EDITORIAL ADVISORY
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 sixteen 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. Reasons seven through ten were covered in Part Two. This part, part three will cover reasons eleven through sixteen. A summary and conclusion for the incident of the incorrect Report will be in a Part Four. In that part, the error will be reviewed one last time and we will summarize all of the corrections and all of the measures taken so that nothing of this sort ever happens again.
Later, another companion series, consisting of either two or three parts, will look at the same sixteen factors and see if they caused the Nuggets loss to the best team of the West in 2009: the Lakers.
INTRODUCTION
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.
REASON ELEVEN WHY THE NUGGETS WERE TO NOT WIN ANY PLAYOFF SERIES
The opponent will overweight three point shooting even more so than is ordinarily the case in the playoffs. Do not expect you can beat the Nuggets without bothering with a three point game anymore. You can’t do that anymore both because the Nuggets are more aggressively defending the paint than in recent years and because the Nuggets themselves now have a three point game for the first time in many years, although it is too early to say whether they will still have a good three point game in the playoffs.
HOW REASON ELEVEN PLAYED OUT
Well, of course we check the Mavericks’ three pointers:
MAVERICKS THREES
Game One: 6/18: 33.3%
Game Two: 8/23: 34.8%
Game Three: 5/15: 33.3%
Game Four: 3/14: 21.4%
Game Five: 12/34: 35.3%
Series Overall: 34/104: 32.7%
Series Overall per Game: 6.8/20.8
This reason did not at all play out; Dallas was a very bad three-point shooting team in this series. The teams that can win rings are usually going to be in the high 30’s in terms of percentage of threes made. But in the regular season, the Mavericks shot exactly 35% from 3-point land, and there were only five teams that were worse than this.
The absolute minimum made threes percentage to stand a chance in a playoff series is probably about 35%. You need to make at least 38% of threes to make the three a weapon for winning a series and you need to make at least 40% of threes to make the three a big factor in your winning. When you are not a good 3-point shooting team, you are more disadvantaged in the playoffs than in the regular due to the ramped up paint defense in the playoffs.
Although the Mavericks allowed the Nuggets way of defending to shake their confidence and concentration enough so that they missed some threes that they normally would make, do not forget that overall the Mavericks had a good shooting percentage during the series. I guess this shows you that a team must be especially confident and loose to be able to make a lot of threes. When the going gets tough, it is probably time to scale back the 3-point shooting.
How about the Nuggets, though?
NUGGETS THREES
Game One: 4/12: 33.3%
Game Two: 8/28: 28.6%
Game Three: 6/15: 40.0%
Game Four: 9/21: 42.9%
Game Five: 11/26: 42.3%
Series Overall: 38/102: 37.3%
Series Overall per Game: 7.6/20.4
So there you have it, the Nuggets achieved the rock bottom minimum 35% while the Mavericks did not. The Nuggets did this with one hand tied behind their backs, since they had only three three-point shooters compared with the usual four or five on a playoff team. There was just Chauncey Billups, J.R. Smith, and Carmelo Anthony, who established a decent 3-point shot in 2008-09 for more or less the first time in his career.
Neither the Nuggets nor the Mavericks had enough good long shooters to make the tree a major weapon, but the Nuggets unlike the Mavericks avoided bad shooting from beyond the arc.
REASON TWELVE WHY THE NUGGETS WERE TO NOT WIN ANY PLAYOFF SERIES
The opponent will pass, pass, and pass some more, and get as many assists as they possibly can. The opponent will maintain its playmaking identity, meaning that the top two playmaking guards will be responsible for making at least 11-12 assists per game. Beating the Nuggets’ style of defending with effective playmaking is the easiest and most sure way of defeating them. The Nuggets amazing defensive enthusiasm and aggressiveness will melt in proportion to how well you beat them with effective passing and assisting.
HOW REASON TWELVE PLAYED OUT
We already saw in reason 10 that although the Mavericks shot well in the series, their passing game and assisting was lousy. So the scenario in this possible reason failed to happen.
Let’s check the playmaking identity, which concentrates on quality assists that are made mostly by playmakers: point guards and 2-guards who can make quality assists.
MAVERICKS’ PLAYMAKING IDENTITY
Game One: 17 assists in total; 8 playmaker assists
Game Two: 23 assists in total; 13 playmaker assists
Game Three: 15 assists in total; 7 playmaker assists
Game Four: 17 assists in total; 9 playmaker assists
Game Five: 23 assists in total: 10 playmaker assists
A true high quality offense makes at least 22 assists per game and 11 or more playmaker assists per game. The absolute minimal requirement to win the Quest in most cases is 21 assists or more per game and 10 or more playmaker assists per game. As you can see, the Mavericks had a high quality offense in just one game: game two. That was the game, you might recall, in which the Mavericks were down by just 3 points going into the fourth quarter, but then the Mavericks ran a very small lineup for much of the first half of the fourth quarter, which allowed the Nuggets to go on a devastating 16-2 run.
Notice that in game five, they were very close to a true high quality offense, but the series was considered a foregone conclusion before this game tipped, and both teams were playing looser, so it’s dubious to read too much into what happened in this game. In games one, three, and four, not only did the Mavericks not qualify as a true high quality offense, they didn’t even come close to the minimum assist and playmaker assist requirements to be in contention for a Ring in any of those three games.
As described in the previous reason, the Mavericks’ were intimidated by the Nuggets’ defense and by the fear of making a lot of turnovers into making the blunder of cutting back on their passing and assisting. The Mavericks’ coaches failed to motivate the Mavericks to not be so afraid of turnovers and to maintain enough passing and assisting so that they would not become too easy to defend and so they would stay in the flow of their offense.
Turnovers are basically the flip side of assists so let’s take the opportunity to check out them. The typical average turnovers per game for an NBA team are about 13.75. The Mavericks had 68 turnovers in the five games of the series: just 13.6 per game. But 20 of those turnovers were in game one, after which the Mavericks were intimidated, and they shot themselves in the foot by cutting back on ball movement and assisting. In the other four games, the Mavericks made only 12 turnovers per game, which was actually too low given how good the Nuggets were in forcing turnovers. The Mavericks sacrificed most of the extra quality in their offense just so they could make sure the Nuggets did not force a lot of turnovers off of them: a very poor deal. They overreacted to all the turnovers that occurred in game one. They pulled in their horns and hurt themselves badly by being too obsessed with “protecting the ball”.
On the whole, reason twelve did not become a reality.
REASON THIRTEEN WHY THE NUGGETS WERE TO NOT WIN ANY PLAYOFF SERIES
The opponent will try like heck to pass especially to anyone who can slip in behind the defense baseline and get the easy layup or dunk. This will cause the Nuggets to lose some of their aggressiveness even more quickly than will passing in general. Make sure your fastest, most elusive offensive players get plenty of playing time. The Nuggets can not foul or aggressively defend who they can not keep up with.
HOW REASON THIRTEEN PLAYED OUT
Unfortunately if you wanted the Nuggets to lose, the Mavericks had only one player who was able to sometimes escape the clutches of the Nuggets defense by being lightning quick: the small point guard Jose Juan Barea. Although Barea had a couple of great games, even he was shut down by the Nuggets in two other games.
Point guard Jason Kidd was relatively hobbled by the Nuggets defense. Eric Dampier had a nightmare of a series at center. 2-guard Jason Terry never got untracked and in any event is not quite a slashing enough type of guard to be the type of player I was thinking of for reason 13.
Josh Howard might have been the player who could have made reason 13 come true, but he was semi-injured and had a horrible series. Howard had only one good game: number four.
The only player who had a good series and who was hardly affected at all by the Nuggets’ schemes was, you probably already know, Dirk Nowitzki. If only Nowitzki and / or Coach Rick Carlisle had been able to rally the troops and get them to take their cue from Nowitzki’s fearlessness in the face of the Nuggets’ fearsome defense. Despite losing the series, the fact that Nowitzki was not in the least intimidated by the Nuggets speaks very well of his chances for eventually winning the Quest for the Ring.
REASON FOURTEEN WHY THE NUGGETS WERE TO NOT WIN ANY PLAYOFF SERIES
The opponent will not allow the Nuggets to rack up a huge advantage in free throw shooting. The Nuggets have been winning regular season games in part by becoming one of the best teams in the League at drawing fouls. Players on the opponent will be told to defend as well as possible, but to be careful about fouling, especially in the 1st half. The only exceptions to the try to go light on the fouling rule will be Chauncey Billups, Nene, and perhaps J.R. Smith, as previously discussed. Otherwise, see if previously unknown players such as Chris Andersen and Dahntay Jones can actually put the ball in the bucket instead of being bailed out by the refs all the time.
HOW REASON FOURTEEN PLAYED OUT
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 had 164 free throws and the Nuggets had 182, certainly a large advantage for the Nuggets but not huge. If you don’t count game five though (and the series was all but decided in four games) the Mavericks had 135 free throws and the Nuggets had 170, and that difference of 35 extra free throws is in fact huge.
The 2008-09 Nuggets will always be remembered as one of the greatest teams in history at drawing fouls. At the same time, the Mavericks’ defense was simply not good enough to defend the fast breaking and hard charging Nuggets without fouling too much. Later on, we shall see whether the Lakers were afflicted with the same problem the Mavericks had. I doubt they were, but we will find out.
As you can see, reason fourteen did not play out at all.
REASON FIFTEEN WHY THE NUGGETS WERE TO NOT WIN ANY PLAYOFF SERIES
The opponent will not make the mistake of losing track of players that no one ever heard of before such as Chris Andersen and Renaldo Balkman, who have been far, far better than anyone would have expected in the regular season so far. Players such as these can not defeat you as long as you don’t ignore them and lose track of them half the time. Just respect them, put decent defenders on them, and go at them offensively repeatedly, and they will be generally out of the way as a potential playoff series problem.
HOW REASON FIFTEEN PLAYED OUT
CHRIS ANDERSEN REAL PLAYER RATINGS AND +/- IN THE SERIES
Game One: 1.021 (historic super star) and plus minus of +28
Game Two: .864 (star player; well above normal starter) and plus minus of +24
Game Three: .397 (marginal role player) and plus minus of -1
Game Four: Did not play, injury or sick
Game Five: .410 (marginal role player) and plus minus of -5
RENALDO BALKMAN REAL PLAYER RATINGS AND +/- IN THE SERIES
Game One: Did not play, coach’s decision
Game Two: Did not play, coach’s decision
Game Three: Did not play, coach’s decision
Game Four: Did not play, coach’s decision
Game Five: Did not play, coach’s decision
The plus minus tells you how the score changed while the player was on the court. It is not really statistically valid and we very seldom use it, but since defending not kept track of by scorekeepers (which we call hidden defending) can not be calculated with our hidden defending adjustment system for an individual game the only thing available is the plus-minus. The plus minus will often but not always be a rough approximation for how well the player defended in a single game.
So you can see reason fifteen was a split decision. The Mavericks did not fail to keep track of Chris Andersen in games three in Dallas or in game five. But it was basically too late in game five so it was really just one game that the Mavs had Andersen under control. Andersen utterly decimated the Mavericks in both games one and two. In game one, Andersen was a full scale historical super star with a staggering +28 plus minus, which means he was totally the opposite of under control. He helped destroy the Mavericks in those first two games.
The Mavericks had no answer for Andersen, and you seldom have to use that expression for a non-starter. The Mavericks had to be aware that Andersen was a great player, but they underestimated how aggressive and explosive he could be if not treated as a star starter. Had the Mavericks treated Chris Andersen as if he was a high grade starter, they might have been able to steal one of the first two games in Denver and go on from there.
George Karl took care of the threat posed to the unsuspecting Mavericks by Renaldo Balkman by refusing to play him even though Balkman was virtually a star in 780 minutes during the regular season. It is interesting to note that in the current 2009-10 season, the fact that Balkman has not really played at all is considered the number one reason why the Nuggets are unlikely to defeat the Lakers in the 2010 West final (assuming both teams make it to there as currently expected).
Between Andersen and Balkman there were only two games when one of them was out of control (Andersen in games one and two). But Andersen was so far out of control that the Mavericks were badly hammered by Andersen and so reason fifteen did not play out as anticipated.
REASON SIXTEEN WHY THE NUGGETS WERE TO NOT WIN ANY PLAYOFF SERIES
The opponent will win one or more playoff games due to good offensive rebounding. Following the loss of Marcus Camby, the Nuggets have become vulnerable to extra aggressive offensive rebounding.
HOW REASON SIXTEEN PLAYED OUT
MAVERICKS / NUGGETS OFFENSIVE REBOUNDING IN THE SERIES
Game One: 10 / 5
Game Two: 9 / 12
Game Three: 11 / 13
Game Four: 9 / 6
Game Five: 9 / 12
SERIES TOTAL: 48 / 48
Per Game: 9.6 / 9.6
For offensive rebounding, the scale for it varies according to how many missed shots are available in a game, but in many games the gold standard is 12 or more offensive rebounds and the usual minimum below which you can say the team had poor offensive rebounding is 10. As you can see, the Mavericks did not have great offensive rebounding in any of the five games, whereas the Nuggets had great offensive rebounding in games two, three, and five. (Usually, great offensive rebounding means valuable second chance points have been scored.)
In the regular season the Nuggets were just very slightly above average in defensive rebounding, but the Mavericks were unable to parlay that into good or great offensive rebounding as reason sixteen anticipated. So reason 16 failed: the Mavericks failed to win a single game due to good or great offensive rebounding.
We conclude the review of the infamous sixteen reasons the Nuggets were supposed to lose for the Mavericks-Nuggets series in Part Four.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Friday, February 19, 2010
Shocking but True: the Denver Nuggets are Better than the Lakers but can they beat the Lakers in the 2010 Playoffs?
I have been totally buried with work other than basketball last week and this week but I had to put a freeze on all of that to write this very important Report on the remarkable situation that has developed over the last several weeks. I mean, this is practically an emergency if you are dedicated to who wins the NBA Championship and why. It’s like if I was a physician, I have just been called into emergency duty in the middle of the night due to some calamity that has caused a lot of injuries. This is a totally unscheduled Report, so you know something big is up.
Even a month ago the 2010 NBA plot was getting unusually thick and now it’s extremely thick. You have as the most likely final four the extremely well managed and coached Los Angeles Lakers, the diabolical, incredibly lucky, and incredibly talented Denver Nuggets, the extremely talented but questionably coached and possibly too dependent on LeBron James Cleveland Cavaliers, and the 2008 Quest winner Boston Celtics, who have been slowed down by one injury after another and in particular by Kevin Garnett taking far longer to fully recover from injury than anyone in Boston wanted. But of the four teams Boston has the best point guard by a good margin in Rajon Rondo (superstar, one ring). Point guard and center are the two most important positions for winning the Quest.
Chauncey Billups may be just as good a player as Rajon Rondo if not slightly better but strictly speaking Rajon Rondo is now a substantially better point guard, mostly because Rondo is more dedicated to the position whereas Chauncey Billups’ coach is less dedicated to the position to say the least so Billups has “less material to work with” from his coach than does Rondo.
The Celtics had in theory the upper hand over the Cavaliers until about the beginning of the year but now they look to be in trouble versus the Cavaliers even if they get completely healthy for the playoffs because:
--The Cavaliers are coming together big time; for one thing, they seem to have finally correctly integrated Shaquille O’Neil into their sets and defensively.
--The Cavaliers made a key trade just before the trading deadline, headlined by Antawn Jamison in and Zydrunas Ilgauskas out, which is a big net gain. There were, however, not a few who were disappointed that Cleveland did not pick up instead Amare Stoudemire from the unstable Phoenix Suns, who was the best player in the NBA according to the 2007-08 Quest for the Ring Real Player Ratings which, however, did not include the defensive adjustment and Stoudemire is not all that great defensively.
Yes, Stoudemire would have been the ultimate prize for Cleveland, which is defensively solid enough to take on Stoudemire’s defending and live to tell about it. And yes, Antawn Jamison is kind of old (34 in June) whereas Stoudemire is 27 and change. But Jamison is a big upgrade over Ilgauskas who practically fell off a cliff this year and the already high odds they will win the Ring this year have gone up after this trade so it is mission accomplished. Stoudemire would have been perfect and would have taken much more load off of LeBron James than Jamison does, but the main point remains mission accomplished for Cleveland. They now have a front court competitive with that of the Lakers and probably better than that of the Celtics unless Garnett returns to 100%.
--Cleveland’s front depth is about to get still deeper with the return of one of the most underrated power forwards in basketball from summer knee surgery: Leon Powe.
The very thick 2010 plot also features a wild card Dallas Mavericks team that has practically fallen apart just after they seemed poised to overtake the Nuggets. That seems like such a long, long time ago now even though it was only about six weeks ago; what the hell happened to your team, Rick Carlisle?
The other, far stronger wild card possibility is the Magic, who will most likely just like last year beat the Celtics if the Celtics can not shake the injury bug before the playoffs, but like Denver most likely do not have enough to contend with the more monstrous than ever Cavaliers.
So as of now it looks like LeBron James will get his ring after all (which is where we started the year with but it’s been a wild ride back to the starting point) and it also looks like it will be Cleveland that gets it’s first ring and not Denver, even if Denver is actually in the Championship playing Cleveland, which is believe it or not a real Championship possibility.
And you and for sure I thought last year was as interesting as things ever get, laugh out loud. Now I know for sure that anyone who thinks I’m silly for doing basketball instead of politics and economics all the time is wrong.
Ten years from now we will probably look back on 2009 and especially on 2010 and say something like “Those were years that make basketball playoffs worth watching and worth writing about. And those were years that gave Quest for the Ring a huge shot in the arm.” To say that these two years provide exactly the kind of subject matter Quest for the Ring needs to learn and report on the high level secrets of who wins Championships and why is an understatement. Thick plots and unique characters (I’m looking at you, George Karl, laugh out loud) allow you to dig out the secrets a lot faster than otherwise.
Even in my dreams I never imagined there would be so much going on in one year. We’ll be breaking 2010 down extensively for a year and from time to time for years to come so as to efficiently discover previously unknown things about how playoff games and Championships are won and lost. In a word, Quest struck gold both in 2009 and especially now in 2010. Had I wrote what is actually happening as a fiction book no one would believe the plot.
The Nuggets are now clearly and definitely better than the Lakers and they are supposed to defeat the Lakers in this year’s West final. Yes, you heard that right, in theory the Denver Nuggets should defeat the Los Angeles Lakers this year. They have everything they need to win and they have moved substantially ahead of the Lakers in Real Team Rating which is designed to reveal who the real best teams are. We have the Cavaliers as the best and the Nuggets as not far behind.
In a Report in the near future, I will go into more detail about exactly how the Nuggets pulled rabbits out of hats talent wise for the second year in a row.
Alright, now everyone pause, take a few deep breaths, and maybe take a short walk. Get calm somehow.
Ok, I’m back from walking around the block (damn that dog who likes George Karl which almost bit my leg off; I’ve got ice on the wound).
But hold the phones! There are a couple of major things that Real Team Ratings leave out (besides injuries, which of course are almost totally unpredictable so we hardly ever even discuss those). You have home court advantage and coaching. What we seem to be seeing this year is that those two things sometimes are essentially the same thing.
There are two main reasons why the Lakers are ahead of the Nuggets right now by four games in the loss column. It just changed this evening from five to four, so there goes the plot getting thicker again. The Lakers probably still have enough of a lead to ensure they will squeak into the playoffs with home court locked up in the West over the Nuggets (but it will be very tight and the Lakers could possibly lose home court to the Nuggets by the end of the regular). First, Kobe Bryant has hit at least three (is it actually four? I’m not sure.) buzzer beaters to change Lakers losses into wins. Second, meanwhile, George Karl has been losing games to bad teams mostly because he has reverted to his traditional short, often inadequate 8-man rotation and also because he has reverted to his more or less traditional over reliance on guards and under reliance on forwards. Last year he was like a new man (and it was quite amazing and I was left sort of speechless, which is very rare laugh out loud) but now this year he is back to those two really bad habits.
The Nuggets have lost a number of games simply because they were badly beaten in the paint by bad and mediocre at best teams because Karl ran an extremely unbalanced lineup with way too many guard minutes and way too few forward minutes. As you review the following, keep in mind that in a regular season game against an inferior opponent good paint defense is less than 40 points given up in the paint and great point defense is less than 35 points given up in the paint. Anytime a team gives up 40 or more points in the paint to a poor team, this is not good. A tried and tested and relatively easy way to make sure you don’t lose to a bad team is to make sure the paint is defended well, simply because bad teams usually don’t have enough players who can make enough outside shots to beat you.
If you can’t defend the paint well despite being a much better team, you are leaving the door open for that inferior team to upset you, which is exactly what George Karl did in these games by refusing to play proven solid paint defender and rebounder Renaldo Balkman. So stubborn was Karl that he refused to play Balkman regardless of injures (including to Carmelo Anthony and Kenyon Martin). When Anthony and Martin were out, the Nuggets were even more overweight guards than they were before, due to Karl still refusing to play Balkman even in those games.
GAMES THE NUGGETS COULD HAVE WON TO ENSURE HOME COURT OVER THE LAKERS
1. November 11: Bucks 108 Nuggets 102 in Milwaukee; Nuggets give up 40 points in the paint
2. November 20: Clippers 106 Nuggets 99 in Los Angeles; Nuggets give up 40 points in the paint.
3. November 29: Timberwolves 106 Nuggets 100 in Denver; Nuggets give up 44 points in the paint.
4. December 8: Bobcats 107 Nuggets 95 in Charlotte; Nuggets give up 42 points in the paint.
5. December 10: Pistons 101 Nuggets 99 in Detroit; Nuggets give up 40 points in the paint.
6. December 28: Kings 106 Nuggets 101 in Sacramento; Nuggets give up 46 points in the paint.
7. January 9: Kings 102 Nuggets 100 in Sacramento; Nuggets give up 46 points in the paint.
So there you have it: seven losses to mostly bad teams with one or two mediocre teams included in the mix. In not one of these games did the Nuggets give up fewer than 40 points in the paint. The Nuggets should have won rock bottom minimum four of those games and had they done so they would be exactly even with the Lakers in the loss column right now. Or, if Kobe missed a couple of those buzzer beaters and the Nuggets had won a measly three of the seven games above, the Nuggets would right now be ahead of the Lakers in the race for home court advantage. And there are other possible combinations, but you get the point: the Nuggets are still behind the Lakers in the standings and they definitely should not be.
Are the Nuggets really that lacking in the front court that they had to lose those games that way? Hardly so. Last year power forward Renaldo Balkman played 780 minutes for the Nuggets and this year he is playing during garbage time only. Balkman last year was at least as good as Kenyon Martin, he was not really all that far behind miracle pick-up for next to nothing Chris Andersen, and with very good paint defending and very good defensive rebounding helped the Nuggets to be the defensive powerhouse that they were. Instead of being rewarded he was benched this year by the always confounding George Karl.
So now the Nuggets are fairly light touches defensively in the paint. There are only about ten teams in the NBA who are worse in paint defense than the Nuggets at the moment. The situation is actually getting worse as it becomes common knowledge that the Nuggets big weakness is paint defending.
Certainly the Lakers are licking their chops at the thought of throwing Gasol, Bynum and Odom at Nene, Martin, and Andersen. The latter was not even in the League not so long ago yet was indisputably better than Martin both last year and this year. Yet due to Karl’s intransigence about players “of lesser stature” and / or of “lesser personalities,” Chris Andersen has not started a single solitary game (he is the J.R. Smith of the front court, laugh out loud) and he is playing only about 22 minutes a game! Talk about shooting yourself in the foot! No one disputes that Andersen is an outstanding player in the paint defensively and is not bad offensively either, and yet even Andersen is being shortchanged on playing time by Karl. If Andersen is that shortchanged, is it really such a surprise that Balkman does not play at all?
You almost wish that if Balkman never plays the Nuggets at least try the “hail Mary strategy” of a very high fouling rate. The Nuggets are currently 6th in fouls committed per game which is normally bad for a Championship team (you ideally want to be in the middle) but they could commit even more fouls and possibly partly make up for the absence of Balkman. They got some traction from doing that last year, after all; they seem to know how to maneuver in that particular territory. If the other team can’t hit free throws and / or if the referees are asleep at the switch, you have a chance to make up for not having enough to defend the paint in certain games if you foul early and often so to speak.
He probably doesn’t realize it, but when Carmelo Anthony wishes for a curtain call for last year’s Nuggets defense as he has several times in the last month, he is in effect really asking, just as Quest for the Ring is asking, for the return of Renaldo Blackman, because without Balkman the Nuggets simply don’t have enough manpower up front to prevent often embarrassing defensive lapses in the paint and weak rebounding.
Meanwhile, the Lakers, who I repeat for emphasis can in theory be defeated by the Nuggets (I honestly never thought I would be saying this by the way) view the business of winning playoff games and Championships quite a bit differently than Coach Karl, who has lost many more playoff games than he has won and who has never won a Championship, whereas Lakers Coach Phil Jackson has ten rings and has the best playoff coaching record of all time. The Lakers like to overweight forward minutes a little and would not be caught dead seriously underweighting forward /center playing time. Phil Jackson is one of the last coaches who would ever possibly make the mistake of playing too many guards for too many minutes and not enough forwards for not enough minutes.
Quest for the Ring is investigating to find out anything specifically explaining why Balkman is not playing at all. But when all is said and done, the reason is probably the same old combination of bad habits and false beliefs of George Karl. But if we find anything more to this, we will definitely report it.
Assuming Karl stubbornly continues to refuse to play Balkman (which is quite likely) the Nuggets will probably not defeat the Lakers in a seven game series. If you had to say right now, you would look for a seven game West final this year where the seventh game is in Los Angeles and the Nuggets lose that game.
So one of the thickest aspects of the very thick 2010 plot is the likelihood that George Karl is going to quite literally cost the Nuggets winning the West this year. Coaching is way more important than most NBA fans think it is, but it is relatively unusual for coaching to directly and clearly cost an extremely talented team a Championship appearance. But exactly how unusual it is we don’t yet know.
So the Lakers still retain a huge coaching advantage. The fascinating question now is whether the Nuggets have pulled so far ahead of the Lakers talent wise that they can beat the Lakers even with inferior coaching. While we do most definitely know as it stands now that the Nuggets are better than the Lakers, we do not yet know whether the huge coaching advantage the Lakers have over the Nuggets will offset that so that the Lakers can once again represent the West in the NBA finals. It seems to be razor close now, tight as a tick on a pig on a hot summer day, as Dan Rather used to say.
In summary, if and only if Balkman plays and he is at least almost as good as last year (which was on the border between solid starter and star) the Nuggets can theoretically defeat the Lakers. Had the Nuggets picked up a solid new forward or center before the trading deadline they could have had another option. Or obviously if George Karl had not vetoed the Ron Artest for Linas Kleiza trade almost two years ago, the Nuggets would be solid enough up front to definitely defeat the Lakers. But alas, Artest is on the Lakers and not on the Nuggets as he really should be (how ironic is that?). And there was also the Marcus Camby giveaway, something the Lakers would never do in a million years. Marcus Camby added to the existing Nuggets crew would definitely put them over the top versus the Lakers.
Given all of those missed opportunities, if and when the Nuggets blow it this year, no one will be able to say that they didn’t have a fair opportunity to win the Quest. Hell, I think they could possibly have won the Quest in 2008 as well; this team has had talent coming out of the woodwork for at least the last three years. No one put a gun to their heads as the Nuggets made decision after decision that weakened their paint defense and rebounding. No, the Nuggets are mismanaging real opportunities to win a Ring.
There is no Artest, no Camby, and no trade deadline pickup for the Nuggets. So what we are down to is this: Balkman plays and Andersen plays more and the Nuggets have a real chance to beat the Lakers in the 2010 playoffs. If not, the Lakers remain solid favorites to defeat the Nuggets even though we have mounting evidence that the Nuggets are actually the better team this year.
Even a month ago the 2010 NBA plot was getting unusually thick and now it’s extremely thick. You have as the most likely final four the extremely well managed and coached Los Angeles Lakers, the diabolical, incredibly lucky, and incredibly talented Denver Nuggets, the extremely talented but questionably coached and possibly too dependent on LeBron James Cleveland Cavaliers, and the 2008 Quest winner Boston Celtics, who have been slowed down by one injury after another and in particular by Kevin Garnett taking far longer to fully recover from injury than anyone in Boston wanted. But of the four teams Boston has the best point guard by a good margin in Rajon Rondo (superstar, one ring). Point guard and center are the two most important positions for winning the Quest.
Chauncey Billups may be just as good a player as Rajon Rondo if not slightly better but strictly speaking Rajon Rondo is now a substantially better point guard, mostly because Rondo is more dedicated to the position whereas Chauncey Billups’ coach is less dedicated to the position to say the least so Billups has “less material to work with” from his coach than does Rondo.
The Celtics had in theory the upper hand over the Cavaliers until about the beginning of the year but now they look to be in trouble versus the Cavaliers even if they get completely healthy for the playoffs because:
--The Cavaliers are coming together big time; for one thing, they seem to have finally correctly integrated Shaquille O’Neil into their sets and defensively.
--The Cavaliers made a key trade just before the trading deadline, headlined by Antawn Jamison in and Zydrunas Ilgauskas out, which is a big net gain. There were, however, not a few who were disappointed that Cleveland did not pick up instead Amare Stoudemire from the unstable Phoenix Suns, who was the best player in the NBA according to the 2007-08 Quest for the Ring Real Player Ratings which, however, did not include the defensive adjustment and Stoudemire is not all that great defensively.
Yes, Stoudemire would have been the ultimate prize for Cleveland, which is defensively solid enough to take on Stoudemire’s defending and live to tell about it. And yes, Antawn Jamison is kind of old (34 in June) whereas Stoudemire is 27 and change. But Jamison is a big upgrade over Ilgauskas who practically fell off a cliff this year and the already high odds they will win the Ring this year have gone up after this trade so it is mission accomplished. Stoudemire would have been perfect and would have taken much more load off of LeBron James than Jamison does, but the main point remains mission accomplished for Cleveland. They now have a front court competitive with that of the Lakers and probably better than that of the Celtics unless Garnett returns to 100%.
--Cleveland’s front depth is about to get still deeper with the return of one of the most underrated power forwards in basketball from summer knee surgery: Leon Powe.
The very thick 2010 plot also features a wild card Dallas Mavericks team that has practically fallen apart just after they seemed poised to overtake the Nuggets. That seems like such a long, long time ago now even though it was only about six weeks ago; what the hell happened to your team, Rick Carlisle?
The other, far stronger wild card possibility is the Magic, who will most likely just like last year beat the Celtics if the Celtics can not shake the injury bug before the playoffs, but like Denver most likely do not have enough to contend with the more monstrous than ever Cavaliers.
So as of now it looks like LeBron James will get his ring after all (which is where we started the year with but it’s been a wild ride back to the starting point) and it also looks like it will be Cleveland that gets it’s first ring and not Denver, even if Denver is actually in the Championship playing Cleveland, which is believe it or not a real Championship possibility.
And you and for sure I thought last year was as interesting as things ever get, laugh out loud. Now I know for sure that anyone who thinks I’m silly for doing basketball instead of politics and economics all the time is wrong.
Ten years from now we will probably look back on 2009 and especially on 2010 and say something like “Those were years that make basketball playoffs worth watching and worth writing about. And those were years that gave Quest for the Ring a huge shot in the arm.” To say that these two years provide exactly the kind of subject matter Quest for the Ring needs to learn and report on the high level secrets of who wins Championships and why is an understatement. Thick plots and unique characters (I’m looking at you, George Karl, laugh out loud) allow you to dig out the secrets a lot faster than otherwise.
Even in my dreams I never imagined there would be so much going on in one year. We’ll be breaking 2010 down extensively for a year and from time to time for years to come so as to efficiently discover previously unknown things about how playoff games and Championships are won and lost. In a word, Quest struck gold both in 2009 and especially now in 2010. Had I wrote what is actually happening as a fiction book no one would believe the plot.
The Nuggets are now clearly and definitely better than the Lakers and they are supposed to defeat the Lakers in this year’s West final. Yes, you heard that right, in theory the Denver Nuggets should defeat the Los Angeles Lakers this year. They have everything they need to win and they have moved substantially ahead of the Lakers in Real Team Rating which is designed to reveal who the real best teams are. We have the Cavaliers as the best and the Nuggets as not far behind.
In a Report in the near future, I will go into more detail about exactly how the Nuggets pulled rabbits out of hats talent wise for the second year in a row.
Alright, now everyone pause, take a few deep breaths, and maybe take a short walk. Get calm somehow.
Ok, I’m back from walking around the block (damn that dog who likes George Karl which almost bit my leg off; I’ve got ice on the wound).
But hold the phones! There are a couple of major things that Real Team Ratings leave out (besides injuries, which of course are almost totally unpredictable so we hardly ever even discuss those). You have home court advantage and coaching. What we seem to be seeing this year is that those two things sometimes are essentially the same thing.
There are two main reasons why the Lakers are ahead of the Nuggets right now by four games in the loss column. It just changed this evening from five to four, so there goes the plot getting thicker again. The Lakers probably still have enough of a lead to ensure they will squeak into the playoffs with home court locked up in the West over the Nuggets (but it will be very tight and the Lakers could possibly lose home court to the Nuggets by the end of the regular). First, Kobe Bryant has hit at least three (is it actually four? I’m not sure.) buzzer beaters to change Lakers losses into wins. Second, meanwhile, George Karl has been losing games to bad teams mostly because he has reverted to his traditional short, often inadequate 8-man rotation and also because he has reverted to his more or less traditional over reliance on guards and under reliance on forwards. Last year he was like a new man (and it was quite amazing and I was left sort of speechless, which is very rare laugh out loud) but now this year he is back to those two really bad habits.
The Nuggets have lost a number of games simply because they were badly beaten in the paint by bad and mediocre at best teams because Karl ran an extremely unbalanced lineup with way too many guard minutes and way too few forward minutes. As you review the following, keep in mind that in a regular season game against an inferior opponent good paint defense is less than 40 points given up in the paint and great point defense is less than 35 points given up in the paint. Anytime a team gives up 40 or more points in the paint to a poor team, this is not good. A tried and tested and relatively easy way to make sure you don’t lose to a bad team is to make sure the paint is defended well, simply because bad teams usually don’t have enough players who can make enough outside shots to beat you.
If you can’t defend the paint well despite being a much better team, you are leaving the door open for that inferior team to upset you, which is exactly what George Karl did in these games by refusing to play proven solid paint defender and rebounder Renaldo Balkman. So stubborn was Karl that he refused to play Balkman regardless of injures (including to Carmelo Anthony and Kenyon Martin). When Anthony and Martin were out, the Nuggets were even more overweight guards than they were before, due to Karl still refusing to play Balkman even in those games.
GAMES THE NUGGETS COULD HAVE WON TO ENSURE HOME COURT OVER THE LAKERS
1. November 11: Bucks 108 Nuggets 102 in Milwaukee; Nuggets give up 40 points in the paint
2. November 20: Clippers 106 Nuggets 99 in Los Angeles; Nuggets give up 40 points in the paint.
3. November 29: Timberwolves 106 Nuggets 100 in Denver; Nuggets give up 44 points in the paint.
4. December 8: Bobcats 107 Nuggets 95 in Charlotte; Nuggets give up 42 points in the paint.
5. December 10: Pistons 101 Nuggets 99 in Detroit; Nuggets give up 40 points in the paint.
6. December 28: Kings 106 Nuggets 101 in Sacramento; Nuggets give up 46 points in the paint.
7. January 9: Kings 102 Nuggets 100 in Sacramento; Nuggets give up 46 points in the paint.
So there you have it: seven losses to mostly bad teams with one or two mediocre teams included in the mix. In not one of these games did the Nuggets give up fewer than 40 points in the paint. The Nuggets should have won rock bottom minimum four of those games and had they done so they would be exactly even with the Lakers in the loss column right now. Or, if Kobe missed a couple of those buzzer beaters and the Nuggets had won a measly three of the seven games above, the Nuggets would right now be ahead of the Lakers in the race for home court advantage. And there are other possible combinations, but you get the point: the Nuggets are still behind the Lakers in the standings and they definitely should not be.
Are the Nuggets really that lacking in the front court that they had to lose those games that way? Hardly so. Last year power forward Renaldo Balkman played 780 minutes for the Nuggets and this year he is playing during garbage time only. Balkman last year was at least as good as Kenyon Martin, he was not really all that far behind miracle pick-up for next to nothing Chris Andersen, and with very good paint defending and very good defensive rebounding helped the Nuggets to be the defensive powerhouse that they were. Instead of being rewarded he was benched this year by the always confounding George Karl.
So now the Nuggets are fairly light touches defensively in the paint. There are only about ten teams in the NBA who are worse in paint defense than the Nuggets at the moment. The situation is actually getting worse as it becomes common knowledge that the Nuggets big weakness is paint defending.
Certainly the Lakers are licking their chops at the thought of throwing Gasol, Bynum and Odom at Nene, Martin, and Andersen. The latter was not even in the League not so long ago yet was indisputably better than Martin both last year and this year. Yet due to Karl’s intransigence about players “of lesser stature” and / or of “lesser personalities,” Chris Andersen has not started a single solitary game (he is the J.R. Smith of the front court, laugh out loud) and he is playing only about 22 minutes a game! Talk about shooting yourself in the foot! No one disputes that Andersen is an outstanding player in the paint defensively and is not bad offensively either, and yet even Andersen is being shortchanged on playing time by Karl. If Andersen is that shortchanged, is it really such a surprise that Balkman does not play at all?
You almost wish that if Balkman never plays the Nuggets at least try the “hail Mary strategy” of a very high fouling rate. The Nuggets are currently 6th in fouls committed per game which is normally bad for a Championship team (you ideally want to be in the middle) but they could commit even more fouls and possibly partly make up for the absence of Balkman. They got some traction from doing that last year, after all; they seem to know how to maneuver in that particular territory. If the other team can’t hit free throws and / or if the referees are asleep at the switch, you have a chance to make up for not having enough to defend the paint in certain games if you foul early and often so to speak.
He probably doesn’t realize it, but when Carmelo Anthony wishes for a curtain call for last year’s Nuggets defense as he has several times in the last month, he is in effect really asking, just as Quest for the Ring is asking, for the return of Renaldo Blackman, because without Balkman the Nuggets simply don’t have enough manpower up front to prevent often embarrassing defensive lapses in the paint and weak rebounding.
Meanwhile, the Lakers, who I repeat for emphasis can in theory be defeated by the Nuggets (I honestly never thought I would be saying this by the way) view the business of winning playoff games and Championships quite a bit differently than Coach Karl, who has lost many more playoff games than he has won and who has never won a Championship, whereas Lakers Coach Phil Jackson has ten rings and has the best playoff coaching record of all time. The Lakers like to overweight forward minutes a little and would not be caught dead seriously underweighting forward /center playing time. Phil Jackson is one of the last coaches who would ever possibly make the mistake of playing too many guards for too many minutes and not enough forwards for not enough minutes.
Quest for the Ring is investigating to find out anything specifically explaining why Balkman is not playing at all. But when all is said and done, the reason is probably the same old combination of bad habits and false beliefs of George Karl. But if we find anything more to this, we will definitely report it.
Assuming Karl stubbornly continues to refuse to play Balkman (which is quite likely) the Nuggets will probably not defeat the Lakers in a seven game series. If you had to say right now, you would look for a seven game West final this year where the seventh game is in Los Angeles and the Nuggets lose that game.
So one of the thickest aspects of the very thick 2010 plot is the likelihood that George Karl is going to quite literally cost the Nuggets winning the West this year. Coaching is way more important than most NBA fans think it is, but it is relatively unusual for coaching to directly and clearly cost an extremely talented team a Championship appearance. But exactly how unusual it is we don’t yet know.
So the Lakers still retain a huge coaching advantage. The fascinating question now is whether the Nuggets have pulled so far ahead of the Lakers talent wise that they can beat the Lakers even with inferior coaching. While we do most definitely know as it stands now that the Nuggets are better than the Lakers, we do not yet know whether the huge coaching advantage the Lakers have over the Nuggets will offset that so that the Lakers can once again represent the West in the NBA finals. It seems to be razor close now, tight as a tick on a pig on a hot summer day, as Dan Rather used to say.
In summary, if and only if Balkman plays and he is at least almost as good as last year (which was on the border between solid starter and star) the Nuggets can theoretically defeat the Lakers. Had the Nuggets picked up a solid new forward or center before the trading deadline they could have had another option. Or obviously if George Karl had not vetoed the Ron Artest for Linas Kleiza trade almost two years ago, the Nuggets would be solid enough up front to definitely defeat the Lakers. But alas, Artest is on the Lakers and not on the Nuggets as he really should be (how ironic is that?). And there was also the Marcus Camby giveaway, something the Lakers would never do in a million years. Marcus Camby added to the existing Nuggets crew would definitely put them over the top versus the Lakers.
Given all of those missed opportunities, if and when the Nuggets blow it this year, no one will be able to say that they didn’t have a fair opportunity to win the Quest. Hell, I think they could possibly have won the Quest in 2008 as well; this team has had talent coming out of the woodwork for at least the last three years. No one put a gun to their heads as the Nuggets made decision after decision that weakened their paint defense and rebounding. No, the Nuggets are mismanaging real opportunities to win a Ring.
There is no Artest, no Camby, and no trade deadline pickup for the Nuggets. So what we are down to is this: Balkman plays and Andersen plays more and the Nuggets have a real chance to beat the Lakers in the 2010 playoffs. If not, the Lakers remain solid favorites to defeat the Nuggets even though we have mounting evidence that the Nuggets are actually the better team this year.
Friday, February 5, 2010
New and Important Features for Basketball Managers, Coaches, Fans, and Writers
With the regular about half over, I thought I would give a rundown of recent goings on behind the scenes here at Quest for the Ring headquarters. Visitors to the Quest may think when there are no postings for two or three weeks that no work is being done on the site, but nothing could be farther from the truth. (Google may also think that but we know they are out of touch with their stuck in the 1990's search engine, don't we, laugh out loud).
We are usually, even when going a week or two without posting, working hard on perfecting features already deployed, on developing new features, and of course on preparing for future Reports.
Here are some highlights of recent work going on behind the scenes for high level basketball managers and watchers. Remember, there are dozens of other features here at Quest that have been developed long before these recent ones.
QUEST FOR THE RING LIVE GAME BLOGGING
We have changed our live game blogging host from Twitter to Tumblr. As with Twitter, the live game posts will appear not only on the new Quest Tumblr Page but also right on this home page, way down near the bottom of this page. So if you miss the live blogging as I would imagine most of you will, you can always come here to find out what upcoming Report previews were made and what lunacy transpired during the game. Remember, these live blogs are only 3/4 serious but raw and unedited, and 1/4 more or less lunacy. But I warn you, there is some truth hidden in some of the lunacy.
We live blogged a few games during 2009 at Twitter under the name "Questforthering". But Twitter turned out to be a big mistake. Apparently, Twitter is undercapitalized or has bad management, because they are actually stopping people from posting to their micro blogs if they make more than a few dozen postings in an hour. This is an unpublished "rule" which is apparently subject to change from day to day.
Keep in mind that you can only post up to 140 characters in a "tweet" at Twitter, roughly 30 words or so. And yet Twitter is cutting people off after roughly 50 tweets, or in other words after roughly 1,500 words, the size of a moderately long newspaper article. So Twitter has obviously become nothing more than a joke, and we are going to have nothing more to do with them.
We deleted the account. We were able to save some but not all of our Tweets, so technically this is the first time in history that an Internet site has been so badly managed that we lost content.
Please do yourself a favor and do not fall into the "Twitter trap". That site is garbage unless you are a celebrity, in which case no doubt you are never stopped from tweeting no matter how many tweets you make.
Just as Quest for the Ring is a lower traffic and sort of a secret site on the Internet, there are always such sites for every other possible application and subject. So we hunted for alternatives for Twitter and found numerous ones. For almost every subject, there are countless sites that are better than the site at the "top of the heap" traffic wise. Google these days is missing much of the internet, partly because of the size of the Internet and partly because Goolge policies heavily favor sites started before 2000.
We chose one of the most popular of the non-Twitter micro blog formats: Tumblr. Unfortunately, we don't have resources to do more than about one live game blog per month. Post links to Quest for the Ring if you want this site to get more traffic and get more production time assigned to it. (But there is an untouchable minimum production regardless of traffic which is more production than most other sites written by a very small staff.)
THE QUEST FOR THE RING TOOLBOX
The Quest Toolbox Site was recently improved dramatically and anyone can now go there and in a very short time calculate Real Player Ratings for anyone they have data for. About ten days ago, the embedded yet interactive spreadsheet (a true state of the art Internet application if there ever was one) was, like many state of the art things, not working correctly. But as of today, it is working fantastically. Try it, you will not be disappointed.
There is a Toolbox User Guide right there on the page.
THE QUEST FOR THE RING INJURIES MONITOR PAGE
It's considered rude to say it, but the truth is that injuries or the lack of them often decide who wins playoff games (and regular season games).
All sports sites run by large corporations and a few run by a small number of medium sized corporations have what are supposed to be continually updated NBA injuries rundowns. These injury monitor pages do not draw a lot of visitors, and yet they are in theory among the most important pages for someone wanting to truly keep up with the real NBA situation and to know in advance how a game or a series is likely to go.
The problem is that the NBA injury situation is very hard to keep up with, both because it is always changing from day to day and because there is no law or League rule that says that teams must be truthful and timely about their injury situations. Some teams will by accident or sometimes intentionally give out misleading or inadequate information about their injury situation. The injuries themselves are often confusing to the team medical staffs, and there is often some uncertainty about how severe an injury is and about how long it will be until a player returns to the court.
Furthermore, some of the injury monitor pages are set up editorially smarter than others, and some have more day to day update work going into them than others.
The bottom line to all of this is that despite the fact that injuries are so important to determining who wins and who loses, finding out exactly what the injury situation is is a dicey proposition.
Until now. Now you can go to the Quest for the Ring Injuries Site and see in one place six different NBA injury rundowns by team. There is at the moment no User Guide for this, so we introduce one right here....
There are five injury rundowns provided by five different media companies and there are links to the official team injury reports that are part of what I call "team situation PDFs". These PDFs are little known goldmines of information about teams provided by people working for those teams, and there are links to the PDFs of ten 2010 contending teams on the Quest Injuries page. Eventually links to all 30 teams' PDFs will be available on that page.
What you do when you want to know which team is up and which team is down due to injuries is go to Quest for the Ring Injuries and start reviewing the various injury breakdowns, starting from the top. Often there is no need to review more than the first two or three rundowns. If there is a disagreement between two or more sources regarding one or more injury statuses as quite honestly there very often will be, you should do one or more of the following:
(1) Review four or five of the "source windows".
(2) Click the link to the official team situation PDF and see the injury report there. Whenever there is disagreement between the media sources, it is usually safe to rely on what the team PDF says as correct.
(3) If no source is saying a player will play (by not listing him in the injury report) assume the worst of the various reports is correct unless the most negative one is heavily outnumbered. For example, if when describing whether a player is going to play or not one source is saying doubtful, another source is saying questionable (which is slightly less pessimistic than doubtful) and another source is saying probable, assume the player is not going to play. The exception to that is if there is one media source saying a player is out but the other four are saying the player is probable. If and only if the probable heavily outnumbers the doubtful will I assume the player will play.
(4) If you see a player listed as probable or questionable or doubtful on one or two sources but you don't see that player listed at all on the other three or four sources, assume the player will play. Remember, when a player does not appear on the list, it is because there is supposed to be no injury and the player is supposed to be able to play.
You see what I mean: this injury stuff is more complicated than the average man on the street knows, and there is both an art (that I have taught you here) and a science (the information on the Injuries page) involved to guessing correctly in advance who is going to play and who is not.
THE QUEST FOR THE RING OVERTIME SITE
The Quest for the Ring used to take as long as 90 seconds to load even with a fast cable broadband connection. We decided recently to make 60 seconds the maximum load time. We have a site where we can find out exactly how long the page takes to load, and we will monitor that from time to time to make sure our page never takes more than 60 seconds to completely and totally load.
We had to move out several great features from the home page. We put them on a new Quest for the Ring Overtime Site.
FINALLY! CUSTOM CHARTS AND GRAPHS COME TO QUEST FOR THE RING
Is there any gizmo that has not yet appeared on Quest for the Ring? Believe or not, there are a few nice gizmos that have still never appeared on this site. One of which until now was a custom graph or chart. We finally got around to finding a resource we can use to make graphs and charts. It's surprising it took so long to introduce graphs given that Quest for the Ring uses custom designed statistics extensively.
Graphs and charts bolster our custom statistical products and let you see at a glance for example exactly how well players are doing. I mean, you can see at a glance with just numbers but somehow a graph or a chart make the numbers more compelling and easier to interpret. With graphs and charts, it is easier than ever to compare a team from one year to the next, to compare the seasons of a player, and to compare one team to another in the here and now.
Here is our first chart, which shows you the Denver Nuggets Real Player Ratings for 2008-09 as a whole and for 2009-10 through February 4, 2010. You can at a glance see how much better or how much worse a player is from last year to this year. (A player plotted at zero for one of the two years means that player did not play for the Nuggets that year.)
With this particular chart that you see below, you can see at a glance that George Karl is a complete idiot for not playing Reynaldo Balkman for at least 16 and preferably about 20 minutes a game this season.
In the chart you can at a glance see that Balkman in 2008-09 was a better player than Kenyon Martin in either 2008-09 or 2009-10. Yes, it's really true, yet the office politics of the Nuggets and of George Karl in particular means it is impossible to recognize that Kenyon Martin is not the untouchable superstar they falsely believe he is. I mean, if Reynaldo Balkman is at least as good as and probably better than Kenyon Martin, then exactly how good is Kenyon Martin? Not as good as George Karl and the Nuggets think, and not as good as Lamar Odom, Pau Gasol, and Andrew Bynum by the way either.
For more information about what is probably George Karl's biggest blunder for the current season, see this Report and this Report.
In a report coming in the near future, we will have our first team to team comparison graph; most likely Lakers versus Nuggets. It's going to be another in a long series of improvements to the closer and closer to perfect Real Player Rating system.
The yellow is 2008-09 and the red is 2009-10. I am aware that it is hard to read the player names and future graphs and charts will be easier to read if at all possible.
Here is the evaluation scale:
Perfect for all Practical Purposes / Major Historic Super Star 1.100 and more
Historic Super Star 1.000 1.099
Super Star 0.910 0.999
A Star Player / A Well Above Normal Starter 0.830 0.909
Very Good Player / A Solid Starter 0.760 0.829
Major Role Player / Good Enough to Start 0.700 0.759
Good Role Player / Often a Good 6th Man 0.650 0.699
Satisfactory Role Player 0.590 0.649
Marginal Role Player 0.530 0.589
Poor Player 0.470 0.529
Very Poor Player 0.400 0.469
Extremely Poor Player and less 0.399
We are usually, even when going a week or two without posting, working hard on perfecting features already deployed, on developing new features, and of course on preparing for future Reports.
Here are some highlights of recent work going on behind the scenes for high level basketball managers and watchers. Remember, there are dozens of other features here at Quest that have been developed long before these recent ones.
QUEST FOR THE RING LIVE GAME BLOGGING
We have changed our live game blogging host from Twitter to Tumblr. As with Twitter, the live game posts will appear not only on the new Quest Tumblr Page but also right on this home page, way down near the bottom of this page. So if you miss the live blogging as I would imagine most of you will, you can always come here to find out what upcoming Report previews were made and what lunacy transpired during the game. Remember, these live blogs are only 3/4 serious but raw and unedited, and 1/4 more or less lunacy. But I warn you, there is some truth hidden in some of the lunacy.
We live blogged a few games during 2009 at Twitter under the name "Questforthering". But Twitter turned out to be a big mistake. Apparently, Twitter is undercapitalized or has bad management, because they are actually stopping people from posting to their micro blogs if they make more than a few dozen postings in an hour. This is an unpublished "rule" which is apparently subject to change from day to day.
Keep in mind that you can only post up to 140 characters in a "tweet" at Twitter, roughly 30 words or so. And yet Twitter is cutting people off after roughly 50 tweets, or in other words after roughly 1,500 words, the size of a moderately long newspaper article. So Twitter has obviously become nothing more than a joke, and we are going to have nothing more to do with them.
We deleted the account. We were able to save some but not all of our Tweets, so technically this is the first time in history that an Internet site has been so badly managed that we lost content.
Please do yourself a favor and do not fall into the "Twitter trap". That site is garbage unless you are a celebrity, in which case no doubt you are never stopped from tweeting no matter how many tweets you make.
Just as Quest for the Ring is a lower traffic and sort of a secret site on the Internet, there are always such sites for every other possible application and subject. So we hunted for alternatives for Twitter and found numerous ones. For almost every subject, there are countless sites that are better than the site at the "top of the heap" traffic wise. Google these days is missing much of the internet, partly because of the size of the Internet and partly because Goolge policies heavily favor sites started before 2000.
We chose one of the most popular of the non-Twitter micro blog formats: Tumblr. Unfortunately, we don't have resources to do more than about one live game blog per month. Post links to Quest for the Ring if you want this site to get more traffic and get more production time assigned to it. (But there is an untouchable minimum production regardless of traffic which is more production than most other sites written by a very small staff.)
THE QUEST FOR THE RING TOOLBOX
The Quest Toolbox Site was recently improved dramatically and anyone can now go there and in a very short time calculate Real Player Ratings for anyone they have data for. About ten days ago, the embedded yet interactive spreadsheet (a true state of the art Internet application if there ever was one) was, like many state of the art things, not working correctly. But as of today, it is working fantastically. Try it, you will not be disappointed.
There is a Toolbox User Guide right there on the page.
THE QUEST FOR THE RING INJURIES MONITOR PAGE
It's considered rude to say it, but the truth is that injuries or the lack of them often decide who wins playoff games (and regular season games).
All sports sites run by large corporations and a few run by a small number of medium sized corporations have what are supposed to be continually updated NBA injuries rundowns. These injury monitor pages do not draw a lot of visitors, and yet they are in theory among the most important pages for someone wanting to truly keep up with the real NBA situation and to know in advance how a game or a series is likely to go.
The problem is that the NBA injury situation is very hard to keep up with, both because it is always changing from day to day and because there is no law or League rule that says that teams must be truthful and timely about their injury situations. Some teams will by accident or sometimes intentionally give out misleading or inadequate information about their injury situation. The injuries themselves are often confusing to the team medical staffs, and there is often some uncertainty about how severe an injury is and about how long it will be until a player returns to the court.
Furthermore, some of the injury monitor pages are set up editorially smarter than others, and some have more day to day update work going into them than others.
The bottom line to all of this is that despite the fact that injuries are so important to determining who wins and who loses, finding out exactly what the injury situation is is a dicey proposition.
Until now. Now you can go to the Quest for the Ring Injuries Site and see in one place six different NBA injury rundowns by team. There is at the moment no User Guide for this, so we introduce one right here....
There are five injury rundowns provided by five different media companies and there are links to the official team injury reports that are part of what I call "team situation PDFs". These PDFs are little known goldmines of information about teams provided by people working for those teams, and there are links to the PDFs of ten 2010 contending teams on the Quest Injuries page. Eventually links to all 30 teams' PDFs will be available on that page.
What you do when you want to know which team is up and which team is down due to injuries is go to Quest for the Ring Injuries and start reviewing the various injury breakdowns, starting from the top. Often there is no need to review more than the first two or three rundowns. If there is a disagreement between two or more sources regarding one or more injury statuses as quite honestly there very often will be, you should do one or more of the following:
(1) Review four or five of the "source windows".
(2) Click the link to the official team situation PDF and see the injury report there. Whenever there is disagreement between the media sources, it is usually safe to rely on what the team PDF says as correct.
(3) If no source is saying a player will play (by not listing him in the injury report) assume the worst of the various reports is correct unless the most negative one is heavily outnumbered. For example, if when describing whether a player is going to play or not one source is saying doubtful, another source is saying questionable (which is slightly less pessimistic than doubtful) and another source is saying probable, assume the player is not going to play. The exception to that is if there is one media source saying a player is out but the other four are saying the player is probable. If and only if the probable heavily outnumbers the doubtful will I assume the player will play.
(4) If you see a player listed as probable or questionable or doubtful on one or two sources but you don't see that player listed at all on the other three or four sources, assume the player will play. Remember, when a player does not appear on the list, it is because there is supposed to be no injury and the player is supposed to be able to play.
You see what I mean: this injury stuff is more complicated than the average man on the street knows, and there is both an art (that I have taught you here) and a science (the information on the Injuries page) involved to guessing correctly in advance who is going to play and who is not.
THE QUEST FOR THE RING OVERTIME SITE
The Quest for the Ring used to take as long as 90 seconds to load even with a fast cable broadband connection. We decided recently to make 60 seconds the maximum load time. We have a site where we can find out exactly how long the page takes to load, and we will monitor that from time to time to make sure our page never takes more than 60 seconds to completely and totally load.
We had to move out several great features from the home page. We put them on a new Quest for the Ring Overtime Site.
FINALLY! CUSTOM CHARTS AND GRAPHS COME TO QUEST FOR THE RING
Is there any gizmo that has not yet appeared on Quest for the Ring? Believe or not, there are a few nice gizmos that have still never appeared on this site. One of which until now was a custom graph or chart. We finally got around to finding a resource we can use to make graphs and charts. It's surprising it took so long to introduce graphs given that Quest for the Ring uses custom designed statistics extensively.
Graphs and charts bolster our custom statistical products and let you see at a glance for example exactly how well players are doing. I mean, you can see at a glance with just numbers but somehow a graph or a chart make the numbers more compelling and easier to interpret. With graphs and charts, it is easier than ever to compare a team from one year to the next, to compare the seasons of a player, and to compare one team to another in the here and now.
Here is our first chart, which shows you the Denver Nuggets Real Player Ratings for 2008-09 as a whole and for 2009-10 through February 4, 2010. You can at a glance see how much better or how much worse a player is from last year to this year. (A player plotted at zero for one of the two years means that player did not play for the Nuggets that year.)
With this particular chart that you see below, you can see at a glance that George Karl is a complete idiot for not playing Reynaldo Balkman for at least 16 and preferably about 20 minutes a game this season.
In the chart you can at a glance see that Balkman in 2008-09 was a better player than Kenyon Martin in either 2008-09 or 2009-10. Yes, it's really true, yet the office politics of the Nuggets and of George Karl in particular means it is impossible to recognize that Kenyon Martin is not the untouchable superstar they falsely believe he is. I mean, if Reynaldo Balkman is at least as good as and probably better than Kenyon Martin, then exactly how good is Kenyon Martin? Not as good as George Karl and the Nuggets think, and not as good as Lamar Odom, Pau Gasol, and Andrew Bynum by the way either.
For more information about what is probably George Karl's biggest blunder for the current season, see this Report and this Report.
In a report coming in the near future, we will have our first team to team comparison graph; most likely Lakers versus Nuggets. It's going to be another in a long series of improvements to the closer and closer to perfect Real Player Rating system.
The yellow is 2008-09 and the red is 2009-10. I am aware that it is hard to read the player names and future graphs and charts will be easier to read if at all possible.
Here is the evaluation scale:
Perfect for all Practical Purposes / Major Historic Super Star 1.100 and more
Historic Super Star 1.000 1.099
Super Star 0.910 0.999
A Star Player / A Well Above Normal Starter 0.830 0.909
Very Good Player / A Solid Starter 0.760 0.829
Major Role Player / Good Enough to Start 0.700 0.759
Good Role Player / Often a Good 6th Man 0.650 0.699
Satisfactory Role Player 0.590 0.649
Marginal Role Player 0.530 0.589
Poor Player 0.470 0.529
Very Poor Player 0.400 0.469
Extremely Poor Player and less 0.399
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Denver Nuggets Real Player Ratings as of February 4, 2010
DENVER NUGGETS MOST VALUABLE PLAYERS
2009-10 SEASON through February 4
Congratulations and respect are due to CHAUNCEY BILLUPS, who is leading the Nuggets in quality basketball so far this season.
Congratulations and respect are due to NENE, who has contributed more than any other player to the Nuggets so far this season.
HISTORIC SUPER STARS
None
BEST BY SIDE OF COURT
BEST OFFENSIVE PLAYER
BEST DEFENSIVE PLAYER
Chris Andersen
DENVER NUGGETS
REAL PLAYER RATINGS
2009-10 Regular Season
As of February 4, 2010
Chauncey Billups 0.954
Carmelo Anthony 0.923
Chris Andersen 0.868
Nene Hilario 0.846
Ty Lawson 0.782
Kenyon Martin 0.740
J.R. Smith 0.665
Arron Afflalo 0.633
Anthony Carter 0.589
Joey Graham 0.404
SCALE FOR REGULAR SEASON REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Perfect for all Practical Purposes / Major Historic Super Star 1.100 and more
Historic Super Star 1.000 1.099
Super Star 0.910 0.999
A Star Player / A Well Above Normal Starter 0.830 0.909
Very Good Player / A Solid Starter 0.760 0.829
Major Role Player / Good Enough to Start 0.700 0.759
Good Role Player / Often a Good 6th Man 0.650 0.699
Satisfactory Role Player 0.590 0.649
Marginal Role Player 0.530 0.589
Poor Player 0.470 0.529
Very Poor Player 0.400 0.469
Extremely Poor Player and less 0.399
NOTES REGARDING LOW REGULAR SEASON RATINGS
Players rated below about .550 sometimes get playing time based largely on factors outside of RPR, but valued by coaches and other players, such as:
--Great energy, effort, and hustle
--Toughness, such as diving after loose balls and taking charges
--Leadership and/or knowledge, especially in the case of veterans
--Perceived potential for future improvement in terms of real basketball production, especially in the case of young players
But keep in mind also that the value of these qualities may be overestimated, particularly with respect to playoff games. See the User Guide (link at the bottom) for much more.
DENVER NUGGETS
REAL PLAYER PRODUCTION
2009-10 Regular Season
As of February 4, 2010
Quantity of players: includes all tracked actions and hidden defending
All players who have played at least 300 minutes included
Nene Hilario 1392.66
Carmelo Anthony 1328.50
Chauncey Billups 1265.50
Kenyon Martin 1168.34
Chris Andersen 891.91
Arron Afflalo 793.36
Ty Lawson 768.41
J.R. Smith 755.54
Anthony Carter 296.03
Joey Graham 175.14
========== OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE SUB RATINGS ==================================
DENVER NUGGETS
OFFENSIVE SUB RATINGS
2009-10 Regular Season
As of February 4, 2010
Offensive Quality: Includes all non-trivial offensive actions
Chauncey Billups 0.699
Carmelo Anthony 0.650
Ty Lawson 0.557
Nene Hilario 0.430
Anthony Carter 0.380
Arron Afflalo 0.371
J.R. Smith 0.360
Kenyon Martin 0.329
Chris Andersen 0.269
Joey Graham 0.177
DENVER NUGGETS
DEFENSIVE SUB RATINGS
2009-10 Regular Season
As of February 4, 2010
Defending Quality: Includes both tracked and hidden defending
Chris Andersen 0.600
Nene Hilario 0.416
Kenyon Martin 0.412
J.R. Smith 0.305
Carmelo Anthony 0.273
Arron Afflalo 0.262
Chauncey Billups 0.255
Joey Graham 0.228
Ty Lawson 0.224
Anthony Carter 0.208
The breakdown between hidden and unhidden is available on request.
THE ALL IMPORTANT, AWARD WINNING REAL PLAYER RATINGS USER GUIDE
For complete details regarding how the Real Player Ratings are designed, how and why they work, and how exactly you can use them, see the User Guide.
2009-10 SEASON through February 4
Congratulations and respect are due to CHAUNCEY BILLUPS, who is leading the Nuggets in quality basketball so far this season.
Congratulations and respect are due to NENE, who has contributed more than any other player to the Nuggets so far this season.
HISTORIC SUPER STARS
None
SUPERSTARS
CHAUNCEY BILLUPS
CARMELO ANTHONY
STARS
Chris Andersen
Nene
VERY GOOD PLAYERS: SOLID STARTERS
Ty LawsonBEST BY SIDE OF COURT
BEST OFFENSIVE PLAYER
Chauncey Billups
BEST DEFENSIVE PLAYER
Chris Andersen
DENVER NUGGETS
REAL PLAYER RATINGS
2009-10 Regular Season
As of February 4, 2010
Quality of players: includes all tracked actions and hidden defending
All players who have played at least 300 minutes includedChauncey Billups 0.954
Carmelo Anthony 0.923
Chris Andersen 0.868
Nene Hilario 0.846
Ty Lawson 0.782
Kenyon Martin 0.740
J.R. Smith 0.665
Arron Afflalo 0.633
Anthony Carter 0.589
Joey Graham 0.404
SCALE FOR REGULAR SEASON REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Perfect for all Practical Purposes / Major Historic Super Star 1.100 and more
Historic Super Star 1.000 1.099
Super Star 0.910 0.999
A Star Player / A Well Above Normal Starter 0.830 0.909
Very Good Player / A Solid Starter 0.760 0.829
Major Role Player / Good Enough to Start 0.700 0.759
Good Role Player / Often a Good 6th Man 0.650 0.699
Satisfactory Role Player 0.590 0.649
Marginal Role Player 0.530 0.589
Poor Player 0.470 0.529
Very Poor Player 0.400 0.469
Extremely Poor Player and less 0.399
NOTES REGARDING LOW REGULAR SEASON RATINGS
Players rated below about .550 sometimes get playing time based largely on factors outside of RPR, but valued by coaches and other players, such as:
--Great energy, effort, and hustle
--Toughness, such as diving after loose balls and taking charges
--Leadership and/or knowledge, especially in the case of veterans
--Perceived potential for future improvement in terms of real basketball production, especially in the case of young players
But keep in mind also that the value of these qualities may be overestimated, particularly with respect to playoff games. See the User Guide (link at the bottom) for much more.
DENVER NUGGETS
REAL PLAYER PRODUCTION
2009-10 Regular Season
As of February 4, 2010
Quantity of players: includes all tracked actions and hidden defending
All players who have played at least 300 minutes included
Nene Hilario 1392.66
Carmelo Anthony 1328.50
Chauncey Billups 1265.50
Kenyon Martin 1168.34
Chris Andersen 891.91
Arron Afflalo 793.36
Ty Lawson 768.41
J.R. Smith 755.54
Anthony Carter 296.03
Joey Graham 175.14
========== OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE SUB RATINGS ==================================
DENVER NUGGETS
OFFENSIVE SUB RATINGS
2009-10 Regular Season
As of February 4, 2010
Offensive Quality: Includes all non-trivial offensive actions
Chauncey Billups 0.699
Carmelo Anthony 0.650
Ty Lawson 0.557
Nene Hilario 0.430
Anthony Carter 0.380
Arron Afflalo 0.371
J.R. Smith 0.360
Kenyon Martin 0.329
Chris Andersen 0.269
Joey Graham 0.177
DENVER NUGGETS
DEFENSIVE SUB RATINGS
2009-10 Regular Season
As of February 4, 2010
Defending Quality: Includes both tracked and hidden defending
Chris Andersen 0.600
Nene Hilario 0.416
Kenyon Martin 0.412
J.R. Smith 0.305
Carmelo Anthony 0.273
Arron Afflalo 0.262
Chauncey Billups 0.255
Joey Graham 0.228
Ty Lawson 0.224
Anthony Carter 0.208
The breakdown between hidden and unhidden is available on request.
THE ALL IMPORTANT, AWARD WINNING REAL PLAYER RATINGS USER GUIDE
For complete details regarding how the Real Player Ratings are designed, how and why they work, and how exactly you can use them, see the User Guide.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Real Team Ratings as of February 2, 2010: the Cavaliers Surge and the Lakers fall Behind the Nuggets
REAL TEAM RATINGS
NBA 2009-10 REGULAR SEASON
AS OF FEBRUARY 2, 2009
Cleveland Cavaliers 41.10
Denver Nuggets 33.30
Orlando Magic 27.00
Los Angeles Lakers 26.90
Atlanta Hawks 25.80
Boston Celtics 23.40
Utah Jazz 21.40
Portland Trail Blazers 11.20
Dallas Mavericks 9.30
San Antonio Spurs 1.60
Oklahoma City Thunder -0.40
Charlotte Bobcats -2.40
Memphis Grizzlies -4.60
Phoenix Suns -7.90
Miami Heat -10.10
Houston Rockets -11.10
New Orleans Hornets -12.30
Chicago Bulls -13.10
Milwaukee Bucks -19.40
Toronto Raptors -26.60
New York Knicks -30.50
Philadelphia 76ers -32.20
Los Angeles Clippers -32.70
Washington Wizards -33.50
Detroit Pistons -38.20
Golden State Warriors -43.60
Sacramento Kings -43.60
Indiana Pacers -45.50
Minnesota Timberwolves -67.40
New Jersey Nets -79.90
THE EAST SITUATION: YIKES!
At the beginning of the season we thought the Cavaliers would meet the Lakers in the 2010 Championship, but the Cavaliers got off to such a stumbling start, and the Celtics got off to such an extremely strong start, that we switched our prediction to Celtics-Lakers for the 2010 Championship.
But since the last Real Team Ratings Report on December 26, the Celtics have stumbled while the Cavaliers have surged.
Whether to start projecting the Cavaliers in the 2010 Championship had to be and was strongly considered. But we decided to for now stand pat with the Celtics, partly because we think that Celtics' injury problems have been a big factor in their falling behind Cleveland by about 18 Real Team Rating (RTR) points.
Paul Pierce has missed five games, during which the Celtics were only 2-3. Kevin Garnett has missed eleven games, during which the Celtics were only 5-6. On the other hand though, Shaquille O'Neal has missed six games for the Cavaliers, who were however 5-1 during these games. But Shaquille O'Neal is still not as crucial to the Cavaliers as are either Pierce or Garnett for the Celtics; for one thing, O’Neal’s playing time is much less than that of Pierce or Garnett when they play.
Also, injuries to non-starters have been more significant for the Celtics than for the Cavaliers. Overall, I think the Celtics deserve roughly ten more RTR points relative to Cleveland due to injury problems that they presumably won't have come playoff time.
Another important reason I am maintaining the Celtics over the Cavaliers in my personal 2010 projection is that I am giving the Celtics about a 12 point RTR boost for having a Coach whose strategies and motivational skills will work better in the playoffs relative to the regular season and relative to the Cleveland coach. Doc Rivers knows more about how to win playoff games than does Mike Brown, whereas Brown is at least as good as Rivers for winning regular season games.
Having said all that, although we are officially maintaining our Celtics over Cavaliers projection, it is razor tight as to who will actually win it; a 7-game series is more and more likely.
WILD CARDS AND LONG SHOTS OF THE EAST
The main contenders in the East this year are the Cavaliers and the Celtics. The wild card / long shot contenders would consist of the Orlando Magic and the Atlanta Hawks. The Hawks have actually become a lot less surprising in the 38 days since the last RTR Report. Meanwhile, the Magic have reestablished the position many thought they had when the season began: a little stronger than the Hawks and the only real theoretical threat to the Celtics and Cavaliers. It was felt by many before the season began that the Hawks are still a player or two and/or a season or two away from being a true major threat to the top contenders. This is more and more being reflected in RTR lately.
Specifically, in the 38 days since the December 26 RTR Report, the Hawks declined from 37.4 to 25.8, while the Magic improved from 25.0 to 27.0. Looking at RTR alone, it remains way too close to call at the moment as to who would win a 2010 Hawks-Magic playoff series. However, we think the Magic would win it due to a definite playoff coaching advantage and a probable home court advantage.
As can be deduced from our keeping the Celtics as our projected East winner this year, we do not think that when all is said and done either the Hawks or the Magic will be able to defeat the Celtics in a playoff series this year, despite the fact that at the moment the Celtics are actually very slightly behind both the Magic and the Hawks RTR wise. In other words, we strongly expect the Celtics will finish the regular season ahead of both the Magic and the Hawks.
THE WEST SITUATION: DOUBLE YIKES!
The Denver Nuggets, thanks to their extremely good, League-leading .750 winning percentage against the best teams, have moved ahead of the Los Angeles Lakers in the West. The Lakers are just .526 versus the best teams at the moment. All of this is a little bit shocking quite honestly.
It may actually be an understatement to say that Carmelo Anthony, Nene, Chauncey Billups, Ty Lawson, Arron Afflalo, and on occasion J.R. Smith are chock loaded with raw scoring abilitiy. Also, Chris Andersen is a low volume but very efficient scoring machine. It is gradually becoming an inescapable conclusion that the Nuggets should by rights defeat the Lakers this year and be in the Championship, and if they don't the blame will have to go on Nuggets' coaching, but I am not at this moment quite ready to go that far. But I am very, very close to going that far; stay tuned.
The Nuggets have surged to a RTR of 33.3 whereas the Lakers are back at 26.9. Since the margin of error is 5-6 points, we can say that the Nuggets are most definitely slightly ahead of the Magic, the Lakers, the Hawks, the Celtics, and the Jazz. Judged by RTR alone (which is dangerous as the User Guide explains) we are looking at a Nuggets-Cleveland Cavaliers 2010 NBA Championship. Cleveland is right now slightly favored in a series against the Nuggets.
The Nuggets are way ahead of the Mavericks, the Trailblazers, and the Spurs. The Nuggets would be fairly heavy favorites to defeat any of these three teams as of now. Quest for the Ring no longer expects the Mavericks to defeat the Nuggets if the two teams meet again in this year’s playoffs, although we have not given up all hope yet. We do think that any Mavericks-Nuggets series will be closer than last year’s near Denver rout was. The main problem for Dallas and for anyone dreaming of beating the Nuggets this year is that the sheer amount of raw offensive skill that the Nuggets seem to have is astounding.
In parallel to our refusal to call the East in favor of the Cavaliers, we are at this time refusing to call the West in favor of the Nuggets despite their being currently ahead of the Lakers RTR wise by slightly more than the margin of error.
One reason we refuse to change our prediction that the Lakers will represent the West in this year's Championship is that the Lakers remain significantly ahead of the Nuggets in the all important net efficiency category. The Lakers offensive efficiency is currently 109.1 and their defensive efficiency is currently 102.0, for a net efficiency of 7.1. (This means, as you may remember, that for every 100 possessions, the Lakers outscore their opponents by 7.1 points. The Nuggets' offensive efficiency is a towering 111.8 but their defensive efficiency is just 106.1, for a net efficiency of 5.7.
The Nuggets’ offensive efficiency is the 2nd best in the NBA, behind only the Phoenix Suns, who are one of only five teams faster paced than the Nuggets by the way.
Aside from the Lakers remaining ahead of the Nuggets in net efficiency, they maintain a big 4.1 points per 100 possessions in defensive efficiency. If the defensive efficiency overweight adjustment should be larger than it is (which is quite frankly possible; we may be a little too conservative on that) then the gap between the Lakers and the Nuggets would be a less than it is.
LAKERS--NUGGETS LOOKS QUITE DIFFERENT THIS YEAR VERSUS LAST
When you look at last year versus this year, you see a fascinating role reversal for the Nuggets-Lakers confrontation. Last year, the Lakers were of course great on both offense and defense, but they were actually better offensively than defensively relative to the rest of the League. Last year, the Lakers were the 3rd best offensive team and the 6th best defensive team. This year so far, the Lakers are only the 10th best offensive team but they are the 2nd best defensive team.
Meanwhile, the Nuggets have been in pretty much the reverse pattern. Last year the Nuggets were the 7th best offensive team and the 8th best defensive team. This year so far, the Nuggets are the 2nd best offensive team but only the 13th best defensive team. Carmelo Anthony, Ty Lawson, and especially Arron Afflalo have exceeded almost everyone's offensive expectations, and they have more than offset the fact that J.R. Smith is so far this year no longer a huge offensive weapon for the Nuggets. Even Kenyon Martin has been ramping it up offensively this year.
Unfortunately for the Nuggets, defensively they have fallen off from last year's surprising 8th best defensive team status to only 13th best, which is very dangerously low if a team wants to make sure it is going to win in the playoffs, when defense is at a premium.
So the Lakers are emphasizing defense more so than they did last year (perhaps excessively, actually) whereas the Nuggets are emphasizing defense much less so than they did last year. Just to be 8th best last year, the Nuggets had to give everything they had to the defensive effort, whereas offensively they could coast on raw scoring skills.
If the Lakers are going to once again defeat the Nuggets this year, they will apparently be doing it with a very heavy emphasis on defense against a team that through massive raw scoring talent is an offensive powerhouse. In other words, the upcoming collision between the Lakers' extremely well coached defense and the Nuggets' extremely high raw skilled offense will be a major sight to behold. Meanwhile, the matchup between the Lakers' offense and the Nuggets' defense will apparently not be quite so high level.
In the 2009 Nuggets-Lakers West Final, it was mostly the reverse: the high level matchup was the Lakers' offense versus the super aggressive and energetic Nuggets' defense, whereas the less important matchup was the mostly street ball style Nuggets' offense against the relatively less important Lakers defense. The bottom line is that, if as increasingly appears a virtual certainty, the Lakers and the Nuggets meet up for the second straight year in the West final, the setup and probably the main dynamics will be the opposite of what they were last year.
WILD CARDS AND LONG SHOTS OF THE WEST
As for the wild cards and long shots of the West, the Mavericks have tumbled from 25.1 to 9.3 in the 38 days since the last RTR report. The Spurs have fallen from 8.0 to 1.6. The Phoenix Suns have gone from -2.0 to -7.9. All three of these teams are fading in the rear view mirror of both the Lakers and the Nuggets.
By contrast, the Utah Jazz have gone from -1.5 to 21.4. We are elevating the Jazz to long shot contender and dropping the Suns completely out of all of the contending categories including long shot. Look for a separate Report coming soon which will give our latest conference final and Championship projections and our latest breakdown for major, wild card, and long shot contenders.
THE ALL IMPORTANT, AWARD WINNING USER GUIDE
For complete details regarding how the Real Team Ratings are designed, how and why they work, and how exactly you can use them, see the User Guide.
NBA 2009-10 REGULAR SEASON
AS OF FEBRUARY 2, 2009
Cleveland Cavaliers 41.10
Denver Nuggets 33.30
Orlando Magic 27.00
Los Angeles Lakers 26.90
Atlanta Hawks 25.80
Boston Celtics 23.40
Utah Jazz 21.40
Portland Trail Blazers 11.20
Dallas Mavericks 9.30
San Antonio Spurs 1.60
Oklahoma City Thunder -0.40
Charlotte Bobcats -2.40
Memphis Grizzlies -4.60
Phoenix Suns -7.90
Miami Heat -10.10
Houston Rockets -11.10
New Orleans Hornets -12.30
Chicago Bulls -13.10
Milwaukee Bucks -19.40
Toronto Raptors -26.60
New York Knicks -30.50
Philadelphia 76ers -32.20
Los Angeles Clippers -32.70
Washington Wizards -33.50
Detroit Pistons -38.20
Golden State Warriors -43.60
Sacramento Kings -43.60
Indiana Pacers -45.50
Minnesota Timberwolves -67.40
New Jersey Nets -79.90
THE EAST SITUATION: YIKES!
At the beginning of the season we thought the Cavaliers would meet the Lakers in the 2010 Championship, but the Cavaliers got off to such a stumbling start, and the Celtics got off to such an extremely strong start, that we switched our prediction to Celtics-Lakers for the 2010 Championship.
But since the last Real Team Ratings Report on December 26, the Celtics have stumbled while the Cavaliers have surged.
Whether to start projecting the Cavaliers in the 2010 Championship had to be and was strongly considered. But we decided to for now stand pat with the Celtics, partly because we think that Celtics' injury problems have been a big factor in their falling behind Cleveland by about 18 Real Team Rating (RTR) points.
Paul Pierce has missed five games, during which the Celtics were only 2-3. Kevin Garnett has missed eleven games, during which the Celtics were only 5-6. On the other hand though, Shaquille O'Neal has missed six games for the Cavaliers, who were however 5-1 during these games. But Shaquille O'Neal is still not as crucial to the Cavaliers as are either Pierce or Garnett for the Celtics; for one thing, O’Neal’s playing time is much less than that of Pierce or Garnett when they play.
Also, injuries to non-starters have been more significant for the Celtics than for the Cavaliers. Overall, I think the Celtics deserve roughly ten more RTR points relative to Cleveland due to injury problems that they presumably won't have come playoff time.
Another important reason I am maintaining the Celtics over the Cavaliers in my personal 2010 projection is that I am giving the Celtics about a 12 point RTR boost for having a Coach whose strategies and motivational skills will work better in the playoffs relative to the regular season and relative to the Cleveland coach. Doc Rivers knows more about how to win playoff games than does Mike Brown, whereas Brown is at least as good as Rivers for winning regular season games.
Having said all that, although we are officially maintaining our Celtics over Cavaliers projection, it is razor tight as to who will actually win it; a 7-game series is more and more likely.
WILD CARDS AND LONG SHOTS OF THE EAST
The main contenders in the East this year are the Cavaliers and the Celtics. The wild card / long shot contenders would consist of the Orlando Magic and the Atlanta Hawks. The Hawks have actually become a lot less surprising in the 38 days since the last RTR Report. Meanwhile, the Magic have reestablished the position many thought they had when the season began: a little stronger than the Hawks and the only real theoretical threat to the Celtics and Cavaliers. It was felt by many before the season began that the Hawks are still a player or two and/or a season or two away from being a true major threat to the top contenders. This is more and more being reflected in RTR lately.
Specifically, in the 38 days since the December 26 RTR Report, the Hawks declined from 37.4 to 25.8, while the Magic improved from 25.0 to 27.0. Looking at RTR alone, it remains way too close to call at the moment as to who would win a 2010 Hawks-Magic playoff series. However, we think the Magic would win it due to a definite playoff coaching advantage and a probable home court advantage.
As can be deduced from our keeping the Celtics as our projected East winner this year, we do not think that when all is said and done either the Hawks or the Magic will be able to defeat the Celtics in a playoff series this year, despite the fact that at the moment the Celtics are actually very slightly behind both the Magic and the Hawks RTR wise. In other words, we strongly expect the Celtics will finish the regular season ahead of both the Magic and the Hawks.
THE WEST SITUATION: DOUBLE YIKES!
The Denver Nuggets, thanks to their extremely good, League-leading .750 winning percentage against the best teams, have moved ahead of the Los Angeles Lakers in the West. The Lakers are just .526 versus the best teams at the moment. All of this is a little bit shocking quite honestly.
It may actually be an understatement to say that Carmelo Anthony, Nene, Chauncey Billups, Ty Lawson, Arron Afflalo, and on occasion J.R. Smith are chock loaded with raw scoring abilitiy. Also, Chris Andersen is a low volume but very efficient scoring machine. It is gradually becoming an inescapable conclusion that the Nuggets should by rights defeat the Lakers this year and be in the Championship, and if they don't the blame will have to go on Nuggets' coaching, but I am not at this moment quite ready to go that far. But I am very, very close to going that far; stay tuned.
The Nuggets have surged to a RTR of 33.3 whereas the Lakers are back at 26.9. Since the margin of error is 5-6 points, we can say that the Nuggets are most definitely slightly ahead of the Magic, the Lakers, the Hawks, the Celtics, and the Jazz. Judged by RTR alone (which is dangerous as the User Guide explains) we are looking at a Nuggets-Cleveland Cavaliers 2010 NBA Championship. Cleveland is right now slightly favored in a series against the Nuggets.
The Nuggets are way ahead of the Mavericks, the Trailblazers, and the Spurs. The Nuggets would be fairly heavy favorites to defeat any of these three teams as of now. Quest for the Ring no longer expects the Mavericks to defeat the Nuggets if the two teams meet again in this year’s playoffs, although we have not given up all hope yet. We do think that any Mavericks-Nuggets series will be closer than last year’s near Denver rout was. The main problem for Dallas and for anyone dreaming of beating the Nuggets this year is that the sheer amount of raw offensive skill that the Nuggets seem to have is astounding.
In parallel to our refusal to call the East in favor of the Cavaliers, we are at this time refusing to call the West in favor of the Nuggets despite their being currently ahead of the Lakers RTR wise by slightly more than the margin of error.
One reason we refuse to change our prediction that the Lakers will represent the West in this year's Championship is that the Lakers remain significantly ahead of the Nuggets in the all important net efficiency category. The Lakers offensive efficiency is currently 109.1 and their defensive efficiency is currently 102.0, for a net efficiency of 7.1. (This means, as you may remember, that for every 100 possessions, the Lakers outscore their opponents by 7.1 points. The Nuggets' offensive efficiency is a towering 111.8 but their defensive efficiency is just 106.1, for a net efficiency of 5.7.
The Nuggets’ offensive efficiency is the 2nd best in the NBA, behind only the Phoenix Suns, who are one of only five teams faster paced than the Nuggets by the way.
Aside from the Lakers remaining ahead of the Nuggets in net efficiency, they maintain a big 4.1 points per 100 possessions in defensive efficiency. If the defensive efficiency overweight adjustment should be larger than it is (which is quite frankly possible; we may be a little too conservative on that) then the gap between the Lakers and the Nuggets would be a less than it is.
LAKERS--NUGGETS LOOKS QUITE DIFFERENT THIS YEAR VERSUS LAST
When you look at last year versus this year, you see a fascinating role reversal for the Nuggets-Lakers confrontation. Last year, the Lakers were of course great on both offense and defense, but they were actually better offensively than defensively relative to the rest of the League. Last year, the Lakers were the 3rd best offensive team and the 6th best defensive team. This year so far, the Lakers are only the 10th best offensive team but they are the 2nd best defensive team.
Meanwhile, the Nuggets have been in pretty much the reverse pattern. Last year the Nuggets were the 7th best offensive team and the 8th best defensive team. This year so far, the Nuggets are the 2nd best offensive team but only the 13th best defensive team. Carmelo Anthony, Ty Lawson, and especially Arron Afflalo have exceeded almost everyone's offensive expectations, and they have more than offset the fact that J.R. Smith is so far this year no longer a huge offensive weapon for the Nuggets. Even Kenyon Martin has been ramping it up offensively this year.
Unfortunately for the Nuggets, defensively they have fallen off from last year's surprising 8th best defensive team status to only 13th best, which is very dangerously low if a team wants to make sure it is going to win in the playoffs, when defense is at a premium.
So the Lakers are emphasizing defense more so than they did last year (perhaps excessively, actually) whereas the Nuggets are emphasizing defense much less so than they did last year. Just to be 8th best last year, the Nuggets had to give everything they had to the defensive effort, whereas offensively they could coast on raw scoring skills.
If the Lakers are going to once again defeat the Nuggets this year, they will apparently be doing it with a very heavy emphasis on defense against a team that through massive raw scoring talent is an offensive powerhouse. In other words, the upcoming collision between the Lakers' extremely well coached defense and the Nuggets' extremely high raw skilled offense will be a major sight to behold. Meanwhile, the matchup between the Lakers' offense and the Nuggets' defense will apparently not be quite so high level.
In the 2009 Nuggets-Lakers West Final, it was mostly the reverse: the high level matchup was the Lakers' offense versus the super aggressive and energetic Nuggets' defense, whereas the less important matchup was the mostly street ball style Nuggets' offense against the relatively less important Lakers defense. The bottom line is that, if as increasingly appears a virtual certainty, the Lakers and the Nuggets meet up for the second straight year in the West final, the setup and probably the main dynamics will be the opposite of what they were last year.
WILD CARDS AND LONG SHOTS OF THE WEST
As for the wild cards and long shots of the West, the Mavericks have tumbled from 25.1 to 9.3 in the 38 days since the last RTR report. The Spurs have fallen from 8.0 to 1.6. The Phoenix Suns have gone from -2.0 to -7.9. All three of these teams are fading in the rear view mirror of both the Lakers and the Nuggets.
By contrast, the Utah Jazz have gone from -1.5 to 21.4. We are elevating the Jazz to long shot contender and dropping the Suns completely out of all of the contending categories including long shot. Look for a separate Report coming soon which will give our latest conference final and Championship projections and our latest breakdown for major, wild card, and long shot contenders.
THE ALL IMPORTANT, AWARD WINNING USER GUIDE
For complete details regarding how the Real Team Ratings are designed, how and why they work, and how exactly you can use them, see the User Guide.
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