I will use this thread to report the descovery of more and more evidence that the Nuggets more or less failed this year, at least in the relative sense, because the coaching staff played an inferior backcourt. All they needed was to get the backcourt right and they could have done as well as everyone expected, but they couldn't do it right. The first entry for here is what you find when you take a look at the plus-minuses for all possible 2-player combinations: Proof that the Allen Iverson PG and J.R. Smith SG lineup is much better than the Anthony Carter PG and Allen Iverson SG Lineup Starting from the top, you can look for the first combination you find which is two guards. The first one, sure enoiugh, is the Allen Iverson / J.R. Smith combination. There have been 1,671 points scored and 1,535 points given up with this lineup on the court. So the +/- is +136. Near the bottom of this first page of 2-player combinations, you come to the Anthony Carter / Allen Iverson combination. While those two players have been on the court, the Nuggets have scored 3,180 points and given up 3,148 points, so the +/- is +32. Now look at the per time plus minuses. The Allen Iverson / J.R. Smith combination, for every minute it is on the court has on average given the Nuggets an advantage of .159 points. So for every 10 minutes, the Nuggets have outscored their opponents by 1.59 points with the Iverson / Smith combination. For every 30 minutes, the Nuggets outscore their opponents by 4.77 points with the Iverson / Smith combination. For the Anthony Carter / Allen Iverson combination, for every minute it is on the court the Nuggets outscore their opponents by .022. So for every 10 minutes, the Nuggets have outscored their opponents by 0.22 points with the Carter / Iverson combination. For every 30 minutes, the Nuggets outscore their opponents by 0.66 points with the Carter / Iverson combination, about 2/3 of a point. The bottom line is that for every 30 minutes, the Nuggets have the following fates, on average: Allen Iverson / J.R. Smith in the backcourt 30 minutes: Denver outscores it's opponent by 4.77 points. Anthony Carter / Allen Iverson in the backcourt 30 minutes: Denver outscores it's opponents by 0.66 points. The Iverson / Smith combination gives the Nuggets a little more than 4 more points of advantage over the opponents than does the Carter / Iverson combination. The Carter / Iverson combination gives the Nuggets only a very weak advantage, on average, over opponents. So you obviously want a lot more minutes of the Iverson / Smith combination, and a lot fewer minutes of the Carter / Iversion combination. Let's check to see how many minutes have actually been given to these combinations: Iverson / Smith: 800 minutes Carter / Iverson: 1414 minutes Ouch, it's roughly backwards from what it's supposed to be.
The Allen Iverson at PG and J.R. Smith at SG backcourt has been grossly outperforming the Anthony Carter at PG and Allen Iverson at SG backcourt. Wow, I would have thought cpawfan or somebody would have claimed by now that the plus-minus performance measure can not be used to measure performance, with little or no evidence to back it up, and despite the fact that the League itself adopted it into their permanent record keeping recently after studying it to make sure it was valid and useful. Which leads me to believe that when he and some others said that A.I. can not play the point, they mean't it in some combination of the political, the religious, the traditional, and the historical senses of that phrase. They didn't actually mean that A.I. is poor at playing point guard, did they? I still don't know absolutely for sure, because the arguments that were made were so vague and limited that you still can't say for sure. But if I had to bet, I'd say at least 1/3 of them mean that A.I. can't play PG because that would be spoiling the historical flow of basketball. Or it would be cheating the historical value of basketball. Or something like that. They're too nervous to put it like that, so I had to do it for them. If anyone has a serious criticism of the plus-minus, please comment.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (tremaine @ Mar 24 2008, 09:33 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>The Allen Iverson at PG and J.R. Smith at SG backcourt has been grossly outperforming the Anthony Carter at PG and Allen Iverson at SG backcourt. Wow, I would have thought cpawfan or somebody would have claimed by now that the plus-minus performance measure can not be used to measure performance, with little or no evidence to back it up, and despite the fact that the League itself adopted it into their permanent record keeping recently after studying it to make sure it was valid and useful. Which leads me to believe that when he and some others said that A.I. can not play the point, they mean't it in some combination of the political, the religious, the traditional, and the historical senses of that phrase. They didn't actually mean that A.I. is poor at playing point guard, did they? I still don't know absolutely for sure, because the arguments that were made were so vague and limited that you still can't say for sure. But if I had to bet, I'd say at least 1/3 of them mean that A.I. can't play PG because that would be spoiling the historical flow of basketball. Or it would be cheating the historical value of basketball. Or something like that. They're too nervous to put it like that, so I had to do it for them. If anyone has a serious criticism of the plus-minus, please comment, but I am going to ignore all posts with the following and similar phrases, where there is no clear argument stated and no evidence presented: ...you have no credibility ...there is no logic ...no connection with the real world And any other unresponsive, illogical, or ad hominem comments with little or no specific statements and evidence.</div> Your entire post is an ad hominem attack, yet you are asking people not to respond in kind to you. Stop with the damn immaturity.
Ok, I probably overreacted to your phrases because you have the uncanny ability to make it sound like you are speaking for millions of people all at once. At least it seems that way to me. So I am amending the previous post, and you can use anything you want other than obvious ad hominem attacks. I'll follow the same rule: no ad hominems. When you use a phrase that makes it seem like much of the sports world is speaking at once, I'll just note the particular phrase and make sure everyone understands it's just you speaking and not thousands or millions. But as I say, I probably underestimated the ability of readers to tell that. As for the criticism itself, fire away, because I get motivated to make my arguments and evidence even stronger when I get criticism. Remember though, the more clear and detailed your points, and the more evidence you might have, the better for your side. If your points are indirect or incomplete, you have already seen what I might do: flesh them out for you. If you don't want me to do that, then make your point direct, clear and complete, so that I can't do that.
After watching AI and Smith tear up Dallas tonight, i think i might totally agree with you. However, no matter what stats you might have or what ANYONE's opinion on the matter might be, your playing the what if game. Maybe it would have worked out the whole season and maybe it might not have. We don't know for sure because it never happened. But, you make some good points and definitely have an argument. I still wish we had a better pg to compliment AI but i think after this offseason, we won't need Carter anymore and hopefully will make a trade or pick someone else up.
No matter what happens to the Nuggets, it's been great watching J.R. Smith exceed anyone's expectations. And it's been great watching AI play BOTH guard positions extremely well. Also, it's been great watching K-Mart return and play well. These are the top 3 highlights that come to mind. Melo has been great but no greater than expected really, and everyone suspects he could be better, especially on defense.
