Fast Break: Renaldo Balkman's Style and Why the Nuggets are Overdosing On It

Renaldo Balkman is the perfect example of a player who has an appealing style to the kinds of basketball fans who think style is more important than things that the scorekeepers keep track of. He is a minor factor offensively to put it nicely, a net negative offensively to put it more bluntly. But on defense he is a clawing tiger who creates disruption and confusion within the offense of the other team. Once Balkman has disrupted things enough, either he himself or a teammate is much more likely than otherwise to get a steal, a block, or both in the same possession. Balkman type players also force some shot clock violations from time to time.

And following direct or indirect Balkman steals of course, a fast break can result in an easy dunk. So technically, it is oversimplified to call a player such as Balkman as defense only, since he indirectly generates some offense.

But you have to be very, very careful on this subject to avoid being fooled. An offensively limited player who plays great defense and who can generate indirect offense is less valuable than a player who plays "merely" good defense and who can generate a good amount of direct offense. Because it is going way to far to say that defense in general and players such as Balkman in particular can shut down a good offense to the point where games against good teams can be reliably won by a core group of players like that.

Good offenses can be slowed down but not stopped. You might, for example, be able to prevent 10 points of scoring with a bunch of players such as Balkman. But if the good offense team is starting from a base of 115 points, they can still beat you with 105 points while playing good defense, because all they need is just reasonably good defense against your offensively challenged team to keep you below 100 points. In other words, when you have a poor offense, you make it too easy for the other team defensively. A team that is just putting in an ordinary, ho hum defensive effort can look like a defensive power against a poor offensive team.

Have you ever heard basketball game announcers say, when they are trying to explain why one team has not scored well in a game, something like: "I wouldn't blame the offense (or bad shooting) all that much; it's more that (the other team) is playing some great defense in this game." And in reality the other team has only been playing decent, ordinary defense, because they didn't need any big defensive effort to beat your offensively challenged team. The 2008-09 Nuggets are that team with the underperforming offense that makes other defenses look better than they are.

Unfortunately, the Nuggets have gone in the space of a few months from being a team with massive offensive potential to a team with little. They have made the same huge mistake as the Suns have made, though on a smaller scale in the sense that the old Suns were better than the old Nuggets and, sure enough, the new Suns are probably better than the new Nuggets.

Along with Balkman, the Nuggets have brought two other hustling, defensive wildcats onto their team: Chris Anderson and Dahntay Jones. Of course, Coach Karl loves giving all three of these players plenty of playing time. Although you will sometimes get surprising mileage from this strategy in the regular season, by overdosing on these mostly defensive players, you have unfortunately left your offense unqualified to compete in the playoffs. Making offensive potential even more dismal, Carmelo Anthony has been explicity told by Karl to "not worry about scoring" very much! Were it not for the fact that Nene is a substantial upgrade offensively over Camby, the Nuggets' offense would be currently one of the worst in the League instead of just being well below average.

Chauncey Billups will improve the Nuggets offense as the season goes along, but the Nuggets' overall offensive potential is too limited for them to become a great offensive team. The main problems are thin offensive talent and even thinner offensive coaching quality.

But at least the Nuggets seem to know that they no longer have the right personnel to be a great offensive team, and so they are not wasting much time practicing offensively. Instead, they are spending a big majority of their practice time on defense, and so I guess that they are making the best of an overall bad situation by maximizing their defensive potential. Had the Nuggets not dramatically shifted from being offensively focused to being defensively focused, they almost certainly would not have had the chance of being a winning team this year. And while the Nuggets no longer have enough offensive potential to be qualified to possibly win a playoff series, they do have enough defensive potential to be qualified to win a couple of playoff games or so.

But overall, the prognosis for the Nuggets for the next few years is not good. Aside from making a damaging sudden lurch from one extreme to the other financially, the Nuggets have elected to try to capture the consolation prize for failing at the Iverson game. They have elected to try to please their fans by bringing in a bunch of players with appealing "styles." But fans who put style above actual impact on the score of games are actually dangerous to teams in my opinion, because to the extent that front offices put style above substance (impact on game scores) and bring in the relatively inexpensive players who are big on style and not so big on substance, they are working against their own best interests. There is a reason why players with "impressive styles" such as Renaldo Balkman come with relatively small price tags and do not have very many teams demanding their services.

In my view, objective number one is always going to be winning as many games as possible. So to me, you should avoid ending up with more than one or two players who hustle and scrap and are appealing to those who like players who hustle and scrap, but are not true offensive weapons.

Sorry, but this is the reality that means you must be very careful about falling in love with a player's style: basketball is a statistical game made up of stuff like scores and blocks and steals and turnovers. The score determines who wins, and the score, in turn, is determined mostly by things that you can keep track of with statistics. If you want your team to win a Championship, you better hope they are able to get the things that the scorekeepers keep track of, because you sure as heck are not going to win a Championship with a core of players who scrap, hustle, and aggressively defend, but who can not excel in producing what the scorekeepers keep track of.

Editorial Note:
A "Fast Break" is a short and quick preview of some of the topics that will be explored and proved in more detail in upcoming regular reports. Fast Breaks will often reappear in full reports with only minor reediting, but there will be more important details, more evidence, and more implications and explanations in the full reports. Moreover, there will be topics that never appear in any Fast Break in a full Report.

Fast Breaks are especially useful for the first few days after major news breaks. They are also very useful for people who will seldom or never have enough time to read a full Game/Team/League Report. Fast Breaks are the type of article that more typical web logs feature almost all or all of the time.

New Nugget Renaldo Balkman Versus Previous Nugget Eduardo Najera

At the end of July, Renaldo Balkman was brought on to the Nuggets to replace Eduardo Najera as designated defensive, disruption, and hustling specialist. I compared Balkman, Najera, and Bobby Jones, another player known as a good and energetic defender. Jones was the kind of younger player who under the regime of George Karl was probably doomed from the start to never be able to remain on the Nuggets.

Regarding Renaldo Balkman, the replacement for Eduardo Najera, the first problem is that the Nuggets have, as they are doing financially, gone from one extreme to another experience wise. Balkman has about 2,000 minutes of experience in banging, while Najera has over 9,500 minutes.

Let's compare Balkman, Najera's replacement, with Najera himself, and also with who would have been a partial replacement for Najera had he been kept, Bobby Jones, who was traded for Balkman.

On threes, Najera has hit on .3 threes per 36 minutes with a percentage of .332. Balkman has hit on .1 threes per 36 minute for a non-competitive percentage of .154. Jones has made .8 threes with a % of .306. Jones has a three-point shot, Balkman does not, and Najera has one but has never used it much.

Overall shooting shows Najera making 4 field goals per 36 minutes with a percentage of .493. Balkman is essentially identical, 4.1 field goals per 36 minutes with a percentage of .499. Bobby Jones also makes about 4 shots per 36 minutes, with a percentage of .442. So they all score about the same, but Jones misses a few jumpers never attempted by Najera or Balkman.

On getting to the line, Najera has the better "style." Najera has earned 1.9 free throws per 36 minutes, and has made .686 of them. Balkman has earned 1.6 free throws per 36 and has made .497 or half. Jones earns 2.6 free throws per 36, and makes .685 of them. Jones is the best slasher to the rim of the three.

Najera is exactly twice the rebounder Balkman is so far, 7.6 rebounds per 36 minutes versus 3.8. For the first time in many years, it looks like Denver is going to be a relatively poor rebounding team this year. Bobby Jones, who was lost in this trade, has been making 6.2 rebounds per 36 minutes, closer to Najera than Balkman. The Marcus Camby rebound rate is 11.4.

With regard to moving and making decisions with the basketball, Najera, never worked into an offense to any extent, has made 1.6 assists per 36 minutes with 1.3 turnovers per 36. Balkman has made 1.5 assists per 36 minutes with 1.5 turnovers per 36. Jones has made 1.8 assists per 36 minutes, with 1.9 turnovers. George Karl refused to play Jones much largely due to that turnover rate. Najera was and is slightly better than Jones in handling and making decisions with the ball, due to experience I would think. Balkman has about the same relatively dismal assist/turnover ratio as Jones, at a lower level of handling the basketball. So Najera is the best of the three by a small amount, while Balkman and Jones are about even up.

With regard to steals and blocks, Najera has made 1.4 steals and .8 blocks per 36 minutes, while Balkman has made 1.8 steals and 1.3 blocks per 36 minutes. Jones has made 1.1 steals and only .2 blocks per 36. If a player is described as a hustle type player, you hope that it shows up somewhere in what can be measured. And with Balkman it shows up with his block rate, which is far higher than Najera's and is almost infinitely higher than Jones' block rate, since Jones does not block shots very much. The gold standard of blocking is the Marcus Camby blocked shot rate, which is 3.1 per 36. So Balkman is a little more than 4/10 the shot blocker that Camby is, which is actually kind of impressive.

Since both Najera and Balkman are regarded as defensive players, it is interesting to note that Balkman is well ahead of Najera in defending that you can measure, so the Nuggets made a fairly good trade with respect to making up for the loss of Najera. The funny thing is, Jones "hustles" on defense also, but he doesn't get anywhere near the actual steals or blocks that a Najera or a Balkman get, so the Nuggets would have been worse off defensively had they not traded Jones for Balkman. The Nuggets lose some offense, but Jones is too young to be a core offensive player for George Karl, so overall it was a good trade for the Nuggets. Due to Karl, the Nuggets were never going to take advantage of the offensive potential of Bobby Jones that much.

However, if the Nuggets are unable to largely make up for the loss of Camby and become a full scale poor rebounding team, the trade was about a wash.

On made them miss defending, we can speculate that Balkman and Najera are about even in that, with Jones actually not too far behind; Jones is a good defender in terms of forced misses, even though he does not actually block many shots.

On the style front, folks who consider style important like Balkman at least as much as they do Najera, while Jones' style is not all that much liked.

But the bigger picture remains that the Nuggets have no future as a playoff team after the loss of Camby, and though Balkman is a very good defender, he is not a very good rebounder, so the Nuggets rebounding is now most likely going to be a problem; how serious will depend of course on how much Nene plays and how much Carmelo Anthony and Kenyon Anthony full in the huge rebounding gap left with Camby's departure.
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Editorial Notes: A "Fast Break" is a short and quick preview of some of the topics that will be explored and proved in more detail in upcoming regular reports. Fast Breaks will often reappear in full reports with only minor reediting, but there will be more important details, more evidence, and more implications and explanations in the full reports. Moreover, there will be topics that never appear in any Fast Break in a full Report.

Fast Breaks are especially useful for the first few days after major news breaks. They are also very useful for people who will seldom or never have enough time to read a full Game/Team/League Report. Fast Breaks are the type of article that more typical web logs feature almost all or all of the time.

Real Team Ratings as of November 27, 2008

As of November 27, 2008
The User Guide Follows the Ratings

1 Los Angeles Lakers 19.7
2 Cleveland Cavaliers 13.3
3 Boston Celtics 12.7
4 Orlando Magic 6.0
5 Indiana Pacers 5.9
6 Denver Nuggets 5.8
7 Houston Rockets 5.8
8 New Orleans Hornets 5.1
9 Dallas Mavericks 3.9
10 Phoenix Suns 2.5
11 Philadelphia 76ers 1.7
12 Miami Heat 1.6
13 Milwaukee Bucks 1.2
14 Portland Trail Blazers 0.7
15 Utah Jazz 0.3
16 San Antonio Spurs -0.3
17 Atlanta Hawks -0.6
18 Chicago Bulls -0.6
19 Detroit Pistons -0.7
20 Charlotte Bobcats -2.4
21 Toronto Raptors -2.5
22 Minnesota Timberwolves -4.5
23 Memphis Grizzlies -5.8
24 New York Knicks -6.5
25 Golden State Warriors -7.3
26 New Jersey Nets -8.1
27 Washington Wizards -9.9
28 Sacramento Kings -10.5
29 Los Angeles Clippers -12.0
30 Oklahoma City Thunder -13.9

More and more, the Quest for the Ring is putting nicely completed and very detailed spreadsheets on the internet so our readers can see details that we would never have time to post. Here is where you can find the spreadsheet for the November 27, 2008 Real Team Ratings:

Real Team Ratings as of November 27, 2008--Spreadsheet With Details

REAL TEAM RATINGS
USER GUIDE FOR REAL TEAM RATINGS
Last updated November 27, 2008

This is the most accurate ranking possible. This system, although still very young, has already obtained a great track record. This system extremely accurately predicted the entire course of the 2008 playoffs.

These rankings start with all-inclusive offensive and defensive efficiency statistics that are adjusted for pace. Specifically, we take points scored per 100 possessions for offensive efficiency and points given up per 100 possessions for defensive efficiency.

We then adjust for schedule difficulty by using a scaled by rank index based on the combined average winning percentage of all of the opponents that a team has played. The indices used in the schedule adjustment are calibrated to the month of the season that has been reached; lessor adjustments are made as the season goes along, because the schedules equal out more and more as the season goes along.

We then carefully overweight a little for the quality of a team's defending, which is at a premium in the playoffs. We call this the Adjustment for Defending.

Due to the strength of schedule adjustment and due to the overweighting of defending, the overall team ratings are NOT simply a report on how well the teams have done this season. This is because the primary objective of this system is to reveal how well each team is projected to do in the playoffs.

THE LATER IN THE SEASON IT IS THE MORE ROCK SOLID THE RATINGS ARE
The earlier in the season it is, the less reliable the ratings are, both because teams have not played the majority of the other teams yet, and because many teams use November and even December as a kind of extended pre-season: they use the early weeks of the season to try out various lineups, strategies, and plays to see which ones work best. As a result, Real Team Ratings after January 1 and especially after February 1 are going to be substantially more rock solid and able to tell you what is going to happen in the playoffs than are ratings coming before the end of the year.

PREDICT FOR KNOWLEDGE OR FUN BUT DO NOT GAMBLE ANY MONEY
Do not under any circumstances use these ratings to gamble with valuable money by betting on the outcome of games. The reasons this would be foolish are explained shortly.

You can predict games for fun but you are a fool if you think you can use these ratings or any other ratings to predict the outcome of games well enough to win money from betting money on outcomes. Do not bet any money on the outcome of basketball games. The remainder of this guide is for those who want to predict games for fun or for knowledge development.

The Real Team Rating differentials between teams can be used as crucial starting points for approximations of expected score difference when any two teams play. Though the ratings are a critical starting point, the outside factors below absolutely must be considered if you are seriously trying to predict the outcome of games in advance. Unfortunately, some of these factors are not only unavailable anywhere including here as of yet, they are difficult to estimate out of the blue, Therefore, to repeat, you should definitely not think that you can use this web site to make money by betting on basketball games. The injury, player slumps, and coaching differential factors, especially, because all of these are so hard to estimate, make it impossible to be truly accurate in predicting games.

OUTSIDE FACTORS THAT EFFECT GAMES
1. Home Court Advantage 4-6 points, depending on team.
2. Extra Rest Advantage 5-7 points
3. Injuries and Player Slumps 0-15 points, rarely more than 10 points. Player slumps are rare, and are defined as major slumps among the best 6 players on the team.
4. Coaching Quality Differential 0-9 points, rarely more than 7 points.
5. The "Human Nature Adjustment": Since it is human nature for basketball players to ease up a little bit if they have a big lead over the other team, you would be foolish to assume that large predicted differences (greater than 10 points) will actually play out in real life. A rough rule of thumb to use is to take only one half of all predicted margin of victory points above 10 as viable for the actual game. For example, suppose that after you have considered the ratings and all of the outside factors, you have an estimate that the Lakers will beat the Clippers by 40 points. You would be wise to take only 1/2 of the margin greater than 10, which would be one half of 40-10, or 1/2 of 30, which is 15, added to the 10, which yields an actual prediction of the Lakers beating the Clippers by 25 points.

FULL EXAMPLE ON PREDICTING
Team X has a Real Team Rating of 15 and Team Y has a Real Team Rating of -5. The starting point for predicting the outcome is that Team X will beat Team Y by 20. Now you estimate all the outside factors:

1. Team Y is home: the predicted team X margin of victory is reduced by 5, to 15.
2. Team Y is playing on back to back nights, while Team X is not: the predicted Team X margin of victory is increased by 6, to 21.
3. Neither team has any major player slumps. But Team X is badly banged up (-10 points) while Team Y has only one injury to a bench player (-1 point): the predicted Team X margin of victory decreases by 9, to 12.
4. The Coach of Team X is on point with hihs team better than the Coach of Team Y is with his team: the predicted Team X margin of victory increases by 3, to 15.
5. Human Nature Adjustment: the predicted margin of victory is reduced by one half of anything in excess of ten points. The predicted Team X margin of victory over Team Y is reduced from 15 to 12.5.

So in this example, the final result is that Team X is projected to beat Team Y by about 12.5 points.

Fast Break: The Nuggets Have Not Understood the Importance of the Draft and of Drafted Players for A Long, Long Time

The Nuggets have fewer players that they drafted still playing for them than do most other teams. They have only two: Carmelo Anthony and Nene. At the opposite extreme, the Los Angeles Lakers have about a half a dozen. Other top NBA franchises also have the great habit of drafting and developing young players, such as the Jazz, the Spurs, and the Cavaliers. We will be doing a Special Report here at the Quest for the Ring during the course of the current season: "How the Best NBA Franchises Make Good Use of the Draft and of Their Drafted Players."

Did you know there is another good inside player that the Nuggets have lost in recent years, besides Anthony McDyess, due to their overly aggressive and overly ambitious trading activities? It's none other than Leon Powe, backup power forward to Kevin Garnett. So he is now a World Champion with the Boston Celtics. He was undrafted, but was first considered and rejected by the Nuggets before he moved on to the Celtics.

In fact, amazingly, the present Nuggets ownership and management has shown almost no interest in retaining and developing players that they have drafted. And at the least since George Karl started with the Nuggets in January 2005, undrafted players who might turn out to be great reserves have been given very perfunctory tryouts if you know what I am saying. All of which to me is another huge warning signal that this franchise is becoming due for another visit to the cellar of the Northwest Division if not the cellar of the entire Western Conference. Drafting and using drafted players well alone is not going to win you a Championship, but I highly doubt that you can win one while mostly ignoring the draft and the development of drafted players.

I know, I am the ultimate Mr. Negative regarding the Nuggets these days, but as far as I am concerned, if you think you are going to continue on with George Karl as if nothing is wrong, give away Marcus Camby, and then trade away Allen Iverson while calling him a poor point guard when you never asked him to play the position, you deserve a whole heap load of negativity. You deserve more negatively than even I can dish out, in fact.

Incidentally, McDyess, who embarrassed the Nuggets recently by refusing to play for them because of how roughly he was traded away off the team in 2002, was a virtual draft pick of the Nuggets in 1995. He was technically drafted by the Clippers, but never played for them, because the Nuggets acquired McDyess immediately after the Clippers drafted him via a trade.

McDyess seems almost certain as we speek to return to the Pistons, from wence he came in the Iverson for Billups trade.

It seems that this pattern of the Nuggets seeing the draft and drafted players as unimportant goes back more than a decade. This would be another reason why the Nuggets have been unable to win a playoff series.

Editorial Note: Please be aware that a "Fast Break" is a short and quick preview of some of the topics that will be explored and proved in more detail in upcoming regular reports. Fast Breaks will often reappear in full reports with only minor reediting, but there will be more important details, more evidence, and more implications and explanations in the full reports. Moreover, there will be topics that never appear in any Fast Break in a full Report.

Fast Breaks are especially useful for the first few days after major news breaks. They are also very useful for people who will seldom or never have enough time to read a full Game/Team/League Report. Fast Breaks are the type of article that more typical web logs feature almost all or all of the time.