Darth Vader Sets out to Destroy The Quest for the Ring, Part Two

If you don't know already from reading this previous Report, George Karl and probably some unknown cronies of his are the Darth Vader of basketball, laugh out loud. Just as in the movies, old Darth can really do some unexpected damage and put a lot of fear into the atmosphere when he gets lucky with one of his diabolical schemes.

As promised in the prequel to this review of the only Quest Report in history to be declared to be in error after publication, we are now going to go over each of the 16 reasons given in that Report for why the Denver Nuggets were supposedly, definitely not going to win any playoff series in 2009. They did win a series, and we actually can see why if we find out that somehow Darth and the Nuggets avoided most of these sixteen things from happening.

The idea from that January 14 Report that turned out to be very wrong was that although not all of the 16 things would go wrong for the Nuggets in the playoffs, enough of them would go wrong that the Nuggets would fail to win a series. Technically, the Nuggets were not supposed to win more than two playoff games; whereas they actually won ten.

Reasons one through six were already covered in Part One. This part features reasons seven through ten, and part three will cover reasons eleven and twelve and will discuss the error one last time and will summarize all of the corrections and also will summarize what does not need to be corrected.

REASON SEVEN WHY THE NUGGETS WERE TO NOT WIN ANY PLAYOFF SERIES

More broadly, Karl is well known for having a total breakdown of communication
and relations with at least one of his players, usually tactlessly and publicly,
during every playoff series he has ever been in. If the player who Karl has the
falling out with is not Smith, it will be someone else. So the opponent will be
doing everything possible to make any developing rift between Karl and one of
the Nuggets worse, so as to literally and perhaps completely remove that Nugget
from the playoffs.

HOW REASON SEVEN PLAYED OUT
This simply didn’t happen. Karl knew this season was his one true coaching success story and he wasn’t going to have a big argument with one of his players to spoil it. Another thing showing that Karl was on his best behavior was that he was more generous with playing time for reserves and for younger players than in God only knows how many years. By contrast, already this year, Coach Karl he has cut back on the amount of playing time available to non-starters from the generous amount that was given last year.

In fairness to Quest, we didn’t think this was among the most likely reasons why the Nuggets would fail to win a playoff series, but we had to include it given Karl’s problematic history in this area.

REASON EIGHT WHY THE NUGGETS WERE TO NOT WIN ANY PLAYOFF SERIES

The Nuggets’ opponent will have patience on offense and will not try to run into
a brick wall by trying to pick up the pace against a team that relies heavily on
very aggressive and energetic defending in general, and especially on aggressive
and energetic man to man defending in the paint in particular. The opponent will
keep the pace measured and use plenty of the 24 second clock. This will wear out
the Nuggets extremely energetic defenders as the game wears on. Stunts and
shortcuts on offense will not work well against a team that uses stunts on
defense.

HOW REASON EIGHT PLAYED OUT
Well this reason did play out as forecast in one sense but not in another. All three of the Nuggets’ playoff opponents kept roughly the same pace they had in the regular season, which was very slow for New Orleans, average for Dallas, and fast pace for Los Angeles. But the reason did not play out insofar as the Nuggets’ defenders hardly ever “wore out”.

In many reports between the end of the Mavericks series and now, I have revised my view by softening my criticism of the 2008-09 Nuggets defense. I have in great detail in previous reports during July-November 2009 explained my new position on the high energy, high aggressiveness, and intentionally high fouling strategy.

Actually, prior to the 2008-09 season, I didn’t have a position, because I had never seen this defensive approach before. It took a long-time veteran coach tired of the same old same old and apparently a wonk or two in the Denver front office to spring this on the unsuspecting basketball world. For a few months during 2008-09, I was naturally against it for all circumstances, but I changed my mind after the Nuggets demonstrated the effectiveness adequately.

There will be other strategies and approaches that are good enough to pick up extra regular season wins and in some cases a few extra playoff wins, but that are not good enough to get into or to win a Championship. The Nuggets had a two-for here, because their primary offensive strategy, fast pace and fast breaks, are another strategy that will give you a few extra regular season wins and possibly an extra playoff win or two, but it will never win you a Ring.

I guess it’s realistic to use these strategies if you know for a fact you can’t win a Ring regardless of using them or not. I personally would not use a strategy or approach such as this if I was in charge, and nor would the majority of coaches and managers, but it can be theoretically justified.

As a brief summary of what we recommend now, I now fully endorse this in certain circumstances: when a team knows it has no chance to win a Ring, when it is not a highly skilled defense, when it has high energy, high motivation, no backing down kind of players, and when on offense it has good fast breaking capability.

You might call this a “building for the future strategy”. The team that uses it will get extra regular season wins from doing this and perhaps, as the Nuggets showed, even some playoff wins it would not otherwise have gotten. No, a team can not win a Ring while doing this barring a once in 300 years miracle, and it’s not the best defensive approach, but it is better than I thought, and if the team is not going to win a Ring anyway, it’s not really a bad defensive scheme.

Referees are simply incapable, unwilling, or both to ramp up their foul calls to the same extent that a team operating a high fouling defense makes the fouls. So the team running this strategy makes some gains “on the margin” when it prevents a score by fouling but the foul is not called. Some additional net gain is made when free throws are missed.

REASON NINE WHY THE NUGGETS WERE TO NOT WIN ANY PLAYOFF SERIES

Stay calm, cool, and collected; do not allow the Nuggets, anyone on the Nuggets,
or the referees to get under your skin. Tune them and their crowd out completely
and don’t worry about them and their rose colored glasses. Go about your
business with laser like focus. Certain teams have lost a game to the Nuggets in
the regular season so far due simply to losing their cool.

HOW REASON NINE PLAYED OUT
Laugh out loud. Chris Paul, the second best player in the NBA during 2008-09, allowed little old Daunte Jones to get under his skin to the point where he was not as effective a point guard as usual. Hornets Coach Byron Scott complained in public that Jones was a dirty player and that the Nuggets were basically playing fast and loose with the rules. The perception that Scott allowed the Nuggets to get under the skin of Chris Paul and also under his own skin most likely was one of the reasons why Scott was subsequently fired by the Hornets. Scott was fired very early in the 2009-10 regular season.

In the next series, not only did the Mavericks, their coaches, their owner, and most of their fans lose their cool to one extent or another due to the Nuggets’ aggressiveness and successful gaming of the referees during the series, but the NBA became worried that the series was going to blow up in some kind of a brawl. The NBA itself lost its cool, laugh out loud. For details, see this Report , especially the last half of that Report. For more than that, simply see other Reports in that series of Reports on the Mavericks-Nuggets series; in total there are nine Reports on that series.

When in game four, under instructions from a worried NBA front office the referees started handing out technical fouls left and right, the Mavericks didn’t realize the trap set up by the Nuggets and the League (who were not in cahoots though) they were walking into, they lost their cool and ended up, ironically, getting more technical and flagrant fouls called against them than the original perpetrators, the Nuggets did. It seems that just as “it’s always the second guy who gets caught,” when players are jostling on the court, I guess its always the second team that gets caught when entire teams are getting extra aggressive toward one another.

So overall, this possible reason why the Nuggets would lose did not really play out.

REASON TEN WHY THE NUGGETS WERE TO NOT WIN ANY PLAYOFF SERIES

The opponent will make sure that their best and hottest jump shooters have
plenty of playing time and that, unlike J.R. Smith and Linas Kleiza, they have
plenty of confidence. The one automatic, easy way to beat the Nuggets is to
simply make your jump shots, or make the free throws if the Nuggets insist on
fouling you as they often do now days. The Nuggets are saying to you: "Ok, we
are going to run around all over and try to confuse your offense, we are going
to run at you all night, we are going to goal tend from time to time, we are
going to foul over and over and over, and we are especially going to man to man
defend you aggressively and well." To which your response is simply: "Fine, have
fun; we'll make our passes, our assists, and our shots, and all of your extra
effort and aggressiveness will not amount to a whole lot of benefit for you." I
repeat for emphasis that you must not forget to make your free throws, because
the Nuggets have actually won at least a couple of regular season games simply
because their opponent could not make enough free throws.

HOW REASON TEN PLAYED OUT
Let’s check what actually happened:

MAVERICKS-NUGGETS SERIES FREE THROWS
Game One: Free throws: Mavericks 9-13, Nuggets 25-36; Fouls Mavericks 29, Nuggets 19
Game Two: Free throws: Mavericks 23-30, Nuggets 31-40; Fouls Mavericks 28, Nuggets 20
Game Three: Free throws: Mavericks 40-49, Nuggets 32-40; Fouls Mavericks 27, Nuggets 34
Game Four: Free throws: Mavericks 36-43, Nuggets 32-44, Fouls Mavericks 29, Nuggets 29
Game Five: Free throws: Mavericks 22-29, Nuggets 17-22; Fouls Mavericks 22, Nuggets 25
Grand Total: Free throws: Mavericks 130-164, Nuggets 137-182; Fouls Mavericks 135 Nuggets 127

The Mavericks made almost 80 percent of their free throws, but the referees were not calling some of the fouls in games one and two in Denver, and nor was Denver making as many fouls as they often did in the regular season.

To their credit, in the Dallas series at least the Nuggets never technically ran a raw intentional fouling defense. It was a modified one;; the Nuggets would only start fouling more or less intentionally if they felt that their energetic and athletic defending was not going to be good enough by itself, and if they felt that the referees would cut them some breaks by not calling a few of the fouls. In games one and two, the Nuggets sensed they didn’t need to foul heavily, but when they went to Dallas for games three and four, it was a different story and the Nuggets clearly intentionally ran a high fouling strategy for those particular games.

The Mavericks made their free throws, but they didn’t get as many free throws as they should have gotten; they should have gotten at least 20 more of them. What about shooting and assisting; did the Mavericks, who did have a well run offense during the regular season, have their shooting and assisting negatively affected by the Nuggets defense or not?

MAVERICKS SHOOTING AND ASSISTING
Game One: Shooting 48.8%, Assists: 17
Game Two: Shooting 47.4%, Assists 23
Game Three: Shooting 40.0%, Assists 15
Game Four: Shooting 50.6%, Assists 17
Game Five: Shooting 51.4%, Assists 23

Series Average per Game: Shooting 47.64%, Assists 19
The Dallas Mavericks’ regular season shooting percentage was 46.2%, so they shot better against Denver than they did on average, so in accordance with this reason the Nuggets way of defending was not able to actually reduce the shooting effectiveness of their opponent.

On the other hand, the Mavericks averaged only 19 assists per game, a very bad number for a playoff team that has sites on winning Rings. During the regular season, the Mavericks made 21.7 assists per game, almost three more than they made against the Nuggets. In the regular, Dallas was 8th in assists, but against Denver, they made assists at rate that would have placed them 29th in the NBA, with only one team, the lowly Memphis Grizzlies, making fewer assists than 19 per game.

What the Mavericks’ assists pattern tells you is that the Nuggets’ unique and controversial high fouling defense did not as you might expect stop a good shooting team from making their shots in playoff games (when they were allowed by the Nuggets to shoot without a foul). But on the other hand, the Mavericks reacted to the high energy, high movement, and high athleticism aspects by passing less, which was absolutely devastating to the Mavericks’ chances to win the series. Had Rick Carlisle demanded that his team not worry so much about turnovers to the Nuggets’ defense, and to pass more and get more assists, they would have been able to be fully competitive in the series, and the result may very well have been a Dallas victory.

I was partly right and partly wrong with this reason. I was right to say that a lot of aggressiveness, fouling, and energy per se will not stop the other team from scoring efficiently. And I am right when I say that that kind of defense will never win you a Ring precisely because it won't reduce scoring percentage. But I was wrong in assuming that that type of defense will not slow down passing and assisting. It may slow down assisting and passing if the team being affected gets scared and starts passing less out of fear of turnovers and fast breaks coming the other way.

There is a crucial lesson here for everyone, especially coaches: never ever fail to monitor your teams’ passing and assisting, and make sure that your team is not so afraid of making turnovers that they cut down their passing and assisting when they encounter any kind of unusually hard charging defense. That is a trap you can fall into if you are not an expert coach. Rather, pay a price of a few more turnovers than usual to maintain your passing and assisting in general. Turnovers are seldom if ever going to spike up so much that you would have been better off half shutting down your passing and assisting. You lose by playing it cautiously and conservatively the way the Mavericks did.

Essentially, the Mavericks fell into the trap that the Nuggets had set: they compromised the quality of their offense (and that quality was the only way they were going to win this series) by cutting down on passing and assisting because they were afraid of turnovers. They thought wrong and were virtually blown out of the series.

Later on, the Lakers faced the same question, and they chose correctly, presumably due to Phil Jackson.

As just described in detail, reason ten partly played out but partly did not play out. It did not play out enough to constitute a substantial reason why the Nuggets might have lost in the playoffs.

The review of the sixteen reasons the Nuggets were going to lose continues and concludes in part three.

THE DARTH VADER OF BASKETBALL

Calculate Exactly How Good Basketball Players Really are at the Much Improved Quest Toolbox

Since May 2009 Quest for the Ring has produced Toolbox, which allows visitors to calculate Real Player and associated ratings for themselves. Our initial application, however, was cumbersome to use and even more cumbersome to improve, so we went in search of improvement. As of January 2010, we have the big improvement we wer looking for. The big breakthrough has arrived and the tools on Toolbox are now state of the art and are now truly easy to use and completely interactive.

Do you have raw data about a basketball player and do you now want to know exactly how good he or she really is? Go to Toolbox, enter the data, see the ratings, and use the evaluation scale to get an excellent idea of how good your player really was in a career, in a season, in part of a season, or in a game.

What follows is the complete "User Guide for Real Player Ratings Calculators on Quest for the Ring Toolbox". This Guide also appears on Quest Reference where all user guides can be found and it also is reprinted in full on the Toolbox Page itself.

INTRODUCTION
Welcome. The Quest for the Ring Toolbox is the only known place on the internet where anyone can rate players by entering game or season performance measurements. Exactly how good players are does not have to be a mystery anymore!

As of January 2010 there are two calculators: one that is intended for multiple games, in other words, for part of or all of an entire season, and one for single games and for small numbers of games. The calculators, using state of the art internet technology, have been embedded onto a web page and made to be fully interactive.

Most of what you can do with any excel file you can do on the calculator that appears in the embedded excel at the Quest for the Ring Toolbox site. In other words, you can quickly calculate ratings right on the web page. If you make a mistake and you don't know how to reverse what you did using Excel, you can simply refresh the page with your browser and start over.

How to use Excel is beyond the scope of this Guide. But even if you know nothing about Excel, you should be able to nevertheless calculate Real Player Ratings and the associated measures using the Toolbox page. You definitely do not need to know much of anything about Excel to be able to calculate Real Player Ratings using the Toolbox Internet page.

If you are well versed in Excel though, you can even change the formula used for calculating Real Player Ratings to one you for whatever reason think is more appropriate.

USE THE TOOL FOR ANY TIME FRAME YOU NEED
Provided you have the correct statistics, you can look at a player's performance for an individual game, for his or her entire career, or for anything in between, such as a season.

USE OF THE TOOL TO COMPARE TEAMS
You can also use the tool to rate and compare entire teams, simply by using the combined measures for all the players. Suppose you have two teams in a League that were considered extremely close, and they play in the Champiionship, and the Championship is decided in overtime. In such a case you might not be convinced that the team that won the Championship was really the better team. To investigate, you could compare the team RPRs of the two teams to try to get at which was really and truly the better team.

One interesting idea for Team RPR is to use combined team RPR (the sum of the player RPRs) to compare the same team from one year to another, which would go a long way towards answering a question that everyone asks all the time but that often no one ever has a very good answer for: which team was better: last year's or this year's?

CUSTOMIZED RATING
To request a custom rating scheme different from the one used in RPR, you can e-mail your request to questforthering at gmail.com.

HOW TO USE A REAL PLAYER RATING CALCULATOR
You need the items shown on the calculators to find out what the Real Player Rating is for one or more players for multiple games or for a single game. You need:

Minutes
Points
3-Point Shots Made
3-Point Shots Attempted
2-Point Shots Made
2-Point Shots Attempted
Free Throws Made
Free Throws Attempted
Offensive Rebounds
Defensive Rebounds
Assists
Steals
Blocks
Turnovers
Personal Fouls
Hidden Defending (Multiple Games Only)

Simply enter all of the items in any order you wish to enter them. When using the multiple games calculator, you enter the totals for all games for each item.

Don’t forget to type the first name initial and the last name of the player(s) you are rating just above the items, where it says "Name of Player >>>>>". Very long names will not entirely fit in the cell but presumably you will know who it is from just most of the name.

When all items have been entered the following will be automatically calculated for you:

Real Player Rating
Real Player Production
Offensive Sub Rating
Defensive Sub Rating

For very detailed and complete information about these four measurements and how and why the ratings are valid and valuable, see the latest User Guide for Real Player Ratings.

SAVING DATA TO YOUR OWN COMPUTER
Although at this time you can not simply save the file (the entire worksheet) to your computer, you can copy and paste the data on the live worksheet on Toolbox into an Excel worksheet of your own. On the Toolbox page, highlight and then right click on data you wish to save. Then click “copy to clipboard.” A small pop-up will appear with the data you highlighted. Right click the data within the pop-up and click copy. Now you can paste that data to your own excel worksheet on your own computer.

Note that you had to copy the data twice. The first time you copy it from the embedded excel that is on Toolbox by highlighting and right clicking “copy to clipboard” and a pop-up appears. (Note that on the first copy, right clicking “copy” will not work; you must right click “copy to clipboard”.) The second time, you copy the highlighted data from a pop-up by right clicking “copy”. Now you can paste to your own Excel worksheet (or to a Word or a Notepad or what have you) on your own computer.

HIDDEN DEFENDING ESTIMATION FOR THE MULTIPLE GAMES CALCULATOR
The hidden defending element is included only on the multiple game calculator. It is the last item on that calculator. It is literally impossible now and for the foreseeable future to in any way, shape, or form include a valid hidden defending adjustment in the calculator for a single game.

For its regular NBA coverage, Quest for the Ring uses a multi-step, statistically valid process to fairly and competitively rate NBA players on their “hidden defending,” which is all actions not recorded by scorekeepers that succeed at preventing scores by the opponent. In the multi-game calculator, however, it is assumed that the extensive data needed to calculate hidden defending ratings the way Quest does it for the NBA is not available. The data you would need to use the Quest system would include the exact number of points scored by the opponent while the player you are rating is on the court, something which is hard or impossible to come by outside of the statistically rich NBA.

However, due to the big need to include hidden defending in ratings that span multiple games up to and including an entire season, the item is included and the following instructions are given for it.

HIDDEN DEFENDING EXPLAINED
The Quest for the Ring Hidden Defending Rating has a scale running from 0 to .307. The ratings follow a “bell curve” statistically. The vast majority of NBA players have ratings between .050 and .260. Only about the the top 2% of all defenders have hidden defending ratings higher than .260. Only about the bottom 2% of all defenders have hidden defending ratings lower than .050. At least 95% (19 out of 20) basketball players have hidden defending ratings between .050 and .260.

In order to incorporate hidden defending into Real Player Ratings and into defensive sub ratings for multiple games, you should use your knowledge of how well the player stops scores using hidden defending actions, which include the following:

--effective man to man defending
--effective rotation / switching on defense, especially off screens and picks
--effective pick and roll defense
--effective defensive recognition
--quickness of defensive reaction
--energy and hustle on defense
--effective taking of charges (causing a driving offensive player to be called for an offensive foul)
--effective hustling after loose balls

You need to make the most reasonable statistical estimate you can make even though you lack hard data. So you simply look at any player you are rating and ask yourself: how good is that player, compared with other players, in the above (and perhaps a small number of other related) actions that prevent the other team from scoring points it would have scored.

THINGS YOU MUST NOT CONSIDER WHEN YOU DO YOUR HIDDEN DEFENDING ESTIMATES
Be careful not to simply rate a player’s defensive or overall style: this is a relatively common mistake that many basketball fans and sometimes coaches make. Managers, though, seldom consider a player’s style when deciding on acquisitions and contracts and that is one of the reasons they are managers. For about the same reason, be careful not to consider a player’s personality when you estimate his hidden defending. Remember, styles and personalities are completely irrelevant: the only thing ultimately relevant is whether and to what extent what the player does on defense prevents what would have been scores from being scores.

You also must not include tracked defensive actions in your estimations:

--Defensive Rebounds
--Steals
--Blocks
--Personal Fouls

These items are known and they are already included in the calculator, so you must not consider these actions when estimating hidden defending. Be warned that there are some players who get a lot of the above but are actually not very good hidden defenders and vice versa: there are some players who don’t make many defensive rebounds, steals, or blocks but are actually very good as far as hidden defending is concerned.

To emphasize, when you estimate how good a player's hidden defending is, do not be biased either for or against players who make a lot of defensive rebounds, blocks, and/or steals.

In fact, players who make a large number of defensive rebounds and blocks often have lower hidden defending ratings than do "defensive specialists" who do not make a truly large number of defensive rebounds and blocks. This makes sense insofar as that it is not automatic or all that easy for players to be extremely good at rebounding and blocking and at for example man to man defending at the same time. To some extent with defending, it is an either/or proposition. Great defenders can be either great rebounders and blockers or alternatively they can be great man to man defenders and defensive recognizers and rotators. Only a small number of great defenders are great at both tracked and hidden defending.

There can be other combinations. For example, there will also be players who are average in rebounding and a little above average in man to man defending. It's just that it would be rare for a player to be an outstanding rebounder, blocker, and man to man defender all at the same time.

And obviously, you should avoid bias for or against good offensive players. Quite honestly, how well or how bad a spcific player is on offense has almost nothing to do with how well or bad that player is on defense, allthough broadly speaking across the whole universe of players there is some degree of correlation.

CORRECT WAY TO DO A HIDDEN DEFENDING ESTIMATE
What you want is your best estimate of the combined effect of the quantity and the quality of the player’s hidden defending actions. Both the quantity and the quality must be considered, not just one or the other. The best defenders use high quality hidden defending most of the time. Defenders who are just “ok” will be for example high quality hidden defenders but they are too lazy or whatever to show the high quality very often. Other defenders who are just “ok” will be players who try hard most of the time but they simply don’t at this time have the skills needed for high quality hidden defending. The higher the quality of the defending, the more often it will turn what would have been scores into stops.

The most important thing, of course, is to be objective and fair, which is really saying about the same thing with two different words. To sum this up in one sentence, you have to judge how good a player is, relative to other players, in terms of the quantity and the quality of his hidden defending.

Once you have in your head how good the player is relative to all other players, use the following to give that player a hidden defending rating. The first percentage shown on each of the following lines is how the player stacks up to all other players with respect to hidden defending:

HIDDEN DEFENDING ESTIMATION SCALE
1% > better than 99% of other players: .285 to .305
2% > better than 98% of other players: .260 to .280
5% > better than 95% of other players: .250 to .255
10% > better than 90% of other players: about 245
20% > better than 80% of other players: about .230
30% > better than 70% of other players: about .205
40% > better than 60% of other players: about .175
50% > better than 50% of other players: about .140
60% > better than 40% of other players: about .110
70% > better than 30% of other players: about .85
80% > better than 20% of other players: about .65
90% > better than 10% of other players: about .55
95% > better than 5% of other players: about .50
98% > better than 2% of other players: .25 to .40
99% > better than 1% of other players: 0 to .20

If you are estimating more than one player, when you are done, review your estimates by making sure that your players rank according to who really is better and who is worse with respect to hidden defending.

Theoretically, a player who never changes any shots from makes to misses would have a hidden defending rating of as low as .000. But even most of the "bad defensive players" in terms of "made them miss" defending, via untracked actions will generally have hidden defending ratings of between about .050 and .070. Exactly in the middle players in terms of hidden defending will have hidden defending ratings of between .130 to .150. And the best defensive players in terms of hidden defending will generally have hidden defending ratings of between .240 and .260, although the absolute best such players can theoretically deserve a rating of up to .305.

EVALUATION OF YOUR RATINGS
Just below the ratings you will see an evaluation scale. Note that the scale for multiple games is different from the scale for single games. In just a single game or a small number of games, since players’ ratings will be more variable (due to, in effect, a small sample size) the range of the single game scale is a little bigger.

Actually, the multiple games scale should not be used unless the player’s minutes are 150 or more. For player minutes less than 150, use the single game scale, which should and probably will be relabeled at some time in the future: it will probably be relabeled “Evaluation Scale for Player Minutes Less Than 150”.

The evaluation scale uses terms that the vast majority of basketball fans, coaches, and managers understand as important descriptions of just how valuable the player is to the team and also the role of the player. See the User Guide for Real Player Ratings for detailed information about how to evaluate the ratings, and also for cautions about using the Ratings.

As the main User Guide will inform you, although Real Player Ratings are very valid and valuable, there are nevertheless reasons why they are not perfect and why they can not be the final word on basketball players. See the cautions section of the User Guide for complete details on this subject.

George Karl is Losing Home Court Advantage due to not Defending the Paint

One of the many elements of last year’s storybook season for the Nuggets was their having home court advantage in the first two rounds of the playoffs. That came as a result of, among other things, a whole lot of intensity and energy on defense, unusual generosity toward non-starters by George Karl, and also as a result of a large amount of luck: more lucky wins than anyone and getting the playoff seeding tie breaker.

Most seasons are not storybook seasons unless you are the Celtics, the Lakers, or the Spurs and hell, even those franchises have numerous rotten seasons in their histories to go along with all the storybook ones. So you have to treasure every storybook season you have and you have to pay close attention to the prerequisites for that kind of good memories season.

One of the main dividing lines between whether the season of an NBA team is a storybook one or not is whether the team was good enough to get home court advantage for at least round one of the playoffs, preferably for the first two rounds. Having home court in round one is a very basic requirement for both the team and of course for the fans. Strictly speaking, the road teams in round one generally don’t deserve to be in the playoffs at all. The NBA qualifies 16 out of its 30 teams for the playoffs every year, whereas in the good old days 8 teams making the playoffs in a League with 30 teams would have been regarded as enough. Even today the National Football League is more restrictive: only 12 out of 32 teams make the playoffs in the NFL.

But the NBA is never going to get rid of its 16 teams in the playoffs format because it is a good money maker and also because having the road team knock off the home team in round one (before things get serious in the playoffs saga and before the TV ratings get really high) is a very good way to quickly put an otherwise very good team that has been devastated by injuries during the season out of it’s misery and off the live games on TV schedules. (Trust me and the League, you don’t want to see the Portland Trailblazers with no Joel Przybilla and no Greg Oden play the Lakers in the West final this year). So think of round one as the injury wash out round, although if a major contender has big injury problems it will often not be washed out until round two. For example, the Celtics with no Kevin Garnett squeaked by the Chicago Bulls in round one but lost to the Orlando Magic in round two despite heroics form Rajon Rondo in 2009.

Anyway, it’s time to get back to that team that I am obsessed with because their coach drives me up the wall and yet the team is very dangerous to the Lakers again this year because it has skills, especially offensive ones, coming out of the woodwork due to unbelievably nice (lucky?) pickups from teams that were somehow willing to let some of their best players go for next to nothing: the Denver Nuggets. (Why did the Bulls give up J.R. Smith for very little; why did the Hornets give up Chris Andersen for next to nothing, and why did the Timberwolves give up Ty Lawson for little or nothing?)

Ok, now what’s up with the Nuggets? Well, you have to first keep in mind that they are as I said overloaded with offensive talent. For example, the Nuggets have even moved a little above the average 3-point shooting percentage for the first time in many years despite the fact that J.R. Smith is not shooting them as well as he did in prior years. But overall the Nuggets remain below average in this very important playoff factor, because they are still short one good 3-point shooter (they need another forward or center who can make threes) and the 3-point shooters they do have are discouraged by Nuggets coaches from putting up a good number of threes.

The next thing you have to understand is that the Nuggets are unexpectedly going back to their traditional poor defensive strategy and are in fact tanking with respect to defending in general and especially with respect to defending the paint. See this Report for the details about how the Nuggets are falling short defensively this year.

I stated in that Report that if expert paint defender Renaldo Balkman (.808 Real Player Rating in 2008-09, slightly higher than Kenyon Martin) was not given more playing time that the Nuggets were going to be hurt more and more as time went by and, sure enough, that is what is happening as more and more teams discover the Nuggets are no longer a lock down paint defending team. The Nuggets are only 4-6 in their last ten games.

The main reason I did this Report, which I am trying to keep relatively short and sweet (good luck with that, laugh out loud) is to emphasize what I already reported and to tell you that it is a 100% certainty that George Karl is blowing games by not playing Balkman.

Just to name two obvious examples, had Balkman played 20 minutes or more, the Nuggets could easily have defeated the 76’ers in Denver on January 3 (instead of losing to them by three) and they could have easily defeated the Kings in Sacramento on January 9 (instead of losing to them by two) By losing these and a few other clearly winnable games, Karl with his refusal to play Balkman at any cost is setting up for the Nuggets to not have home court advantage in the playoffs, not even in round one. So Karl is spoiling the Nuggets’ opportunity to have the second storybook season in a row, regardless of whether they can win a Ring or not.

Now you probably know there are two guard positions and three front court positions (two forwards and a center) in basketball. Obviously, the front court players are always taller than the back court players because they can use their height to greater advantage in those positions whereas guards can use their speed, passing, and ball handling to greater advantage in the back court. Guards are simply too short and not bulky enough to be good paint defenders and when defending they generally remain out of the paint guarding other guards unless the player they are guarding drives into the paint.

Regardless of what specific strategies and tactics you are following on defense, if you don’t have the right players with the right physical characteristics in the right positions, you are not going to be very successful in stopping the other team from scoring. What’s more, you absolutely must as you rotate players in and out of games make sure that in every lineup that is out that you do not make the blunder of failing to balance the back court and the front court. And you have to maintain some kind of balance between guards and the taller front court players for the game as a whole. If you over play guards and under play forwards and centers, your defending will be inferior to what it needs to be. If you over play forwards and centers and underplay guards, your offense will usually simply not score enough points.

As we now go more specific, we’ll first remind you that the small forward position lies between the big man positions of power forward and center and the two guard positions (point guard and shooting guard.) There are 48 minutes in a game, so there are 5 X 48 = 240 player minutes that the coach is responsible for allocating. If the 240 minutes were exactly allocated, the big men (the power forwards and centers) would total 2 X 48 = 96 player minutes, the guards would also total 2 X 48 = 96 player minutes, and the small forward slot in the middle would have 1 X 48 = 48 player minutes.

Now let’s see how George Karl allocated playing time when he and his much more talented and harder working on defense Nuggets blew their game in Sacramento on January 9:

NUGGETS PLAYING TIME VERSUS SACRAMENTO ON JANUARY 9 2010
BIG MEN: Power Forwards and Centers:
Kenyon Martin: 37 minutes
Nene: 37 minutes
Chris Andersen: 22 minutes
TOTAL: 96 MINUTES versus 96 minutes standard

IN THE MIDDLE: Small Forward
No One: 0 minutes
TOTAL: 0 MINUTES versus 48 minutes standard

GUARDS: Point Guards and Shooting Guards
Joey Graham: 19 minutes
Aaron Afflalo: 26 minutes
Chauncey Billups: 39 minutes
J.R. Smith: 37 minutes
Anthony Carter 24 minutes
TOTAL: 145 MINUTES versus 96 minutes standard

Ok, so now you can easily see how Karl blew this game.

Karl had small forward (the position in between the two categories that need to be closely balanced that you see above) superstar Carmelo Anthony out due to a knee contusion. You can argue that technically Melo is the only small forward on the team. (Although this is definitely not a good thing, it is not necessarily gross mismanagement by the Nuggets’ general managers, because Melo plays most of every game, because Melo is a superstar and the Nuggets are ruined without him, and because you can usually slide either a shooting guard or a power forward into the small forward slot and usually not suffer too much damage. While I am not saying that the Nuggets didn’t make a mistake by not having a bona fide small forward to back up Carmelo Anthony, I am not on the other hand claiming it is some huge blunder. I’d say it was a small to at most moderate mistake.

But guess what? Karl is screwing up again, you ask? Bingo, how did you know? Laugh out loud. No, seriously, Renaldo Balkman at 6 feet 8 inches is classified as a power forward, but he can easily be considered to be holding down the small forward position if the need arises. Were he not a defensive specialist type of power forward, Balkman could be a full scale PF/SF, as are other players who are 80 inches tall. Whereas those who are an inch or two taller are much more often exclusively power forwards or they can be power forwards / centers.

I said that Balkman can be small forward if the need arises. Well, having small forward Carmelo Anthony out with a knee contusion is the need arising to put it mildly. Yet Karl was oblivious to the obvious need to play Balkman.

So now we have caught George Karl blowing a game through what amounts to gross negligence. This has gone beyond coaching discretion: no rational coach would fail to play Renaldo Balkman in games where Carmelo Anthony is not playing at all. Karl has in Balkman one of the best young paint defenders and a very good rebounder, two qualities the Nuggets are badly in need of and will be even more in need of in the playoffs. Balkman established himself as a high quality paint defender both last year when Karl was unusually generous with playing time for non-starting forwards and in a prior sting with the New York Knicks.

Not only that, but Balkman can be a small forward for a team that has no small forwards when Carmelo Anthony is out due to injury. The need for Balkman to play has become overwhelming to the point where it is gross negligence not to play him. But instead of providing his team with paint defending, rebounding, a small forward, and balance between forwards and guards, Karl trashed all of those things and gave every single “Carl Anthony minute” allocated to the small forward position to his guards.

So there are really two gross errors here. The first is that Balkman was not put in to fill the gaping hole at small forward. The other gross error was giving every last small forward minute to guards. Had Karl better split the small forward minutes between the guards and the big men, he most likely would have defeated the Sacramento Kings on January 9 even without Balkman.

Looking at number of players, first be informed that Karl typically plays just eight players in games whereas top coaches typically play nine (and sometimes ten). In the Sacramento loss you had Karl playing five guards and three forwards and centers. Whereas the top coaches more often play 4 guards and 5 forwards and centers than they do 5 guards and 4 forwards and centers. Karl was short at least one forward or center and arguably he was short two forwards or centers.

With regard to specific guards that Karl insists on playing: it is obvious that Renaldo Balkman would be more important to the Nuggets winning both regular season and playoff games than would 2-guard Joey Graham and 1-guard Anthony Carter. Aaron Afflalo is working out great for the Nuggets, and obviously Chauncey Billups and J.R. Smith are your bread and butter. But to be cavalierly playing Graham and/or Carter over Balkman is a gross error.

Somehow, George Karl thinks that dedicated and fast guards can overcome the huge defensive liabilities you have when you are starved for long players up front. This is not true both in the regular season and in the playoffs. I don’t care how good your guards are, you can’t easily win basketball games when you have too many of them and when as a result you put a big sign up in your paint: “Come on in, we are keeping the paint open early and late for your scoring convenience”.

Don't Miss These Regular Season Games That Preview the 2010 Playoffs

Alright you basketball animals, here we have something really convenient and useful: the schedule for the rest of the regular season with all the playoff preview games among the top teams highlighted. Games between any of the major contenders, wild card contenders, and long shot contenders are highlighted in the schedule that follows.

This is the state of the art way to quickly see what the best games of the coming days, weeks, and months are. Plan accordingly. Make sure you clear your schedule for those games in yellow. The swag is on for those games.

Sorry to Trailblazers, Heat, Rockets, and Jazz fans; none of your games are highlighted. You have decent teams, and you are close to being long shot contenders, but you do not quite qualify to be that this year. The Porland Trailblazers are heavily damaged by injuries. The Miami Heat are missing at least one key offensive player to go along with Dywane Wade and one key defensive player to go with Udonis Haslem and Jermaine O'Neal. The Houston Rockets are extremely well coached, but they, like Miami, need a key offensive player and a key defensive player to be able to contend. The Utah Jazz are a bad road team and a bad 3-point shooting team, and no offense to one of the greatest coaches of all time, but I do honestly believe that the Jazz need some new coaches.

First the list of the contenders and then the regular season schedule with games among the contenders highlighted.

CURRENT MAJOR CONTENDERS
Los Angeles Lakers--Quest Specialization
Cleveland Cavaliers--Quest Specialization
Boston Celtics

CURRENT WILD CARD CONTENDERS
Orlando Magic
Dallas Mavericks
Atlanta Hawks

CURRENT LONG SHOT CONTENDERS
Denver Nuggets
San Antonio Spurs
Phoenix Suns