Return of Nuggets 1: Forum Comments From Late March 2008, Part 2

Forum commentary I did from March 2008 through July 2008, when I didn't have time to do the detailed and extensive reports I like to do, is being posted in early October, 2008. The primary themes are how the Nuggets are blowing a great (and expensive!) opportunity to play the game of basketball in such a way that respects the sport and that takes as much advantage as possible of who they have on the roster. The 2006-09 Nuggets have turned out to be an excellent case study of how not to run a basketball team; many things you should not do if you are a basketball manager or coach can be identified from what the Nuggets actually did during these years.

In these comments, do not look for the usual huge amount of detail and proof that you see in the ordinary releases here at Nuggets 1. Some of this is more like everyday conversation than like top quality sports writing. On the other hand, some of the comments do include some detailed reasoning and proof that I pride myself on in the primary reports I release.
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LATE MARCH 2008 FORUM COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NUGGETS, ESPECIALLY ABOUT THEIR MISTAKES

You want a staff that is smart and tough, but that never forgets that sports is just a game and that if your penalties are too big, you've just defeated the purpose of being smart and tough. The amount of time that players are benched after they have messed up should be measured in minutes or quarters, not in games.

I hope the next staff never tries to measure individual players or the team as a whole on psychological or morality scales. Saying that J.R. Smith has an immature personality is kind of obvious, and doesn't help to win a basketball game. Do you think, for ezample, that Don Nelson gives much of a damn whether his player's personalities are competitive with the personalities found on other teams? He probably literally could not care less.

These things may be important in the real world but, like it or not, these things are not very important in sports. We need a coaching staff that is almost all basketball all the time so to speak.

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The Nuggets had the guard positions reversed from the usual pattern. In the great majority of well run offenses, the point guard dominates the shooting guard in assisting. For the Pistons, the SG Hamilton made only 3 assists in this game, an almost insignificant number compared to Billups and Stuckey, who are both point guards. So Hamilton, along with both forwards and the center, were concentrating on scoring most of the time, and went for only obvious assists. Meanwhile, the Nuggets failed to win the game with their opposite approach. They had their shooting guard, Allen Iverson, make far more assists than their point guard, Anthony Carter, did. Carter is not an aggressive scorer, although he is a more efficient scorer this season than expected. But since you can’t possibly get the quantity of scoring you need to win a game from Carter, the Nuggets were, as usual, relying on Iverson for scoring too.

To make this even clearer, while the Pistons were relying on Richard Hamilton for scoring and on mostly Chauncey Billups for playmaking, the Nuggets were relying mostly on Allen Iverson for scoring and on mostly Allen Iverson for playmaking. Even someone in high school can probably understand that the team that relies on two specialized players to get two jobs done has the better chance of winning over a team that relies on just one player to get the two jobs done. Although Iverson/Carter made 15 assists while Billups/Hamilton made 13, Iverson/Carter scored 25 points while Billups/Hamilton scored 38. So the Billups/Hamilton combination was better than the Iverson/Carter combination. Had the Iverson/J.R. Smith combination been the relevant comparison, the game could have turned out differently.

The bottom line is that the Pistons out managed the Nuggets at their own type of game. They made more total assists, they had a slightly better playmaking identity, and they had the guards set up in the way that is most commonly successful, whereas the Nuggets were using the more unusual and generally less successful shooting guard as playmaker approach.

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Plan A: Get a new coaching staff for 2008-09.
Plan B: Make the owner and front office look so bad by not getting a new coaching staff for 2008-09 that they are forced to get a new coaching staff for 2009-10.

Plan A is so much better. One problem with Plan B is that the Nuggets might not be worth quality coaching by then.

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Is Atkins going to play or not and if not why not? He had about 4 great games and then he disappeared from the rotation.

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Great game, Nuggets. I admit I post more when the Nuggets lose, but this proves I post when the Nuggets win too.

But where the hell was Atkins??? Did he get smashed in NYC last night?

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I may not have enough time to fully monitor this thread, so I might not be around right away when someone comes up with some bizarre reason why the evidence is faulty.

http://www.nba.com/statistics/lenovo/len....=9&team=Nuggets

Starting from the top, you can look for the first combination you find which is two guards. The first one, sure enoiugh, is the Allen Iverson / J.R. Smith combination. There have been 1,671 points scored and 1,535 points given up with this lineup on the court. So the +/- is +136.

Near the bottom of this first page of 2-player combinations, you come to the Anthony Carter / Allen Iverson combination. While those two players have been on the court, the Nuggets have scored 3,180 points and given up 3,148 points, so the +/- is +32.

Now look at the per time plus minuses. The Allen Iverson / J.R. Smith combination, for every minute it is on the court, has on average given the Nuggets an advantage of .159 points. So for every 10 minutes, the Nuggets have outscored their opponents by 1.59 points with the Iverson / Smith combination. For every 30 minutes, the Nuggets outscore their opponents by 4.77 points with the Iverson / Smith combination.

For the Anthony Carter / Allen Iverson combination, for every minute it is on the court the Nuggets outscore their opponents by .022. So for every 10 minutes, the Nuggets have outscored their opponents by 0.22 points with the Carter / Iverson combination. For every 30 minutes, the Nuggets outscore their opponents by 0.66 points with the Carter / Iverson combination, about 2/3 of a point.

The bottom line is that for every 30 minutes, the Nuggets have the following fates, on average:

Allen Iverson / J.R. Smith in the backcourt 30 minutes: Denver outscores it's opponent by 4.77 points.
Anthony Carter / Allen Iverson in the backcourt 30 minutes: Denver outscores it's opponents by 0.66 points.

The Iverson / Smith combination gives the Nuggets a little more than 4 more points of advantage over the opponents than does the Carter / Iverson combination. The Carter / Iverson combination gives the Nuggets only a very weak advantage, on average, over opponents.

So you obviously want a lot more minutes of the Iverson / Smith combination, and a lot fewer minutes of the Carter / Iverson combination. Let's check to see how many minutes have actually been given to these combinations:

Iverson / Smith: 800 minutes
Carter / Iverson: 1414 minutes

Ouch, it's roughly backwards from what it's supposed to be.

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Ai, K-Mart, JR, Melo get it done in one of the best games of the year.

Now the Lakers beating the Warriors tonight would be great.

Warriors at Nuggets this weekend for the 8th seed.

I want to see the Nuggets bounced in the 1st round rather than not be in the playoffs at all, because I don't think GK is going to retire either way. So let them get in and be bounced by the Lakers!

Go Nuggets!

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The Mavs are in deep now. I don't see how the Mavs can possibly win in Denver this week.