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

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.