Denver Nuggets Real Player Ratings as of January 15 2009

Discussion in 'Denver Nuggets' started by tremaine, Jan 20, 2009.

  1. tremaine

    tremaine To Win, Be Like Fitz

    Joined:
    Nov 25, 2006
    Messages:
    1,192
    Likes Received:
    5
    Trophy Points:
    38
    Occupation:
    writer, accountant & part time economist
    Location:
    North of great majority of Canadians
    The Quest is proud to announce to you that the second major improvement to Real Player Ratings (RPR) in less than half a year is now fully up and running. I am now certain that RPR is the best overall rating system in existence, and that it is now roughly as good as it will ever or can ever be.

    I recently developed a statistically valid way to rate the defending of players, that is, what they do to prevent scores other than rebounding, blocks, steals, and fouls, which were always included. Although the technique used had to be indirect and inexact, it validly awards the better defenders with bigger RPR bonuses. It has been validated by comparing results obtained with the defensive ratings shown on three different "advanced basketball statistics" web sites. My results were shown to be highly correlated with the results shown on the other sites. And where there is any difference, I honestly believe mine are better.

    Point Guard Chauncey Billups is so far the most valuable Nugget, and by a considerable margin, in the 2008-09 regular season.

    DENVER NUGGETS
    REAL PLAYER RATINGS
    [QUALITY OF PLAYERS]
    2008-09 Regular Season
    As of Jan. 15, 2009

    Chauncey Billups 0.909
    Nene Hilario 0.845
    Renaldo Balkman 0.830
    Carmelo Anthony 0.821
    J.R. Smith 0.787
    Chris Andersen 0.763
    Kenyon Martin 0.744
    Anthony Carter 0.637
    Linas Kleiza 0.552
    Dahntay Jones 0.455

    SCALE FOR REAL PLAYER RATINGS FOR A SEASON
    Perfect Player? Is there Such a Thing? 1.000 and more
    Historic Super Star 0.950 and more
    Super Star 0.850 0.949
    A Star Player; An Extremely Good Starter 0.775 0.849
    A Great Player; A Solid Starter 0.700 0.774
    Major Role Player 0.650 0.699
    Role Player 0.600 0.649
    Minor Role Player 0.550 0.599
    Very Minor Role Player 0.500 0.549
    Poor Player at This Time 0.450 0.499
    Very Poor Player at This Time 0.350 0.449
    Extremely Poor Player at This Time / Disaster and less 0.349

    Real Player Production (RPP) is the sum of all the good things minus the sum of all the bad things a player has done since the season began. There is no methodology as of yet for adjusting RPP for defending. Therefore, you should, in order to fairly evaluate the following ratings, remember that the better defenders have done more for the team relative to the lessor defenders than the ratings are showing.

    DEMVER NUGGETS
    REAL PLAYER PRODUCTION
    [QUANTITY OF PLAYERS]
    2008-09 Regular Season
    Through Jan. 15, 2009

    Chauncey Billups 990.75
    Nene Hilario 920.10
    Carmelo Anthony 793.75
    Kenyon Martin 754.20
    J.R. Smith 634.45
    Anthony Carter 512.90
    Linas Kleiza 439.45
    Chris Andersen 346.40
    Dahntay Jones 255.90
    Renaldo Balkman 207.90

    Congratulations and respect are due to CHAUNCEY BILLUPS who has been leading the Nuggets in quality basketball so far this season. At the same time, BILLUPS also leads the Nuggets in terms of total net contributions so far this season. So there is clearly only one Nuggets MVP, and that is CHAUNCEY BILLUPS.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    OTHER NUGGETS STARS OF 2008-09

    NENE
    [​IMG]

    RENALDO BALKMAN
    [​IMG]

    CARMELO ANTHONY
    [​IMG]

    J.R. SMITH
    [​IMG]

    USER GUIDE FOR TEAM REAL PLAYER RATING REPORTS
    Last updated January 13, 2009

    REAL PLAYER RATINGS IN GENERAL
    The Real Player Rating (RPR) is a very carefully constructed all inclusive performance measure. Everything of value that a basketball player can do is recorded by official NBA scorekeepers who sit right along the edge of the court, mid-court, and who are trained to observe and record everything that happens in a game.

    Since these days all of these counts are immediately input into continually updated public data bases online, such as at ESPN, it is theoretically possible to combine everything together into an overall performance measure for each player. This is what the RPR does.

    Not counting purely subjective and abstract factors such as leadership, and not counting a few other, less common things not being counted or tracked by anyone yet, such as chasing down loose balls, the only thing a basketball player can regularly do on the court of any value, that is not counted by scorekeepers, is preventing what would have been a score from being a score by defending against the shot or shots during a possession of the opposing team well enough to change the shot or shots from becoming scores. In other words, what does the player do to make the possessions of the opposing teams worthless in terms of points other than what is already counted, which would be rebounds, steals, blocks, and personal fouls. Effective man to man defending and effective rotation on defense would be counted by scorekeepers if it were possible, but there is no way to know exactly how many shots a good (or any kind of) defender has changed from being a score to a miss.

    Real Player Rating or RPR is everything tracked by scorekeepers that a player does, good and bad, added and subtracted (with negative things such as turnovers and missed shots being subtracted). Very carefully calibrated factors, or weights, are applied to the different elements. The calibration, as you would expect, is done to reflect the different value toward winning games that different actions on the court have. All of the good and bad combined together is divided by minutes, so we can tell the rate, which we need to determine the overall quality or value of the player.

    THE DEFENDING COMPONENT OF REAL PLAYER RATINGS-NEW AS OF JANUARY 2009
    As of January 8, 2009, Quest for the Ring is very happy to announce a major breakthrough that we have been talking about and working for and expecting for many months. We recently developed a statistically valid way to rate the defending of players, that is, what they do to prevent scores other than rebounding, blocks, steals, and fouls, which were always included in RPR. Although the technique used had to be indirect and inexact, it validly awards the better defenders with bigger RPR bonuses. It has been validated by comparing results obtained with the defensive ratings shown on three different "advanced basketball statistics" web sites. Our results have been shown to be extremely highly correlated with the results shown on the other sites.

    Where do we start? We use the most official and therefore presumably the most reliable data as the building blocks for rating the defense of NBA players. We start with the player minutes and points scored by the other team while the player was on the court that are shown in the plus/minus statistical section at NBA.com.

    After simply dividing points allowed by minutes on the court, we adjust that rate for the pace of the team and for the quality of the team's defense. The two adjustments are needed so that the ratings of players who are on different teams can be fairly compared.

    Players who are on teams with faster paces give up more points per minute through no fault of their own. Similarly, players who are on teams with less efficient defenses give up more points per minute, everything else held constant. You could not fairly compare players on teams with different paces and different team defense qualities unless you standardized, or in other words controlled for those differences for all NBA players.

    What we are doing is using an indirect and inexact yet accurate and statistically valid way to discover who the better defenders are. No two players are out on the court for all the exact same minutes. So although for every player, what the other players out on the court do defensively while they are out on the court is a very large factor determining what that player's points per minute allowed will be, when you look at many, many hundreds of minutes, what the individual player does, or does not do defensively, as the case may be, will eventually show up in that particular player's points allowed per minute statistic.

    In other words, what any individual player does defensively has to sooner or later show itself in the points allowed per minute. As the number of minutes rise above 1,000 and, for many players, above 2,000 and even 3,000 for a regular season, what a particular player does or does not do defensively becomes more and more exactly shown by the points allowed per minute number. This is very basic statistical sampling theory in operation. Statistical sampling theory is the easy to understand bedrock theory of statistics.

    Due to the necessity of a large sample of minutes, we will not do defending estimates for any player who has played for fewer than 300 minutes. Furthermore, quality of defending estimates will be slightly less accurate for players who have only played between 301 and about 600 minutes than they will be for players who have played for more than 600 minutes. We believe that the estimates are going to be extremely accurate for all players who have played 900 minutes or more. You get the idea: as the number of hundreds of minutes played goes up, the accuracy of this system improves, to the point where it gives you the same information you would have if you knew exactly how many possessions of the other team each player ruined with his defending.

    The final big step in the process is to translate the adjusted points allowed per minute into numerical terms that are the most useful. So we, with a very carefully designed translation scale, amplify the very small differences in different player's points allowed per minute numbers into much larger different RPR defending numbers for each player.

    Like everything statistical we do at Quest, we keep it as simple and reliable as possible, while at the same time spending as much time as necessary on design, quality control and performance evaluation. Unlike some other practitioners, we avoid what you might call layered complexity, which leads to formulas which can not be understood without studying them and which high traffic sites will not show on any of their web pages for fear that the public will rebel against the statistic. At Quest, we think that our rating systems can be understood and evaluated by most high school graduates, and we keep everything out in the open through User Guides such as this one.

    The range of possible defending adjustments to the base RPR is from 0 to about .200. In most cases, however, the adjustment will be between 0.030 and .160.

    A TEAM PACE ADJUSTMENT IS NOT VERY USEFUL FOR TEAM RPRs
    The by the team version of RPRs are not adjusted for the pace of teams, because the team RPR report is not intended to be a League-wide tool, but a team tool. By not adjusting for pace, you have the straight-up, real time, real life performance of the players shown: you have exactly what you actually saw if you watched the games. As a result, a player's Team RPR will be slightly different from his NBA RPR, since we need to and do adjust the RPRs for the team paces when reporting RPR for the whole NBA. Be aware that other advanced player statistics always adjust for pace, precisely because they never issue reports by the team, and they are not concerned as Quest for the Ring is with how well a team is being managed.

    EXACTLY WHAT REAL PLAYER RATING IS, AND A CAUTION
    Because it is per time, RPR is the best possible measure of the net quality of a basketball player, or simply "how good" the player is (on average) for each minute of playing time. But to be completely honest and clear, although it is the best possible overall real life measure, it is still not a perfect or absolute, "final word" measure on any player. This is because players need not only playing time but possession of the ball in order to produce many of the things that count in the rating. So if, for whatever reason, a player does not get the ball as often as he would on a different team, or with a different coach, or with whatever other circumstances you can dream of, then his RPR will be lower than what it could or would be. So don't think of RPR as the ultimate gospel or bible on how good players are. But do think of it as an extremely accurate and reliable summary of how good the players actually have been in real life in the specific circumstances involved.

    So with a Real Player Ratings Report for a Team for the Regular Season, you can see very rapidly who the best players on the team have been during the course of the season.

    A NOTE ABOUT REAL PLAYER RATINGS FOR INDIVIDUAL GAMES
    However, not as many breakdowns of individual game ratings are going to closely track the overall average for the roster as you might think. This is because one of the interesting things about basketball that makes it different from most other sports is that "how good" a player is from game to game varies radically. The best players have terrible games where they do almost nothing sometimes, while players who normally do not do much can every once in a while have outstanding games, at least if you measure it per minute on the court anyway. If you just looked at actual production, and never at a reserve player's Real Player Rating, you would hardly notice any of his unusually outstanding games, since players who normally do not do much will normally not have much playing time.

    INTERACTIONS BETWEEN PLAYING TIMES, PLAYER RATINGS, AND THE NEEDS OF TEAMS
    There are certain things that only certain players can do very well, and if those things are crucial for the team, than those players will have to play more minutes than they might otherwise play. The extra minutes might tend to reduce the player's Real Player Rating, while his total production will rise with the additional minutes. So to fairly and completely evaluate any player, you must always look at both the Real Player Rating (RPR) and the Real Player Production (RPP).

    Furthermore, it is strongly suspected that, in order to compete in the playoffs, a team must have as many players of as high a quality (RPR) as possible, while at the same time having at least one or two players whose actual production is among the highest in the NBA regardless of exactly how high the RPRs happen to be. (All high RPP players will be relatively high RPR players; some will be higher than others.) Specifically for example, LeBron James' actual massive amount of production is most likely just as important to the Cleveland Cavaliers as is his RPR or, in other words, as is his rate of production. Similarly, Kobe Bryant's quantity is probably at least as important to the Lakers as is his quality.

    Whereas, teams such as the Denver Nuggets, who have instructed a possible huge producer, Carmelo Anthony, to "not worry about scoring," may have made a fatal mistake relative to the playoffs, because teams with no extremely high rate producers may be generally doomed to lose quickly in the playoffs even if they have an unusually large number of high quality players as shown by RPR. This is because extremely high RPP players can by themselves "dominate a game" to some extent, meaning they can by themselves possibly win the game for their team, without worrying about complications that come in to play if you need to coordinate several high RPR but ultimately and theoretically limited RPP players.

    Players who over the course of a season appear to rank higher in RPR (quality) but lower in RPP (quantity) may not be getting enough playing time. Players who over the course of a season appear to rank lower in RPR (quality) but higher in RPP (quantity) may be getting too much playing time. But as alluded to earlier, you must not automatically conclude this, because some skills are needed out on the court most of the time, but yet may be available only from a small number players on the roster. Such players may have to get more playing time due to that critical skill in short supply, even if their overall quality does not seem to justify all of that playing time.

    A relatively common reason for unusual playing time will be players who are either truly outstanding defenders (who get extra playing time) or truly bad defenders (who get their playing time reduced).

    Another common reason for extra playing time 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 may end up sort of like cutting your foot off because you have a bad case of athletes foot!

    MINIMUM PLAYING TIME RULES
    Only players who played at least 5% of the minutes of whoever has played the most minutes on the team are included in these reports. Any player who has played for less than 5% of the minutes of the player who has played the most minutes is not included, since he didn't play for long enough to be fairly or reasonably compared with the other players. Furthermore, as described previously in the adjustment for defending section, only players who have played at least 300 minutes can have a defensive rating, or an overall RPR given to him. Both the 5% and the 300 minutes rules must be met for a player to be rated.

    REAL PLAYER PRODUCTION
    But of course, looking at actual production (everything positive added together and everything negative subtracted out) is something that is extremely important too. The total production (everything good and everything bad combined together) is simply called Real Player Production or RPP.

    There is no methodology for including defending (other than rebounding, steals, blocks, and personal fouls) in RPP at this time.

    THE FORMULA
    For 2008-09, the RPR formula has been very carefully and accurately tweaked again and is set to be 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

    DEFENDING RATING
    A quality of defending rating of between 0 and .200 is added to the base or unadjusted RPR (which is calculated with the factors and scorekeeper elements just discussed). In most cases, the defending rating is between 0.030 and .160. See above for an explanation of how we determine how to defensively rate the players.

    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} SUMMARIZED ONE LAST TIME
    RPR 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, without regard to playing time.

    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 team is playing the way it is.
     
    Last edited: Jan 20, 2009
  2. tremaine

    tremaine To Win, Be Like Fitz

    Joined:
    Nov 25, 2006
    Messages:
    1,192
    Likes Received:
    5
    Trophy Points:
    38
    Occupation:
    writer, accountant & part time economist
    Location:
    North of great majority of Canadians
    Lol that Karl plays Dahntay Jones over Renaldo Balkman.
     
  3. tremaine

    tremaine To Win, Be Like Fitz

    Joined:
    Nov 25, 2006
    Messages:
    1,192
    Likes Received:
    5
    Trophy Points:
    38
    Occupation:
    writer, accountant & part time economist
    Location:
    North of great majority of Canadians
    Double laugh out loud that Karl starts Dahntay Jones over J.R. Smith. (Couldn't resist adding that in.)
     
  4. Tempo

    Tempo New Member

    Joined:
    Jan 22, 2009
    Messages:
    12
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    3
    Very impressed with that post Tremaine, some pretty damn good quality there. I just love to see that Carmelo has changed his game quite a bit. Not scoring as much as he is able to, and focusing more on the defensive side of his game. Props to Chauncey for that, because I can almost guarantee he was the one that has showed Melo that. It has paid off because the Nuggets are winning games. Chauncey has brung so much to this team, and I see us heading towards our first second round series for the first time in quite a well. But your right Chauncey is the only MVP, and by quite a margin.
     
  5. bbwSwish

    bbwSwish Harder. Better. Faster. Stronger.

    Joined:
    Jun 1, 2004
    Messages:
    8,315
    Likes Received:
    5
    Trophy Points:
    38
    When did you guys get Balkman?!
     
  6. tremaine

    tremaine To Win, Be Like Fitz

    Joined:
    Nov 25, 2006
    Messages:
    1,192
    Likes Received:
    5
    Trophy Points:
    38
    Occupation:
    writer, accountant & part time economist
    Location:
    North of great majority of Canadians
    D'Antoni didn't want him, so Denver picked him up during last summer.
     
  7. DaRizzle

    DaRizzle BLAKER

    Joined:
    Sep 16, 2008
    Messages:
    9,631
    Likes Received:
    104
    Trophy Points:
    48
    Location:
    Torrance, CA
    So are you still sooo sure they will be eliminated in the first round? Billups has done WONDERS for that team.
     
  8. tremaine

    tremaine To Win, Be Like Fitz

    Joined:
    Nov 25, 2006
    Messages:
    1,192
    Likes Received:
    5
    Trophy Points:
    38
    Occupation:
    writer, accountant & part time economist
    Location:
    North of great majority of Canadians
    Here are the adjustments for defending that were included in these ratings. Remember that this adjustment is for defending actions other than rebounds, steals, blocks, and personal fouls. This is intended to cover man to man defending, rotating, and defensive recognition and quick response to offensive tactics such as picks.

    DEFENDING OTHER THAN REBOUNDING, BLOCKING, STEALING, AND FOULING
    This Rating includes man to man defending, quick recognition of and response to the offense, and ability to maintain the best defending possible in the wake of picks, screens, and other offensive tactics.
    DENVER NUGGETS
    2008-09 SEASON
    Through Jan. 15 2009

    Renaldo Balkman 0.176
    J.R. Smith 0.125
    Nene Hilario 0.100
    Dahntay Jones 0.095
    Chauncey Billups 0.086
    Kenyon Martin 0.080
    Chris Andersen 0.073
    Carmelo Anthony 0.067
    Anthony Carter 0.056
    Linas Kleiza 0.040

    The first thing that jumps out here is how Renaldo Balkman has been one of the best defenders in the NBA. Were he to start, his rating would go down due to playing against better offensive players, but it is clear that it is extremely unlikely that his rating would drop below .100, and it is clear that his rating would probably be roughly .120. Even as a starter, he would still be rated as one of the outstanding NBA defenders.

    The next thing that jumps out is that J.R. Smith, who thanks partly to George Karl and partly to his own playing in the past, has a terrible defending reputation, is listed as the second best defensive stopper on the Nuggets! How could this be? Thats's easy; there are two main reasons. First, because since Smith does not start, he is often in the game against inferior offensive players. Second, Smith was never as bad a defender as many thought, and he has improved substantially at defending.

    Don't blame me, the messenger, blame the Nuggets' coaches. And don't even think about claiming that an adjustment should be made between starters and non-starters. First of all, it would be way more work than I have time for and second, it would distort reality, because like it or not, Smith is a very good defender in the context of him often playing against reserves. Third, actually, Smith is defending against starters roughly as often as much as he is defending against non-starters since, although he does not start, he is getting a lot of 2nd half minutes where many of the starters of the other team are in.

    Furthermore, you can't automatically assume that Smith would be far worse when defending against better offensive players; you don't know how much his defending rating would go down unless you actually find out by having Smith as a starter and try it. Notice that another non-starter, Linas Kleiza, has a very low defending rating despite the fact that, like Smith, he is often defending against not so great offensive players. This indirectly but strongly argues in favor of Smith being given an opportunity to start and to be evaluated fairly as to defending and as to overall net worth as a starter. Whereas with Kleiza, who by the way was recently given the nod over Smith with Carmelo Anthony out, is a high risk starter, since he can't even defend all that well against lower quality offensive players. Sure enough, starting Kleiza was a move that bit Mr. Karl in the rear end, and Kleiza was quickly sent back to the bench.

    What this is telling the Nuggets' coaches, who unfortunately are not listening and will never listen, is that they should not be using J.R. Smith's defense anymore as an excuse for not starting him. They don't have that as an excuse anymore. They should have used the first few months of this season to try starting Smith out and to see what would happen. They didn't do that because unlike the Pistons for example, the Nuggets feel no need to experiment until they get things just right.

    So no, the Nuggets had to go with Dahntay Jones, who previously no one ever thought of as a starter. As you can see from the defending rating, Jones can hold his own as a defender, but he is simply not qualified offensively to start at 2-guard for a playoff team. Until the Nuggets understand the guard positions, Denver is never going to win a playoff series, it's that simple. It doesn't even matter who they have on the roster, if they don't understand that guards are most of the time more critical offensively than defensively, they will never win one damn playoff series.
     
    Last edited: Jan 24, 2009
  9. tremaine

    tremaine To Win, Be Like Fitz

    Joined:
    Nov 25, 2006
    Messages:
    1,192
    Likes Received:
    5
    Trophy Points:
    38
    Occupation:
    writer, accountant & part time economist
    Location:
    North of great majority of Canadians
    Billups has brought badly needed coaching to the Nuggets lol. In the playoffs, he will be doubled and harrassed almost continually, and Carmelo Anthony will not be able to carry the day since he has too many rebounding and defending duties now, and since he has been told to not worry too much about scoring anymore.
     
  10. tremaine

    tremaine To Win, Be Like Fitz

    Joined:
    Nov 25, 2006
    Messages:
    1,192
    Likes Received:
    5
    Trophy Points:
    38
    Occupation:
    writer, accountant & part time economist
    Location:
    North of great majority of Canadians
    I just did the defending adjustment rating for Marcus Camby. You can compare across different teams, because differences in pace and differences in overall team quality of defense are "washed out" when I use factors that make every team an average pace and an average defending one.

    Many Nuggets fans who decided to remain fans and to not abandon ship after the total annihilation by the Lakers have claimed that Camby is so bad in these aspects of defending, that it was a good thing that he was given away. So now, just how bad is Marcus Camby in man to man defending, in defensive recognition and rotating, in responding to screens, and so forth?

    Drum roll, please.

    Marcus Camby, Clippers, defending adjustment rating, 2008-09 through Jan. 24 .083.

    The League-wide average is approximately .090, so on the one hand it is true that although he is about the best rebounder and the best blocker of the NBA, Camby is not one of the best players in the League when it comes to these other parts of defending. The worst thing you can say about Camby's defending and still be correct is to say that outside of blocking, rebounding, and his very low fouling rate, the other aspects of Camby's defending are slightly below the NBA average. But it is not true that he is so bad at the other stuff that he is a defensive liability overall. He is this year at least 80% as good as Nene is in the hidden components of defending, and much better in the other components of defending, so Camby is a better defender overall than Nene is.

    Just to make sure that no one tries to twist this, there is no "double counting" here. As it says in the User Guide for Team Real Player Ratings, very small differences in points scored by the other team are amplified via a conversion scale to produce these ratings. If someone is a bad man to man defender, then obviously the other team will score more points than otherwise while he is out there, regardless of how good a rebounder or blocker or stealer the bad man to man defender is.

    So in summary, Camby is a slightly below average man to man defender and / or defensive recognition and response guy. But since he is not way below average in that, and since he is far, far above normal in rebounding and blocking, while maintaining an amazingly low fouling rate, he is overall one of the best defenders in the NBA.

    What about last year for the Nuggets; how did Camby and the other Nuggets do in untracked defending last year? Good question, I'm going to go back and find out what all of the Nuggets' ratings for defending other than rebounding, blocking, stealing, and fouling were from last year, which is the year the Nuggets imploded and wasted all their huge payroll and luxury tax money. It's like an autopsy, folks. I'm doing a new topic on that, and the results are quite revealing and fascinating, so don't miss it.
     
    Last edited: Jan 24, 2009

Share This Page