The Nuggets Lose a Key Game to the Rockets 103-89, and Why the Nuggets' Offense Can't Get it Done in Big Games

This was the game that the Nuggets had to win to reestablish their credentials as a true playoff team. Yao Ming, the Rockets best player, is out for the season, and the Rockets overall are now equal to the Nuggets in damage from players not being available. The stage was set for the Nuggets to redeem themselves from their post all-star break extreme inconsistency. But not only did they not win, they had no chance of winning. Not only did they have no chance of winning, but they looked bad while not having any chance of winning. Not only did they look bad, but they were truly helpless and hopeless, considering that Iverson has been given 100% control to do whatever he wants, but he was having one of his serious downer games, and there is no Plan B for Iverson downer games.

The Nuggets started off decently, but trailed all the way after the 1st quarter, and they lost 103-89 to the Rockets. The Nuggets should be thankful it was not a 20 point blowout, like the other visit to Houston was earlier in the season.

The bottom line is that the Nuggets have not shown themselves to be a true playoff team, meaning one that has a chance to win more than 1 game in a playoff series. Quite honestly, their record is a little misleading on the upside, because of a relatively soft schedule and because of an unusual number of lucky wins. Most of the reasons for the Nuggets failing to match the expectations of experts have already been identified in prior game reports, and we can’t rehash them here because it would bore the regular readers to death and it would take too long.

However, I am planning to summarize the reasons why the Nuggets will not make the playoffs in the next game report, the one for the Suns game. But if the Nuggets beat the Suns, I will delay it a little, since the Nuggets odds of making the playoffs will be up around 50% again if they win that game and, more importantly, you don’t want to post why the Nuggets are failures after they have won a big game. The Suns are playing on back to back nights, and they no longer have Shawn Marion, and these factors give the Nuggets a fighting chance to win that game.

The Nuggets have 3 mega stars and none of them played well in this game. I can’t recall another game where all three among Iverson, Anthony, and Camby all played far below their usual levels at once. According to the Real Player Ratings, Camby and Anthony were just good, which is actually bad, relatively speaking, and Iverson was poor, which is a disaster, relatively speaking. The best Nugget in the game was Anthony Carter, because he made all 4 shots he put up, and because he made 3 steals to go along with his 5 assists. However, Carter and Iverson continued to play a lot of minutes simultaneously, and it was completely unclear in this game who the PG was supposed to be, since both of them were continually switching off running the point while they were both out there.

The only other Nugget who played well besides Carter was J.R. Smith, who at least was allowed to play a relatively generous 25 minutes. Smith made 3 of 5 threes, and 4 of 8 shots overall, along with 3 steals 3 rebounds, and an assist. Meanwhile, the Bad Smith was nowhere to be found: Smith made only 1 turnover and 2 fouls.

C Dikembe Mutombo and PF Carl Landry are the main two players to receive Yao’s minutes. Landry was fairly big on both offense and defense, while Mutombo was reasonably good on defense. But it was SF Shane Battier and PF Luis Scola who really stepped up for the Rockets in the paint. PG Rafer Alston made some sweet looking shots and some sweet looking passes for scores. And of course SG Tracy McGrady made even more of them than did Alston. But don’t kid yourself, the smart way that the Rockets were sharing and moving the ball, while maintaining a clear identity at the point guard position, made it as if Adelman himself was running around out there and getting a triple double. The Rockets’ head coach kicked some serious rear end in this game, believe that.

A well run offense needs to get between 22 and 25 assists per game or more, with the requirement varying depending on it’s pace. The Nuggets are the fastest pace team in pro basketball, wild and free, so they would need to be getting at least 25 assists per game to be considered a well run offense. But the Nuggets are only making 23.7 assists per game, so they are about 10% short. It doesn’t sound like much, and I admit that the Nuggets offense could be a lot worse than it is, but keep in mind that my job is to tell you why the Nuggets have not made the playoffs if they don’t, and to tell you why they have lost in the playoffs when they do. That seemingly small shortage of assists is a symptom of a much larger problem, which is that the Nuggets are not organized enough on offense to be able to support their extremely fast pace. It’s great to get all the fast breaks that you can get, but a fast pace for the sake of a fast pace, while running without set plays to get players in position to make their favorite shots, is not a smart offense.

In total, the Nuggets made a total of just 19 assists in this game. The Nuggets failed to make even the average number of assists that an NBA team gets in a game, which rounded off is 22, let alone the number of assists that a very fast paced team is supposed to get, which is 25.

Now let’s break this game’s offense down to the player level. There is an important playmaking guideline that must be followed in every game, without fail. The very best run offenses feature one PG dominating in assists, making 1/3 to 1/2 of all of the assists in every game. Think of the Hornets, the Suns, the Warriors, the Jazz, and the new Mavericks. The next best option is to have your starting PG and your starting SG combine for between 1/2 and 2/3 of the assists in every game. Think of the Lakers, the Spurs, and these Rockets, with Alston and McGrady teaming up for the Rockets. The third best option is to have 2 point guards combine to get at least half the assists, but no more than 2/3 of the assists in every game. In rare cases, such as with the current 76’ers, you might be halfway decent with 1 PG and one G-F or SF combining for between 1/2 and 2/3 of the assists in every game.

In every single game where none of these guidelines is met, it means that the assists are too spread out. This indicates a team that is too wild and too on the fly to be able to have enough consistency or, in other words, to be able to have players on the same page often enough. On these unstructured offense teams, some players are mostly left out of the offense. Think Yakhouba Diawara. On these teams, there can be more than 2 players who are often looking for cutters and open men at the same time, which doesn’t make any sense because the primary objective is to score. There should always be either 3 or 4 players who have getting into scoring position as their top objective. These players make an assist only when the extra pass will mean an almost certain score.

In other words, with unstructured offenses, players get confused about whether they should be screening, cutting, and getting open, or whether they should be looking for someone else to be screening, cutting, and getting open. Carmelo Anthony himself fell into this confusion during this game, which was a big reason why the Nuggets had no chance to win it.

Guess which teams commonly can not meet any of the playmaking guidelines? You guessed it; these would be the lottery teams. Examples would be the Grizzlies, the Timberwolves, and the Clippers without Shaun Livingston.

Without enough offensive consistency coming from a playmaking identity, which you get by following the guidelines, you are making life too difficult for yourself. You are making your team a hostage to too much confusion, too many turnovers, and to too little sweet looking cutting, passing, and shooting.

Whenever the Nuggets fail to meet the guidelines, they almost always lose. The Nuggets generally fail to make the guidelines when Iverson makes too many shot attempts and not enough assists. Carter is nowhere near good enough to rescue the Nuggets when Iverson decides to do this. They also fail to make the guidelines when Melo starts to worry about assisting as much as he worries about scoring, including 3-point scoring. And by not being a good finisher at the rim offensively, Camby does not help the Nuggets in the least with this major offensive problem.

The solution to prevent the Nuggets from failing to meet the guidelines is clear: Iverson starts and plays PG and is held responsible if his shooting goes wild at the expense of his assisting. Carter and Iverson should be on the court at the same time as little as possible, for half a quarter at the most.

As mentioned already, in this game, the Nuggets made a total of just 19 assists. Carter made 5, Iverson 4, Anthony 4, Camby 3, and Martin, Najera, and Smith made 1 assist each. So you can see that the Nuggets violated the rule: their top two assist players made 9 assists instead of 10-12 of them. Why did neither of the Nuggets’ point guards, Carter, or Iverson, have substantially more assists than Anthony, a forward? There is no good answer for that. Why, if Carter is the PG, which he most certainly is according to Karl, did he not get substantially more assists than any other Nugget, in one the most important games of the season? There is no good answer for that. Why, out of a 48 minute game, were Iverson and Carter on the floor at the same time for over 22 minutes, so that the Nuggets had a strange and confusing 2 point-guard offense during this time? There is no good answer for that either. Who was the Denver Nuggets’ point guard for this game? Your guess is as good as mine, son.

The Rockets have now won 15 straight games, 12 with Yao Ming and 3 without him, tying their franchise record. The Rockets never lost a game during February; the last time they lost was on January 27. The winning streak is the longest in the NBA this season. The Rockets are now 19-1 in their last 20 games. Do the Rockets have 3 superstars, 1 star, and 1 high potential SG like the Nuggets do? No, they have 2 superstars, one of whom is gone for 3 games now, and a bunch of hardworking players who have been instructed by Coach Rick Adelman on what they should do and what they should not do in order to win games.

“We know how good we are and we’re showing it,” McGrady said. “We’re a focused group, a group that understands how to win ballgames.” Damn you McGrady! Just when everyone, and I do mean everyone, is finally in agreement with Nuggets 1 and is saying that the Nuggets need to have a way to win, because Karl and his staff have not provided one yet, you have to rub it in by telling everyone that the Rockets have been provided with the golden knowledge of a way to win by the wily old Adelman. Damn you for rubbing it in anyway, while we are trying to deal with a real head case of a team up here in Denver and the very real chance that the Nuggets will be the biggest disaster in basketball this year. And damn Adelman too, for not being in love with Denver and for not approaching the Denver front office to see if he could coach here.

PROJECTIONS

Nuggets 1 Current odds of the Nuggets making the playoffs: 35%
Nuggets 1 Current odds that we will be stuck with George Karl for next season: 60%

The current odds of the Nuggets making the playoffs, according to Hollinger at ESPN’s excellent team analysis system, are 56%. However, the Nuggets are projected to most likely be the 9th seed in the Western Conference, meaning they will not make the playoffs. The Hollinger odds don’t take into account that, most likely, neither Nene nor Atkins are going to be available in top form for the Nuggets for the stretch run, so the real odds that the Nuggets will make the playoffs are probably around 40-45% now. The subjective odds are just 30-35%, because of how bad the Nuggets looked against the Rockets.

The Lakers, the Hornets, the Spurs, the Mavericks, the Jazz, the Suns, and the Rockets are currently considered virtual locks to make the playoffs. However, the Rockets are no longer total locks, due to the loss of Yao Ming for the season.

Here are the computer projections for the final records of Western Conference teams:

PLAYOFF TEAMS PROJECTED FINAL RECORDS-HOLLINGER ESPN
1. Lakers 58-24
2. Spurs 56-26
3. Rockets 54-28
4. Jazz 53-27
5. Mavericks 52-30
6. Hornets 52-30
7. Suns 52-30
8. Warriors 48-34

NON-PLAYOFF TEAMS PROJECTED FINAL RECORDS-HOLLINGER ESPN

9. Nuggets 47-35
10. Trailblazers 42-40

The Rockets have just lost their best player, and one of the best players in the NBA, Yao Ming, for the rest of the season. Therefore, they will probably drop substantially below their current projection, since the projections do not take injuries into account. The Suns will probably drop a little more also, because they made a bad trade when they gave up “The Matrix,” Shawn Marion. At this time, however, Nuggets 1 does not believe that either the Rockets or the Suns will fail to win at least 49 games, so they will most likely finish ahead of the Nuggets despite their difficulties. As for the Warriors, they have an easier schedule than the Nuggets the rest of the way, so Nuggets 1 agrees with Hollinger’s system that the Warriors will finish slightly ahead of the Nuggets.

So overall, Nuggets 1 agrees with the Hollinger system; we think the Nuggets will fail to make the playoffs.

If you win a division you get into the playoffs regardless of how poor your record is. For the Nuggets, winning the Northwest Division is very unlikely at this point; the odds on that are at 13%. The odds that Utah will win the Northwest are 87% right now. The Nuggets would most likely have to beat the Jazz in both of their remaining games against them, both of which are in Salt Lake City, and one of which is this Saturday night, in order to have a shot at winning the Northwest.

PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
NUGGETS PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
Chucky Atkins: He was diagnosed with a right groin/abdominal strain (sports hernia) on Jan. 9 and underwent successful surgery on Jan. 11. He is expected to be sidelined a minimum of eight weeks. Atkins is out until at least March 10. With any luck, he will be back in the Nuggets lineup by late March.
Nene: underwent successful surgery to remove a testicular tumor on Jan. 14. A timeline for his return is still unknown. He is out until at least the first week of March, but could easily be out for the entire rest of the season.

ROCKETS PLAYERS WHO WERE NOT AVAILABLE
Yao Ming: He will miss the rest of the season with a stress fracture in his foot.
Steve Francis: He will be out for the indefinite future as he was diagnosed with bi-lateral quadricep tendonitis on Dec. 31.
Adam Haluska: Ankle injury: Out indefinitely. He could miss remainder of the season.

ALERT STATUS PROBLEMS
As of March 3, 2008

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

INJURIES, ILLNESSES, SUSPENSIONS, AND LEAVES
1. Chucky Atkins injury 18 points
2. Nene illness 14 points

SEVERE AND UNEXPECTED CRUCIAL PLAYER SLUMPS
None, 0 points.

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

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

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

J.R. Smith was partially benched: 0 points. Smith was not partially benched.

3. George Karl over relies on his starters and won’t play the non-starters enough: 0-12 Points. The severity varies depending on the circumstances, mainly Karl’s beliefs and moods, and whether the other team is playing well enough to take advantage of the Nuggets playing with not enough breathers, with too many fouls, and so forth. The current points reported are for the use, or should I say the misuse, of the reserves for the most recent games, with the most weight being given to the game being reported on here.

The bad use of reserves score for this game is 2 points. Najera should have played a little more.

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

On defense a system is much less important than on offense. How good your defense is is determined much more by effort and skill than by strategy. On defense, the main strategic decision is whether you are playing zone or man to man defense. The choice varies during each game, and usually depends on a gut feeling of the coach and/or the defensive floor leader, as to which is better at a particular point in the game, and with a particular opposing lineup on the court. More important than whether a zone or man to man defense is in effect is the quality of the actual defending.

Lack of an adequate number of offensive plays and patterns: 15 Points

INTENSITY, HUSTLE, AND HEART
1. The Nugget’s intensity, hustle and heart are lacking: 2 Points. It’s not anywhere near as bad as some fans think it is.

TOTAL PROBLEM POINTS: 51, which constitutes YELLOW ALERT.

YELLOW ALERT (40-54): Minor damage is occurring to the season. The entire season is under medium threat. Beating quality teams is much more difficult and will be pretty rare. About 1/2 of all wins against good teams will now be losses. Beating mid-level teams is a little more difficult. About 1/4 of games that would be wins against mid-level teams will now be losses. Beating low level teams is still relatively easy, but no longer almost a sure bet. A good team has become in between a good team and a mid-level team when it is under this alert.

The damage description assumes that Nuggets opponents are in a GREY ALERT or better status. When the Nuggets play teams that are in yellow alert or worse, the damage they suffer from being in a significant alert status will be substantially reduced. In other words, opponents who are themselves in significant alert situations will obviously be more beatable, even when the Nuggets are in a significant alert situation.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE ALERT STATUS
Yao Ming is 35 alert status points, Steve Francis is 10 points, and Adam Haluska is 0 points, for a total of 45 points from injuries alone. The Rockets are either in a high YELLOW or a low ORANGE alert, so the alert status of the Rockets and the Nuggets was about the same.

Both Atkins and Nene are definitely going to be out for many more days and either one of them or both of them could easily be out for the entire rest of the season. And George Karl is definitely not going to pull a few offensive set plays out of a hat any time soon. Therefore, the Nuggets are doomed to be in ORANGE ALERT or YELLOW ALERT for most or all of the rest of the season, which endangers their chances of making the playoffs.

The mid January losses to the Bobcats and the Hawks, and the close calls at home against the Wolves and the Hawks in January, in games that should have and probably would have been relatively easy wins had the alert status been green, grey, or even yellow, illustrate the usefulness and accuracy of the alert system. When you reach ORANGE ALERT and especially RED ALERT, you start losing a substantial number of games that you would normally win. It’s that simple, and there is little anyone can do about it.

RESERVE WATCH
Number of Players Who Played at Least 6 Minutes: Nuggets 8 Rockets 9
Number of Players Who Played at Least 10 Minutes: Nuggets 8 Rockets 8

Nuggets Non-Starters Points: 23
Rockets Non-Starters Points: 25

Nuggets Non-Starters Rebounds: 13
Rockets Non-Starters Rebounds: 10

Nuggets Non-Starters Assists: 2
Rockets Non-Starters Assists: 4

Both coaches played 8 players for 10 minutes or more, but Rick Adelman for the Rockets added 1 more, Chuck Hayes, for 8 minutes. But Hayes did not do anything much for the Rockets.

Scoring was about even between the non-starters of the Nuggets and the Rockets. Led by Najera’s 6 rebounds, the Nuggets’ non-starters out rebounded the Rockets’ non-starters, 13-10. As usual, the other team’s non-starters made more assists than did the Nuggets’ non-starters, in this case by 4-2.

I hope to develop the reserve watch feature further in the future, because I want to try to expand what I already have in terms of a game coaching evaluation system. But 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 EXPLAINED
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. While some are biased in favor of offensive players, such as the efficiency measure at the NBA site, 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, which I think is a very good balance between offense and defense:

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-ROCKETS PLAYER RATINGS
NUGGETS PLAYER RATINGS
Carmelo Anthony: Game 27.3 Season 39.3
Marcus Camby: Game 25.7 Season 33.1
Anthony Carter: Game 23.3 Season 20.9
Allen Iverson: Game 21.0 Season 41.1
J.R. Smith: Game 20.5 Season 15.6
Kenyon Martin: Game 17.6 Season 22.5
Eduardo Najera: Game 12.6 Season 13.2
Linas Kleiza: Game 2.9 Season 18.5

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

Yakhouba Diawara: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Taurean Green: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision
Steven Hunter: Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision

ROCKETS PLAYER RATINGS
Tracy McGrady: Game 36.4 Season 34.2
Shane Battier: Game 35.7 Season 19.7
Luis Scola: Game 33.1 Season 17.2
Rafer Alston: Game 33.1 Season 23.8
Carl Landry: Game 21.5 Season 15.6
Luther Head: Game 15.1 Season 12.7
Dikembe Mutombo: Game 11.4 Season 5.4
Bobby Jackson: Game 10.2 Season 12.0
Chuck Hayes: Game 0.3 Season 11.3

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 THE PLAYER RATINGS:
A team that has no player with at least a 30 rating is normally a lottery, rebuilding type of team, so the fact that the highest Nugget, Anthony, made just a 27 rating tells you that the Nuggets’ stars all simultaneously played relatively poorly in this game. It could have been a massive rout, similar to the other Nuggets-Rockets game in Houston earlier this season. Anthony and Camby were only about 70% of normal, and Iverson was only about 50% of normal.

Anthony Carter, by making virtually every shot he attempted and by leading the team in assists, broke out of his slump in this game, and was above normal for a change. The only other Nugget who was better than normal was J.R. Smith, who was 3/5 on threes and 4/8 overall. Smith is known for playing better on the road than in Denver, and is also known for playing very well when many other Nuggets are playing poorly.

Najera just missed his average, and Martin was off roughly 1/3 from his. Linas Kleiza should not have bothered to suit up.

For the Rockets, it was an extremely impressive across the board team effort.

For the Rockets, the three big step-up players were PG Alston, SF Battier, and PF Scola, the latter two being much more important to the Rockets now that Yao Ming is out for the season. 41 years old C Mutombo joined Battier and Scola with a big step-up type of performance in the front court.

SG Tracy McGrady was right on target, but by no means spectacular.

From the Rockets bench came the very solid games from SG Head and PF Landry. Unlike Coach Karl with the Nuggets non-starters, Coach Adelman was able to integrate Rockets non-starters into the flow of the offense.

PG Jackson was only a fraction off his usual game, and Hayes didn’t do anything much but he only played 8 minutes so it didn’t matter.
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REAL PLAYER RATINGS EXPLAINED
The Real Player Rating reflects reality better than the gross player rating, since it washes out differences in playing times among the players. The straight up player rankings are obviously heavily affected by how many playing minutes the various players get. With many teams, you can rely on the coach to give his various players roughly the playing time that makes the most sense for his team. Unfortunately, some coaches bring other factors besides actual performance into their rotation decisions. Therefore, it makes good sense to introduce a new and extremely important statistic that Nuggets 1 calls the Real per Minute Player Rating. As the name implies, this is the gross ESPN player rating divided by the number of minutes. The statistic is called Real Player Rating for short.

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

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

SCALE FOR THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
1.80 More Amazing Happens, but only certain players can ever fly this high
1.60 1.80 Superstar Plus-Above Normal Even For Michael Jordan
1.40 1.60 Superstar Performance-A Michael Jordan Type Game
1.20 1.40 Star Plus-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 Extremely Poor-Near Disaster
Less 0.25 Total Disaster

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

1. Anthony Carter, Den 1.059
2. Rafer Alston, Hou 1.034
3. Luis Scola, Hou 0.974
4. Luther Head, Hou 0.944
5. Carl Landry, Hou 0.896
6. Tracy McGrady, Hou 0.888
7. Shane Battier, Hou 0.850
8. J.R. Smith, Den 0.820
9. Marcus Camby, Den 0.779
10. Bobby Jackson, Hou 0.729
11. Carmelo Anthony, Den 0.700
12. Eduardo Najera, Den 0.663
13. Allen Iverson, Den 0.500
14. Dikembe Mutombo, Hou 0.475
15. Kenyon Martin, Den 0.463
16. Linas Kleiza, Den 0.161
17. Chuck Hayes, Hou 0.038…Hayes played only 8 minutes.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE REAL PLAYER RATINGS
There was only 1 star in this game: Carter of the Nuggets. But the Rockets had 3 outstanding players, while the Nuggets had none. Alston led the Rockets, and Scola and Head were also outstanding. So the Rockets had 3 of the 4 players who were outstanding or better. Playing very well were Battier, McGrady, and Landry for the Rockets, and J.R. Smith for the Nuggets. Among all players who were very good or better, the Rockets crushed the Nuggets 6-2.

Anthony was right on the border between good and mediocre, but since his average rating is outstanding, this was basically a disaster, relatively speaking. Iverson, who is also normally outstanding, was right on the border between mediocre and poor, and this was a disaster for the Nuggets, relatively speaking, no doubt about it.

Mutombo is out there for his defense only these days, and man to man defending is not rated by this or any other rating system, so his very poor rating is a little misleading. Martin is also a good defender, but he is also an important Nuggets’ offensive player, and he missed 9 of 13 shots, so his very poor rating is not really misleading. Playoff teams can not afford many one-dimensional players, offensive or defensive, that’s for sure.

Kleiza was a complete and total disaster in this game for the Nuggets; Hayes played only 8 minutes for the Rockets and did very little.

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.

J.R. Smith: -1
Eduardo Najera: -6
Anthony Carter: -7
Kenyon Martin: -10
Linas Kleiza: -10
Marcus Camby: -12
Allen Iverson: -13
Carmelo Anthony: -14

OBSERVATIONS ON PLUS—MINUS
J.R. Smith led the Nuggets in the plus-minus in a road game where the team was playing poorly, as has happened many times this season, especially in the past month. Najera and Carter were not as whipped by the Rockets as were the other Nuggets. The three top Nuggets stars, Camby, Iverson, and Anthony, were all routed by the Rockets.

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

Turnovers: NBA Average: 14, Nuggets’ Total 17, Team 0, Anthony 4, Camby 0, Carter 1, Iverson 4, Kleiza 2, Martin 4, Najera 1, Smith 1

Personal Fouls: NBA Average: 21, Nuggets’ Total 17, Anthony 5, Camby 2, Carter 1, Iverson 0, Kleiza 1, Martin 4, Najera 2, Smith 2

Linas Kleiza played 18 minutes and was 1/5 and 1/2 on 3’s for 3 points, and he made 3 rebounds.

Kenyon Martin played 38 minutes and was 4/13 and 4/8 from the line for 12 points, and he made 10 rebounds, 1 block, 1 assist, and 1 steal.

Allen Iverson played for most of the game, 42 minutes, and was 7/22, 1/7 on 3’s, and 2/3 from the line for 17 points, and he made 4 assists, 3 steals, and 3 rebounds.

Eduardo Najera played 19 minutes and was 2/4 and 1/2 on 3’s for 5 points, and he made 6 rebounds and 1 assist.

Carmelo Anthony played 39 minutes and was 7/17, 0/2 on 3’s, and 5/6 from the line for 19 points, and he made 6 rebounds and 4 assists.

Marcus Camby played 33 minutes and was 3/4 and 2/2 from the line for 8 points, and he made 8 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 blocks.

J.R. Smith played 25 minutes and was 4/8, 3/5 on 3’s, and 1/2 from the line for 12 points, and he made 3 steals, 3 rebounds, and 1 assist.

Anthony Carter played 22 minutes and was 4/4, 1/1 on 3’s, and 1/2 from the line for 10 points, and he made 5 assists and 3 steals.

NEXT UP
The next game will be Wednesday, March 5 in Denver to play the Suns at 7 pm mountain time. The Suns will be playing on back to back nights, but the Nuggets will not be. So the Nuggets will have both the home court and the extra rest advantages.