Linas Kleiza is Huge as the Nuggets Roll Over the Jazz 120-109

The Jazz’ offense was more organized and better managed than that of the Nuggets, but they committed too many turnovers on offense and too many fouls on defense, which enabled the Nuggets to roll to a relatively easy win at home against them, 120-109. Neither the Jazz nor the Nuggets were playing on back to back nights. The Jazz turned it over 18 times, the Nuggets a very reasonable 12 times. The Nuggets have been uncharacteristically limiting their turnovers lately.

Kyle Korver was 4/8 and the Jazz were an extremely good 9/19 on three-point shots overall, while for the Nuggets, Kleiza was 4/8 but the Nuggets overall were a poor 5/19 on long range shots. Both teams were an identical 41/92 or 44.6% overall from the field, which is about average for a NBA game.

Marcus Camby made twice as many rebounds as Carlos Boozer, and made more than half the rebounds that the entire Jazz squad made. Along with 24 rebounds, Camby, this year’s NBA leader in blocks by far, skillfully powered his way to 11 blocks, more than twice as many blocks as the entire Jazz squad, which made 5 blocks. Camby has become so dominant on the boards lately that he is sometimes fighting with some of his own teammates to get that extra rebound. He waves Carmelo Anthony off some of his possible rebounds, as if he was a lion defending his territory.

On the one hand, there is no denying that there is no one better in the NBA in rebounding than Camby, with the possible exception of the Celtic’s Kevin Garnett. On the other hand, Camby runs the risk of making his teammates lazy regarding rebounding by dominating the boards in game after game. It’s kind of the defensive version of the periodic offensive problem the Nuggets have with superstar Allen Iverson, where A.I. takes too many shots and enables his teammates to become relatively lazy in terms of moving, cutting, and screening on offense.

The Camby high intensity in rebounding, and the Iverson high intensity on possessing and shooting the ball, is matched by the Carmelo Anthony intensity and drive to score the ball one way or the other every good chance he gets. These three turn out to be remarkably similar personalities from a basketball performance standpoint, when all is said and done.

Everyone knows that the Nuggets have 3 major superstars. But what many don’t know, with the notable exception of Charles Barkley who has opined on this topic, and thinks the Nuggets are doomed because of this, is that all 3 of the Nuggets superstars are by nature more individually oriented and less team oriented than the average basketball superstar. It is their personality and, George Karl’s wrong beliefs aside, personalities can not be changed, though they can be adjusted to some extent if they are channeled into the right strategies and tactics.

The huge problem is, as has been discussed and illustrated over and over again in these reports, the Nugget’s coaches do not provide enough tactics and strategies that would have the effect of getting these three superstar and individualistic personalities to work together. If this could be done, the Nuggets would then clearly finally be in a position to make a serious run to be the Champions of the NBA. The more any three superstars work together, the more likely it is they could win over any and all opposition. The less they mesh their games, the easier it is for the opposing teams to focus on hyper defending one or two of the three, partly removing them from the game, while disrupting the on the fly attempts the Nuggets make to work out of the double teams by coordinating the non-doubled superstars with the other Nuggets.

In other words, the Nuggets have generously provided the opposing teams with a formula for defeating them, even though they have 3 superstars and most other teams have only 1 or two of those. If you are opposing the Nuggets, you simply double team one of the Nuggets offensive superstars, Anthony or Iverson, and ramp up the defense to disrupt the subsequent Nugget’s attempts to score out of the double teams with tactics that they make up as they go. The disruption translates into turnovers, and the Nugget turn it over more than any other team in basketball. The Nuggets make it all too easy for the best teams to beat them, about as easy as taking candy from a baby in fact.

Utah has been a surprisingly poor team on the road so far this season. The Jazz have the biggest gap of all NBA teams between winning percentage at home and winning percentage on the road. Almost unbeatable in Salt Lake City, the Jazz have been easily beaten by many other teams besides the Nuggets on the road this year. Stockton and Malone from years ago has given way to Williams and Boozer for today’s Jazz, but inside scoring is not as automatic and consistent for Boozer as it was for Malone back in the day. And until the Jazz obtained Korver, the present day version of the team was terrible in 3-point shooting and, even with him, it will be average at best.

Now we proceed to the George Karl Fiasco Story, Part 2:

There are two players on the Nuggets who Karl would never bench or partly bench no matter what: Marcus Camby and Allen Iverson. Why these two? Because these two have such long and great careers, and many awards as well, that they have become legends, already part of the glorious history of basketball, which Karl reveres.

Karl would have to defy his own belief system in order to bench Camby or Iverson, and it is rare for anyone to defy his or her belief system. Neither Camby nor Iverson is likely to ever mess up to the point of deserving to be benched, so this potential flip side of the usual Karl mistake is most likely just a hypothetical.

Kenyon Martin does not qualify as great enough to be part of the glorious history of basketball, so that enabled Karl to bench him for the playoff series two seasons ago and freed him, in his mind, from the responsibility to seek a compromise with his feuding star player.

This is why, by the way, that Iverson gets more burn than Anthony, and why Iverson is always discussed in glowing terms in the media by Karl, whereas Anthony is always minimized to one extent or another. Karl generally refers to Anthony as nothing more than a work in progress who needs to make changes in his game, and never as the cornerstone of the Nuggets franchise.

If Rick Adelman, or any other good NBA coach, was coaching the Nuggets, he would never have a player of the caliber of JR Smith completely benched. He would make sure the player was traded or waived if there was truly a severe attitude problem. On the other hand, Adelman would be at least as fast as Karl to yank Smith, or most other players for that matter, from a particular game if a player was clearly playing very poorly after about 10-12 minutes.

In the NBA, players who are impulsive, young, and poor decision makers due to inexperience, but have a lot of raw athletic ability, commonly have their minutes reduced, but you almost never see them completely benched for games at a time. Karl justifies his periodic complete benching of Smith by complaining about Smith’s personality and how it leads to dumb mistakes on the court. This type of sweeping and derogatory accusation is just not something anyone should accept without proof. I keep looking, but I still haven't found the personality and IQ ratings of basketball players on the internet in order to confirm that Smith is the dumbest player in the NBA, and/or the one with the worst personality. Until I find objective information that shows that Smith has one of the very worst personality ratings in the NBA, I am not going to agree to his being the only very talented player in the NBA who should be totally benched for games at a time. Even if I found such information, I would still not agree to the total benching, but I would acknowledge that Karl had a leg to stand on, something which he doesn’t have right now.

And the Nuggets can't have it both ways at once. If the serious Karl accusations are true, Smith is just about worthless and needs to be waived immediately. Surely no other team will offer anything for the worst personality and the dumbest player. And no other team will ever play him either.

Seriously though, there have been cases where good players have washed out of the League as a result of psychological difficulties. But JR is definitely not in that group. He plays video games for god’s sakes, how dangerous can he be to himself or others? If Karl gets what he really wants, which is JR off the team, Smith will definitely move on and get to play substantial minutes elsewhere.

PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE

NUGGETS INJURIES AND OUT SICKS
Kenyon Martin: A staph infection.
Chucky Atkins: He was diagnosed with a right groin/abdominal strain (Sports Hernia) on 1/9 and underwent successful surgery on 1/11. He is expected to be sidelined a minimum of eight weeks.
Nene: He has taken an indefinite leave to tend to a tumor growth.

JAZZ INJURIES AND OUT SICKS
NONE
And they still lost big!

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of January 18, 2008

The Nuggets are under an ORANGE ALERT, on account of the following problems.

INJURIES & SUSPENSIONS
1. Kenyon Martin illness 22 points
2. Chucky Atkins injury 18 points
3. Nene illness 14 points

SEVERE AND UNEXPECTED PLAYER PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS
There are none at this time: 0 points.

BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl has completely benched one or more players who should not be benched due to his incompetence, hatred of the player, and/or his having the ulterior motive of forcing the player off the team. The problem points would be the points you would have if the player were injured.

No one is currently completely benched who should not be: 0 points.

2. One or more players are partially benched; their minutes are being artificially limited due to abstract and subjective factors that the Denver Coaches believe are more important than performance on the court.

J.R. Smith was partially benched: 2 points.

2. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 1-12 Points. The severity varies depending on the circumstances, mainly Karl’s beliefs and moods, and whether the other team is playing well enough to take advantage of the Nuggets playing with not enough breathers, with too many fouls, and so forth. The current points reported are for the use, or should I say the misuse, of the reserves for the most recent games, with the most weight being given to the game being reported on here.

The bad use of reserves score for this game is 4 points. Either Yakhouba Diawara or Steven Hunter should have played 7-13 minutes.

3. The Nuggets have extreme inconsistency and a truly excessive number of turnovers because they have neither a system nor even a partial system on offense. The damage caused by this would be up to 20 points, except that Iverson reduces the damage. In broad terms, the team has failed to decide whether it wants Melo alone, Iverson alone, Melo and Iverson together, or neither of them to be firstly responsible for scoring enough points to keep the Nuggets in games. If it were neither, I call the name of that strategy the "share the wealth" strategy. More specifically, the Nuggets lack enough tried and tested offensive plays that they can run game after game, perfecting them as they go, and having everyone automatically on the same page for those plays.

Lack of an adequate number of offensive plays and schemes: 5 Points

INTENSITY, HUSTLE, AND HEART
1. The Nugget’s intensity, hustle and heart are lacking: 0 Points. It’s not anywhere near as bad as some fans sometime think it is.

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 65, which constitutes ORANGE ALERT.

ORANGE ALERT (55-74): Moderate damage is occurring to the season. The entire season is under serious threat, and you can just about forget about beating quality teams. About 3/4 of all potential wins against good teams will now be losses. Beating mid-level teams is much more difficult. About 1/2 of games against mid-level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. Even poor teams can often beat an otherwise good team that is under this alert. Close to 1/4 of games against low level teams that would have been won will be lost under this alert. A good team has been reduced to being a mid-level team, at best, when it is under this alert.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE ALERT STATUS
Injury and illness disaster has once again struck the Nuggets, with Kenyon Martin, Chucky Atkins, and Nene all out. The losses to the Bobcats and then to the Hawks in what would have been relatively easily won games had the alert status been green, grey, or even yellow illustrate the usefulness and accuracy of the alert system. When you reach ORANGE ALERT, you start losing a substantial number of games that you would win normally, it’s that simple.

RESERVE WATCH
Number of Players Who Played at Least 6 Minutes: Nuggets 7 Jazz 12
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 7 Jazz 9

Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 15
Jazz Non-Starters Points: 38

Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 6
Jazz Non-Starters Rebounds: 17

Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 2
Jazz Non-Starters Assists: 12

This feature is under development, and it will be gradually expanded. The complications involved explain why there are no formal statistics anywhere on the internet on the subject of how much non-starters contribute to different teams, and also why coaches are not compared statistically the way players are. There are a lot of variables that come into the use of reserves that interfere with the objective of judging their use. Statisticians call this “statistical noise,” and if you have a substantial amount of it, then what you are trying to do with your statistics becomes very difficult or next to impossible.

GEORGE KARL CONFIDENCE IN HIS TEAM RATING (Scale of 0 to 10)
3: He's hiding under his seat on the sidelines

PLAYER RATINGS FOR THIS GAME:
You can tell how well every player played at a glance. Of the advanced statistics I have seen on the internet, this one seems to have the best balance between offense and defense. Many other advanced statistics are biased in favor of good defenders, and do not reflect the heavy importance of offense in basketball. Here is the formula for the ESPN rating of a player:

Points + Rebounds + 1.4*Assists + Steals + 1.4*Blocks - .7*Turnovers + # of Field Goals Made +1/2*# of 3-pointers Made - .8*# of Missed Field Goals - .8*# of Missed Free Throws + .25 *# of Free Throws Made

All players on each team who played at least 5 minutes are shown. The number after “game,” is how well the player did in this game, whereas the number after “season” is that player’s overall average for the entire season.

NUGGETS PLAYER RATINGS
Linas Kleiza: Game 61.4 Season 18.5
Allen Iverson: Game 47.4 Season 41.2
Marcus Camby: Game 45.5 Season 33.3
Anthony Carter: Game 27.1 Season 21.2
Carmelo Anthony: Game 25.8 Season 38.6
J.R. Smith: Game 19.2 Season 15.3
Eduardo Najera: Game 8.3 Season 12.9

Kenyon Martin: Did Not Play-Illness
Chucky Atkins: Did Not Play-Injury
Nene: Did Not Play-Illness

Yakhouba Diawara: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Von Wafer: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision

JAZZ PLAYER RATINGS
Deron Williams: Game 46.9 Season 36.6
Carlos Boozer: Game 30.5 Season 40.7
Kyle Korver: Game 27.9 Season 15.2
Mehmet Okur: Game 26.9 Season 21.5
Andrei Kirilenko: Game 22.2 Season 27.3
C.J. Miles: Game 11.9 Season 9.7
Matt Harpring: Game 8.6 Season 12.8
Paul Millsap: Game 8.5 Seasoin 16.7
Ronnie Brewer: Game 8.0 Season 21.0
Jason Hart: Game 6.4 Season 7.1
Jarron Collins: Game 4.6 Season 4.9
Ronnie Price: Game 1.0 Season 3.6

NOTE: these stats do not correct for the big differences in playing times. Players with small minutes would get a higher rating if they had more minutes.

OBSERVATIONS ON RATINGS:
The Jazz were swamped by Kleiza, Camby, and Iverson, and it didn’t even matter that Carmelo Anthony did not get what he normally gets, especially on rebounding. Camby insisted on hogging the rebounds, essentially, not that I can blame him. With Camby having become the ultimate rebounding machine, Anthony’s rebounding was not needed in this game.

Running the show aside from Iverson was Anthony Carter, who had 11 assists, but he could not get the double double because he only scored 5 points. Carter continues to play extremely well at the Pepsi Center, but is far from a sure bet away from there. And he is far from a sure thing against the best teams of the West. Utah is not in that top group of 4 or 5 teams that the Nuggets most have to worry about.
J.R. Smith continues to cram a whole lot of achievements into a small number of minutes. Najera’s offense was crowded out in this game: the Nuggets don’t need his offense when you have Iverson, Kleiza, Anthony, and Smith hitting shots, with none of them in shooting slumps.

Boozer was actually pretty much normal in this game, he just missed a few free throws, and was short a made shot, a steal, and a block from his normal production. But being a littlke short will cost you in Lithuania, and also in Denver when Kleiza is playing his game of the year. Deron Williams and Mehmet Okur were slightly above normal, while Kyle Korver, who is new to the Jazz, having been acquired from the 76’ers so that Utah would have a chance at getting up to mediocre on 3-point shooting for the playoffs, was almost twice as productive as usual. This was the first game that Korver, who was 4/8 from downtown, made more than 2 threes in a game for the Jazz. Unfortunately, were the Jazz to play the Nuggets in the playoffs, this would be a signal of the kind of damage Korver could cause to the Nugget’s hopes, unless the volatile and often benched J.R. Smith could offset.

Paul Millsap and especially Ronnie Brewer were big disappointments for the Jazz, while the Nuggets enjoyed a very unusual instance of no real disappointments.

NUGGETS REAL PLAYER RATINGS—EXPLANATION
The Real Player Rating reflects reality better than the gross player rating, since it washes out differences in playing times among the players. The straight up player rankings are obviously heavily affected by how many playing minutes the various players get. With many teams, you can rely on the coach to give his various players roughly the playing time that makes the most sense for his team. Unfortunately, some coaches bring other factors besides actual performance into their rotation decisions. Therefore, it makes good sense to introduce a new and extremely important statistic that Nuggets 1 calls the Real Per Minute Player Rating. As the name implies, this is the gross ESPN player rating divided by the number of minutes. The statistic is called Real Player Rating for short.

This statistic allows anyone to see whether or not players who play only a small number of minutes are doing better than their low gross rating will indicate. You can spot diamond in the rough players who are not getting all the respect and playing time due to them. At the same time, it will allow anyone to see whether players with a lot of minutes are playing worse than, as well as, or better than their gross rating shows.

In summary, the Real Player Rating allows the reader, at a glance, to see exactly how well each player is doing without regard to playing time, which is subject to coaching error and subjective and less important factors such as a player's personality. The Real Player Rating provides the real truth-pure knowledge not available anywhere else.

SCALE FOR THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
1.80 More Amazing Happens, but only certain players can ever fly this high
1.60 1.79 Rare Superstar Plus-Above Normal Even For Michael Jordan
1.40 1.60 Superstar Performance Plus-A Michael Jordan Type Game
1.20 1.40 Spectacular Performance-Star Plus
1.05 1.20 Star Performance
0.90 1.05 Outstanding Game
0.80 0.90 Very Good Game
0.70 0.80 Good Game
0.60 0.70 Mediocre Game
0.50 0.60 Poor Game
0.40 0.50 Very Poor Game
0.25 0.40 Bad Game-Near Disaster
Less 0.25 Total Disaster

NUGGETS-JAZZ REAL PLAYER RATINGS
All players who played 5 minutes or more are included. Any player who played only 5-9 minutes is noted.

1. Linas Kleiza, Den 1.462
2. Deron Williams, Uta 1.340
3. C.J. Miles, Uta 1.322…Miles played only 9 minutes.
4. Kyle Korver, Uta 1.116
5. J.R. Smith, Den 1.067
6. Allen Iverson, Den 1.053
7. Marcus Camby, Den 1.034
8. Carlos Boozer, Uta 0.924
9. Andrei Kirilenko, Uta 0.854
10. Mehmet Okur, Uta 0.841
11. Anthony Carter, Den 0.821
12. Carmelo Anthony, Den 0.679
13. Ronnie Brewer, Uta 0.667
14. Jarron Collins, Uta 0.575… Collins played only 8 minutes.
15. Jason Hart, Uta 0.492
16. Matt Harpring, Uta 0.478
17. Eduardo Najera, Den 0.461
18. Paul Millsap, Uta 0.370
19. Ronnie Price, Uta 0.167… Price played only 6 minutes.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Linas Kleiza was the superstar. Deron Williams and C.J. Miles in limited minutes were stars plus, while Korver for the Jazz and Smith and Iverson for the Nuggets were regular old stars. Not counting Miles, among the 7 players who were outstanding or better, the Nuggets had 4 players and the Jazz had 3.

At the point, Williams for the Jazz was far better than Carter for the Nuggets. At the 2-spot, in this game at least, a lot more Miles and a lot less Brewer would have worked better for the Jazz, who were badly beaten by the Nugget’s dynamic shooting guard duo of Iverson and Smith. At small forward, Korver badly outplayed Anthony. At power forward, Kleiza exploded past Boozer. At center, Marcus Camby scored a narrow victory over Mehmet Okur.

NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court. All Nuggets who played at least 10 minutes are shown.

Marcus Camby: +22
Allen Iverson: +22
Linas Kleiza: +10
J.R. Smith: +4
Eduardo Najera: +4
Carmelo Anthony: +3
Anthony Carter: -4

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
These numbers tell you that the Jazz could not avoid being confounded on offense by Camby, who made 24 rebounds and 11 blocks. And they could not avoid being confounded on defense by Iverson, who made 9 assists and 28 points on 9/19 shooting. They apparently were gambling that if they used enough double teams to contain Melo, Iverson would not be able to hit enough shots and get to the line enough to win it for the Nuggets. However, Kleiza was left out of their how to beat the Nuggets calculations. Last year that calculation was correct, but this year it failed. So you can bet that the Jazz will come to the next Nuggets game, which will be the second of 4 games between the two teams this season, with a new strategy where they do their best to contain both Melo and Iverson at the same time, while being ready to go after Kleiza if the situation warrants. That is a very tall order, but I’m sure Coach Sloan has learned his lesson and will come correct next time. Sloan was literally shocked at how well Kleiza played, and you can’t blame him. Amazing happens sometimes.

NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
All Nuggets who played at least 5 minutes are shown. The order is from lowest to highest in real player rating.

Eduardo Najera played 18 minutes and was 1/2 for 2 points, and he made 4 rebounds, 1 block, and 1 assist.

Carmelo Anthony played 38 minutes and was 8/20, 0/1 on 3’s, and 7/8 from the line for 23 points, and he made 2 assists and 2 rebounds.

Anthony Carter played 33 minutes and was 1/3, 0/1 on 3’s, and 3/4 from the line for 5 points, and he made 11 assists, 4 steals, and 4 rebounds.

Marcus Camby played for virtually the whole game, 44 minutes, and was 4/13 and 0/1 on 3’s for 8 points, and he made 24 rebounds, 11 blocks, 2 steals, and 1 assist.

Allen Iverson played for virtually the whole game, 45 minutes, and was 9/19, 0/2 on 3’s, and 10/12 from the line for 28 points, and he made 9 assists, 4 rebounds, and 3 steals.

J.R. Smith played for 18 minutes and was 5/12, 1/4 on 3’s, and 2/2 from the line for 13 points, and he made 2 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 steal, and 1 block.

Linas Kleiza played for most of the game, 42 minutes, and was 13/21, 4/8 on 3’s, and 11/14 from the line for 41 points, and he made 9 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 steal.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Saturday, January 19 in Denver to play the Timberwolves at 7 pm mountain time. The Timberwolves will be playing on back to back nights while the Nuggets will not be. Therefore, the Nuggets will enjoy both the home court and the rest advantages.