REAL PLAYER RATINGS (QUALITY) FOR THIS GAME DENVER QUALITY Carmelo Anthony, SF 1.018 Nene, C 0.983 Linas Kleiza, SF 0.900 Chauncey Billups, PG 0.637 J.R. Smith, SG 0.598 Kenyon Martin, PF 0.596 Chris Andersen, PF 0.469 Anthony Carter, PG 0.460 Dahntay Jones, SG 0.168 MAVERICKS QUALITY Jason Kidd, PG 1.046 Dirk Nowitzki, PF 0.918 Jason Terry, PG 0.874 Gerald Green, SG 0.793 Brandon Bass, PF 0.728 DeSagana Diop, C 0.317 Josh Howard, SF 0.187 Jerry Stackhouse, SG 0.104 Erick Dampier, C -0.110 Antoine Wright, SG -0.183 SCALE FOR RPR (QUALITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME Historic Superstar for this game 1.400 and more Superstar 1.050 to 1.399 Star/Outstanding 0.800 to 1.050 Very Good 0.650 to 0.799 Major Role Player 0.525 to 0.649 Role Player 0.450 to 0.524 Minor Role Player 0.400 to 0.449 Very Minor Role Player or Very Important Defender 0.350 to 0.399 Poor Game or Extremely Importand Defender 0.275 to 0.349 Very Poor Game Regardless of Defending 0.200 to 0.274 Disaster Game Regardless of Defending minus infinity to 0.199 **************************************************** REAL PLAYER PRODUCTION (QUANTITY) IN THIS GAME DENVER QUANTITY Nene, C 35.40 Carmelo Anthony, SF 33.60 Kenyon Martin, PF 20.85 Chauncey Billups, PG 19.10 J.R. Smith, SG 16.15 Linas Kleiza, SF 13.50 Anthony Carter, PG 11.05 Chris Andersen, PF 8.45 Dahntay Jones, SG 3.70 MAVERICKS QUANTITY Jason Kidd, PG 41.85 Dirk Nowitzki, PF 35.80 Jason Terry, PG 34.10 Brandon Bass, PF 18.20 Gerald Green, SG 11.90 DeSagana Diop, C 6.65 Josh Howard, SF 5.05 Jerry Stackhouse, SG 1.45 Erick Dampier, C -1.10 Antoine Wright, SG -1.65 SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME FOR STARTING PLAYERS Only Some Players Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 40.0 and more Massive and Memorable Game 36.0 to 39.9 Huge Game 32.0 to 35.9 Very Big Game 28.0 to 31.9 Big Game 24.0 to 27.9 Typical Average Game 20.0 to 23.9 Somewhat Below Average Game 16.0 to 19.9 Way Below Average Game 12.0 to 15.9 Bad Game 9.0 to 11.9 Really Bad Game 5.0 to 8.9 Total Disaster minus infinity to 4.9 SCALE FOR RPP (QUANTITY) RATINGS FOR A SINGLE GAME FOR NON-STARTING PLAYERS Only Some Non-Starters Can Ever Fly This High, but Not Very Often! 33.0 and more Massive and Memorable Game 29.0 to 32.9 Huge Game 25.0 to 28.9 Very Big Game 21.0 to 24.9 Big Game 17.0 to 20.9 Typical Non-Starter Game 12.0 to 16.9 Below Average Even For a Non-Starter 9.0 to 11.9 Way Below Average Even For a Non-Starter or Limited Minutes 6.0 to 8.9 Bad Game Even for a Non-Starter or Very Limited Minutes 3.0 to 5.9 Disaster: Nothing Much to Report minus infinity to 1.9 THE HIGHEST QUALITY PLAYERS IN THIS GAME MAVERICKS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES Superstar during minutes on the Court: Jason Kidd Star/Outstanding during minutes on the court: Dirk Nowitzki Star/Outstanding during minutes on the court: Jason Terry Very Good during minutes on the court: Gerald Green Very Good during minutes on the court: Brandon Bass NUGGETS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES Superstar during minutes on the Court: Nene Star/Outstanding during minutes on the court: Carmelo Anthony Star/Outstanding during minutes on the court: Linas Kleiza Very Good during minutes on the court: Chauncey Billups Very Good during minutes on the court: Kenyon Martin THE GREATEST POWER PERFORMERS OF THIS GAME MAVERICKS POWER PERFORMERS Only Some Starters Can Ever Fly This High, and Not Very Often!: Jason Kidd Massive and Memorable Game: Dirk Nowitzki Huge Game: Jason Terry Big Game: Brandon Bass NUGGETS POWER PERFORMERS Massive and Memorable Game: Nene Huge Game: Carmelo Anthony USER GUIDE FOR THIS TYPE OF REPORT (Last updated Nov. 8) EDITING AND PUBLISHING PLAN-MAIN DETAILS This is a "just the important facts please, and give them to me quick" type of report. I will in some cases do a very limited amount of commentary at the bottom of this type of report, but it will really be just notes for commentary that will be elsewhere in the near future. In some cases there will be no comments at all. Most of the commentaries I do are in "Game/Team/League Reports" and in Fast Breaks". Game/Team/League reports are, with any luck, going to be produced for 26 Nuggets and for 23 games of other teams this season. Originally I was planning to cover the Raptors but now the thinking is that I should concentrate on the Pistons, so those 23 will be mostly or only on the Pistons. Ultimate Game Breakdowns: Players, such as the one here, will be done for the 26 key Nuggets games, for 8 other Nuggets games, for the 23 key Pistons games, and for 17 other games which could be Pistons games or any other NBA games. So in total, 74 of these relatively easy to produce but very informative Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players reports are scheduled for the regular season. 49 Game/Team/League Reports are planned. Ultimate Game Breakdown-Coaching reports are done for every game that has a Game/Team/League Report (for 26 Nuggets and 23 Pistons games). More of every type of report will come out during playoffs season; I won't bore you with those details. The games that get the full treatment have been very carefully chosen to be the most important games, which are generally the games against the best teams. Full treatment including the kitchen sink report games have been chosen from among only games where neither team is at a disadvantage due to playing on back to back nights. Other internet basketball "experts" are really wasting their time to some extent when they report on a game where one team was playing on back to back nights and the other team was not, because the great majority of those games are almost automatically won by the team that has more rest. I used to do those stupid games, but I'm not doing them anymore, because I keep trying to get better and better at understanding and teaching basketball, so I make changes such as this. ULTIMATE GAME BREAKDOWN--PLAYERS REPORT EXPLAINED With an Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players report, you can see very rapidly who was most responsible for the winning or the losing of the game. Then someone like me can easily write a separate game report which explains how things might have worked out better for a team, or why things worked out just about as well as possible, as the case may be. The Real Player Ratings formula has been very carefully and accurately tweaked again and is currently as follows: POSITIVE FACTORS Points 1.00 (at par) Number of 3-Pt FGs Made 1.00 Number of 2-Pt FGs Made 0.60 Number of FTs Made 0.00 Assists 1.75 Offensive Rebounds 1.15 Defensive Rebounds 1.25 Blocks 1.60 Steals 2.15 NEGATIVE FACTORS 3-Pt FGs Missed -1.00 2-Pt FGs Missed -0.85 FTs Missed -0.85 Turnovers -2.00 Personal Fouls -0.80 ACTUAL COMBINED AWARD OR PENALTY BY TYPE OF SHOT 3-Pointer Made 4.00 2-Pointer Made 2.60 Free Throw Made 1.00 3-Pointer Missed -1.00 2-Pointer Missed -0.85 Free Throw Missed -0.85 ZERO POINTS: PERCENTAGES BELOW WHICH THERE IS A NEGATIVE NET RESULT 3-Pointer 0 score % 0.200 2-Pointer 0 score % 0.246 1-Pointer 0 score % 0.459 ASSISTS VERSUS TURNOVERS ZERO POINT Assist/Turnover Ratio That Yields 0 Net Points: 1.143 QUALITY (RPR) AND QUANTITY (RPP)-AN EXPLANATION RPR game reports show for each player the RPR (Real Player Rating) which tells you how good a player did (all the good things minus all the bad things) out on the court per unit of time. The RPP (Real Player Production) report tells you how much in total (the sum of the of the good things minus the sum of the bad things) a player did out on the court. Many and maybe most sports watchers and an unknown but probably disturbingly large number of sports managers make the mistakes of exaggerating the importance of quantity and overlooking to some extent quality. These reports allow you to expand your horizons. These reports put quantity and quality side by side, which is extremely valuable, because both are roughly equally important in explaining accurately why and how the game turned out the way it did. Players who over many games consistently have higher RPR (quality) but lower RPP (quantity) results are in many cases not getting enough playing time. Players that over many games consistently have lower RPR (quality) but higher RPP (quantity) results are in many cases getting too much playing time. The exceptional cases are very often going to be players who are either truly outstanding defenders or truly bad defenders. This is because the one and only thing that is not counted, because it is impossible to calculate it, is the number of shots that a player prevents from being scores. Investigation has to date revealed that, apparently, no one has even attempted, for the NBA, rough estimates of the actual value of each player's defending, in terms of number or percentage of scores prevented, or in terms of number or percentage of possessions made worthless. Over the coming year, I am going to be working to see if it is possible to use some combination of advanced statistics that are tracked on certain internet sites as an accurate proxy for the number of shots and/or for the number of possessions ruined by a defender. Another exception. where it is really alright when it looks like a player is playing too much, will be if a team has a point guard who has many more turnovers than the average point guard has. Because the point guard is so important, a good coach has to play his best guard who can make plays at the position for a full set of minutes every game, pretty much regardless of how many turnovers that player makes. If you take out your designated point guard due to "too many turnovers," it's most often going to be sort of like cutting your foot off because you have a bad case of athletes foot!
