Introducing Team and Playoff Preview Grids: The Denver Nuggets vs The Utah Jazz, Round One, 2010 Playoffs

The Quest for the Ring presents the first ever published Team Grids as a preview of and guide for the competitive 2010 first round series between the Utah Jazz and the Denver Nuggets.

The other three first round series in the West are most likely already decided. A relatively brief (for us, laugh out loud) look at them:

LOS ANGELES LAKERS OVER THE OKLAHOMA THUNDER
Even with no Andrew Bynum the Lakers are most likely too chock loaded for the Thunder to beat them. But the Lakers’ 2010 secret weakness is out: their bench is a combination of banged up players and players who are just not getting it done.

In the front court there is a huge drop-off from the Gasol-Odom-Bynum “Great Wall of Los Angeles”. If Bynum is out with an injury as he is threatening to be, the Lakers are in trouble unless Ron Artest can magically and instantly become more power forward minded. Josh Powell can successfully fill in for next to no one let alone for Gasol, Odom, or Bynum. Either all three of them play injury free, or the Lakers suddenly transform their guard crew behind Kobe Bryant to better than average, or it seems that the Lakers are doomed to lose to either the Orlando Magic or to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2010 Championship. Assuming they even get there: without Bynum the Lakers can relatively easily lose to the Dallas Mavericks in the West Final, who are injury free.

In the back court, Kobe Bryant can make up for only so much lame and uninspired play. Just how bad is the Lakers’ back court this year? It’s so bad that 2-guard Vujacic being out with an injury is most likely a good thing, since he was the biggest disappointment of all for the Lakers in the backcourt this year. Instead of getting better as the Lakers thought he would, Vujacic got worse from last year.

Ironically, considering the relatively sorry state of the Lakers’ reserves, the Thunder have one of the very best benches in pro basketball while Kevin Durant holds down the fort among the mediocre at best other Thunder starters. The Thunder non-starting crew has been nothing short of a miracle this year.

But if Bynum starts or if Lamar Odom starts in place of Bynum for the Lakers, Los Angeles has the best starting five in the West, which if they work their tails off will be enough to prevent the upstart Thunder from taking the series to six or seven games.

For Oklahoma, since backup center Serge Idaka is actually better than the starter Nenad Kristic, Thunder fans should probably hope that he gets more minutes due to a Kristic bruised right knee.

The Thunder can and will run the Lakers right out of the gym in a game whenever the Lakers think that talent alone will give them the game and the series, because the Thunder are younger and can run faster, because the Thunder and not the Lakers are more talented outside of the starting five, and because the Thunder and not the Lakers have the 2009-10 regular season top scorer (Kevin Durant). So unlike last year when the Lakers took forever until they closed out Houston and took their time to close out Denver, they had better close out Oklahoma early rather than late if they know what is good for them.

Last year I think everyone knew that Houston was eventually definitely going to be defeated by LA even if it took all seven games to do it. The Lakers taking until the cows came home to beat the Rockets was as if the cat was toying with the half dead mouse before it kills the mouse once and for all. A warning to the Lakers: the Thunder are NOT mice you can play with before you kill them.

But we have to say the Lakers win this series in God only knows how many games (I’ll guess five or six).

DALLAS MAVERICKS OVER THE SAN ANTONIO SPURS
Marc Cuban spent too much money, Marc Cuban obtained too many of the right players, Marc Cuban cares too much about winning the Quest, and Jason Kidd is just too good this year for San Antonio to be able to pull this out even though, for the record, Greg Popovich is the second best coach in the NBA and is a substantially better coach than Rick Carlisle. But Dallas wins this in five or six games for and due to Cuban and in celebration of a Jason Kidd return to superstar status.

PHOENIX SUNS OVER THE PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS
The Pacific Northwest basketball monster known as the Trailblazers lost superstar center (if he ever gets to play) Greg Oden for the season. But the monster came back to terrorize the West without Oden. Then they lost established star at the center position Joel Przybilla for the season. But again the monster defied know it alls including Quest for the Ring and came back for more wins and for a playoff berth. But now that monster has lost two guard superstar Brandon Roy for the playoffs.

True, they did scramble to get Marcus Camby to partially make up for the loss of Oden and Przybilla. But the loss of superstar 2-guard Brandon Roy just before the playoffs began would have to be the last nail in the coffin for Portland. You can lose only so many of your best players before its over no matter what you do. So this series will be one of those first round injury washouts: Phoenix in four or five games.

DENVER NUGGETS VERSUS THE UTAH JAZZ
We now have Team Grids that show you the matchups at a glance. The first one ever published, which is for the Denver-Utah series, follows:

Note: if you can not see a chart (spreadsheet) just below here, copy and paste the web address that you do see into your browser address bar in order to view it.



PLAYOFF SERIES GUIDE / TEAM GRIDS USER GUIDE
In general the playoff series guide / team grid system allows for quick and easy comparisons between teams. It also allows managers, coaches, or anyone else to consider changes in playing times that would improve the chances of winning the playoff series. At the same time, and just as importantly, it allows for quick flagging of coaching errors, some of which can be big enough to cost a team a playoff series.

A depth chart shows you team policy regarding who starts and who are the backups and in what order for the five positions. The grid is based on the depth chart style. However, players (other than players acquired during the season; see below) are placed into first squad, second squad, and third squad according to minutes played, not according to the latest ESPN or any other estimation of what the team policy is. Whoever has played the most minutes at a position is shown in the “1st Squad” whether or not that player starts at the position.

There is a notable exception to the rule for who goes in which squad. If a player has been acquired during the season and he is listed as the starter on the ESPN depth chart, he will be shown as first squad. Similarly, if a player acquired during the season is shown as the first backup to the starter in the depth chart he will be shown as second squad regardless of minutes. In other words, the depth chart prevails over minutes in the case of players acquired by trade during the season.

Just to the right of the “3rd Squad" you see two grey areas. From left to right the first one is for players who are probably or definitely out for much or for all of the series for some reason, usually due to injury.

The second grey shaded area is for players who could play but almost certainly will not play because they played fewer than 300 minutes during the regular season. The 300 minutes threshold is the minimum needed for a hidden defending adjustment and therefore is the minimum needed for a player to get a Real Player Rating. It also is being used here as the threshold for determining whether a player was essentially benched for the season. 300 minutes is less than four minutes a game, which is a very good dividing line for saying whether a player was benched for the season or not. You can get close to 300 minutes with just garbage time, so if you don't play at least 300 minutes, you are basically benched.

PLAYERS ACQUIRED BY TRADE
Players acquired by trade during the season who have played at least 300 minutes for their new team at the time when ratings for that team are done are treated on the grid as if they were on the team the entire season. The rating you see for them is for their new, current team minutes. The previous team rating is considered to be irrelevant for the grid.

Players acquired by trade during the season who have NOT played at least 300 minutes for their new team are either:

--Completely ignored and not shown on the grid if they did not play at least 300 minutes for the team they played for earlier in the season (regardless of whether they ever played at least 300 minutes in any year).

--They are shown as "more or less benched" if they did play at least 300 minutes for the previous team this season but not at least 300 minutes for the new, current team. The rating you see for them in the "more or less benched" column would have to be and is their rating on their previous team this season.

PLAYERS WHO HAVE NEVER PLAYED AT LEAST 300 MINUTES IN ANY SEASON
These players will not be listed even in the "benched for the season" column since no rating can be computed for them for any year and since, quite frankly, they are completely irrelevant for the playoff series at hand.

So players who are listed in the “more or less benched for the season” column are players who played at least 300 minutes during at least one NBA season. The Real Player Rating is shown for those players for the most recent year they played at least 300 minutes. What year that was is shown right next to their rating.

TEAM COMPARISONS USING THE GRID
First, you can compare specific players for any position. For example, you can see that Deron Williams was a substantially better point guard than Chauncey Billups was this year.

COMPARING TEAMS BY POSITION
By looking at the “Position Averages” column you can compare the two teams position by position. For each position, only the ratings of the 1st squad and of the 2nd squad player are considered for the position average. In other words, for each position the position average is the average rating of the two players who played that position for the most minutes. If there is only one player who played 300 minutes or more at a position, that player’s rating is the position average.

Real Player Ratings vary by position because ultimately some positions are on average more important for winning the Quest than others. We don’t have exact numbers yet but here is a rough estimate of how League average ratings will vary by position:

Point Guard .825
Center .775
Power Forward .725
Small Forward .600
Shooting Guard .575

We don't have a hard number yet, but we already know that, approximately, playoff team ratings, at least for the teams that win the first round, which would be eight teams, average out to .800. The very best teams will have ratings averaging even higher than that. So ideally, and once again with the reminder that teams can and will vary radically from the position pattern, here is a prototypical, "average" round 2 level NBA playoff team by position and by RPR:

Point Guard .925
Center .875
Power Forward .825
Small Forward .700
Shooting Guard .675

Again for emphasis: in reality many playoff teams will have at least one position where the average RPR of the two players who play it the most is greater than .925. And many will have at least one position where the average of the top two players at the position is substantially less than .675.

But Championship teams will seldom have any position where the best two players average below .675 and they sometimes will feature two positions where the average of the top two players is greater than .900.

THE SUPERSTAR COMBO GUARD STRATEGY
Sometimes the shooting guard is so good that he is effectively also the point guard to some extent and he has a much higher rating than other shooting guards and perhaps a higher rating than other point guards. Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers are a very good example. The overall 2-guard League average Real Player Rating is about .575 in the regular and .675 for the final eight teams. Kobe Bryant, of course, is well over 1.000.

One reason why having a superstar 2-guard who can take responsibility for keeping the ball moving and for being a playmaker is a very good strategy for winning the Quest is that you eliminate the common problem of leaving the 2-guard position as a weak spot in your overall lineup. In other words it is a very good way of optimizing your overall lineup, provided that the "real" point guard understands and can work with the strategy correctly.

If the "real" point guard does not understand the strategy and / or he disagrees with it, the drawback will be that to the extent you play that real point guard at the same time as your combo guard at the shooting guard position, you may have a player even less useful than a straight up mediocre 2-guard, in which case the strategy has backfired. There are several wrong ways and only a very few right ways to deploy the superstar combo guard strategy. There have been and will in the future be more Quest Reports on this very important subject.

By looking at the squad averages row you can see what the average rating of the players in that squad is for each team. By comparing the first squad with the second squad, you can see how much of a drop off there is between them. Since most of the players in the first squad are starters, this is approximately equivalent to comparing the starters and the bench. The bigger the drop off, the more minutes the starters should be playing.

SQUAD AND TEAM AVERAGES
You can also of course compare the squad averages of the two teams. If you do, you will be essentially comparing the starters as a whole and the non-starters as a whole of the two teams, although keep in mind a team may have graduated one or two second squad players to starter for the playoffs.

Finally, notice that there is a “Team Average” at the lower left for each team. This is two times the first squad average plus the second squad average divided by three. In other words, this is a weighted average of the top two squads, with the first squad counted twice and the second squad counted once, which roughly corresponds to typical playing time patterns. Players in the third squad, the injured players, and the benched players are not counted in the team average.

You can put substantial stock but not a very large amount of stock in the team average number because there are still often going to be in the second squad a player with a very low rating from time to time. How much such players play in the playoffs is dependent on how strapped the team is at the position and on how dumb the coaching is.

Often, especially on the best coached teams and on the primary contenders, a second squad player with a relatively low rating will be strategically benched during the playoffs. In general, players with ratings below .600 should play sparingly in the playoffs or not at all. Players with ratings below .500 should generally not play in the playoffs at all for any reason.

So there is a fairly large statistical error going on with the overall team average. But if you see that there is a big difference of about ..050 or more in the team averages, that would tell you that the higher team is clearly more talented than the lower.

Coming next we’ll use the Utah-Denver grid to begin to Report on this series.