Carmelo Anthony, Anthony Carter, and Linas Kleiza Lead the Nuggets Over the Magic 113-103; Nene is Out Indefinitely Due to Unknown Ailment

The Nuggets, for about 10 days, had all of their players except the little used Steven Hunter off of the injury list, but things have deteriorated very quickly again, to where the Nuggets are once again a team much more hurt by injuries and ailments than the average team in the NBA. Nene has taken an indefinite leave from the Nuggets to tend to a personal medical issue, which he is not disclosing. Injuries resulting from basketball must be disclosed, but injuries and ailments not caused by basketball may be kept private, and Nene has wisely elected to keep the specifics of his ailment private for now.

But everyone read between the lines of the press releases and of the Coach Karl mini interview on the Nene situation. From this reading of the tea leaves, there was a lot of speculation among fans of the Nuggets that Nene has a serious problem, up to and including some kind of cancer. This news broke just after his fine game in Phoenix, and just when fans including me were starting to believe that it was really possible that both Kenyon Martin and Nene, the two good power forwards on the team, would actually be playing most or all the rest of the season to include any playoffs. But now we are back to the norm for the Nuggets, which is that you always have at least one very expensive big man out, and usually out for a very, very long time.

Nuggets 1 wishes peace and good health to Nene.

A.I. on Nene: "He's family, Life is way more important than the game of basketball. We just want him to get his situation straightened and get back to the team as soon as possible. He needs to take care of himself first."

Due to all the injuries and me wanting to go over this Magic game in some detail, part 3 of the J.R. Smith fiasco story has been postponed again, to the next game report, which will be for the Bobcats game.

Without Nene, the Nuggets may not even make the playoffs, thanks to the Trailblazers shocker. I don’t know what is more shocking, how well the Trailblazers are playing, or how well Coach Nate McMillan is coaching. Right now, you have to think that McMillan is going to be the Coach of the year. Just when the Nuggets catch a break with Utah loosing a bunch of games, the Trailblazers win practically everything on their schedule.

Eight-year NBA veteran Chucky Atkins has averaged 10.7 points, 1.8 rebounds and 3.6 assists in 608 games for seven teams. He is supposed to be the starting point guard, but has turned into yet another health disaster for the Nuggets. Atkins underwent successful surgery on Friday, January 11 to repair a right groin/abdominal strain, also known as a sports hernia. Atkins is expected to be sidelined for a minimum of eight weeks. That will leave Atkins precious little time, about a month if he’s lucky, to try to work back into shape for the playoffs. It most likely will not happen.

I am beginning to seriously think that the combination of the following may cost the Nuggets a playoff spot this year:

1. Nene being out for most or all of the season.
2. Chucky Atkins being out for most or all of the season.
3. J.R. Smith having his playing time sharply limited by his Coach, who over estimates his negatives and underestimates his positives.
4. Bobby Jones has been waived and can not be retrieved, since the Grizzlies have him now.
5. The Trailblazers seem to be for real, and seem destined for a low seed playoff berth this year, something that upsets all of the calculations of West Conference playoff possibilities.
6. Lack of anything approaching a system on offense, resulting in way too much inconsistency and way too many turnovers.

Now if Kenyon Martin goes out again, you can take it to the bank that the Nuggets will not make the playoffs. Actually, if almost anyone goes out for a long stretch, say a month or more, it will probably not be possible for the Nuggets to make the playoffs this year
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The whole report, with many other topics, is at the link.
Original Story: http://nuggets1.blogspot.com/2008/01/car....
Points for this article:

Now if Kenyon Martin goes out again, you can take it to the bank that the Nuggets will not make the playoffs. Actually, if almost anyone goes out for a long stretch, say a month or more, it will probably not be possible for the Nuggets to make the playoffs this year.

The Orlando Magic so far are a good but not a great team. They came in to this game with a fantastic road record of 16-6, and they have C Dwight Howard, who is scoring, rebounding, and blocking the heck out of the ball to be one of the very best players in the NBA so far. But the Magic lack another star player to go along with Howard, and so they are probably destined to win just one playoff series before losing in the Eastern Conference round of four (the East semifinals). PF Rashard Lewis, playing his 1st year for the Magic after 9 straight years for the Supersonics, has been a relative disappointment, as his shooting accuracy and his rebounding have been less than what they were in most of his years in Seattle. On the other hand, SF Hedo Turkoglu is enjoying his best year yet, as his shooting accuracy, rebounding, and assisting have improved from prior years. PG Jameer Nelson, in his 4th year, has been concentrating on passing and rebounding more, and shooting less than he did in his first 3 seasons that he played for Orlando.

Orlando has yet to establish a truly impressive offensive mix, as they are hampered by a weak spot on their lineup, at shooting guard. Neither Maurice Evans nor Keith Bogans are playing very well at that position. Bogans has become a substantial three-point threat, but his shooting overall is relatively poor, his assists are few and far between, and his turnovers are excessive. Similarly, Evans shooting leaves a lot to be hoped for in the future, and his turnovers are excessive as well.

The Magic could have taken this game down to the buzzer had either Dwight Howard or Hedo Turkoglu played at their normal speed, and they could easily have won the game if both of them had played as well as usual. Turkoglu had the misfortune of having to contend with an Anthony who has decided to keep putting in more focus and energy on defending and rebounding, a change in his game which was what helped him to emerge from his big December shooting slump before Christmas.

In that slump, Anthony ended up in the wilderness, because Anthony Carter, who has played far better than anyone expected, and Allen Iverson, who has shifted into a high Iverson gear, were dominating the offense and choosing not to get the ball very much to the slumping Anthony. Then Anthony finally figured out a way to get the ball more and to use the possessions to get out of the shooting slump. He finally started to defend and especially to rebound better. Fast forward to this game, and I am sure that Turkoglu wishes that whole chain of events had not happened. Turkoglu missed all 4 of his 3-pointer attempts, and he missed 5 of 6 short and midrange jumpers. He was out rebounded by Anthony 11-7, and he committed 3 turnovers to just 1 for Anthony.

The Magic did get the memo regarding a good strategy you can use to try to defeat the Nuggets. Since the Nuggets are a bad 3-point shooting team if J.R. Smith does not play, you can try to offset Denver’s good shooting on 2-point jumpers and on their scoring at point blank range by trying to hit a lot of threes. The Nuggets do not defend the 3-point shot very well, and they in fact have more three-point shots attempted against them than any other team has.

So in the 1st quarter, with Dwight Howard handling most of the scoring in the paint, Rashard Lewis and Maurice Evans started hitting some jumpers, with Rashard Lewis getting warmed up for sinking threes by getting two of them in the opening quarter. The Nuggets could not get five layups to fall during the quarter, and the Magic were unable to get as many jump shots to fall as they wanted, and so it was a draw; it was 26-25 Magic after the 1st quarter.

In the 2nd, the Magic long range shooting strategy started to pay off. Keith Bogans nailed a 25-footer with 9 minutes left in the quarter, and it was 37-28 Magic. Linas Kleiza, whose occasionally explosive scoring has sometimes been a partial substitute for the absent J.R. Smith, made a three and 3 layups, to lead the Nuggets back to parity with the Magic, and the score stayed extremely close for the remainder of the half. It was 56-53 Magic at the half.

J.R. Smith came and went so quickly in the first 5 minutes of the 2nd quarter that his only accomplishments were negative ones: a personal foul on Bogans, a technical foul for disagreeing with it too much, and a turnover. He never got a single shot off. George Karl would not have allowed Smith out of his doghouse at all were it not for the Nuggets being short on guards due to Chucky Atkins being out and due to Yakhouba Diawara being a very poor scorer. Even so, Karl panicked very quickly regarding Smith’s poor start on the court, and he yanked him out the game after less then 5 minutes.

And with Karl, if you have been sprung from the doghouse due to an injury emergency, but then you are yanked, the yanking will have priority over the emergency. In other words, it’s more important for Karl to keep a player who has upset him on the bench then it is to deal effectively with a shortage of players due to injuries. So Smith was gone for good, and since Karl was in no mood to play the offensively challenged Diawara, and since Bobby Jones is gone, having been waived 4 days ago and then snatched up quickly by the Grizzlies by the way, just seven Nuggets were going to have to work their tails off to beat nine Magic players. In other words, it was one of those nights where the seven Nuggets who had survived the Karl gauntlet had to work harder than they would if they were playing for another team, due to having a Coach who is basically terrified of younger bench players and who may also be afraid of his own shadow.

Early in the 3rd quarter, the Nuggets got a rare glimpse of the Carmelo Anthony who lives in the alternate Universe, the Team USA Carmelo Anthony, when Anthony hit two quick threes in a row, which tied up the game at 64 each. But then PG Jameer Nelson quickly followed with a three of his own, as the Magic continued with their beat the Nuggets from beyond the arc strategy. Half-way through the 3rd, Nelson fed Lewis who swished a three, but Iverson answered that one right back to keep the Nuggets on an even keel. It was 72-71 Magic.

With the Nuggets banged up again, and with the Magic enjoying just one injury, to C Tony Battie, the two teams are probably fairly even overall, with the sheer number of players that Orlando has ready to contribute to one extent or another offsetting the star power of the Iverson-Anthony-Camby-Martin combination. So it was no surprise that this game was remarkably even for most of the way. It was still almost tied after the 3rd quarter, as it was 86-84 Magic.

But the Magic were destined to pay for having come to the contest with seemingly only one major strategy for beating the Nuggets, the three-point shot. Their defense on Carmelo Anthony was poor, and they allowed Linas Kleiza and Anthony Carter too many open looks as well.

As the 4th quarter got underway, Turkoglu missed three straight jump shots, two of which were threes, while Melo hit two straight midrange jumpers, as the Nuggets took the lead 88-86. With about 7 minutes to play, Keith Bogans nailed a 26-foot three, but Iverson to Anthony Carter was good for a layup and another tie on the scoreboard. Then Anthony Carter, who has benefited from playing with Iverson to an incredible extent, made two more driving layups, while the Magic’ Carlos Arroyo made one layup while missing two jumpers, so the Nuggets finally had a 4th quarter lead of 98-96 with 5:43 to play.

Then Orlando really started to go dry. While Turkoglu continued his long string of misses, Jameer Nelson missed two key shots for the Magic, the kind of shots that you suspect would have gone in had this game been played in Orlando. Two Carmelo Anthony layups, the second of which was off an Anthony Carter steal off Turkoglu, made it 102-98 Nuggets with 3:20 left.

In this 4th quarter, Carter was in a zone; it was as if he had learned so much from playing with and watching Iverson that he had practically become Iverson. So following the key Nelson miss on the three attempt, he took the rock from his pal A.I. and calmly swished a three himself. The Magic were now in serious trouble, because it was 105-98 Nuggets with 2:47 left. Who would have thought that Anthony Carter could be a deadly 4th quarter weapon?

I guess not all secondary players have their potentials limited by Coach Karl. If you are a short and relatively smart point guard who hustles while playing and who works overtime in practice and you have a pleasing personality, you might be the exception to the rule and have your potential maximized under Karl. You are just what Karl is looking for. In fact, you are the only thing Karl is looking for.

After a 20-second Magic timeout, 3-point ace Lewis buried a three to cut the Magic deficit to 4 points. Then Carter could not make a three. Carter should not have been attempting a three at that point. You would not see Nash, Kidd, Paul, Fisher, Parker, or the like jacking up a three with a 4 point lead with just 2 minutes left. Oh well, Carter played just about like Mike in this game, so I guess I’m just nitpicking on account of being in a very bad mood about the misfortunes befalling Nene, Atkins, and Smith. I feel like my team has become a fish that is being gutted before it’s going to be cooked, after which it will be eaten up by the top teams of the West. So stay away from me.

After the Carter miss, Lewis missed a crucial three, and then of course it had to be Carter who made the rebound. Then Allen Iverson made 1 of 2 free throws when he was fouled by Dwight Howard, and Rashard Lewis made 1 of 2 free throws when he was fouled by Kenyon Martin. It was 106-102 Nuggets with 1:15 left. Then Anthony Iverson (oops, I mean Anthony Carter) iced the Nugget’s win with a 21 foot jumper. After Turkoglu lost the ball yet again, Carter scored yet again, on a little runner. In case you don’t read the “Nuggets Made What” section, Carter scored 21 points on 9/16 shooting, and he made 11 assists, 5 rebounds, and 2 steals.

The Magic finished 10/26 from beyond the arc, which is an accuracy of 38.5%. But the Nuggets, led by the 2/2 Team USA Anthony and the 3/8 Kleiza, were an efficient 7/16 from downtown, for a percentage of 43.8%. The Magic strategy had fallen short because their defense fell short, because of Anthony Carter, and because Carmelo Anthony finally had a little success with the three.

For the second straight year, the Nuggets had an Iverson #2, if only for a fleeting moment in time. If only actual cloning was legal in the NBA. The Nuggets would have two Cambys, two Martins, three Anthonys, and five Iversons, and they would no doubt be the best team in the world.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of January 12, 2008

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

INJURIES & SUSPENSIONS
1. Chucky Atkins injury 18 points
2. Nene injury 13 points

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

BAD OR INADEQUATE COACHING
1. George Karl has completely benched one or more players who should not be benched due to his incompetence, hatred of the player, and/or his having the ulterior motive of forcing the player off the team. The problem points would be just about the points you would have if the player were injured. J.R. Smith is benched and should not be: 15 points.

2. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 1-20 Points. The severity varies depending on the circumstances, mainly Karl’s beliefs and moods, and whether the other team is playing well enough to take advantage of the Nuggets playing with not enough breathers, with too many fouls, and so forth. The current points reported are for the use, or should I say the misuse, of the reserves for the most recent games, with the most weight being given to the game being reported on here. The bad use of reserves score for this game is 8 points.

3. Lack of adequate offensive schemes: 8 Points. This would be up to 20 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: 62, which constitutes ORANGE ALERT.

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

OBSERVATIONS ON THE ALERT STATUS
Injury disaster has once again struck the Nuggets, with both Chucky Atkins and Nene out. The Nuggets are on the verge of moving into a disastrous red alert situation. The season is hanging by a rope at the moment.

RESERVE WATCH

Number of Players Who Played at Least 6 Minutes: Nuggets 9 Magic 9
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 9 Magic 9

Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 18
Magic Non-Starters Points: 28

Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 8
Magic Non-Starters Rebounds: 11

Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 3
Magic Non-Starters Assists: 3

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
Carmelo Anthony: Game 51.3 Season 38.2
Anthony Carter: Game 44.9 Season 22.0
Allen Iverson: Game 42.5 Season 41.5
Linas Kleiza: Game 29.8 Season 17.7

Marcus Camby: Game 27.3 Season 32.3
Kenyon Martin: Game 23.6 Season 19.6
Eduardo Najera: Game 1.8 Season 13.4
J.R. Smith: Game 0.7 Season 14.6

Chucky Atkins: Injury
Nene: Did Not Play-Injury
Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Injury

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


MAGIC
Dwight Howard: Game 35.4 Season 43.4
Rashard Lewis: Game 33.8 Season 28.5
Maurice Evans: Game 27.4 Season 10.4
Jameer Nelson: Game 26.6 Season 23.7
Keith Bogans: Game 22.1 Season 16.3
Keyon Dooling: Game 17.1 Season 12.5
Hedo Turkoglu: Game 13.8 Season 31.9
Carlos Arroyo: Game 4.6 Season 13.2
Adonal Foyle: Game 4.6 Season 5.7

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:
Carmelo Anthony was superb in this game, and Anthony Carter was twice as productive as usual. Could Nuggets 1 be wrong about Carter being doomed in the playoffs? Not until and unless Carter has a big game against one of the 4 top teams of the West: the Spurs, the Suns, the Lakers, and the Mavericks.

Turkoglu, and to a lesser extent Arroyo, killed the Magic in this game. Lewis tried hard but was only a little better than his disappointing season normal. Bogans and especially Evans played very well, mostly up against Iverson. Dwight Howard is not going to be a hero every night.

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

1. Linas Kleiza, Den 1.419
2. Carmelo Anthony, Den 1.315
3. Anthony Carter, Den 1.247
4. Maurice Evans, Orl 1.015
5. Allen Iverson, Den 0.988
6. Keyon Dooling, Orl 0.950
7. Dwight Howard, Orl 0.932
8. Keith Bogans, Orl 0.884
9. Jameer Nelson, Orl 0.831
10. Rashard Lewis, Orl 0.786
11. Marcus Camby, Den 0.738
12. Kenyon Martin, Den 0.621
13. Carlos Arroyo, Orl 0.460
14. Adonal Foyle, Orl 0.460
15. Hedo Turkoglu, Orl 0.373
16. J.R. Smith, Den 0.140…Smith played only 5 minutes.
17. Eduardo Najera, Den 0.086

OBSERVATIONS ON THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
In the friendly confines of the Pepsi Center in Denver, Kleiza and Carter played two of the best games of their respective careers. Carmelo Anthony was spectacular, while Iverson was merely outstanding in this one.

Dwight Howard is a better player than what he showed in this game, and Rashard Lewis should in theory be a better player than what he showed. Camby and Martin were a little off but it didn’t mean much, mostly because of the Turkoglu disaster.

The Najera disaster was the first one in many, many moons.

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

Anthony Carter: +17
Carmelo Anthony: +14
Marcus Camby: +13
Kenyon Martin: +8
Linas Kleiza: +5
Allen Iverson: +2
Eduardo Najera: -1

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
This is additional confirmation that Carter was a superstar for this game. Anthony and Camby were more trouble for the Magic than were Iverson, and Najera.

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

Eduardo Najera played 21 minutes and was 0/5 for 0 points, and he made 3 rebounds, 1 block, and 1 assist.

J.R. Smith played 5 minutes and made 1 block.

Kenyon Martin played 38 minutes and was 5/11 and 3/4 from the line for 13 points, and he made 6 rebounds, 3 steals, 1 block, and 1 assist.

Marcus Camby played 37 minutes and was 4/9 for 8 points, and he made 12 rebounds, 3 blocks, 2 assists, and 1 steal.

Allen Iverson played most of the game, 43 minutes, and was 6/15, 1/3 on 3’s, and 8/13 from the line for 21 points, and he made 13 assists, 5 rebounds, 1 steal, and 1 block.

Anthony Carter played 36 minutes and was 9/16, 1/3 on 3’s, and 2/3 from the line for 21 points, and he made 11 assists, 5 rebounds, and 2 steals.

Carmelo Anthony played 39 minutes and was 11/20, 2/2 on 3’s, and 8/10 from the line for 32 points, and he made 11 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 steal.

Linas Kleiza played 21 minutes and was 7/13, 3/8 on 3’s, and 1/1 from the line for 18 points, and he made 5 rebounds and 2 assists.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Monday, January 14 in Charlotte to play the Bobcats at 5 pm mountain time. Neither the Nuggets nor the Bobcats will be playing on back to back nights.