The Coach's Demand for a Player (CDP) is minutes per game divided by real player rating. What follows is technically ACDP (Adjusted Coach's Demand for Players) because I am using the real player ratings adjusted for made them miss defending. ACDP is a measure of how much a coach plays a player relative to that player's real performance. In theory, on a perfectly coached team, the best 9 or even the best 10 players on a team should have approximately the same ACDP, at least within about 10% of each other anyway. Actual statistics suggest the following evaluation scale for this: SCALE FOR THE 10 PLAYERS WITH THE MOST PLAYING TIME 51 > Player has been insanely overplayed 45-51 Player has been very or extremely overplayed 40-45 Player has been overplayed 36-40 Player has been slightly overplayed 30-36 Midrange--Theoretically Optimal 26-30 Player has been slightly underplayed 22-26 Player has been underplayed 18-22 Player has been very or extremely underplayed < 18 Player has been insanely underplayed NUGGETS 2007-08 COACH'S DEMAND FOR PLAYERS PRIMARY PLAYERS USUALLY PART OF NORMAL ROTATION 1 Allen Iverson, Den SG 46.52 Very Overplayed 2 Anthony Carter, Den PG 41.57 Overplayed 3 Marcus Camby, Den C 34.76 Optimal 4 Kenyon Martin, Den PF 33.63 Optimal 5 Carmelo Anthony, Den SF 33.37 Optimal 6 Chucky Atkins, Den PG 32.78 Optimal 7 Linas Kleiza, Den SF 31.80 Optimal 8 Eduardo Najera, Den PF 31.22 Optimal 9 J.R. Smith, Den SG 21.63 Very underplayed 10 Nene Hilario, Den PF 19.93 Extremely underplayed Ratio between #1 Iverson and #9 Smith: 2.15 SECONDARY PLAYERS NOT USUALLY PART OF NORMAL ROTATION 11 Yakhouba Diawara, Den SG 18.53 12 Bobby Jones, Den SG 13.55 13 Steven Hunter, Den C 10.55 14 Taurean Green, Den PG 6.27 The much lower numbers among the secondary players are normal and inevitable, because even coaches who make excellent use of their bench such as Greg Popovich and Phil Jackson do not try to put more than 10 or at the very most 11 players into the usual rotation. George Karl and company had 6 players exactly correct in terms of playing time, but they badly missed the mark on the 4 others among the 10 Nuggets who were usually in the regular rotation. The only very overplayed Nugget was Allen Iverson, who was designated as team captain by Karl and was given free reign to divide his efforts between the two guard positions as he wished. PG Anthony Carter was overplayed, but it was not anywhere near as ridiculous as Karl's overplaying of PG Steve Blake in 2006-07, mostly because Carter was much better than expected and was actually better than Blake if the truth were told. Two Nuggets in the primary rotation were heavily underplayed, or cheated of playing time if you prefer: J.R. Smith and Nene. Since Nene's season was filled with a major cancer scare and other injuries, I guess Mr. Karl and company get a pass on his seriously deficient minutes. But the Denver coaches do not get a waiver on their serious underplaying of J.R. Smith, a substantial chunk of whose minutes were taken by the less productive Anthony Carter and by the overworked Allen Iverson. Compared with Smith, Carter was given almost twice as much playing time per performance rating and Iverson was given more than twice as much. As time permits, I will be doing these reviews for the teams who clearly have better coaches than the Nuggets and the results to prove it, such as the Lakers and the Pistons. We'll see whether coaches such as Popovich, Saunders, and Jackson have ratios between their most favored and their least favored players anywhere near as much as the more than 2.0 ratio put out by Karl. I must say though, regardless of how Karl will compare to other coaches on this, he ended up doing somewhat better this year than last year on playing times, when he was even more wildly off the mark.
