouba Diawara: Game 3.2 Season 5.8
Von Wafer: Game -1.6 Season 1.2

Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision

Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Injury

SUNS
Shawn Marion: Game 64.5 Season 35.3
Amare Stoudemire: Game 39.3 Season 38.6
Marcus Banks: Game 37.3 Season 9.8
Grant Hill: Game 32.6 Season 28.7
Steve Nash: Game 31.4 Season 38.2
Leandro Barbosa: Game 24.6 Season 26.6
Brian Skinner: Game 10.2 Season 10.4
Boris Diaw: Game 9.9 Season 15.2
Raja Bell: Game 9.7 Season 18.5

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:
Any player who does twice as much as Carmelo Anthony in a game where Anthony does well might as well not be of this world. Shawn Marion is in a League and World of his own, along with Allen Iverson, but even Iverson has only rarely had a game as productive as Marion had here. The NBA promotional motto right now is “where amazing happens,” and it certainly did happen for Shawn Marion and the Suns in this game.

Carmelo Anthony seldom plays as well as he can against the Suns, I think he gets a little nervous when he sees a team loaded with players about as talented as he is. Nene is storming back from the wilderness, game by game. As for Anthony Carter, I have been warning and I will continue to warn between now and when the Nuggets go over the cliff that, while Anthony Carter is frequently very good or outstanding against poor and some mid-level teams, he seldom plays well against the best teams in the NBA, most of which are found in the Western Conference and one of which is who the Nuggets will meet in the playoffs. I see most of the train wrecks that are coming towards the Nuggets, and this one is definitely coming unless Chucky Atkins works his way back into the point guard slot by the time of the playoffs around the 20th of April.

Marcus Banks is roughly the J.R. Smith of the Suns, a talented young player who sometimes doesn’t get playing time because the Suns are loaded with talent amongst their starters, while Banks is not accomplished enough to be a starter. Banks is an even better 3-point shooter than J.R. Smith, as was demonstrated in this game where he was an amazing 7/8 from long range, but he does not have the drives to the hoop for layups plus the fouls potential that Smith does. And while his turnovers are fewer in number than Smith’s, his steals are also fewer in number. But unlike Smith, Banks does not have his personality put under a microscope for evaluation by his Coach. Assuming Banks is not an active criminal, refusing to practice at all, or in some other dire straights, all Suns Coach Mike D’Antoni cares about is to what extent Banks can be a net positive for his high flying Suns.

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

1 Shawn Marion, Pho 2.016
2 J.R. Smith, Den 1.940…Smith played only 5 minutes.
3 Marcus Banks, Pho 1.865
4 Amare Stoudemire, Pho 1.638
5 Grant Hill, Pho 1.482
6 Nene Hilario, Den 1.083
7 Allen Iverson, Den 1.041
8 Carmelo Anthony, Den 0.988
9 Steve Nash, Pho 0.981
10 Marcus Camby, Den 0.952
11 Eduardo Najera, Den 0.861
12 Leandro Barbosa, Pho 0.848
13 Kenyon Martin, Den 0.652
14 Brian Skinner, Pho 0.567
15 Anthony Carter, Den 0.467
16 Linas Kleiza, Den 0.408
17 Raja Bell, Pho 0.388
18 Boris Diaw, Pho 0.354
19 Yakhouba Diawara, Den 0.291
20 Von Wafer, Den -0.320…Wafer played 5 minutes.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE NUGGETS-WARRIORS REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Nene, Iverson, Anthony, and Camby were all solid performers, but the Suns were in another galaxy for this one.

Once again, J.R. Smith played extremely well in extremely limited minutes, in what is becoming a more and more bizarre pattern. Smith is slowly but surely becoming more and more attractive to other teams, even as his minutes, mostly garbage time minutes by the way, are too limited to do much of anything for the Nuggets.

Also, have you noticed recently that in most games Nuggets players appear at the bottom of the ratings? That’s most likely because of the little attention to and respect for the Nugget’s reserves that the coaching staff pays. The coaching staff seems to think that reserve players should teach themselves stuff like offensive strategy and how to have a competitive, tough attitude, and that is like thinking that your field of wheat is going to grow corn just by wishing it so. The Nuggets too often get almost nothing from their players off the bench. Except of course from J.R. Smith, from which they get almost everything.

Amazing happens. In this game, Shawn Marion, J.R. Smith, Marcus Banks, Amare Stoudemire, and Grant Hill proved that amazing does happen sometimes. Unfortunately, four out of those fives amazements were Suns, and the other one is being run off the Nuggets.

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: +1
Nene: +0
Linas Kleiza: -9
Marcus Camby: -10
Eduardo Najera: -14
Anthony Carter: -19
Carmelo Anthony: -19
Kenyon Martin: -19
Allen Iverson: -21

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
Of all the Nuggets, it is Nene and Camby who were and will probably in the future be most important in attempting to slow the Suns’ juggernaut down. Nene and Camby get enough rebounds to at least prevent a lot of 2nd chance scores by the Suns, and to prevent a substantial number of in the paint points being scored. Those two factors will be crucial if the Nuggets meet the Suns in the playoffs and the Suns are not shooting the lights out from outside the paint in general and from beyond the arc in particular. Also, while Camby blocks a lot of shots, Nene blocks a fair amount of penetration. And then Martin is great at rotating out to defend those deadly perimeter shooters. So the Nuggets could in theory defeat the Suns in any game where the Suns shooting is off. How off it would have to be from normal is the question that remains to be decided.

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

Von Wafer played 5 minutes and was 0/2 on 3’s for 0 points.

Yakhouba Diawara played 11 minutes and was 1/2 and 0/1 on 3’s for 2 points, and he made 1 rebound.

Linas Kleiza played 25 minutes and was 1/6, 0/1 on 3’s, and 3/6 from the line for 5 points, and he made 7 rebounds and 2 assists.

Anthony Carter played 30 minutes and was 1/6, 1/2 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 5 points, and he made 5 assists and 4 rebounds.

Kenyon Martin played 23 minutes and was 4/10 and 3/3 from the line for 11 points, and he made 5 rebounds and 1 assist.

Eduardo Najera played 18 minutes and was 3/6 and 1/3 on 3’s for 7 points, and he made 5 rebounds, 1 assist, and 1 steal.

Marcus Camby played 29 minutes and was 6/11 and 1/1 from the line for 13 points, and he made 6 rebounds, 3 blocks, and 2 assists.

Carmelo Anthony played 33 minutes and was 9/21 and 2/4 from the line for 20 points, and he made 14 rebounds, 1 assist, and 1 steal.

Allen Iverson played 39 minutes and was 10/20, 2/4 on 3’s, and 10/13 from the line for 32 points, and he made 3 assists and 2 rebounds.

Nene played 23 minutes and was 5/10 and 2/5 from the line for 12 points, and he made 9 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 steals, and 1 block.

J.R. Smith played 5 minutes and was 1/2 and 6/6 from the line for 8 points.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Friday, January 11 in Denver to play the Magic at 7 pm mountain time. Neither the Nuggets nor the Magic will be playing on back to back nights.