The Quest for the Ring Express Version: Denver Nuggets Real Player Ratings as of January 15 2009

The Quest is proud to announce to you that the second major improvement to Real Player Ratings (RPR) in less than half a year is now fully up and running. We are now certain that RPR is the best overall rating system in existence, and that it is now roughly as good as it will ever or can ever be.

I recently developed a statistically valid way to rate the defending of players, that is, what they do to prevent scores other than rebounding, blocks, steals, and fouls, which were always included. Although the technique used had to be indirect and inexact, it validly awards the better defenders with bigger RPR bonuses. It has been validated by comparing results obtained with the defensive ratings shown on three different "advanced basketball statistics" web sites. My results were shown to be highly correlated with the results shown on the other sites. And where there is any difference, I honestly believe mine are better.

Point Guard Chauncey Billups is so far the most valuable Nugget, and by a considerable margin, in the 2008-09 regular season.

DENVER NUGGETS
REAL PLAYER RATINGS
[QUALITY OF PLAYERS]
2008-09 Regular Season
As of Jan. 15, 2009

Chauncey Billups† 0.909
Nene Hilario 0.845
Renaldo Balkman 0.830
Carmelo Anthony 0.821
J.R. Smith 0.787
Chris Andersen 0.763
Kenyon Martin 0.744
Anthony Carter 0.637
Linas Kleiza 0.552
Dahntay Jones 0.455

SCALE FOR REAL PLAYER RATINGS FOR A SEASON
Perfect Player? Is there Such a Thing? 1.000 and more
Historic Super Star 0.950 and more
Super Star 0.850 0.949
A Star Player; An Outstanding, Above Average Starter 0.775 0.849
A Very Good Player; A Solid Starter 0.700 0.774
Major Role Player 0.650 0.699
Role Player 0.600 0.649
Minor Role Player 0.550 0.599
Very Minor or Marginal Role Player 0.500 0.549
Poor Player at This Time 0.450 0.499
Very Poor Player at This Time 0.350 0.449
Extremely Poor Player at This Time / Disaster and less 0.349

Real Player Production (RPP) is the sum of all the good things minus the sum of all the bad things a player has done since the season began. There is no methodology as of yet for adjusting RPP for defending. Therefore, you should, in order to fairly evaluate the following ratings, remember that the better defenders have done more for the team relative to the lessor defenders than the ratings are showing.

DEMVER NUGGETS
REAL PLAYER PRODUCTION
[QUANTITY OF PLAYERS]
2008-09 Regular Season
Through Jan. 15, 2009

Chauncey Billups† 990.75
Nene Hilario 920.10
Carmelo Anthony 793.75
Kenyon Martin 754.20
J.R. Smith 634.45
Anthony Carter 512.90
Linas Kleiza 439.45
Chris Andersen 346.40
Dahntay Jones 255.90
Renaldo Balkman 207.90

CLICK HERE TO REVIEW THE USER GUIDE FOR REAL PLAYER RATINGS BY TEAM, last updated Jan. 13, 2009

Congratulations and respect are due to CHAUNCEY BILLUPS who has been leading the Nuggets in quality basketball so far this season. At the same time, BILLUPS also leads the Nuggets in terms of total net contributions so far this season. So there is clearly only one Nuggets MVP, and that is CHAUNCEY BILLUPS.