Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players: Wizards 107 Pistons 94 in Washington Dec. 9 2008

REAL PLAYER RATINGS (QUALITY) FOR THIS GAME
DETROIT PISTONS QUALITY
Rasheed Wallace, C 1.070
Richard Hamilton, SG 0.874
Antonio McDyess, PF 0.712
Rodney Stuckey, PG 0.597
Walter Herrmann, PF 0.512
Allen Iverson, SG 0.411
Tayshaun Prince, SF 0.395
Arron Afflalo, SG -0.042

WASHINGTON WIZARDS QUALITY
Juan Dixon, SG 1.379
Caron Butler, SF 1.113
Dominic McGuire, PF 1.073
Nick Young, SG 0.891
Andray Blatche, PF 0.742
Antawn Jamison, PF 0.692
Darius Songaila, PF 0.632
Antonio Daniels, PG 0.388
DeShawn Stevenson, SG 0.033

SCALE FOR RPR (QUALITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
Historic Superstar for this game 1.400 and more
Superstar 1.050 to 1.399
Star 0.800 to 1.050
Very Good 0.650 to 0.799
Major Role Player 0.525 to 0.649
Role Player 0.450 to 0.524
Minor Role Player 0.400 to 0.449
Very Minor Role Player or Very Important Defender 0.350 to 0.399
Poor Game or Extremely Importand Defender 0.275 to 0.349
Very Poor Game Regardless of Defending 0.200 to 0.274
Disaster Game Regardless of Defending minus infinity to 0.199

****************************************************
REAL PLAYER PRODUCTION (QUANTITY) IN THIS GAME
DETROIT PISTONS QUANTITY
Richard Hamilton, SG 33.20
Rasheed Wallace, C 28.90
Rodney Stuckey, PG 21.50
Antonio McDyess, PF 17.80
Tayshaun Prince, SF 15.80
Allen Iverson, SG 15.60
Walter Herrmann, PF 6.65
Arron Afflalo, SG -0.75

WASHINGTON WIZARDS QUANTITY
Caron Butler, SF 45.65
Juan Dixon, SG 33.10
Antawn Jamison, PF 27.00
Darius Songaila, PF 17.70
Nick Young, SG 15.15
Dominic McGuire, PF 13.95
Andray Blatche, PF 13.35
Antonio Daniels, PG 6.20
DeShawn Stevenson, SG 1.10

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 40.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 36.0 to 39.9
Huge Game 32.0 to 35.9
Very Big Game 28.0 to 31.9
Big Game 24.0 to 27.9
Typical Average Game 20.0 to 23.9
Somewhat Below Average Game 16.0 to 19.9
Way Below Average Game 12.0 to 15.9
Bad Game 9.0 to 11.9
Really Bad Game 5.0 to 8.9
Total Disaster minus infinity to 4.9

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR NON-STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Non-Starters Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 33.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 29.0 to 32.9
Huge Game 25.0 to 28.9
Very Big Game 21.0 to 24.9
Big Game 17.0 to 20.9
Typical Non-Starter Game 12.0 to 16.9
Below Average Even For a Non-Starter 9.0 to 11.9
Way Below Average Even For a Non-Starter or Limited Minutes 6.0 to 8.9
Bad Game Even for a Non-Starter or Very Limited Minutes 3.0 to 5.9
Disaster: Nothing Much to Report minus infinity to 1.9

THE HIGHEST QUALITY PLAYERS IN THIS GAME








DETROIT PISTONS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAME
Superstar during minutes on the court: Rasheed Wallace
Star during minutes on the court: Richard Hamilton
Very Good during minutes on the court: Antonio McDyess













WASHINGTON WIZARDS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Superstar during minutes on the court: Juan Dixon
Superstar during minutes on the court: Caron Butler
Superstar during minutes on the court: Dominic McGuire
Star during minutes on the court: Nick Young
Star during minutes on the court: Andray Blatche
Very Good during minutes on the court: Antawn Jamison
Very Good during minutes on the court: Darius Songaila

THE GREATEST POWER PERFORMERS OF THIS GAME








DETROIT PISTONS POWER PERFORMERS
Huge Game: Richard Hamilton
Very Big Game: Rasheed Wallace
Big Game: Antonio McDyess













WASHINGTON WIZARDS POWER PERFORMERS
Only Some Players can Ever Fly This High, and Not Very Often: Caron Butler
Massive and Memorable Game: Juan Dixon
Very Big Game: Antawn Jamison
Big Game: Darius Songaila

USER GUIDE FOR THIS TYPE OF REPORT(Last updated December 8 2008)
EDITING AND PUBLISHING PLAN-MAIN DETAILS
This is a "just the important facts please, and give them to me quick" type of report. I will in some cases do a very limited amount of commentary at the bottom of this type of report, but it will really be just notes for commentary that will be elsewhere in the near future. In some cases there will be no comments at all.

Most of the commentaries I do are in "Game/Team/League Reports" and in Fast Breaks". Game/Team/League reports are, with any luck, going to be produced for about 20 Nuggets and for about 20 Pistons games this season. Ultimate Game Breakdowns: Players, such as the one here, will be done for those same games. Plus there will be about 10 more Nuggets and 10 more Pistons Game Breakdowns for games for which there will be no article report. There will be a few other "wildcard" Game Breakdowns.

So in total, at least 70 of these relatively easy to produce but very informative Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players reports are scheduled for the regular season. At least 40 Game/Team/League Reports are planned.

Ultimate Game Breakdown-Coaching reports are done for every game that has a Game/Team/League Report.

More of every type of report will come out during playoffs season; I won't bore you with those details.

The games that get the full treatment have been very carefully chosen to be the most important games, which are generally the games against the best teams. Full treatment including the kitchen sink report games have been chosen from among only games where neither team is at a disadvantage due to playing on back to back nights. Other internet basketball "experts" are really wasting their time to some extent when they report on a game where one team was playing on back to back nights and the other team was not, because the great majority of those games are almost automatically won by the team that has more rest. I used to do those stupid games, but I'm not doing them anymore, because I keep trying to get better and better at understanding and teaching basketball, so I make changes such as this.

ULTIMATE GAME BREAKDOWN--PLAYERS REPORT EXPLAINED
With an Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players report, you can see very rapidly who was most responsible for the winning or the losing of the game. Then someone like me can easily write a separate game report which explains how things might have worked out better for a team, or why things worked out just about as well as possible, as the case may be.

The Real Player Ratings formula has been very carefully and accurately tweaked again and is currently as follows:

POSITIVE FACTORS
Points 1.00 (at par)
Number of 3-Pt FGs Made 1.00
Number of 2-Pt FGs Made 0.60
Number of FTs Made 0.00

Assists 1.75

Offensive Rebounds 1.15
Defensive Rebounds 1.25
Blocks 1.60
Steals 2.15

NEGATIVE FACTORS
3-Pt FGs Missed -1.00
2-Pt FGs Missed -0.85
FTs Missed -0.85

Turnovers -2.00
Personal Fouls -0.80

ACTUAL COMBINED AWARD OR PENALTY BY TYPE OF SHOT
3-Pointer Made 4.00
2-Pointer Made 2.60
Free Throw Made 1.00
3-Pointer Missed -1.00
2-Pointer Missed -0.85
Free Throw Missed -0.85

ZERO POINTS: PERCENTAGES BELOW WHICH THERE IS A NEGATIVE NET RESULT
3-Pointer 0 score % 0.200
2-Pointer 0 score % 0.246
1-Pointer 0 score % 0.459

ASSISTS VERSUS TURNOVERS ZERO POINT
Assist/Turnover Ratio That Yields 0 Net Points: 1.143

QUALITY (RPR) AND QUANTITY (RPP)-AN EXPLANATION
RPR game reports show for each player the RPR (Real Player Rating) which tells you how good a player did (all the good things minus all the bad things) out on the court per unit of time. The RPP (Real Player Production) report tells you how much in total (the sum of the of the good things minus the sum of the bad things) a player did out on the court.

Many and maybe most sports watchers and an unknown but probably disturbingly large number of sports managers make the mistakes of exaggerating the importance of quantity and overlooking to some extent quality. These reports allow you to expand your horizons. These reports put quantity and quality side by side, which is extremely valuable, because both are roughly equally important in explaining accurately why and how the game turned out the way it did.

Players who over many games consistently have higher RPR (quality) but lower RPP (quantity) results are in many cases not getting enough playing time. Players that over many games consistently have lower RPR (quality) but higher RPP (quantity) results are in many cases getting too much playing time.

The exceptional cases are very often going to be players who are either truly outstanding defenders or truly bad defenders. This is because the one and only thing that is not counted, because it is impossible to calculate it, is the number of shots that a player prevents from being scores. Investigation has to date revealed that, apparently, no one has even attempted, for the NBA, rough estimates of the actual value of each player's defending, in terms of number or percentage of scores prevented, or in terms of number or percentage of possessions made worthless.

Over the coming year, I am going to be working to see if it is possible to use some combination of advanced statistics that are tracked on certain internet sites as an accurate proxy for the number of shots and/or for the number of possessions ruined by a defender.

Another exception. where it is really alright when it looks like a player is playing too much, will be if a team has a point guard who has many more turnovers than the average point guard has. Because the point guard is so important, a good coach has to play his best guard who can make plays at the position for a full set of minutes every game, pretty much regardless of how many turnovers that player makes. If you take out your designated point guard due to "too many turnovers," it's most often going to be sort of like cutting your foot off because you have a bad case of athletes foot!

Fast Break: Cheapest Win of the Year Nomination

The Nuggets are a cheap team. They kick players to the curb, they have a "playground style" offense that is still playground despite Chauncey Billups because no point guard can totally offset pure chaos, and they play a swarming and fouling defense in the paint while leaving the perimeter largely undefended. I have decided that I really, really dislike teams and franchises like this. I mean, I dislike them even beyond the losses in general and the fooled fans and playoff losses in particular that they generate. There is too much money and too many smart coaches in pro sports to settle for all these cheap approaches to pro basketball.

Tonight I ruined my Boxer Day evening by watching what may be the cheapest victory of the 2008-09 season, when the 76'ers thoroughly outplayed the Nuggets but lost to them in Denver.

How did the 76'ers lose? The cheapest way you can imagine, of course. While the 76'ers were incredibly missing 12 of 30 foul shots, the Nuggets were lucky beyond comprehension as they made 24 of 25 free throws and 15 of 31 threes. Almost no one ever makes those numbers and percentages in combination on either free throws or threes. It is essentially unheard of for a team to make those in both categories in the same game. It's like the 76'ers lost due to a bizarre mathematical fluke.

How many good offensive players did the Nuggets have out there? One, which is what you would expect from a cheap team: J.R. Smith. Two if you count Billups and that is still cheap, sorry.

The Nuggets turned the ball over 22 times versus 16 times for the 76'ers. The 76'ers shot .494 from the field versus .434 for the Nuggets. In at least 97 out of 100 games, those two things alone would guarantee the 76'ers the win. But for some bizarre reason, they could not make free throws. Meanwhile, the Nuggets could not miss free throws.

Honestly, I think this was one of the cheapest wins ever achieved by one of the cheapest franchises of recent years.

Oh well, the harder they come, the harder they fall. Now, I will not be fully satisfied until the Nuggets lose 4-0 in the playoffs next April. The idea that the Nuggets could win a playoff series in this state remains ridiculous and you are wearing huge made in Colorado rose colored glasses if you think the Nuggets are going to get home court advantage or win more than a game in the playoffs. And, as I said, I am really, really rooting for the Nuggets to lose all 4 now.
___________________________________________
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.

Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players: Nuggets 105, 76'ers 101 in Denver Dec. 26 2008

REAL PLAYER RATINGS (QUALITY) FOR THIS GAME
PHILADELPHIA 76'ERS QUALITY
Andre Iguodala, SG 0.840
Andre Miller, PG 0.832
Marreese Speights, PF 0.761
Willie Green, SG 0.661
Lou Williams, SG 0.622
Royal Ivey, PG 0.561
Thaddeus Young, SF 0.385
Samuel Dalembert, C 0.384
Reggie Evans, PF 0.346

DENVER NUGGETS QUALITY
Chauncey Billups, PG 1.016
Chucky Atkins, PG 0.718
J.R. Smith, SG 0.640
Nene, C 0.597
Dahntay Jones, SG 0.474
Kenyon Martin, PF 0.456
Anthony Carter, PG 0.418
Chris Andersen, PF 0.331
Linas Kleiza, SF 0.294
Renaldo Balkman, SF -0.029

SCALE FOR RPR (QUALITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
Historic Superstar for this game 1.400 and more
Superstar 1.050 to 1.399
Star 0.800 to 1.050
Very Good 0.650 to 0.799
Major Role Player 0.525 to 0.649
Role Player 0.450 to 0.524
Minor Role Player 0.400 to 0.449
Very Minor Role Player or Very Important Defender 0.350 to 0.399
Poor Game or Extremely Importand Defender 0.275 to 0.349
Very Poor Game Regardless of Defending 0.200 to 0.274
Disaster Game Regardless of Defending minus infinity to 0.199

****************************************************
REAL PLAYER PRODUCTION (QUANTITY) IN THIS GAME
PHILADELPHIA 76'ERS QUANTITY
Andre Iguodala, SG 38.65
Andre Miller, PG 32.45
Lou Williams, SG 16.80
Willie Green, SG 14.55
Marreese Speights, PF 13.70
Thaddeus Young, SF 11.55
Samuel Dalembert, C 10.75
Royal Ivey, PG 5.05
Reggie Evans, PF 4.85

DENVER NUGGETS QUANTITY
Chauncey Billups, PG 40.65
J.R. Smith, SG 23.05
Nene, C 19.70
Kenyon Martin, PF 15.95
Chucky Atkins, PG 10.05
Dahntay Jones, SG 9.00
Anthony Carter, PG 8.35
Linas Kleiza, SF 7.05
Chris Andersen, PF 4.30
Renaldo Balkman, SF -0.20

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 40.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 36.0 to 39.9
Huge Game 32.0 to 35.9
Very Big Game 28.0 to 31.9
Big Game 24.0 to 27.9
Typical Average Game 20.0 to 23.9
Somewhat Below Average Game 16.0 to 19.9
Way Below Average Game 12.0 to 15.9
Bad Game 9.0 to 11.9
Really Bad Game 5.0 to 8.9
Total Disaster minus infinity to 4.9

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR NON-STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Non-Starters Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 33.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 29.0 to 32.9
Huge Game 25.0 to 28.9
Very Big Game 21.0 to 24.9
Big Game 17.0 to 20.9
Typical Non-Starter Game 12.0 to 16.9
Below Average Even For a Non-Starter 9.0 to 11.9
Way Below Average Even For a Non-Starter or Limited Minutes 6.0 to 8.9
Bad Game Even for a Non-Starter or Very Limited Minutes 3.0 to 5.9
Disaster: Nothing Much to Report minus infinity to 1.9

THE HIGHEST QUALITY PLAYERS IN THIS GAME








PHILADELPHIA 76'ERS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Star during minutes on the court: Andre Igoudala
Star during minutes on the court: Andre Miller
Star during minutes on the court: Marreese Speights








DENVER NUGGETS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Superstar during minutes on the court: Chauncey Billups
Very Good during minutes on the court: J.R. Smith
Very Good during minutes on the court: Nene

THE GREATEST POWER PERFORMERS OF THIS GAME








PHILADELPHIA 76'ERS POWER PERFORMERS
Massive and Memorable Game: Andre Igoudala
Very Big Game: Andre Miller








DENVER NUGGETS POWER PERFORMERS
Only Some Players can Ever Fly This High, and Not Very Often: Chauncey Billups
Big Game: J.R. Smith

USER GUIDE FOR THIS TYPE OF REPORT
ULTIMATE GAME BREAKDOWN--PLAYERS REPORT EXPLAINED(Last edited Dec. 8, 2008)

This is a "just the important facts please, and give them to me quick" type of report. I will in some cases do a very limited amount of commentary at the bottom of this type of report, but it will really be just notes for commentary that will be elsewhere in the near future. In some cases there will be no comments at all.

With an Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players report, you can see very rapidly who was most responsible for the winning or the losing of the game. Then someone like me can easily write a separate game report which explains how things might have worked out better for a team, or why things worked out just about as well as possible, as the case may be.

The Real Player Ratings formula has been very carefully and accurately tweaked again and is currently as follows:

POSITIVE FACTORS
Points 1.00 (at par)
Number of 3-Pt FGs Made 1.00
Number of 2-Pt FGs Made 0.60
Number of FTs Made 0.00

Assists 1.75

Offensive Rebounds 1.15
Defensive Rebounds 1.25
Blocks 1.60
Steals 2.15

NEGATIVE FACTORS
3-Pt FGs Missed -1.00
2-Pt FGs Missed -0.85
FTs Missed -0.85

Turnovers -2.00
Personal Fouls -0.80

ACTUAL COMBINED AWARD OR PENALTY BY TYPE OF SHOT
3-Pointer Made 4.00
2-Pointer Made 2.60
Free Throw Made 1.00
3-Pointer Missed -1.00
2-Pointer Missed -0.85
Free Throw Missed -0.85

ZERO POINTS: PERCENTAGES BELOW WHICH THERE IS A NEGATIVE NET RESULT
3-Pointer 0 score % 0.200
2-Pointer 0 score % 0.246
1-Pointer 0 score % 0.459

ASSISTS VERSUS TURNOVERS ZERO POINT
Assist/Turnover Ratio That Yields 0 Net Points: 1.143

QUALITY (RPR) AND QUANTITY (RPP)-AN EXPLANATION
RPR game reports show for each player the RPR (Real Player Rating) which tells you how good a player did (all the good things minus all the bad things) out on the court per unit of time. The RPP (Real Player Production) report tells you how much in total (the sum of the of the good things minus the sum of the bad things) a player did out on the court.

Many and maybe most sports watchers and an unknown but probably disturbingly large number of sports managers make the mistakes of exaggerating the importance of quantity and overlooking to some extent quality. These reports allow you to expand your horizons. These reports put quantity and quality side by side, which is extremely valuable, because both are roughly equally important in explaining accurately why and how the game turned out the way it did.

Players who over many games consistently have higher RPR (quality) but lower RPP (quantity) results are in many cases not getting enough playing time. Players that over many games consistently have lower RPR (quality) but higher RPP (quantity) results are in many cases getting too much playing time.

The exceptional cases are very often going to be players who are either truly outstanding defenders or truly bad defenders. This is because the one and only thing that is not counted, because it is impossible to calculate it, is the number of shots that a player prevents from being scores. Investigation has to date revealed that, apparently, no one has even attempted, for the NBA, rough estimates of the actual value of each player's defending, in terms of number or percentage of scores prevented, or in terms of number or percentage of possessions made worthless.

Over the coming year, I am going to be working to see if it is possible to use some combination of advanced statistics that are tracked on certain internet sites as an accurate proxy for the number of shots and/or for the number of possessions ruined by a defender.

Another exception. where it is really alright when it looks like a player is playing too much, will be if a team has a point guard who has many more turnovers than the average point guard has. Because the point guard is so important, a good coach has to play his best guard who can make plays at the position for a full set of minutes every game, pretty much regardless of how many turnovers that player makes. If you take out your designated point guard due to "too many turnovers," it's most often going to be sort of like cutting your foot off because you have a bad case of athletes foot!

EDITING AND PUBLISHING PLAN-MAIN DETAILS (Last Edited Dec. 21, 2008)
Most of the commentaries I do are in "Game/Team/League Reports" and in Fast Breaks". Game/Team/League reports are, with any luck, going to be produced for about 20 Nuggets and for about 20 Pistons games this season. Ultimate Game Breakdowns: Players, such as the one here, will be done for those same games. Plus there will be about 10 more Nuggets and 10 more Pistons Game Breakdowns for games for which there will be no article report. There will be a few other "wildcard" Game Breakdowns.

So in total, at least 70 of these relatively easy to produce but very informative Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players reports are scheduled for the regular season. At least 40 Game/Team/League Reports are planned.

Ultimate Game Breakdown-Coaching reports are done for every game that has a Game/Team/League Report.

More of every type of report will come out during playoffs season; I won't bore you with those details.

The games that get the full treatment have been very carefully chosen to be the most important games, which are generally the games against the best teams. Full treatment including the kitchen sink report games have been chosen from among only games where neither team is at a disadvantage due to playing on back to back nights. Other internet basketball "experts" are really wasting their time to some extent when they report on a game where one team was playing on back to back nights and the other team was not, because the great majority of those games are almost automatically won by the team that has more rest. I used to do those stupid games, but I'm not doing them anymore, because I keep trying to get better and better at understanding and teaching basketball, so I make changes such as this.

DECEMBER 16 EDITING CHANGES

As of December 16, two very important changes were made in the editing plan. These changes are most likely the finishing touches for a plan which has gone through many developmental phases during 2008, and now is ready to be the operational plan for 2009 and for hopefully many years thereafter. We went from complete chaos to a finely tuned editing plan ready for prime time. It took many, many hours of work and iterations.

First, the tight tie-in between Fast Breaks and Game/Team/League Reports (GTLRs) was relaxed. For several months, the evolving editing plan was envisioning that all Fast Breaks would be incorporated in full in ensuing GTLRs. The new plan is that some of the Fast Breaks will stand on their own.

In conjunction with this change, it was necessary to adobt a new production measurement system. We decided to use number of words for this. The word count tool in Microsoft Word makes this feasible. Despite this change, the majority and probably the great majority of Fast Breaks will still be picked up, expanded upon, and improved to some extent in ensuing GTLRs.

An implication of this change is that we are no longer going to be promising a specific number of GTLRs anymore. But we are now pledging to produce 20,000 words or more a month during the NBA season. And we are still going to be pledging a specific number of statistical reports, such as Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players reports, Real Team Ratings reports, and various kinds of Real Player Ratings reports, and so forth.

The other big change is that GTLRs will no longer automatically cover the particular game they are tied to to any extent. Really good or important games will still be covered in detail. Other games will be covered briefly, as has been increasingly the case in recent months and years. The new change is that now, some games, usually near routs or routs where the larger issues being discussed in lieu of particular games played out, will hardly be mentioned at all.

When non-game topics are considered more deserving of the limited editorial space and time available, they will get the coverage instead of relatively lopsided particular games. Technically, within the editorial plan, all GTLRs will still be tied to individual games, all of which have been carefully chosen in advance to be the most important games for the team.

An implication of this change is that I will no longer automatically reference a game score in GTLR titles. If there is a score in a title, it means that the game will be covered in some detail. If there is no score in the title, it means the report will be one that skips the individual game and goes into topics that are broader than any particular game.

Fast Break: Top Reasons Why the Nuggets Beat the TrailBlazers in Denver on Dec. 22

How in the world did the Nuggets win this game with no Carmelo Anthony (and no Reynaldo Balkman, laugh out loud)?

Just as the NBA playoffs are a different, more intense world than the regular season (unfortunately for these Nuggets) the NBA regular season is a different, more intense world than is college basketball. Greg Oden, due to a major injury, did not play a single game during what was supposed to be his rookie season last year. So he has still not finished making the adjustment from Ohio State to the NBA.

Portland chose him in the draft because they knew their biggest problem was interior defense and another big problem was a relative lack of interior scoring. Portland's guards are the opposite of Nuggets guards: they prefer to keep the passing, assisting, and good shooting game going over taking it to the hoop. Nuggets guards and Carmelo Anthony to boot have been ordered to overweight going to the hoop and foul hunting. Chauncey Billups is supposed to be the sum total of the passing game, and scoring from outside the paint has been relegated to the back burner to say the least.

But Oden is not really ready to full the Portland void in the paint yet due to last year's injury. (Some first round picks never fully adjust but this will almost certainly not be the case with Oden). So really, Portland is being hammered by the Oden injury again this year.

Everything I just pointed out explains why the TrailBlazers lost this game: they lost the game first and foremost because Oden is still playing his very first NBA games and without Oden at full speed, the TrailBlazers are still a bad inside team on both sides of the ball. They are especially vulnerable to the Nuggets in the state they are in, since the Nuggets seem to think that basketball outside the paint does not have much significance. So everything important the Nuggets do is in or very near the paint and if your team is bad there, the Nuggets will clean up on you there.

The most blatant example of how Oden has not adjusted to the NBA yet is that he seems to be in almost constant foul trouble. And he is not getting his share of easy scores yet.

But by April, if the TrailBlazers have any luck, Oden will be largely adjusted and they will be less vulnerable to being badly damaged in the paint.

Aside from this, the number two reason the Nuggets won would be that they used a high level strategy when they doubled/harassed Brandon Roy during the game. Whereas the Blazers did not do enough of that on Billups.
____________________________________________
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.

Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players: Nuggets 97 TrailBlazers 89 in Denver Dec. 22 2008

REAL PLAYER RATINGS (QUALITY) FOR THIS GAME
PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS QUALITY
Greg Oden, C 0.773
LaMarcus Aldridge, PF 0.728
Joel Przybilla, C 0.652
Travis Outlaw, SF 0.641
Steve Blake, PG 0.563
Rudy Fernandez, SG 0.547
Brandon Roy, SG 0.483
Nicolas Batum, SF 0.058
Ike Diogu, PF -0.072

DENVER NUGGETS QUALITY
Nene, C 0.831
Chris Andersen, PF 0.812
Chauncey Billups, PG 0.789
J.R. Smith, SG 0.714
Linas Kleiza, SF 0.620
Kenyon Martin, PF 0.585
Anthony Carter, PG 0.509
Chucky Atkins, PG 0.239
Dahntay Jones, SG 0.203

SCALE FOR RPR (QUALITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
Historic Superstar for this game 1.400 and more
Superstar 1.050 to 1.399
Star 0.800 to 1.050
Very Good 0.650 to 0.799
Major Role Player 0.525 to 0.649
Role Player 0.450 to 0.524
Minor Role Player 0.400 to 0.449
Very Minor Role Player or Very Important Defender 0.350 to 0.399
Poor Game or Extremely Importand Defender 0.275 to 0.349
Very Poor Game Regardless of Defending 0.200 to 0.274
Disaster Game Regardless of Defending minus infinity to 0.199

****************************************************
REAL PLAYER PRODUCTION (QUANTITY) IN THIS GAME
PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS QUANTITY
LaMarcus Aldridge, PF 28.40
Steve Blake, PG 22.50
Travis Outlaw, SF 20.50
Greg Oden, C 17.00
Brandon Roy, SG 15.45
Joel Przybilla, C 14.35
Rudy Fernandez, SG 9.85
Nicolas Batum, SF 0.75
Ike Diogu, PF -0.65

DENVER NUGGETS QUANTITY
Chauncey Billups, PG 33.15
Nene, C 32.40
J.R. Smith, SG 22.85
Kenyon Martin, PF 21.05
Linas Kleiza, SF 17.35
Chris Andersen, PF 17.05
Anthony Carter, PG 8.65
Dahntay Jones, SG 3.25
Chucky Atkins, PG 2.15

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 40.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 36.0 to 39.9
Huge Game 32.0 to 35.9
Very Big Game 28.0 to 31.9
Big Game 24.0 to 27.9
Typical Average Game 20.0 to 23.9
Somewhat Below Average Game 16.0 to 19.9
Way Below Average Game 12.0 to 15.9
Bad Game 9.0 to 11.9
Really Bad Game 5.0 to 8.9
Total Disaster minus infinity to 4.9

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR NON-STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Non-Starters Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 33.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 29.0 to 32.9
Huge Game 25.0 to 28.9
Very Big Game 21.0 to 24.9
Big Game 17.0 to 20.9
Typical Non-Starter Game 12.0 to 16.9
Below Average Even For a Non-Starter 9.0 to 11.9
Way Below Average Even For a Non-Starter or Limited Minutes 6.0 to 8.9
Bad Game Even for a Non-Starter or Very Limited Minutes 3.0 to 5.9
Disaster: Nothing Much to Report minus infinity to 1.9

THE HIGHEST QUALITY PLAYERS IN THIS GAME








PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Star during minutes on the court: Greg Oden
Star during minutes on the court: LaMarcus Aldridge
Very Good during minutes on the court: Joel Przybilla
Very Good during minutes on the court: Travis Outlaw








DENVER NUGGETS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Star during minutes on the court: Nene
Star during minutes on the court: Chris Andersen
Star during minutes on the court: Chauncey Billups
Very Good during minutes on the court: J.R. Smith
Very Good during minutes on the court: Kenyon Martin

THE GREATEST POWER PERFORMERS OF THIS GAME








PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS POWER PERFORMERS
Very Big Game: LaMarcus Aldridge
Very Big Game: Travis Outlaw








DENVER NUGGETS POWER PERFORMERS
Huge Game: Chauncey Billups
Huge Game: Nene
Big Game: Chris Andersen

USER GUIDE FOR THIS TYPE OF REPORT
ULTIMATE GAME BREAKDOWN--PLAYERS REPORT EXPLAINED(Last edited Dec. 8, 2008)

This is a "just the important facts please, and give them to me quick" type of report. I will in some cases do a very limited amount of commentary at the bottom of this type of report, but it will really be just notes for commentary that will be elsewhere in the near future. In some cases there will be no comments at all.

With an Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players report, you can see very rapidly who was most responsible for the winning or the losing of the game. Then someone like me can easily write a separate game report which explains how things might have worked out better for a team, or why things worked out just about as well as possible, as the case may be.

The Real Player Ratings formula has been very carefully and accurately tweaked again and is currently as follows:

POSITIVE FACTORS
Points 1.00 (at par)
Number of 3-Pt FGs Made 1.00
Number of 2-Pt FGs Made 0.60
Number of FTs Made 0.00

Assists 1.75

Offensive Rebounds 1.15
Defensive Rebounds 1.25
Blocks 1.60
Steals 2.15

NEGATIVE FACTORS
3-Pt FGs Missed -1.00
2-Pt FGs Missed -0.85
FTs Missed -0.85

Turnovers -2.00
Personal Fouls -0.80

ACTUAL COMBINED AWARD OR PENALTY BY TYPE OF SHOT
3-Pointer Made 4.00
2-Pointer Made 2.60
Free Throw Made 1.00
3-Pointer Missed -1.00
2-Pointer Missed -0.85
Free Throw Missed -0.85

ZERO POINTS: PERCENTAGES BELOW WHICH THERE IS A NEGATIVE NET RESULT
3-Pointer 0 score % 0.200
2-Pointer 0 score % 0.246
1-Pointer 0 score % 0.459

ASSISTS VERSUS TURNOVERS ZERO POINT
Assist/Turnover Ratio That Yields 0 Net Points: 1.143

QUALITY (RPR) AND QUANTITY (RPP)-AN EXPLANATION
RPR game reports show for each player the RPR (Real Player Rating) which tells you how good a player did (all the good things minus all the bad things) out on the court per unit of time. The RPP (Real Player Production) report tells you how much in total (the sum of the of the good things minus the sum of the bad things) a player did out on the court.

Many and maybe most sports watchers and an unknown but probably disturbingly large number of sports managers make the mistakes of exaggerating the importance of quantity and overlooking to some extent quality. These reports allow you to expand your horizons. These reports put quantity and quality side by side, which is extremely valuable, because both are roughly equally important in explaining accurately why and how the game turned out the way it did.

Players who over many games consistently have higher RPR (quality) but lower RPP (quantity) results are in many cases not getting enough playing time. Players that over many games consistently have lower RPR (quality) but higher RPP (quantity) results are in many cases getting too much playing time.

The exceptional cases are very often going to be players who are either truly outstanding defenders or truly bad defenders. This is because the one and only thing that is not counted, because it is impossible to calculate it, is the number of shots that a player prevents from being scores. Investigation has to date revealed that, apparently, no one has even attempted, for the NBA, rough estimates of the actual value of each player's defending, in terms of number or percentage of scores prevented, or in terms of number or percentage of possessions made worthless.

Over the coming year, I am going to be working to see if it is possible to use some combination of advanced statistics that are tracked on certain internet sites as an accurate proxy for the number of shots and/or for the number of possessions ruined by a defender.

Another exception. where it is really alright when it looks like a player is playing too much, will be if a team has a point guard who has many more turnovers than the average point guard has. Because the point guard is so important, a good coach has to play his best guard who can make plays at the position for a full set of minutes every game, pretty much regardless of how many turnovers that player makes. If you take out your designated point guard due to "too many turnovers," it's most often going to be sort of like cutting your foot off because you have a bad case of athletes foot!

EDITING AND PUBLISHING PLAN-MAIN DETAILS (Last Edited Dec. 21, 2008)
Most of the commentaries I do are in "Game/Team/League Reports" and in Fast Breaks". Game/Team/League reports are, with any luck, going to be produced for about 20 Nuggets and for about 20 Pistons games this season. Ultimate Game Breakdowns: Players, such as the one here, will be done for those same games. Plus there will be about 10 more Nuggets and 10 more Pistons Game Breakdowns for games for which there will be no article report. There will be a few other "wildcard" Game Breakdowns.

So in total, at least 70 of these relatively easy to produce but very informative Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players reports are scheduled for the regular season. At least 40 Game/Team/League Reports are planned.

Ultimate Game Breakdown-Coaching reports are done for every game that has a Game/Team/League Report.

More of every type of report will come out during playoffs season; I won't bore you with those details.

The games that get the full treatment have been very carefully chosen to be the most important games, which are generally the games against the best teams. Full treatment including the kitchen sink report games have been chosen from among only games where neither team is at a disadvantage due to playing on back to back nights. Other internet basketball "experts" are really wasting their time to some extent when they report on a game where one team was playing on back to back nights and the other team was not, because the great majority of those games are almost automatically won by the team that has more rest. I used to do those stupid games, but I'm not doing them anymore, because I keep trying to get better and better at understanding and teaching basketball, so I make changes such as this.

DECEMBER 16 EDITING CHANGES

As of December 16, two very important changes were made in the editing plan. These changes are most likely the finishing touches for a plan which has gone through many developmental phases during 2008, and now is ready to be the operational plan for 2009 and for hopefully many years thereafter. We went from complete chaos to a finely tuned editing plan ready for prime time. It took many, many hours of work and iterations.

First, the tight tie-in between Fast Breaks and Game/Team/League Reports (GTLRs) was relaxed. For several months, the evolving editing plan was envisioning that all Fast Breaks would be incorporated in full in ensuing GTLRs. The new plan is that some of the Fast Breaks will stand on their own.

In conjunction with this change, it was necessary to adobt a new production measurement system. We decided to use number of words for this. The word count tool in Microsoft Word makes this feasible. Despite this change, the majority and probably the great majority of Fast Breaks will still be picked up, expanded upon, and improved to some extent in ensuing GTLRs.

An implication of this change is that we are no longer going to be promising a specific number of GTLRs anymore. But we are now pledging to produce 20,000 words or more a month during the NBA season. And we are still going to be pledging a specific number of statistical reports, such as Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players reports, Real Team Ratings reports, and various kinds of Real Player Ratings reports, and so forth.

The other big change is that GTLRs will no longer automatically cover the particular game they are tied to to any extent. Really good or important games will still be covered in detail. Other games will be covered briefly, as has been increasingly the case in recent months and years. The new change is that now, some games, usually near routs or routs where the larger issues being discussed in lieu of particular games played out, will hardly be mentioned at all.

When non-game topics are considered more deserving of the limited editorial space and time available, they will get the coverage instead of relatively lopsided particular games. Technically, within the editorial plan, all GTLRs will still be tied to individual games, all of which have been carefully chosen in advance to be the most important games for the team.

An implication of this change is that I will no longer automatically reference a game score in GTLR titles. If there is a score in a title, it means that the game will be covered in some detail. If there is no score in the title, it means the report will be one that skips the individual game and goes into topics that are broader than any particular game.

Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players: Cavaliers 105 Nuggets 88 in Denver Dec. 19 2008

REAL PLAYER RATINGS (QUALITY) FOR THIS GAME
CLEVELAND CAVALIERS QUALITY
LeBron James, SF 1.167
Zydrunas Ilgauskas, C 1.068
Delonte West, SG 0.960
Ben Wallace, PF 0.602
Sasha Pavlovic, SG 0.412
Anderson Varejao, PF 0.389
Mo Williams, PG 0.290
Wally Szczerbiak, SG 0.220

DENVER NUGGETS QUALITY
Chris Andersen, PF 0.908
Chauncey Billups, PG 0.702
J.R. Smith, SG 0.632
Anthony Carter, PG 0.602
Linas Kleiza, SF 0.466
Kenyon Martin, PF 0.230
Dahntay Jones, SG 0.147
Carmelo Anthony, SF 0.029
Nene, C -0.046

SCALE FOR RPR (QUALITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
Historic Superstar for this game 1.400 and more
Superstar 1.050 to 1.399
Star 0.800 to 1.050
Very Good 0.650 to 0.799
Major Role Player 0.525 to 0.649
Role Player 0.450 to 0.524
Minor Role Player 0.400 to 0.449
Very Minor Role Player or Very Important Defender 0.350 to 0.399
Poor Game or Extremely Importand Defender 0.275 to 0.349
Very Poor Game Regardless of Defending 0.200 to 0.274
Disaster Game Regardless of Defending minus infinity to 0.199

****************************************************
REAL PLAYER PRODUCTION (QUANTITY) IN THIS GAME
CLEVELAND CAVALIERS QUANTITY
LeBron James, SF 45.50
Delonte West, SG 32.65
Zydrunas Ilgauskas, C 29.90
Ben Wallace, PF 13.85
Anderson Varejao, PF 10.90
Sasha Pavlovic, SG 10.70
Mo Williams, PG 10.15
Wally Szczerbiak, SG 4.40

DENVER NUGGETS QUANTITY
Chauncey Billups, PG 22.45
Chris Andersen, PF 21.80
J.R. Smith, SG 15.80
Anthony Carter, PG 12.65
Linas Kleiza, SF 11.65
Kenyon Martin, PF 6.90
Dahntay Jones, SG 2.80
Carmelo Anthony, SF 0.85
Nene, C -1.20

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 40.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 36.0 to 39.9
Huge Game 32.0 to 35.9
Very Big Game 28.0 to 31.9
Big Game 24.0 to 27.9
Typical Average Game 20.0 to 23.9
Somewhat Below Average Game 16.0 to 19.9
Way Below Average Game 12.0 to 15.9
Bad Game 9.0 to 11.9
Really Bad Game 5.0 to 8.9
Total Disaster minus infinity to 4.9

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR NON-STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Non-Starters Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 33.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 29.0 to 32.9
Huge Game 25.0 to 28.9
Very Big Game 21.0 to 24.9
Big Game 17.0 to 20.9
Typical Non-Starter Game 12.0 to 16.9
Below Average Even For a Non-Starter 9.0 to 11.9
Way Below Average Even For a Non-Starter or Limited Minutes 6.0 to 8.9
Bad Game Even for a Non-Starter or Very Limited Minutes 3.0 to 5.9
Disaster: Nothing Much to Report minus infinity to 1.9

THE HIGHEST QUALITY PLAYERS IN THIS GAME








CLEVELAND CAVALIERS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Superstar during minutes on the court: LeBron James
Superstar during minutes on the court: Zydrunas Ilgauskas
Star during minutes on the court: Delonte West
Very Good during minutes on the court: Ben Wallace








DENVER NUGGETS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Star during minutes on the court: Chris Andersen
Very Good during minutes on the court: Chauncey Billups

THE GREATEST POWER PERFORMERS OF THIS GAME







CLEVELAND CAVALIERS POWER PERFORMERS
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High, and Not Very Often: LeBron James
Very Big Game: Delonte West
Very Big Game: Zydrunas Ilgauskas








DENVER NUGGETS POWER PERFORMERS
Very Big Game: Chris Andersen
Big Game: Chauncey Billups

USER GUIDE FOR THIS TYPE OF REPORT
ULTIMATE GAME BREAKDOWN--PLAYERS REPORT EXPLAINED(Last edited Dec. 8, 2008)

This is a "just the important facts please, and give them to me quick" type of report. I will in some cases do a very limited amount of commentary at the bottom of this type of report, but it will really be just notes for commentary that will be elsewhere in the near future. In some cases there will be no comments at all.

With an Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players report, you can see very rapidly who was most responsible for the winning or the losing of the game. Then someone like me can easily write a separate game report which explains how things might have worked out better for a team, or why things worked out just about as well as possible, as the case may be.

The Real Player Ratings formula has been very carefully and accurately tweaked again and is currently as follows:

POSITIVE FACTORS
Points 1.00 (at par)
Number of 3-Pt FGs Made 1.00
Number of 2-Pt FGs Made 0.60
Number of FTs Made 0.00

Assists 1.75

Offensive Rebounds 1.15
Defensive Rebounds 1.25
Blocks 1.60
Steals 2.15

NEGATIVE FACTORS
3-Pt FGs Missed -1.00
2-Pt FGs Missed -0.85
FTs Missed -0.85

Turnovers -2.00
Personal Fouls -0.80

ACTUAL COMBINED AWARD OR PENALTY BY TYPE OF SHOT
3-Pointer Made 4.00
2-Pointer Made 2.60
Free Throw Made 1.00
3-Pointer Missed -1.00
2-Pointer Missed -0.85
Free Throw Missed -0.85

ZERO POINTS: PERCENTAGES BELOW WHICH THERE IS A NEGATIVE NET RESULT
3-Pointer 0 score % 0.200
2-Pointer 0 score % 0.246
1-Pointer 0 score % 0.459

ASSISTS VERSUS TURNOVERS ZERO POINT
Assist/Turnover Ratio That Yields 0 Net Points: 1.143

QUALITY (RPR) AND QUANTITY (RPP)-AN EXPLANATION
RPR game reports show for each player the RPR (Real Player Rating) which tells you how good a player did (all the good things minus all the bad things) out on the court per unit of time. The RPP (Real Player Production) report tells you how much in total (the sum of the of the good things minus the sum of the bad things) a player did out on the court.

Many and maybe most sports watchers and an unknown but probably disturbingly large number of sports managers make the mistakes of exaggerating the importance of quantity and overlooking to some extent quality. These reports allow you to expand your horizons. These reports put quantity and quality side by side, which is extremely valuable, because both are roughly equally important in explaining accurately why and how the game turned out the way it did.

Players who over many games consistently have higher RPR (quality) but lower RPP (quantity) results are in many cases not getting enough playing time. Players that over many games consistently have lower RPR (quality) but higher RPP (quantity) results are in many cases getting too much playing time.

The exceptional cases are very often going to be players who are either truly outstanding defenders or truly bad defenders. This is because the one and only thing that is not counted, because it is impossible to calculate it, is the number of shots that a player prevents from being scores. Investigation has to date revealed that, apparently, no one has even attempted, for the NBA, rough estimates of the actual value of each player's defending, in terms of number or percentage of scores prevented, or in terms of number or percentage of possessions made worthless.

Over the coming year, I am going to be working to see if it is possible to use some combination of advanced statistics that are tracked on certain internet sites as an accurate proxy for the number of shots and/or for the number of possessions ruined by a defender.

Another exception. where it is really alright when it looks like a player is playing too much, will be if a team has a point guard who has many more turnovers than the average point guard has. Because the point guard is so important, a good coach has to play his best guard who can make plays at the position for a full set of minutes every game, pretty much regardless of how many turnovers that player makes. If you take out your designated point guard due to "too many turnovers," it's most often going to be sort of like cutting your foot off because you have a bad case of athletes foot!

EDITING AND PUBLISHING PLAN-MAIN DETAILS (Last Edited Dec. 21, 2008)
Most of the commentaries I do are in "Game/Team/League Reports" and in Fast Breaks". Game/Team/League reports are, with any luck, going to be produced for about 20 Nuggets and for about 20 Pistons games this season. Ultimate Game Breakdowns: Players, such as the one here, will be done for those same games. Plus there will be about 10 more Nuggets and 10 more Pistons Game Breakdowns for games for which there will be no article report. There will be a few other "wildcard" Game Breakdowns.

So in total, at least 70 of these relatively easy to produce but very informative Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players reports are scheduled for the regular season. At least 40 Game/Team/League Reports are planned.

Ultimate Game Breakdown-Coaching reports are done for every game that has a Game/Team/League Report.

More of every type of report will come out during playoffs season; I won't bore you with those details.

The games that get the full treatment have been very carefully chosen to be the most important games, which are generally the games against the best teams. Full treatment including the kitchen sink report games have been chosen from among only games where neither team is at a disadvantage due to playing on back to back nights. Other internet basketball "experts" are really wasting their time to some extent when they report on a game where one team was playing on back to back nights and the other team was not, because the great majority of those games are almost automatically won by the team that has more rest. I used to do those stupid games, but I'm not doing them anymore, because I keep trying to get better and better at understanding and teaching basketball, so I make changes such as this.

DECEMBER 16 EDITING CHANGES

As of December 16, two very important changes were made in the editing plan. These changes are most likely the finishing touches for a plan which has gone through many developmental phases during 2008, and now is ready to be the operational plan for 2009 and for hopefully many years thereafter. We went from complete chaos to a finely tuned editing plan ready for prime time. It took many, many hours of work and iterations.

First, the tight tie-in between Fast Breaks and Game/Team/League Reports (GTLRs) was relaxed. For several months, the evolving editing plan was envisioning that all Fast Breaks would be incorporated in full in ensuing GTLRs. The new plan is that some of the Fast Breaks will stand on their own.

In conjunction with this change, it was necessary to adobt a new production measurement system. We decided to use number of words for this. The word count tool in Microsoft Word makes this feasible. Despite this change, the majority and probably the great majority of Fast Breaks will still be picked up, expanded upon, and improved to some extent in ensuing GTLRs.

An implication of this change is that we are no longer going to be promising a specific number of GTLRs anymore. But we are now pledging to produce 20,000 words or more a month during the NBA season. And we are still going to be pledging a specific number of statistical reports, such as Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players reports, Real Team Ratings reports, and various kinds of Real Player Ratings reports, and so forth.

The other big change is that GTLRs will no longer automatically cover the particular game they are tied to to any extent. Really good or important games will still be covered in detail. Other games will be covered briefly, as has been increasingly the case in recent months and years. The new change is that now, some games, usually near routs or routs where the larger issues being discussed in lieu of particular games played out, will hardly be mentioned at all.

When non-game topics are considered more deserving of the limited editorial space and time available, they will get the coverage instead of relatively lopsided particular games. Technically, within the editorial plan, all GTLRs will still be tied to individual games, all of which have been carefully chosen in advance to be the most important games for the team.

An implication of this change is that I will no longer automatically reference a game score in GTLR titles. If there is a score in a title, it means that the game will be covered in some detail. If there is no score in the title, it means the report will be one that skips the individual game and goes into topics that are broader than any particular game.

Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players: Rockets 108 Nuggets 96 in Houston Dec. 16, 2008

REAL PLAYER RATINGS (QUALITY) FOR THIS GAME
DENVER NUGGETS QUALITY
Linas Kleiza, SF 1.048
Chris Andersen, PF 0.935
Anthony Carter, PG 0.916
J.R. Smith, SG 0.689
Carmelo Anthony, SF 0.558
Kenyon Martin, PF 0.333
Nene, C 0.326
Chauncey Billups, PG 0.167
Dahntay Jones, SG -0.079

HOUSTON ROCKETS QUALITY
Tracy McGrady, SG 1.366
Yao Ming, C 1.108
Ron Artest, SF 0.893
Aaron Brooks, PG 0.673
Shane Battier, SF 0.524
Carl Landry, PF 0.346
Luis Scola, PF 0.340

SCALE FOR RPR (QUALITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
Historic Superstar for this game 1.400 and more
Superstar 1.050 to 1.399
Star 0.800 to 1.050
Very Good 0.650 to 0.799
Major Role Player 0.525 to 0.649
Role Player 0.450 to 0.524
Minor Role Player 0.400 to 0.449
Very Minor Role Player or Very Important Defender 0.350 to 0.399
Poor Game or Extremely Importand Defender 0.275 to 0.349
Very Poor Game Regardless of Defending 0.200 to 0.274
Disaster Game Regardless of Defending minus infinity to 0.199

****************************************************
REAL PLAYER PRODUCTION (QUANTITY) IN THIS GAME
DENVER NUGGETS QUANTITY
Linas Kleiza, SF 22.00
J.R. Smith, SG 21.35
Carmelo Anthony, SF 21.20
Anthony Carter, PG 20.15
Chris Andersen, PF 15.90
Nene, C 11.40
Kenyon Martin, PF 8.65
Chauncey Billups, PG 5.85
Dahntay Jones, SG -1.10

DALLAS MAVERICKS QUANTITY
Tracy McGrady, SG 50.55
Yao Ming, C 41.00
Aaron Brooks, PG 28.25
Ron Artest, SF 25.90
Shane Battier, SF 17.80
Carl Landry, PF 8.30
Luis Scola, PF 8.50

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 40.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 36.0 to 39.9
Huge Game 32.0 to 35.9
Very Big Game 28.0 to 31.9
Big Game 24.0 to 27.9
Typical Average Game 20.0 to 23.9
Somewhat Below Average Game 16.0 to 19.9
Way Below Average Game 12.0 to 15.9
Bad Game 9.0 to 11.9
Really Bad Game 5.0 to 8.9
Total Disaster minus infinity to 4.9

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR NON-STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Non-Starters Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 33.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 29.0 to 32.9
Huge Game 25.0 to 28.9
Very Big Game 21.0 to 24.9
Big Game 17.0 to 20.9
Typical Non-Starter Game 12.0 to 16.9
Below Average Even For a Non-Starter 9.0 to 11.9
Way Below Average Even For a Non-Starter or Limited Minutes 6.0 to 8.9
Bad Game Even for a Non-Starter or Very Limited Minutes 3.0 to 5.9
Disaster: Nothing Much to Report minus infinity to 1.9

THE HIGHEST QUALITY PLAYERS IN THIS GAME









DENVER NUGGETS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Superstar during minutes on the court: Linas Kleiza
Star during minutes on the court: Chris Andersen
Star during minutes on the court: Anthony Carter
Very Good during minutes on the court: J.R. Smith








HOUSTON ROCKETS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Superstar during minutes on the court: Tracy McGrady
Superstar during minutes on the court: Yao Ming
Star during minutes on the court: Ron Artest

THE GREATEST POWER PERFORMERS OF THIS GAME









DENVER NUGGETS POWER PERFORMERS
Very Big Game: Linas Kleiza
Big Game: J.R. Smith
Big Game: Anthony Carter
Big Game: Chris Andersen








HOUSTON ROCKETS POWER PERFORMERS
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High, and Not Very Often: Tracy McGrady
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High, and Not Very Often: Yao Ming
Huge Game: Ron Artest
Big Game: Aaron Brooks

USER GUIDE FOR THIS TYPE OF REPORT
ULTIMATE GAME BREAKDOWN--PLAYERS REPORT EXPLAINED(Last edited Dec. 8, 2008)

This is a "just the important facts please, and give them to me quick" type of report. I will in some cases do a very limited amount of commentary at the bottom of this type of report, but it will really be just notes for commentary that will be elsewhere in the near future. In some cases there will be no comments at all.

With an Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players report, you can see very rapidly who was most responsible for the winning or the losing of the game. Then someone like me can easily write a separate game report which explains how things might have worked out better for a team, or why things worked out just about as well as possible, as the case may be.

The Real Player Ratings formula has been very carefully and accurately tweaked again and is currently as follows:

POSITIVE FACTORS
Points 1.00 (at par)
Number of 3-Pt FGs Made 1.00
Number of 2-Pt FGs Made 0.60
Number of FTs Made 0.00

Assists 1.75

Offensive Rebounds 1.15
Defensive Rebounds 1.25
Blocks 1.60
Steals 2.15

NEGATIVE FACTORS
3-Pt FGs Missed -1.00
2-Pt FGs Missed -0.85
FTs Missed -0.85

Turnovers -2.00
Personal Fouls -0.80

ACTUAL COMBINED AWARD OR PENALTY BY TYPE OF SHOT
3-Pointer Made 4.00
2-Pointer Made 2.60
Free Throw Made 1.00
3-Pointer Missed -1.00
2-Pointer Missed -0.85
Free Throw Missed -0.85

ZERO POINTS: PERCENTAGES BELOW WHICH THERE IS A NEGATIVE NET RESULT
3-Pointer 0 score % 0.200
2-Pointer 0 score % 0.246
1-Pointer 0 score % 0.459

ASSISTS VERSUS TURNOVERS ZERO POINT
Assist/Turnover Ratio That Yields 0 Net Points: 1.143

QUALITY (RPR) AND QUANTITY (RPP)-AN EXPLANATION
RPR game reports show for each player the RPR (Real Player Rating) which tells you how good a player did (all the good things minus all the bad things) out on the court per unit of time. The RPP (Real Player Production) report tells you how much in total (the sum of the of the good things minus the sum of the bad things) a player did out on the court.

Many and maybe most sports watchers and an unknown but probably disturbingly large number of sports managers make the mistakes of exaggerating the importance of quantity and overlooking to some extent quality. These reports allow you to expand your horizons. These reports put quantity and quality side by side, which is extremely valuable, because both are roughly equally important in explaining accurately why and how the game turned out the way it did.

Players who over many games consistently have higher RPR (quality) but lower RPP (quantity) results are in many cases not getting enough playing time. Players that over many games consistently have lower RPR (quality) but higher RPP (quantity) results are in many cases getting too much playing time.

The exceptional cases are very often going to be players who are either truly outstanding defenders or truly bad defenders. This is because the one and only thing that is not counted, because it is impossible to calculate it, is the number of shots that a player prevents from being scores. Investigation has to date revealed that, apparently, no one has even attempted, for the NBA, rough estimates of the actual value of each player's defending, in terms of number or percentage of scores prevented, or in terms of number or percentage of possessions made worthless.

Over the coming year, I am going to be working to see if it is possible to use some combination of advanced statistics that are tracked on certain internet sites as an accurate proxy for the number of shots and/or for the number of possessions ruined by a defender.

Another exception. where it is really alright when it looks like a player is playing too much, will be if a team has a point guard who has many more turnovers than the average point guard has. Because the point guard is so important, a good coach has to play his best guard who can make plays at the position for a full set of minutes every game, pretty much regardless of how many turnovers that player makes. If you take out your designated point guard due to "too many turnovers," it's most often going to be sort of like cutting your foot off because you have a bad case of athletes foot!

EDITING AND PUBLISHING PLAN-MAIN DETAILS (Last Edited Dec. 21, 2008)
Most of the commentaries I do are in "Game/Team/League Reports" and in Fast Breaks". Game/Team/League reports are, with any luck, going to be produced for about 20 Nuggets and for about 20 Pistons games this season. Ultimate Game Breakdowns: Players, such as the one here, will be done for those same games. Plus there will be about 10 more Nuggets and 10 more Pistons Game Breakdowns for games for which there will be no article report. There will be a few other "wildcard" Game Breakdowns.

So in total, at least 70 of these relatively easy to produce but very informative Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players reports are scheduled for the regular season. At least 40 Game/Team/League Reports are planned.

Ultimate Game Breakdown-Coaching reports are done for every game that has a Game/Team/League Report.

More of every type of report will come out during playoffs season; I won't bore you with those details.

The games that get the full treatment have been very carefully chosen to be the most important games, which are generally the games against the best teams. Full treatment including the kitchen sink report games have been chosen from among only games where neither team is at a disadvantage due to playing on back to back nights. Other internet basketball "experts" are really wasting their time to some extent when they report on a game where one team was playing on back to back nights and the other team was not, because the great majority of those games are almost automatically won by the team that has more rest. I used to do those stupid games, but I'm not doing them anymore, because I keep trying to get better and better at understanding and teaching basketball, so I make changes such as this.

DECEMBER 16 EDITING CHANGES

As of December 16, two very important changes were made in the editing plan. These changes are most likely the finishing touches for a plan which has gone through many developmental phases during 2008, and now is ready to be the operational plan for 2009 and for hopefully many years thereafter. We went from complete chaos to a finely tuned editing plan ready for prime time. It took many, many hours of work and iterations.

First, the tight tie-in between Fast Breaks and Game/Team/League Reports (GTLRs) was relaxed. For several months, the evolving editing plan was envisioning that all Fast Breaks would be incorporated in full in ensuing GTLRs. The new plan is that some of the Fast Breaks will stand on their own.

In conjunction with this change, it was necessary to adobt a new production measurement system. We decided to use number of words for this. Despite this change, the majority and probably the great majority of Fast Breaks will still be picked up, expanded upon, and improved to some extent in ensuing GTLRs.

An implication of this change is that we are no longer going to be promising a specific number of GTLRs anymore. But we are now pledging to produce 20,000 words or more a month during the NBA season. And we are still going to be pledging a specific number of statistical reports, such as Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players reports, Real Team Ratings reports, and various kinds of Real Player Ratings reports, and so forth.

The other big change is that GTLRs will no longer automatically cover the particular game they are tied to to any extent. Really good or important games will still be covered in detail. Other games will be covered briefly, as has been increasingly the case in recent months and years. The new change is that now, some games, usually near routs or routs where the larger issues being discussed in lieu of particular games played out, will hardly be mentioned at all.

When non-game topics are considered more deserving of the limited editorial space and time available, they will get the coverage instead of relatively lopsided particular games. Technically, within the editorial plan, all GTLRs will still be tied to individual games, all of which have been carefully chosen in advance to be the most important games for the team.

An implication of this change is that I will no longer automatically reference a game score in GTLR titles. If there is a score in a title, it means that the game will be covered in some detail. If there is no score in the title, it means the report will be one that skips the individual game and goes into topics that are broader than any particular game.

Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players: Jazz 120 Pistons 114, 2 OT in Detroit Dec. 19, 2008

REAL PLAYER RATINGS (QUALITY) FOR THIS GAME
UTAH JAZZ QUALITY
Deron Williams, PG 0.972
Ronnie Brewer, SG 0.878
Paul Millsap, PF 0.864
Mehmet Okur, C 0.810
Matt Harpring, SF 0.417
Andrei Kirilenko, SF 0.351
C.J. Miles, SF 0.235
Kyle Korver, SG 0.036
Ronnie Price, PG -0.064
Brevin Knight, PG -0.225

DETROIT PISTONS QUALITY
Allen Iverson, SG 0.900
Richard Hamilton, SG 0.764
Rasheed Wallace, C 0.757
Tayshaun Prince, SF 0.602
Rodney Stuckey, PG 0.528
Jason Maxiell, PF 0.513
Antonio McDyess, PF 0.222
Arron Afflalo, SG 0.200

SCALE FOR RPR (QUALITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
Historic Superstar for this game 1.400 and more
Superstar 1.050 to 1.399
Star 0.800 to 1.050
Very Good 0.650 to 0.799
Major Role Player 0.525 to 0.649
Role Player 0.450 to 0.524
Minor Role Player 0.400 to 0.449
Very Minor Role Player or Very Important Defender 0.350 to 0.399
Poor Game or Extremely Importand Defender 0.275 to 0.349
Very Poor Game Regardless of Defending 0.200 to 0.274
Disaster Game Regardless of Defending minus infinity to 0.199

****************************************************
REAL PLAYER PRODUCTION (QUANTITY) IN THIS GAME
UTAH JAZZ QUANTITY
Deron Williams, PG 44.70
Paul Millsap, PF 44.05
Mehmet Okur, C 38.90
Ronnie Brewer, SG 20.20
Andrei Kirilenko, SF 13.00
C.J. Miles, SF 4.00
Matt Harpring, SF 3.75
Kyle Korver, SG 1.25
Ronnie Price, PG -0.45
Brevin Knight, PG -2.70

DETROIT PISTONS QUANTITY
Allen Iverson, SG 48.60
Richard Hamilton, SG 35.90
Rasheed Wallace, C 26.50
Tayshaun Prince, SF 25.30
Rodney Stuckey, PG 16.90
Jason Maxiell, PF 8.20
Antonio McDyess, PF 7.55
Arron Afflalo, SG 3.60

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 40.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 36.0 to 39.9
Huge Game 32.0 to 35.9
Very Big Game 28.0 to 31.9
Big Game 24.0 to 27.9
Typical Average Game 20.0 to 23.9
Somewhat Below Average Game 16.0 to 19.9
Way Below Average Game 12.0 to 15.9
Bad Game 9.0 to 11.9
Really Bad Game 5.0 to 8.9
Total Disaster minus infinity to 4.9

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR NON-STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Non-Starters Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 33.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 29.0 to 32.9
Huge Game 25.0 to 28.9
Very Big Game 21.0 to 24.9
Big Game 17.0 to 20.9
Typical Non-Starter Game 12.0 to 16.9
Below Average Even For a Non-Starter 9.0 to 11.9
Way Below Average Even For a Non-Starter or Limited Minutes 6.0 to 8.9
Bad Game Even for a Non-Starter or Very Limited Minutes 3.0 to 5.9
Disaster: Nothing Much to Report minus infinity to 1.9

THE HIGHEST QUALITY PLAYERS IN THIS GAME







UTAH JAZZ OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Star during minutes on the court: Deron Williams
Star during minutes on the court: Ronnie Brewer
Star during minutes on the court: Paul Milsap
Star during minutes on the court: Mehmet Okur








DETROIT PISTONS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Star during minutes on the court: Allen Iverson
Star during minutes on the court: Rasheed Wallace
Very Good during minutes on the court: Richard Hamilton
Very Good during minutes on the court: Tayshaun Prince

THE GREATEST POWER PERFORMERS OF THIS GAME







UTAH JAZZ POWER PERFORMERS
Only Some Players can Ever Fly This High, and Not Very Often: Deron Williams
Only Some Players can Ever Fly This High, and Not Very Often: Paul Milsap
Only Some Players can Ever Fly This High, and Not Very Often: Mehmet Okur








DETROIT PISTONS POWER PERFORMERS
Only Some Players can Ever Fly This High, and Not Very Often: Allen Iverson
Huge Game: Richard Hamilton
Very Big Game: Rasheed Wallace
Big Game: Tayshaun Prince

USER GUIDE FOR THIS TYPE OF REPORT(Last updated December 8 2008)
EDITING AND PUBLISHING PLAN-MAIN DETAILS
This is a "just the important facts please, and give them to me quick" type of report. I will in some cases do a very limited amount of commentary at the bottom of this type of report, but it will really be just notes for commentary that will be elsewhere in the near future. In some cases there will be no comments at all.

Most of the commentaries I do are in "Game/Team/League Reports" and in Fast Breaks". Game/Team/League reports are, with any luck, going to be produced for about 20 Nuggets and for about 20 Pistons games this season. Ultimate Game Breakdowns: Players, such as the one here, will be done for those same games. Plus there will be about 10 more Nuggets and 10 more Pistons Game Breakdowns for games for which there will be no article report. There will be a few other "wildcard" Game Breakdowns.

So in total, at least 70 of these relatively easy to produce but very informative Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players reports are scheduled for the regular season. At least 40 Game/Team/League Reports are planned.

Ultimate Game Breakdown-Coaching reports are done for every game that has a Game/Team/League Report.

More of every type of report will come out during playoffs season; I won't bore you with those details.

The games that get the full treatment have been very carefully chosen to be the most important games, which are generally the games against the best teams. Full treatment including the kitchen sink report games have been chosen from among only games where neither team is at a disadvantage due to playing on back to back nights. Other internet basketball "experts" are really wasting their time to some extent when they report on a game where one team was playing on back to back nights and the other team was not, because the great majority of those games are almost automatically won by the team that has more rest. I used to do those stupid games, but I'm not doing them anymore, because I keep trying to get better and better at understanding and teaching basketball, so I make changes such as this.

ULTIMATE GAME BREAKDOWN--PLAYERS REPORT EXPLAINED
With an Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players report, you can see very rapidly who was most responsible for the winning or the losing of the game. Then someone like me can easily write a separate game report which explains how things might have worked out better for a team, or why things worked out just about as well as possible, as the case may be.

The Real Player Ratings formula has been very carefully and accurately tweaked again and is currently as follows:

POSITIVE FACTORS
Points 1.00 (at par)
Number of 3-Pt FGs Made 1.00
Number of 2-Pt FGs Made 0.60
Number of FTs Made 0.00

Assists 1.75

Offensive Rebounds 1.15
Defensive Rebounds 1.25
Blocks 1.60
Steals 2.15

NEGATIVE FACTORS
3-Pt FGs Missed -1.00
2-Pt FGs Missed -0.85
FTs Missed -0.85

Turnovers -2.00
Personal Fouls -0.80

ACTUAL COMBINED AWARD OR PENALTY BY TYPE OF SHOT
3-Pointer Made 4.00
2-Pointer Made 2.60
Free Throw Made 1.00
3-Pointer Missed -1.00
2-Pointer Missed -0.85
Free Throw Missed -0.85

ZERO POINTS: PERCENTAGES BELOW WHICH THERE IS A NEGATIVE NET RESULT
3-Pointer 0 score % 0.200
2-Pointer 0 score % 0.246
1-Pointer 0 score % 0.459

ASSISTS VERSUS TURNOVERS ZERO POINT
Assist/Turnover Ratio That Yields 0 Net Points: 1.143

QUALITY (RPR) AND QUANTITY (RPP)-AN EXPLANATION
RPR game reports show for each player the RPR (Real Player Rating) which tells you how good a player did (all the good things minus all the bad things) out on the court per unit of time. The RPP (Real Player Production) report tells you how much in total (the sum of the of the good things minus the sum of the bad things) a player did out on the court.

Many and maybe most sports watchers and an unknown but probably disturbingly large number of sports managers make the mistakes of exaggerating the importance of quantity and overlooking to some extent quality. These reports allow you to expand your horizons. These reports put quantity and quality side by side, which is extremely valuable, because both are roughly equally important in explaining accurately why and how the game turned out the way it did.

Players who over many games consistently have higher RPR (quality) but lower RPP (quantity) results are in many cases not getting enough playing time. Players that over many games consistently have lower RPR (quality) but higher RPP (quantity) results are in many cases getting too much playing time.

The exceptional cases are very often going to be players who are either truly outstanding defenders or truly bad defenders. This is because the one and only thing that is not counted, because it is impossible to calculate it, is the number of shots that a player prevents from being scores. Investigation has to date revealed that, apparently, no one has even attempted, for the NBA, rough estimates of the actual value of each player's defending, in terms of number or percentage of scores prevented, or in terms of number or percentage of possessions made worthless.

Over the coming year, I am going to be working to see if it is possible to use some combination of advanced statistics that are tracked on certain internet sites as an accurate proxy for the number of shots and/or for the number of possessions ruined by a defender.

Another exception. where it is really alright when it looks like a player is playing too much, will be if a team has a point guard who has many more turnovers than the average point guard has. Because the point guard is so important, a good coach has to play his best guard who can make plays at the position for a full set of minutes every game, pretty much regardless of how many turnovers that player makes. If you take out your designated point guard due to "too many turnovers," it's most often going to be sort of like cutting your foot off because you have a bad case of athletes foot!

Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players: Nuggets 98 Mavericks 88 in Dallas Dec. 15, 2008

REAL PLAYER RATINGS (QUALITY) FOR THIS GAME
DENVER NUGGETS QUALITY
J.R. Smith, SG 1.375
Chauncey Billups, PG 0.884
Nene, C 0.693
Kenyon Martin, PF 0.670
Carmelo Anthony, SF 0.549
Linas Kleiza, SF 0.456
Anthony Carter, PG 0.450
Dahntay Jones, SG 0.297
Chris Andersen, PF 0.181

DALLAS MAVERICKS QUALITY
Erick Dampier, C 0.728
Devean George, SF 0.722
Dirk Nowitzki, PF 0.694
Jose Juan Barea, PG 0.693
Jason Terry, PG 0.655
Josh Howard, SF 0.482
Brandon Bass, PF 0.350
Jason Kidd, PG 0.307
DeSagana Diop, C 0.075

SCALE FOR RPR (QUALITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
Historic Superstar for this game 1.400 and more
Superstar 1.050 to 1.399
Star 0.800 to 1.050
Very Good 0.650 to 0.799
Major Role Player 0.525 to 0.649
Role Player 0.450 to 0.524
Minor Role Player 0.400 to 0.449
Very Minor Role Player or Very Important Defender 0.350 to 0.399
Poor Game or Extremely Importand Defender 0.275 to 0.349
Very Poor Game Regardless of Defending 0.200 to 0.274
Disaster Game Regardless of Defending minus infinity to 0.199

****************************************************
REAL PLAYER PRODUCTION (QUANTITY) IN THIS GAME
DENVER NUGGETS QUANTITY
J.R. Smith, SG 33.00
Chauncey Billups, PG 30.95
Kenyon Martin, PF 25.45
Nene, C 24.25
Carmelo Anthony, SF 18.65
Anthony Carter, PG 9.90
Linas Kleiza, SF 8.20
Dahntay Jones, SG 4.75
Chris Andersen, PF 3.25

DALLAS MAVERICKS QUANTITY
Dirk Nowitzki, PF 28.45
Jose Juan Barea, PG 23.55
Erick Dampier, C 21.10
Jason Terry, PG 20.30
Devean George, SF 19.50
Jason Kidd, PG 11.05
Josh Howard, SF 6.75
Brandon Bass, PF 6.30
DeSagana Diop, C 0.60

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 40.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 36.0 to 39.9
Huge Game 32.0 to 35.9
Very Big Game 28.0 to 31.9
Big Game 24.0 to 27.9
Typical Average Game 20.0 to 23.9
Somewhat Below Average Game 16.0 to 19.9
Way Below Average Game 12.0 to 15.9
Bad Game 9.0 to 11.9
Really Bad Game 5.0 to 8.9
Total Disaster minus infinity to 4.9

SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME
FOR NON-STARTING PLAYERS
Only Some Non-Starters Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 33.0 and more
Massive and Memorable Game 29.0 to 32.9
Huge Game 25.0 to 28.9
Very Big Game 21.0 to 24.9
Big Game 17.0 to 20.9
Typical Non-Starter Game 12.0 to 16.9
Below Average Even For a Non-Starter 9.0 to 11.9
Way Below Average Even For a Non-Starter or Limited Minutes 6.0 to 8.9
Bad Game Even for a Non-Starter or Very Limited Minutes 3.0 to 5.9
Disaster: Nothing Much to Report minus infinity to 1.9

THE HIGHEST QUALITY PLAYERS IN THIS GAME









DENVER NUGGETS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Superstar during minutes on the court: J.R. Smith
Star during minutes on the court: Chauncey Billups
Very Good during minutes on the court: Nene
Very Good during minutes on the court: Kenyon Martin








MAVERICKS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES
Very Good during minutes on the court: Erick Dampier
Very Good during minutes on the court: Devean George
Very Good during minutes on the court: Dirk Nowitzki
Very Good during minutes on the court: Jose Juan Berea

THE GREATEST POWER PERFORMERS OF THIS GAME









DENVER NUGGETS POWER PERFORMERS
Only Some Players can Ever Fly This High: J.R. Smith
Massive and Memorable Game: Chauncey Billups
Big Game: Kenyon Martin
Big Game: Nene








DALLAS MAVERICKS POWER PERFORMERS
Very Big Game: Dirk Nowitzki

USER GUIDE FOR THIS TYPE OF REPORT(Last updated December 8 2008)
EDITING AND PUBLISHING PLAN-MAIN DETAILS
This is a "just the important facts please, and give them to me quick" type of report. I will in some cases do a very limited amount of commentary at the bottom of this type of report, but it will really be just notes for commentary that will be elsewhere in the near future. In some cases there will be no comments at all.

Most of the commentaries I do are in "Game/Team/League Reports" and in Fast Breaks". Game/Team/League reports are, with any luck, going to be produced for about 20 Nuggets and for about 20 Pistons games this season. Ultimate Game Breakdowns: Players, such as the one here, will be done for those same games. Plus there will be about 10 more Nuggets and 10 more Pistons Game Breakdowns for games for which there will be no article report. There will be a few other "wildcard" Game Breakdowns.

So in total, at least 70 of these relatively easy to produce but very informative Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players reports are scheduled for the regular season. At least 40 Game/Team/League Reports are planned.

Ultimate Game Breakdown-Coaching reports are done for every game that has a Game/Team/League Report.

More of every type of report will come out during playoffs season; I won't bore you with those details.

The games that get the full treatment have been very carefully chosen to be the most important games, which are generally the games against the best teams. Full treatment including the kitchen sink report games have been chosen from among only games where neither team is at a disadvantage due to playing on back to back nights. Other internet basketball "experts" are really wasting their time to some extent when they report on a game where one team was playing on back to back nights and the other team was not, because the great majority of those games are almost automatically won by the team that has more rest. I used to do those stupid games, but I'm not doing them anymore, because I keep trying to get better and better at understanding and teaching basketball, so I make changes such as this.

ULTIMATE GAME BREAKDOWN--PLAYERS REPORT EXPLAINED
With an Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players report, you can see very rapidly who was most responsible for the winning or the losing of the game. Then someone like me can easily write a separate game report which explains how things might have worked out better for a team, or why things worked out just about as well as possible, as the case may be.

The Real Player Ratings formula has been very carefully and accurately tweaked again and is currently as follows:

POSITIVE FACTORS
Points 1.00 (at par)
Number of 3-Pt FGs Made 1.00
Number of 2-Pt FGs Made 0.60
Number of FTs Made 0.00

Assists 1.75

Offensive Rebounds 1.15
Defensive Rebounds 1.25
Blocks 1.60
Steals 2.15

NEGATIVE FACTORS
3-Pt FGs Missed -1.00
2-Pt FGs Missed -0.85
FTs Missed -0.85

Turnovers -2.00
Personal Fouls -0.80

ACTUAL COMBINED AWARD OR PENALTY BY TYPE OF SHOT
3-Pointer Made 4.00
2-Pointer Made 2.60
Free Throw Made 1.00
3-Pointer Missed -1.00
2-Pointer Missed -0.85
Free Throw Missed -0.85

ZERO POINTS: PERCENTAGES BELOW WHICH THERE IS A NEGATIVE NET RESULT
3-Pointer 0 score % 0.200
2-Pointer 0 score % 0.246
1-Pointer 0 score % 0.459

ASSISTS VERSUS TURNOVERS ZERO POINT
Assist/Turnover Ratio That Yields 0 Net Points: 1.143

QUALITY (RPR) AND QUANTITY (RPP)-AN EXPLANATION
RPR game reports show for each player the RPR (Real Player Rating) which tells you how good a player did (all the good things minus all the bad things) out on the court per unit of time. The RPP (Real Player Production) report tells you how much in total (the sum of the of the good things minus the sum of the bad things) a player did out on the court.

Many and maybe most sports watchers and an unknown but probably disturbingly large number of sports managers make the mistakes of exaggerating the importance of quantity and overlooking to some extent quality. These reports allow you to expand your horizons. These reports put quantity and quality side by side, which is extremely valuable, because both are roughly equally important in explaining accurately why and how the game turned out the way it did.

Players who over many games consistently have higher RPR (quality) but lower RPP (quantity) results are in many cases not getting enough playing time. Players that over many games consistently have lower RPR (quality) but higher RPP (quantity) results are in many cases getting too much playing time.

The exceptional cases are very often going to be players who are either truly outstanding defenders or truly bad defenders. This is because the one and only thing that is not counted, because it is impossible to calculate it, is the number of shots that a player prevents from being scores. Investigation has to date revealed that, apparently, no one has even attempted, for the NBA, rough estimates of the actual value of each player's defending, in terms of number or percentage of scores prevented, or in terms of number or percentage of possessions made worthless.

Over the coming year, I am going to be working to see if it is possible to use some combination of advanced statistics that are tracked on certain internet sites as an accurate proxy for the number of shots and/or for the number of possessions ruined by a defender.

Another exception. where it is really alright when it looks like a player is playing too much, will be if a team has a point guard who has many more turnovers than the average point guard has. Because the point guard is so important, a good coach has to play his best guard who can make plays at the position for a full set of minutes every game, pretty much regardless of how many turnovers that player makes. If you take out your designated point guard due to "too many turnovers," it's most often going to be sort of like cutting your foot off because you have a bad case of athletes foot!