REAL PLAYER RATINGS (QUALITY) FOR THIS GAME PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS QUALITY Greg Oden, C 0.773 LaMarcus Aldridge, PF 0.728 Joel Przybilla, C 0.652 Travis Outlaw, SF 0.641 Steve Blake, PG 0.563 Rudy Fernandez, SG 0.547 Brandon Roy, SG 0.483 Nicolas Batum, SF 0.058 Ike Diogu, PF -0.072 DENVER NUGGETS QUALITY Nene, C 0.831 Chris Andersen, PF 0.812 Chauncey Billups, PG 0.789 J.R. Smith, SG 0.714 Linas Kleiza, SF 0.620 Kenyon Martin, PF 0.585 Anthony Carter, PG 0.509 Chucky Atkins, PG 0.239 Dahntay Jones, SG 0.203 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 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 PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS QUANTITY LaMarcus Aldridge, PF 28.40 Steve Blake, PG 22.50 Travis Outlaw, SF 20.50 Greg Oden, C 17.00 Brandon Roy, SG 15.45 Joel Przybilla, C 14.35 Rudy Fernandez, SG 9.85 Nicolas Batum, SF 0.75 Ike Diogu, PF -0.65 DENVER NUGGETS QUANTITY Chauncey Billups, PG 33.15 Nene, C 32.40 J.R. Smith, SG 22.85 Kenyon Martin, PF 21.05 Linas Kleiza, SF 17.35 Chris Andersen, PF 17.05 Anthony Carter, PG 8.65 Dahntay Jones, SG 3.25 Chucky Atkins, PG 2.15 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 PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS OUTSTANDING QUALITY GAMES Star during minutes on the court: Greg Oden Star during minutes on the court: LaMarcus Aldridge Very Good during minutes on the court: Joel Przybilla Very Good during minutes on the court: Travis Outlaw DENVER NUGGETS QUALITY GAMES Star during minutes on the court: Nene Star during minutes on the court: Chris Andersen Star during minutes on the court: Chauncey Billups Very Good during minutes on the court: J.R. Smith Very Good during minutes on the court: Kenyon Martin THE GREATEST POWER PERFORMERS OF THIS GAME PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS POWER PERFORMERS Very Big Game: LaMarcus Aldridge Very Big Game: Travis Outlaw DENVER NUGGETS POWER PERFORMERS Huge Game: Chauncey Billups Huge Game: Nene Big Game: Chris Andersen USER GUIDE FOR THIS TYPE OF REPORT ULTIMATE GAME BREAKDOWN--PLAYERS REPORT EXPLAINED(Last edited Dec. 8, 2008) 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. 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! EDITING AND PUBLISHING PLAN-MAIN DETAILS (Last Edited Dec. 21, 2008) 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 about 20 Nuggets and for about 20 Pistons games this season. Ultimate Game Breakdowns: Players, such as the one here, will be done for those same games. Plus there will be about 10 more Nuggets and 10 more Pistons Game Breakdowns for games for which there will be no article report. There will be a few other "wildcard" Game Breakdowns. So in total, at least 70 of these relatively easy to produce but very informative Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players reports are scheduled for the regular season. At least 40 Game/Team/League Reports are planned. Ultimate Game Breakdown-Coaching reports are done for every game that has a Game/Team/League Report. 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. DECEMBER 16 EDITING CHANGES As of December 16, two very important changes were made in the editing plan. These changes are most likely the finishing touches for a plan which has gone through many developmental phases during 2008, and now is ready to be the operational plan for 2009 and for hopefully many years thereafter. I went from complete chaos to a finely tuned editing plan ready for prime time. It took many, many hours of work and iterations. First, the tight tie-in between Fast Breaks and Game/Team/League Reports (GTLRs) was relaxed. For several months, the evolving editing plan was envisioning that all Fast Breaks would be incorporated in full in ensuing GTLRs. The new plan is that some of the Fast Breaks will stand on their own. In conjunction with this change, it was necessary to adobt a new production measurement system. I decided to use number of words for this. The word count tool in Microsoft Word makes this feasible. Despite this change, the majority and probably the great majority of Fast Breaks will still be picked up, expanded upon, and improved to some extent in ensuing GTLRs. An implication of this change is that I am no longer going to be promising a specific number of GTLRs anymore. But we are now pledging to produce 20,000 words or more a month during the NBA season. And we are still going to be pledging a specific number of statistical reports, such as Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players reports, Real Team Ratings reports, and various kinds of Real Player Ratings reports, and so forth. The other big change is that GTLRs will no longer automatically cover the particular game they are tied to to any extent. Really good or important games will still be covered in detail. Other games will be covered briefly, as has been increasingly the case in recent months and years. The new change is that now, some games, usually near routs or routs where the larger issues being discussed in lieu of particular games played out, will hardly be mentioned at all. When non-game topics are considered more deserving of the limited editorial space and time available, they will get the coverage instead of relatively lopsided particular games. Technically, within the editorial plan, all GTLRs will still be tied to individual games, all of which have been carefully chosen in advance to be the most important games for the team. An implication of this change is that I will no longer automatically reference a game score in GTLR titles. If there is a score in a title, it means that the game will be covered in some detail. If there is no score in the title, it means the report will be one that skips the individual game and goes into topics that are broader than any particular game.
Re: Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players: Nuggets 97 TrailBlazers 89 in Denver Dec. 22 20 How in the world did the Nuggets win this game with no Carmelo Anthony (and no Reynaldo Balkman, laugh out loud)? Just as the NBA playoffs are a different, more intense world than the regular season (unfortunately for these Nuggets) the NBA regular season is a different, more intense world than is college basketball. Greg Oden, due to a major injury, did not play a single game during what was supposed to be his rookie season last year. So he has still not made the adjustment from Ohio State to the NBA. Portland chose him in the draft because they knew their biggest problem was interior defense and another big problem was a relative lack of interior scoring. Portland's guards are the opposite of Nuggets guards: they prefer to keep the passing, assisting, and good shooting game going over taking it to the hoop. But Oden is not really ready to full this void yet due to last year's injury. (Some first round picks never fully adjust but this will almost certainly not be the case with Oden). So really, Portland is being hammered by the Oden injury again this year. Everything I just pointed out explains why the TrailBlazers lost this game: they lost the game first and foremost because Oden is still playing his very first NBA games and without Oden at full speed, the TrailBlazers are still a bad inside team on both sides of the ball. They are especially vulnerable to the Nuggets in the state they are in, since the Nuggets seem to think that basketball outside the paint does not have much significance. So everything important they do is in or very near the paint and if your team is bad there, the Nuggets will clean up on you there. The most blatant example of how Oden has not adjusted to the NBA yet is that he seems to be in almost constant foul trouble. And he is not getting his share of easy scores yet. By April, if the TrailBlazers have any luck, Oden will be largely adjusted and they will be less vulnerable to being badly damaged in the paint. Aside from this, the number 2 reason the Nuggets won would be that they used a high level strategy when they doubled/harassed Brandon Roy during the game. Whereas the Blazers did not do enough of that on Billups.
