Allen Iverson is the Superstar as the Nuggets Defeat the 76'ers 109-96, and Part 2 of the J.R. Smith Fiasco Story

The 76’ers caught up early in the 2nd quarter, and almost caught up half way in the third quarter, but they were chasing Allen Iverson, who ruthlessly sliced through, shot over, and picked apart his former team, as the Nuggets pretty much led from start to finish and defeated the Philadelphia 76’ers 109-96. It was one of Iverson’s very best games of the year, as he favored slashing to the hoop even more than usual and converted almost every time he did so. As is so often the case, he led both teams in being fouled on charges to the hoop, and his jump shot was good enough to do additional damage to the over matched 76’ers. How about 3/6 from long range for a team that is relatively hurting for 3-point shooting, and 14/25 overall for 38 points? How about 8 assists, and it would have been more had Anthony Carter not been finding everyone everywhere for 15 dimes? Iverson simply cleaned up against the rebuilding mode 76’ers, and nothing former Nuggets PG Andre Miller and PF Reggie Evans could do was going to make any difference in this game. Iverson was not stoppable.

Worrying about how the Nuggets are going to beat one of the top teams of the West when Carmelo Anthony gets only 16 shots will be left to another day; maybe the Nuggets will be smart enough to know that, while Iverson can dominate the offense and lead the Nuggets to a lot of wins against losing teams, that will usually not be possible against the top winning teams of the West. Or maybe David Stern will in fact ban the 3-point shot before the playoffs start. Or maybe the Spurs, Suns, and Lakers will decide to pack their bags and move to an Italian league.

If you can’t beat the Nuggets in 3-point shooting, you generally can’t beat the Nuggets, because they are very easy to beat in 3-point shooting. The Nuggets have more threes attempted against them per game (21) than any other team. They don't defend it very well, and smart teams know that this is one way to try to offset Denver's frequently great scoring on twos and free throws. The Sixers, along with the Hawks, are the worst 3-point shooting team in the NBA, so I guess they weren’t qualified to try to beat the Nuggets with the long range swishes. The Nuggets, thanks to Iverson, finished 6/15 on threes, while the 76’ers were 4/10.

Overall, the 76’ers were just 39/95, which is 41.1%, while the Nuggets were a much stronger 44/93, which is 47.3%. Anytime the difference in the percentage of shots that go in is greater than 5 percent, the better team wins most of the time. That’s why the intense made you miss defending you see especially in the playoffs and especially in the West Conference is so important in winning games. The Nuggets kept their turnovers within reason, as Carter made an outstanding assist/turnover ratio of 3.75 while Iverson’s was a strong 2.67.

Marcus Camby, who added 7 blocks in this game and now has 129 for the season, is in a zone of his own in the League, far ahead of everyone in blocks per game at this point. Camby was almost unbelievable in blocking last year, and finished 1st in the League by a very substantial margin, with 3.3 blocks per game, well ahead of 2nd place Josh Smith, who made 2.9. In the NBA playoffs, Camby edged out Tim Duncan to be the number one playoff blocker. This year Camby is beyond great and is completely unbelievable. Camby this season is the Michael Jordan of blocked shots. He has 3.8 blocked shots per game, far ahead of Josh Smith again, who is getting 3.1 blocks per game so far.

Iverson is leading the 2007-08 Nuggets offensively, Camby is leading them defensively, and Carmelo Anthony is in the back seat enjoying the ride. As long as the team is winning, Anthony doesn’t really care that Iverson is a little ahead of him in scoring. I guess it must be nice to be like Anthony and to not worry about tough times ahead. I’m not usually like that, I’m usually worried about the big problems that loom on the horizon. Those big problems would be, at a minimum, the Spurs, the Suns, and the Lakers. Melo will not be able to beat any of those teams in the playoffs while riding in the back seat

Now I will continue on with the J.R. Smith fiasco report, part 2. In part 1, which was in the Timberwolves game report, I showed that the benching of J.R. Smith as of the 1st of the year was more obnoxious than most of George Karl’s benchings, many of which are very obnoxious, since Smith played extremely well in limited minutes in the last 4 games before his benching. I then went on to explain the most likely motivation of Karl for not giving Smith significant playing time, that he wants him to be traded to another team, against the wishes of the Denver front office and against the wishes of Smith himself. I then made a big attempt to explain why Karl has come to hate J.R. Smith to the point where he refuses to teach him or to play him in significant minutes.

Karl doesn’t even want Smith on the bench anymore, he wants him gone. And Karl knows full well that Smith could be getting good playing time on a good number of other teams, such as the 76’ers for example. So Karl is giving Smith just enough playing time to showcase his scoring and disrupting defending, while not giving him anywhere near enough time to advance his career as a Nugget, or to give the Nuggets the full benefit of Smith being on the roster.

Here in part 2, I will show, using just 2007-08 statistics, that Smith is one of the better players on the Nuggets even while being jerked around on playing time and being the only Nugget under a lot of pressure to try to get more playing time.

J.R. Smith might have a really dumb or lazy agent. At worst, Smith is the 6th best player on the team. If the Denver front office doesn't want him to go, and they definitely do not, but Karl doesn't want him to play, the player, the agent, or both are supposed to apply some pressure in order to get the player off the bench, by demanding a trade if at least a minimum amount of playing time is not provided. Otherwise, Smith is just a hostage in a dispute between the front office and the Coach.

I have seen J.R. say in the media that he doesn't want to leave, so that may be what is stopping the normal course of events when a good player is benched. He's too young to realize that if you are a major pro athlete, you lose mega bucks if your career is held down by artificially low playing time for more than a year or so. Not to mention that your actual playing skills might be reduced to one extent or another. The longer the lack of playing time goes on, the worst these effects get, and Smith is now coming up on the 1-year anniversary of when Karl first started to really hate him.

I will now kill two birds with one stone, giving you all of the most important per 48 minutes performance measures, and at the same time showing just how valuable J.R. Smith is to the Nuggets. The Real Player rating which is in every game report is a per time measure as well, but it combines all of the important things that players do on the court into one number, and also puts differing weights on the various things, with the higher weights going on the things that are more valuable toward the objective of winning the game.

A per 48 minutes basketball performance measure tells you how many or how much of whatever is being measured a player or a team would get in 48 minutes of playing time. Since 48 minutes is the length of a non-overtime game, the measurement tells you how many or how much of whatever is being measured a player would get if he played for the whole game. It measures each player without regard to actual playing time, so it washes out all differences in playing time, and equalizes the playing field for all players, whether they are getting too much, the right amount, or too little playing time.

NUGGETS POINTS PER 48 MINUTES
First 32 games of the 2007-08 season

Player and Points per 48 Minutes
1 Carmelo Anthony 32.88
2 Allen Iverson 30.85
3 J.R. Smith 25.61
4 Linas Kleiza 22.65
5 Bobby Jones 17.77
6 Kenyon Martin 17.76
7 Nene 14.67
8 Anthony Carter 13.87
9 Von Wafer 13.29
10 Eduardo Najera 13.22
11 Yakhouba Diawara 12.58
12 Marcus Camby 12.33
13 Chucky Atkins 11.44
14 Steven Hunter 7.58
15 Jelani McCoy 4.50

Here you can see that J.R. is the third most productive scorer on the Nuggets per unit of playing time. Smith remains ahead of Kleiza despite Kleiza's big year so far and despite Smith being at least as inconsistent in 3-point shooting this year as last. A player who gets more than 24 points per 48 minutes, or more than a point every 2 minutes on the court, is relatively rare in the NBA, and represents real talent that will in almost all cases earn that player a starting slot and playing time of 22-38 minutes a game. Smith’s playing time for the 2007-08 season is now in the high teens and is dropping, of course, with every game he is benched.

Let’s see how Smith stacks up in the NBA as a scorer:

NBA PLAYERS WHO GET 24 OR MORE POINTS FOR EVERY 48 MINUTES OF PLAYING TIME-2007-08 SEASON AS OF JANUARY 7, 2008

Player, Team, and Points per 48 Minutes
1 Kobe Bryant, LAL 35.18
2 Lebron James, CLE 34.81
3 Amare Stoudemire, PHX 33.73
4 Carmelo Anthony, DEN 32.91
5 Carlos Boozer, UTA 31.97
6 Manu Ginobili, SA 31.19
7 Allen Iverson, DEN 31.18
8 Tracy McGrady, HOU 31.04
9 Dwyane Wade, MIA 30.79
10 Richard Jefferson, NJ 29.93
11 Kevin Martin, SAC 29.79
12 Michael Redd, MIL 29.77
13 Dirk Nowitzki, DAL 29.30
14 Shaquille O’Neal, MIA 29.21
15 Chris Bosh, TOR 29.01
16 Kevin Durant, SEA 28.77
17 Yao Ming, HOU 28.35
18 Tony Parker, SA 27.95
19 Chris Paul, NO 27.71
20 Dwight Howard, ORL 27.62
21 Corey Maggette, LAC 27.62
22 Leandro Barbos, PHX 27.52
23 Josh Howard, DAL 27.32
24 Gilbert Arenas, WAS 27.19
25 Tim Duncan, SA 27.00
26 Baron Davis, GS 26.95
27 Vince Carter, NJ 26.94
28 Al Jefferson, MIN 26.55
29 Wally Szczerbiak, SEA 26.46
30 Kevin Garnett, BOS 26.42
31 Rashad McCants, MIN 26.37
32 Paul Pierce, BOS 26.28
33 Antawn Jamison, WAS 26.19
34 Andres Nocioni, CHI 26.09
35 T.J. Ford, TOR 26.07
36 Ben Gordon, CHI 26.02
37 Caron Butler, WAS 26.00
38 J.R. Smith, DEN 25.88
39 Jason Richardson, CHAR 25.79
40 Stephen Jackson, GS 25.46
41 Al Harrington, GS 25.45
42 LaMarcus Aldridge, POR 25.38
43 Richard Hamilton, DET 25.34
44 Rudy Gay, MEM 25.29
45 Eddy Curry, NY 25.22
46 Gerald Wallace, CHAR 25.14
47 Hakim Warrick, MEM 25.13
48 Joe Johnson, ATL 25.06
49 Zach Randolph, NY 25.00
50 David West, NO 24.87
51 Pau Gasol, MEM 24.84
52 Deron Williams, UTA 24.79
53 Brandon Roy, POR 24.72
54 Josh Smith, ATL 24.69
55 Nate Robinson, NY 24.66
56 Mike Dunleavy, IND 24.54
57 Chauncy Billups, DET 24.40
58 Luol Deng, CHI 24.34
59 Hedo Turkoglu, ORL 24.25

There are only 37 players in the NBA who score more points per 48 minutes (or any number of minutes) on the court than Smith does.

Next we’ll look at assists, but for this and the following measures, we’ll limit our look right now to just the Nuggets. In future Nuggets 1 reports, I’ll show the NBA leaders in assists, steals, blocks, and turnovers per 48 minutes.

NUGGETS ASSISTS PER 48 MINUTES
First 32 games of the 2007-08 season

Player & Assists Per 48 minutes
Anthony Carter 8.8
Allen Iverson 8.0
Chucky Atkins 5.1
J.R. Smith 4.8
Carmelo Anthony 4.7
Marcus Camby 4.4
Yakhouba Diawara 3.1
Von Wafer 3.0
Linas Kleiza 2.7
Eduardo Najera 2.5
Nene 2.5
Bobby Jones 2.5
Kenyon Martin 1.7
Steven Hunter 0.0
Jelani McCoy 0.0

J.R. is 4th in assists, roughly equal to Atkins and Anthony. Is Smith one of the better assists players in the NBA? No, but he’s not rock bottom bad as Karl wants you to think either. In a future report, we will see exactly where Smith, Iverson, and all the top players in the NBA rank in terms of assists (and steals, blocks, and turnovers) per 48 minutes.

NUGGETS STEALS PER 48 MINUTES
First 32 games of the 2007-08 season

Player & Steals Per 48 mins.
1 Carter 2.7
2 Iverson 2.6
3 Martin 2.6
4 Smith 2.2
5 Najera 2.0
6 Anthony 1.7
7 Wafer 1.5
8 Camby 1.4
9 Atkins 1.3
10 Kleiza 1.2
11 Nene 1.2
12 Jones 1.2
13 Diawara 0.5
14 Hunter 0.0
15 McCoy 0.0

On a team that is leading the NBA in steals, Smith is 4th in steals per minute. Anthony Carter and Kenyon Martin have been phenomenal, because Iverson has never failed to be the best on his team in steals.

NUGGETS REBOUNDS PER 48 MINUTES
First 32 games of the 2007-08 season

Player & Rebounds Per 48 minutes.
1 Camby 19.9
2 Nene 14.9
3 Hunter 12.6
4 Martin 11.1
5 McCoy 10.5
6 Najera 10.1
7 Anthony 8.7
8 Kleiza 8.3
9 Jones 7.4
10 Smith 5.2
11 Carter 5.0
12 Diawara 4.6
13 Wafer 4.4
14 Iverson 3.4
15 Atkins 3.2

J.R. Smith leads all Nuggets guards in rebounding, though Carter is breathing down his neck.

While he is not yet back to where he was last spring in getting the ball in the basket, Nene is at least rebounding well already.

Notice that, while Diawara is a relatively good made you miss defender, he is neither a good scorer nor a good rebounder, so even though he is an very accurate 3-point shooter, he can be benched with me getting just a little upset about it instead of enraged like I am with the Smith benching.

NUGGETS TURNOVERS PER 48 MINUTES
First 32 games of the 2007-08 season

Player & Turnovers Per 48 Minutes.
1 Atkins 1.0
2 Diawara 1.5
3 Najera 1.9
4 Camby 2.1
5 Martin 2.3
6 Hunter 2.5
7 Kleiza 2.6
8 Carter 2.9
9 Jones 3.2
10 Iverson 4.0
11 Wafer 4.4
12 Nene 4.5
13 Smith 4.7
14 Anthony 4.7
15 McCoy 6.0

The Nuggets are dead last in the NBA in turnovers. I call otherwise good players who turn it over a lot "high rent" players. The trouble is, the Nuggets have too many high rent players. Most teams can only afford about 2 of them, but the Nuggets have 4 of them who deserve playing time despite their turnovers: Iverson, Nene, Smith, and Anthony.

The Nuggets are paying a huge price in terms of turnovers for their almost complete lack of offensive structure. They absolutely have to be at least a little less wild and a little more structured on offense if they hope to win a playoff series. And on a team that is loaded with high rent players, J.R. Smith is an obvious target for a coach who wants to reduce the turnovers by putting more careful and conservative players in the game.

However, the Nuggets can not win in the playoffs without the production of J.R. Smith. So the only way the Nuggets can be favored in the playoffs is if J.R. Smith is allowed to play, but at the same time, the coaches and the players work together on ways to reduce turnovers overall. In other words, the Nugget’s coaches need to attack the problem and not attack one player who is part of it.

NUGGETS ASSIST/TURNOVER RATIOS
First 32 games of the 2007-08 season

Player & Assist/Turnover Ratio
1 Atkins 5.10
2 Carter 3.03
3 Camby 2.10
4 Diawara 2.07
5 Iverson 2.00
6 Najera 1.32
7 Kleiza 1.04
8 Smith 1.02
9 Anthony 1.00
10 Jones 0.78
11 Martin 0.74
12 Wafer 0.68
13 Nene 0.56
14 Hunter 0.00
15 McCoy 0.00

Atkins has not been able to score much yet but at least his basic distribution skills seem to be intact.

Even with his high number of turnovers, J.R. Smith has an assist/turnover ratio that is not good, but not the complete disaster that Karl has in his mind.

One of, but not the only reason, that Karl can get away with benching Smith and almost forfeiting the playoff series is that Smith’s specific top skills other than 3-point shooting are somewhat expendable on the Nuggets right now. The Nuggets are getting plenty of points overall, and plenty of steals, without J.R. Smith. It is obvious that J.R. Smith would be much more of a stand-out star on at least half of the other teams in the NBA.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of January 7, 2008

The Nuggets are under a GREY ALERT, on account of the following problems.

INJURIES & SUSPENSIONS
1. Steven Hunter injury 4 Points

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

BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 5-35 Points. The severity varies depending on the circumstances, mainly Karl’s beliefs and moods, and whether the other team is playing well enough to take advantage of the Nuggets playing with not enough breathers, with too many fouls, and so forth. Karl will normally be in the 5-20 range, but it could spike to as much as 35 in the event of the benching of a major player such as Kenyon Martin. The current points reported are for the use, or should I say the misuse, of the reserves for the most recent games, with the most weight being given to the game being reported on here. The bad use of reserves score for this game is 15 points.

2. Lack of adequate offensive schemes: 12 Points. This would be up to 24 points, except that Iverson reduces the damage. In general terms, the team has failed to decide whether it wants Melo alone, Iverson alone, Melo and Iverson together, or neither of them to be firstly responsible for scoring enough points to keep the Nuggets in games. If it were neither, I call the name of that strategy the "share the wealth" strategy. More specifically, the Nuggets lack enough tried and tested offensive plays that they can run game after game, perfecting them as they go, and having everyone automatically on the same page for those plays.

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

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 31, which constitutes GREY ALERT.

GREY ALERT (30-39): There are relatively minor problems leading to a small threat against the success of the entire season. It is still possible to beat quality teams, but it will be more unusual to beat a quality team, because about 1/4 of what would have been wins against good teams will now be losses when there is a GREY ALERT.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE ALERT STATUS
Praise be to the most high, if there is a most high, because the Nugget’s front court is all playing now, and no important player is having any serious slump problems, and because the Nuggets are therefore no longer in yellow alert or worse. But don’t party too hard yet. We will be back in a damaging yellow alert if and when either the injury prone Martin or the injury prone Nene go out again, and in a very damaging orange alert if they are ever both out. And as the Spurs game on January 3 showed, the Nuggets need both Martin and Nene in to make up for their offense being trashed by a quality defensive team.

Another reason not to party about the sports medicine miracles is that the alert status has moved from green alert to grey alert as a result of an increase in the actual and, more importantly, the projected damage caused by George Karl’s rotation mistakes. He has now totally removed J.R. Smith and largely removed Chucky Atkins from playing time, and that spells d-o-o-m for the playoffs, pure and simple. Carter is playing very well against lottery and mid-level teams here in the regular season, but he will be no match for the top flight guards that he will come up against in the playoffs, whereas Atkins does have some playoff experience with the Lakers. And the Nuggets will not be able to offset the very tough defending they will face in the playoffs without good 3-point shooting and, quite honestly, they have to have Smith just to be assured of being mediocre in 3-point shooting. Being good would require someone else to step up and join Smith and Kleiza as major players on the Nugget’s 3-point shooting squad.

RESERVE WATCH

Number of Players Who Played at Least 6 Minutes: Nuggets 9 76’ers 9
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 8 76’ers 9

Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 24
76’ers Non-Starters Points: 33

Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 14
76’ers Non-Starters Rebounds: 15

Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 2
76’ers Non-Starters Assists: 7

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

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

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

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

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

NUGGETS
Allen Iverson: Game 58.2 Season 41.5
Carmelo Anthony: Game 39.3 Season 37.9
Marcus Camby: Game 38.7 Season 32.6
Anthony Carter: Game 32.9 Season 20.9
Kenyon Martin: Game 24.0 Season 19.6
Nene Hilario: Game 16.5 Season 14.0
Eduardo Najera: Game 14.0 Season 13.7
Linas Kleiza: Game 13.5 Season 17.3
Chucky Atkins: Game-1.8 Season 6.1

J.R. Smith: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Bobby Jones: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Yakhouba Diawara: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Jelani McCoy: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Von Wafer: Did Not Play-Coach's Decision

Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Injury

76’ERS
Andre Igoudala: Game 32.3 Season 32.3
Andre Miller: Game 32.0 Season 29.4
Samuel Dalembert: Game 27.0 Season 25.4
Thaddeus Young: Game 19.9 Season 9.0
Louis Williams: Game 18.8 Season 17.6
Reggie Evans: Game 18.1 Season 13.7
Willie Green: Game 14.5 Season 18.5
Jason Smith: Game 10.1 Season 9.7
Gordan Gricek: Game 7.0 Season 6.3

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

OBSERVATIONS ON RATINGS:
It’s very simple: Iverson was huge, the Nuggets were solid as a rock, the 76’ers were about as good as they are on average, and the Nuggets are clearly more talented in basketball right now than the 76’ers. Talent is, very fortunately for the Nuggets, more important than strategy and tactics.

NUGGETS REAL PLAYER RATINGS—EXPLANATION
A Great New Feature from Nuggets 1

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

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

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

SCALE FOR THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
1.60 More Rare Superstar Plus-Above Normal Even For Michael Jordan
1.40 1.60 Superstar Performance Plus-A Michael Jordan Type Game
1.20 1.40 Spectacular Performance
1.05 1.20 Star Performance
0.90 1.05 Outstanding Game
0.80 0.90 Very Good Game
0.70 0.80 Good Game
0.60 0.70 Mediocre Game
0.50 0.60 Poor Game
0.40 0.50 Very Poor Game
0.25 0.40 Bad Game-Near Disaster
Less 0.25 Total Disaster

NUGGETS-76’ERS REAL PLAYER RATINGS
All players who played 5 minutes or more are included. Any player who played only 5-9 minutes is noted

1. Allen Iverson, Den 1.323
2. Marcus Camby, Den 1.173
3. Eduardo Najera, Den 1.167
4. Carmelo Anthony, Den 1.092
5. Andre Miller, Phi 0.914
6. Andre Iguodala, Phi 0.897
7. Anthony Carter, Den 0.866
8. Kenyon Martin, Den 0.804
9. Thaddeus Young, Phi 0.796
10. Jason Smith, Phi 0.777
11. Nene Hilario, Den 0.750
12. Louis Williams, Phi 0.696
13. Samuel Dalembert, Phi 0.692
14. Reggie Evans, Phi 0.670
15. Linas Kleiza, Den 0.614
16. Willie Green, Phi 0.580
17. Gordan Giricek, Phi 0.538
18. Chucky Atkins, Den -0.257...Atkins played only 7 minutes

OBSERVATIONS ON THE NUGGETS-WARRIORS REAL PLAYER RATINGS
Iverson gets the superstar Michael Jordan rating, but Camby, Najera, and Anthony were all stars. The 76’ers had no stars in this game, but Andre Miller and Andre Igoudala were outstanding. Former Nugget Reggie Evans was mediocre. Linas Kleiza was off his season pace in this one, while it looks like something is physically wrong with Chucky Atkins.

NUGGET’S PLUS—MINUS
This tells you how the score changed while a player was on the court. All Nuggets who played at least 6 minutes are shown.

Anthony Carter: +18
Marcus Camby: +12
Carmelo Anthony: +11
Kenyon Martin: +10
Linas Kleiza: +8
Allen Iverson: +6
Nene: +3
Eduardo Najera: +3
Chucky Atkins: -6

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
Against the poor and some of the mid-level teams, Carter is making the Nugget’s offense work, but there is no plan on how to successfully take on the Suns, the Spurs, the Lakers, or the Mavericks in the playoffs yet. Nene is still working his way back to the playing condition he was in last spring.

NUGGETS MADE WHAT?
All Nuggets who played at least 6 minutes are shown. The order is from lowest to highest in real player rating.

Chucky Atkins played 7 minutes and was 0/4 and 0/2 on 3’s for 0 points, and he made 1 assist.

Linas Kleiza played 22 minutes and was 4/9 and 1/3 on 3’s for 9 points, and he made 3 rebounds, 1 assist, and 1 steal.

Nene played 22 minutes and was 2/7 and 2/3 from the line for 6 points, and he made 8 rebounds, 2 blocks, and 2 steals.

Kenyon Martin played 27 minutes and was 4/10 for 8 points, and he made 10 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 block, and 1 steal.

Anthony Carter played 38 minutes and was 2/7 and 1/2 on 3’s for 5 points, and he made 15 assists, 5 rebounds, 3 blocks, and 2 steals.

Carmelo Anthony played 36 minutes and was 10/16 and 3/4 from the line for 23 points, and he made 7 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 steals.

Eduardo Najera played 12 minutes and was 4/8 and 1/2 on 3’s for 9 points, and he made 3 rebounds and 1 block.

Marcus Camby played 33 minutes and was 4/7 and 3/3 from the line for 11 points, and he made 12 rebounds, 7 blocks, and 3 assists.

Allen Iverson played for virtually the whole game, 44 minutes, and was 14/25, 3/6 on 3’s, and 7/8 from the line for 38 points, and he made 8 assists, 1 steal, 1 block, and 1 rebound.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Monday, January 7 in Phoenix to play the Suns at 7 pm mountain time. The Nuggets will be playing on back to back nights but the Suns will not be.