The Shorthanded Nuggets Lose in Dallas 90-85, and How Karl Compares to Other Coaches

The shorthanded Nuggets lost to Dirk Nowitzki and the Mavericks in Dallas 90-85. The Nuggets have only 13 of the 15 allowed roster positions filled right now, and they have 3 important players unavailable due to injury or illness. So they are working with just 10 available players. On top of that, you have George Karl, who can be and was in this game a scrooge regarding playing time even when he doesn’t have enough players to effectively contest the game. Only a League regulation or a player’s union rule could stop Karl from virtually giving games away where he only plays and overworks 7 players.

In fact, every year Karl, sooner or later, chooses to play just 7 players in a game, but any team which fields only 7 players against a winning team is going to lose most of the time. Yakhouba Diawara played only a trivial 4 minutes in this game, but he should have played at least 12 minutes. And both J.R. Smith and Najera should each have played about 4 minutes more than their 21 and 20 minutes, respectively.

In fairness, it must be said that it took a nasty injury situation to bring the scrooge extreme in Karl out this season. He has actually been substantially less scrooge-like this season than last. The really frustrating thing is that Karl is biased against reserves even in heavy injury situations, and at the same time, of course, as a result of that bias, his reserves are not as ready to play and produce as are reserves on many other teams, particularly the best teams.

Of all NBA coaches, Karl is one of the most biased in favor of starters. There is self-fulfilling prophesy action going on with Karl’s management of reserves. Nuggets’ reserves don’t play as much as reserves on other teams do, so they are less useful than reserves on other teams. The less Karl plays certain non-starters, the less they are ready to contribute, and then Karl’s desire to play them gets weaker still.

In sharp contrast, Coach Avery Johnson of the Mavericks played more players than Karl ever plays in any game, and he was rewarded with huge positive Mavericks over Nuggets margins in points, rebounds, and assists among the non-starters. Had the game been decided only by starters, the Nuggets would have won 69-58. But the Mavericks non-starters defeated the Nuggets non-starters 32-16, more than offsetting the 11-point starters’ deficit.

The Nuggets were only 29/76 from the field, or 38.2%, while the Mavericks were 35/77, or 45.5%. Neither team moved the ball well; both teams had almost exactly as many turnovers as they had assists. The Nuggets were out coached and outmanned, but they were able to keep it relatively close as a result of cobbling together 8/18 in 3-point shooting, with Anthony Carter 4/6 from long range. But the Mavericks could not buy a three, as Josh Howard was 0/4, Jason Terry was 1.4, and 3 other Mavs were 0/1. Only Nowitzki at 2/4 was any good.

PF Brandon Bass and C DeSagana Diop were very effective up front along side PF Nowitzki and SF Josh Howard. By sharp contrast, C Marcus Camby, PF Linas Kleiza, and PF Kenyon Martin played poorly for Denver. The Mavericks were mediocre at best, but the Nuggets were clearly inferior in this game, due primarily to a much worse injury situation and to inadequate coaching.

THE GEORGE KARL FIASCO PART 6

In part 6, we compare all current NBA coaches on two crucial factors: experience and regular season success. In part 7, which will be in the next game report, the one for the Hornets game, we will compare all current NBA coaches in playoff experience and in playoff success.

HOW KARL’S COACHING EXPERIENCE AND REGULAR SEASON SUCCESS COMPARE WITH THOSE OF OTHER COACHES

TOTAL EXPERIENCE: TOTAL NUMBER OF GAMES COACHED BY NBA COACHES
The first number is the total number of games, the middle number is the number of regular season games, and the last number is the number of playoff games.

1 Golden State Don Nelson 2366 2200 166
2 Miami Pat Riley 2127 1845 282
3 Utah Jerry Sloan 1947 1772 175
4 LA Lakers Phil Jackson 1614 1358 256
5 Denver George Karl 1598 1457 141
6 Houston Rick Adelman 1418 1280 138
7 LA Clippers Mike Dunleavy 1231 1160 71
8 San Antonio Gregg Popovich 1040 897 143
9 Detroit Flip Saunders 1029 948 81
10 Boston Doc Rivers 651 629 22
11 Portland Nate McMillan 621 605 16
12 New Orleans Byron Scott 620 580 40
13 Philadelphia Maurice Cheeks 522 512 10
14 Washington Eddie Jordan 491 471 20
15 Seattle P.J. Carlesimo 464 452 12
16 Phoenix Mike D'Antoni 450 404 46
17 Indiana Jim O'Brien 419 388 31
18 New York Isiah Thomas 390 375 15
19 New Jersey Lawrence Frank 371 333 38
20 Toronto Sam Mitchell 298 292 6
21 Atlanta Mike Woodson 289 289 0
22 Dallas Avery Johnson 270 228 42
23 Orlando Stan Van Gundy 262 234 28
24 Minnesota Randy Wittman 252 252 0
25 Cleveland Mike Brown 243 210 33
26 Milwaukee Larry Krystkowiak 66 66 0
27 Charlotte Sam Vincent 48 48 0
28 Memphis Marc Iavaroni 47 47 0
29 Sacramento Reggie Theus 46 46 0
30 Chicago Jim Boylan 20 20 0

In every employment, in every business, in every pursuit of any kind, experience is supposed to produce efficiency and effectiveness in performance. Basketball coaching is no exception. NBA coaching is not a simple thing, and coaches with more experience have a substantial advantage over coaches with less. Therefore, you should tend to see that the coaches with the most experience will also tend to have the best win-loss records. This is exactly what you do see.

Coaches who have been repeatedly stuck early in their careers with bad teams that can not be improved enough to become winners will inevitably get fired after a few years, at the most, and they will never reach what you might call the “permanent head coaching career level,” which I would say is at about 500 games or so.

In a class of their own as the most experienced NBA coaches are Don Nelson-Warriors and Pat Riley-Heat. The third most experienced NBA coach is Jerry Sloan-Jazz. Phil Jackson-Lakers and George Karl-Nuggets are virtually tied for fourth. There are really only 3 coaches in the NBA who have coached substantially more games than Karl has: Nelson, Riley, and Sloan.

Rick Adelman, who is out to get one of the last two playoff berths in the West, is the 6th most experienced Coach. Don Nelson of the Warriors is also gunning for one of the last two seeds. Should both of them succeed, it would probably mean devastation for the Denver franchise, since the Nuggets most likely will not even make the playoffs if that scenario plays out.

The only other coaches who have coached more than 1,000 games are Mike Dunleavy-Clippers, Greg Popovich-Spurs, and Flip Saunders-Pistons. Following the 9 coaches who have the huge experience of more than 1,000 games coached, there is a huge drop-off. The 10th most experienced coach is Doc Rivers-Celtics, with 651 games. Should there be a Lakers-Celtics Championship this year, which seems to become more likely with each passing week, the Celtics’ Coach will be less than half as experienced as the Lakers’ Coach, which will give the Lakers a key advantage, especially if the teams are otherwise about equal.

The other coaches who are much less experienced than the top 9, but who have reached the permanent head coaching career level of 500 games, where they have some protection from being fired if they can not turn a bad team into a winner, would be Nate McMillan-Trailblazers, Byron Scott-Hornets, Maurice Cheeks-76’ers, and, soon to be qualified, Eddie Jordan-Wizards.

CURRENT NBA COACHES RANKED BY CAREER REGULAR SEASON RECORDS AS OF FEBRUARY 4, 2008
The first number is the regular season winning percentage, the middle number is the number of regular season wins, and the last number is the number of regular season losses.

1 Dallas Avery Johnson 0.763 174 54
2 LA Lakers Phil Jackson 0.699 949 409
3 San Antonio Gregg Popovich 0.674 605 292
4 Miami Pat Riley 0.646 1191 654
5 Orlando Stan Van Gundy 0.611 143 91
6 Houston Rick Adelman 0.609 779 501
7 Phoenix Mike D'Antoni 0.606 245 159
8 Utah Jerry Sloan 0.601 1065 707
9 Cleveland Mike Brown 0.600 126 84
10 Detroit Flip Saunders 0.593 562 386
11 Denver George Karl 0.588 857 600
12 Golden State Don Nelson 0.573 1261 939
13 New Jersey Lawrence Frank 0.532 177 156
14 Indiana Jim O'Brien 0.518 201 187
15 Philadelphia Maurice Cheeks 0.494 253 259
16 Boston Doc Rivers 0.491 309 320
17 LA Clippers Mike Dunleavy 0.486 564 596
18 Portland Nate McMillan 0.483 292 313
19 Sacramento Reggie Theus 0.478 22 24
20 New Orleans Byron Scott 0.476 276 304
21 New York Isiah Thomas 0.475 178 197
22 Toronto Sam Mitchell 0.452 132 160
23 Chicago Jim Boylan 0.450 9 11
24 Washington Eddie Jordan 0.446 210 261
25 Seattle P.J. Carlesimo 0.431 195 257
26 Charlotte Sam Vincent 0.375 18 30
27 Milwaukee Larry Krystkowiak 0.348 23 43
28 Minnesota Randy Wittman 0.333 84 168
29 Atlanta Mike Woodson 0.304 88 201
30 Memphis Marc Iavaroni 0.277 13 34

Avery Johnson, who has coached a relatively small number of games, 270, is the most successful regular season coach in the NBA right now. But Phil Jackson, who has won about 7 of every 10 games he has coached, has a far more impressive record than Johnson, because Jackson has coached almost exactly 6 games for every 1 game coached by Johnson.

Trailing Jackson in both experience and success, by small margins, is Greg Popovich. Pat Riley has been an extremely successful coach as well; he’s 4th in success and 2nd in experience.

Among those who have not yet reached 500 games, Stan Van Gundy is most likely the coach who has the greatest probability of becoming a permanent, career head coach, because his success has been substantial. Just behind Van Gundy and with at least 6 0f 10 games won, is Rick Adelman-Rockets, Mike D’Antoni-Suns, Jerry Sloan-Jazz and Mike Brown-Cavaliers. Like Van Gundy, Brown is likely to become a permanent, career coach, unless general managers decide that LeBron James deserves all of the credit for the Cavaliers success and Brown deserves almost none.

In sum, there are 9 coaches who have achieved the 6 in 10 games won or better mark, which I would call the absolute minimum level needed to qualify to be further considered as to whether they might be an historically great coach. Then there is a group of 5 coaches who are over .500, but under the 6 in 10 games threshold. These would be Flip Saunders-Pistons, George Karl-Nuggets, Don Nelson-Warriors, Lawrence Frank-Nets, and Jim O’Brien-Pacers.

So it would appear that Karl is a good Coach, or at least used to be a good Coach, but he comes up a little short as to whether he might be a great Coach. Close counts only in horseshoes, right? Saunders, Karl, and Nelson are all highly experienced coaches who come up short as to whether they might be truly great coaches. Of the 9 most experienced coaches, there are 5 who qualify as very possibly historically great, Jackson, Popovich, Riley, Adelman, and Sloan. And there is one Coach who is less successful than the partially successful trio of Saunders, Karl, and Nelson: Mike Dunleavy-Clippers. Dunleavy is the only heavily experienced Coach who has a losing regular season record.

The bottom line is that George Karl is one of 9 heavily experienced NBA coaches, but he is not one of the 5 heavily experienced NBA coaches who have achieved a regular season record of 6 out of 10 games won or better. Karl is 18 wins short from that mark and the odd thing is, I am certain he would have those 18 and probably more just from his Nuggets job, if he were truly a great coach. Because the Nuggets are not winning as many games as they should be this year, and nor did they last year.

The Nuggets are exactly the kind of team that a great coach can take to a 54 or 58-win season. Were the Nuggets coached by any of the top 5 NBA coaches, Jackson, Popovich Riley, Adelman, or Sloan, I am certain that they would win 54-60 games this season. Under Karl, they are projected to win 48 games and, astoundingly, have a substantial risk of missing the playoffs.

Exactly how well the Nuggets would do were they coached by Johnson, Van Gundy, D’Antoni, and Brown is more uncertain, since these four, while more successful than Karl in win percentage, are not heavily experienced coaches. However, as an educated estimate, I would say that Johnson, Van Gundy, or D’Antoni, were they coaching the Nuggets this year, would produce 50-54 wins, and would be able to insure that the Nuggets would make the playoffs without having to worry about it right up to and including the last week of the season. Brown would be a wildcard, and all bets would be off with him, because his success may be mostly due to LeBron James.

PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE

NUGGETS PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
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 by 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 the first of March, but could easily be out for the entire rest of the season.

MAVERICKS PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
Devin Harris: Harris landed awkwardly on a hard drive to the basket early in the fourth quarter. He didn't put any weight on it while being helped to the locker room and he left the arena on crutches.
Jerry Stackhouse: Hamstring injury.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of January 28, 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: 4 points.

3. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 0-12 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 3 points. Yakhouba Diawara should have played more.

4. 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: 10 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.

The damage description assumes that Nuggets opponents are in a GREY ALERT or better status. When the Nuggets play teams that are in yellow alert or worse, the damage they suffer from being in a significant alert status will be substantially reduced. In other words, opponents who are themselves in significant alert situations will obviously be more beatable, even when the Nuggets are in a significant alert situation.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE ALERT STATUS
The injury to Harris was late, so the Mavericks were really dealing with only one injury, the one to Stackhouse. The Nuggets were dealing, unsuccessfully, with 3 major injuries and sicknesses. The Mavericks were in a GREY alert, most likely, whereas the Nuggets were in a RED alert, with a huge gap represented by yellow and orange alerts in between. Life isn’t fair sometimes.

The mid January losses to the Bobcats and the Hawks, and the close calls at home against the Wolves and the Hawks in January, 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. The average alert status of an NBA team at any given time is probably high end GREY or low end YELLOW. So when you reach ORANGE ALERT and especially 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 Mavericks 10
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 7 Mavericks 9

Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 16
Mavericks Non-Starters Points: 32

Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 9
Mavericks Non-Starters Rebounds: 19

Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 5
Mavericks Non-Starters Assists: 8

OBSERVATIONS ON HOW THE RESERVES WERE USED AND PLAYED
As mentioned previously, you play only 7 players against a winning team in the NBA, and you are generally going to lose, it’s really not any more complicated than that. Karl had three other players he could have made the 8th player: Yakhouba Diawara, Steven Hunter, and Von Wafer. Karl has been wildly inconsistent in how he views Diawara, and obviously he isn’t viewing him very highly these days. Hunter and Wafer are examples of the kind of young, inexperienced, and undeveloped players that Karl has no confidence in and tries to ignore, even in practices.

So Karl would not play any of the three and decided to overwork the other 7 players he had on his roster. If Diawara had played at least 12 minutes, it might have provided just enough extra energy to one or more other Nuggets so that they might have been able to make this a photo finish Nuggets win.

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 break 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-MAVERICKS PLAYER RATINGS
Allen Iverson: Game 36.2 Season 40.9
Anthony Carter: Game 33.6 Season 20.9
Marcus Camby: Game 20.0 Season 33.0
Linas Kleiza: Game 17.9 Season 19.5
Eduardo Najera: Game 15.9 Season 13.1
J.R. Smith: Game 15.4 Season 14.5
Kenyon Martin: Game 9.8 Season 22.2

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

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

MAVERICKS PLAYER RATINGS
Dirk Nowitzki: Game 59.8 Season 39.5
Josh Howard: Game 33.9 Season 32.5
Jason Terry: Game 26.1 Season 24.5
DeSagana Diop: Game 22.7 Season 10.9
Brandon Bass: Game 16.4 Season 14.9
Devin Harris: Game 5.8 Season 25.3
Erick Dampier: Game 4.0 Season 16.1
Eddie Jones: Game 4.0 Season 8.6
Trento Hassell: Game 3.4 Season 4.3
Jose Juan Barea: Game -2.5 Season 7.9

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 PLAYER RATINGS:
The Denver front court didn’t really show up in this game; only Kleiza was even close to his average. The only Nugget who was well above normal was Anthony Carter. Ouch.

Quite honestly, Nowitzki destroyed Kenyon Martin in this game. Also showing the dominance of Dallas up front in this game, Diop was much more productive than usual, actually exceeding both Camby and Martin. Oh well, at least Dampier was held in check.

The Devin Harris number is misleading, because he played only 13 minutes due to foul and injury troubles.

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 Superstar Plus-Above Normal Even For Michael Jordan
1.40 1.60 Superstar Performance-A Michael Jordan Type Game
1.20 1.40 Star Plus-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 Terrible Game-Near Disaster
Less 0.25 Total Disaster

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

1. Dirk Nowitzki, Dal 1.759
2. Anthony Carter, Den 0.933
3. Brandon Bass, Dal 0.911
4. Josh Howard, Dal 0.827
5. Allen Iverson, Den 0.823
6. Eduardo Najera, Den 0.795
7. DeSagana Diop, Dal 0.757
8. J.R. Smith, Den 0.733
9. Jason Terry, Dal 0.705
10. Marcus Camby, Den 0.500
11. Linas Kleiza, Den 0.448
12. Devin Harris, Dal 0.446
13. Kenyon Martin, Den 0.272
14. Erick Dampier, Dal 0.250
15. Trenton Hassell, Dal 0.227
16. Eddie Jones, Dal 0.138
17. Jose Juan Barea, Dal -0.313…Barea played only 7 minutes

OBSERVATIONS ON THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Nowitzki by a massive margin was the best player in this game. Nowitzki was a superstar-plus, whereas nobody else was even a star, let alone a superstar. Carter for Denver and Bass for Dallas were outstanding. Iverson for Denver and Howard for Dallas were only very good, which is not truly very good, since they both often do better than that.

The Mavericks had 2 of the 3 players who were outstanding or better, and 3 of the 5 players who were very good or better.

The Mavericks had 5 of the 7 players who were very poor or worse, but this didn’t hurt Dallas much, because they played 10 players whereas Coach Scrooge for the Nuggets played only 7 players. Marcus Camby just barely avoided a very poor rating, but Kleiza did not avoid it. Kenyon Martin, outside his made you miss defending, was terrible in this game.

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.

Linas Kleiza: +3
Allen Iverson: +2
Anthony Carter: -2
Kenyon Martin: -3
Eduardo Najera: -3
J.R. Smith: -7
Marcus Camby: -8

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
Kleiza and Iverson work well together this year, and they were the only Nuggets above water in the plus-minus. You can tell that Martin’s defending was top notch in this game, because otherwise his terrible player rating would have led to a much larger negative number in the plus-minus. On the flip side, J.R. Smith’s number suggests that either his defending was not all that great, or that he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
All Nuggets who played at least 5 minutes are shown. Made you miss defending is not included, hopefully someday soon it will be. The order is from lowest to highest in real player rating.

Turnovers: Total 16, Team 0, Camby 0, Carter 4, Iverson5, Kleiza 3, Martin 2, Najera 0, Smith 2

Personal Fouls: Total 17, Camby 2, Carter 1, Iverson 2, Kleiza 5, Martin 3, Najera 1, Smith 3

Kenyon Martin played 36 minutes and was 4/11 for 8 points, and he made 2 blocks and 2 rebounds.

Linas Kleiza played most of the game, 40 minutes, and was 2/8, 1/2 on 3’s, and 5/8 from the line for 10 points, and he made 9 rebounds, 3 steals, and 1 assist.

Marcus Camby played most of the game, 40 minutes, and was 2/11, 0/1 on 3’s, and 4/4 from the line for 10 points, and he made 12 rebounds and 3 blocks.

J.R. Smith played 21 minutes, and was 5/12 and 2/7 on 3’s for 12 points, and he made 2 rebounds, 1 assist, and 1 steal.

Eduardo Najera played 20 minutes and was 1/2 and 1/1 on 3’s for 3 points, and he made 6 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 steals.

Allen Iverson played for virtually the whole game, 44 minutes, and was 7/17, 0/1 on 3’s, and 9/13 from the line for 23 points, and he made 9 assists, 3 rebounds, and 3 steals.

Anthony Carter played 36 minutes and was 8/14 and 4/6 on 3’s for 20 points, and he made 5 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 steals, and 1 block.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Monday, January 28 in New Orleans to play the Hornets at 6 pm mountain time. The Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights, while the Hornets will not be. Therefore, the Hornets will enjoy both the home court and the extra rest advantages.