Fast Break: Dahntay Jones to Start in the Playoffs? Denver Can't be Serious, Can They?

You probably know that Dahntay Jones has been starting a lot of games for the Denver Nuggets at shooting guard this season, even though he was not on the team last year, and even though he was picked up from the waiver wires by Denver last July, with very few other teams having any interest in him. and even though he has never started to any degree before now, even though he played for two of the worst teams in the League.

Before we see whether he should be starting, let's find out a little about Dahntay Jones as quickly as possible, which can be done by quoting from wikipedia:

Dahntay Lavall Jones (born December 27, 1980 in Trenton, New Jersey) is an American professional basketball player, currently playing for the Denver Nuggets of the NBA. Originally a student at Rutgers University, Jones transferred to Duke University to play alongside his boyhood Jersey friend Jay Williams who encouraged him to join him in Durham, North Carolina. He was selected by the Boston Celtics in the first round (20th overall) of the 2003 NBA Draft, and his rights were later traded, along with the rights to Troy Bell, to the Grizzlies for the rights to Kendrick Perkins and Marcus Banks. Jones played his first four professional seasons for the Grizzlies, averaging 3.7 points per game.

Jones grew up in Hamilton Square, New Jersey and starred in Steinert High School in Hamilton Township, Mercer County from 1995-1998. He averaged 24 points and 9 rebounds as a senior and was named as a McDonald's All-America honorable mention.

Even though Jones enjoyed a career season in 2007, no team signed him until on September 26, 2007, Jones signed a non-guaranteed contract with the Boston Celtics, but was later waived by the team on October 25, 2007.

Jones was signed by the Sacramento Kings on December 10, 2007. He was waived on February 16, 2008. Jones signed with the Denver Nuggets in July 2008 for the 2008-09 season.

Dahntay Jones' first five years were all with major losing teams: 4 years with the wretched Grizzlies, and last year with the wretched Kings. He started a grand total of 36 games for those wretched teams in all those five years combined, whereas this half a year alone for Denver he has started 39 games in front of J.R. Smith! Is that not totally ludicrous or am I missing something that is really something and not a figment of someone's warped imagination?

No, I'm straight. and there is no doubt that J.R. Smith is a much better shooting guard than is Dahntay Jones. Smith has a real player rating through Jan. 15 of .787. Dahntay Jones' real player rating is .455. Furthermore, Quest has proof that Smith's defending is much improved over his defending from two and more years ago, and is at least as good as the defending of Jones. Jones is smarter than Smith, most likely, and apparently has a better personality, things that matter a lot in Colorado. But so what? How do general intelligence and personality advantages trump a huge difference in basketball ability and production? This is basketball, not jeopardy or the dating game.

But George Karl is continuing to, like an unusually stubborn adolescent, refuse to start J.R. Smith, which means, assuming it continues through the entire regular season, that the Nuggets are claiming they can succeed in the playoffs with a starting shooting guard who was not even good enough to start for major losing teams. This is yet another clue among many that this franchise is not at all serious about winning in the playoffs; they are going to call it a day after looking flashy and aggressive while winning in the regular season.

Aside from Smith, there are not one but two other non-starting players who have very high ratings, ones normally associated with starters, and ratings far higher than that of Jones. One is Renaldo Balkman, a third year player who, while solidifying his reputation as a very good defender, has been far better offensively this year than almost anyone thought possible, although in limited minutes.

The other one is Chris Andersen, yet another defensive specialist, and another one who has produced to some extent offensively. But since Andersen is a C-PF, and Balkman is a SF-SG, it would make a lot more sense to replace Jones with Balkman.

Although the main, conventional, obvious point is that J.R. Smith should be starting at 2-guard instead of Dahntay Jones, it is interesting to note that were the Nuggets to start Balkman instead of Jones, and if necessary switch to Andersen if Balkman didn't work out, they would really and truly be a very good and improved defensive team, instead of just fooling the public that they are improved defensively as they actually are doing. I might actually start to break a sweat that the Nuggets could win a playoff series were Jones to be replaced by Smith, Balkman, or even by Andersen in the starting lineup.

Dahntay Jones is scoring no more points than is Chris Andersen per 36 minutes, and he is scoring about 2 points less than Renaldo Balkman per 36 minutes! So by starting Jones instead of Andersen or Balkman, you are getting no more scoring and lessor overall defending than you would get with Balkman or Andersen. I mean Andersen and Balkman are every bit as much hustle "little things" players as is Jones, yet they produce more defensive things other than hustle than Jones, and just as many offensive things, so it is a no brainer that, were J.R. Smith out, you would want to start either Balkman or Andersen over Jones, with Balkman being the correct choice due to position.

But this being the Nuggets, I am very comfortable that nothing like this is going to happen. It seems that every year, George Karl gets infatuated with one of his guards, and grossly overestimates his quality and abilities. It's generally a guard who is a little shorter than normal for his position too. Although one year it was a guard grossly shorter than normal: Earl Boykins. All of these guards seem to excel in the "little things" that the NBA does not bother to keep track of. I hate to inform Mr. Karl that there are only so many loose balls to get, charges to take, and other items to go for, that are not counted by scorekeepers, and that are not in the Real Player Rating or any other similar rating, but that Karl is grossly over impressed by.

Before Jones, in the last two seasons, Karl's infatuation was with point guard Anthony Carter who, however, was unceremoniously ditched for the 2008 Lakers playoff series by Karl, who apparently realized about six months too late that he had missed the boat as far as point guards are concerned. This year's flavor of the moment is Jones who, along with Andersen and Balkman, are previously little played players making up the aggressive on defense, fast and hard charging on offense, and energetic on both ends playing approach of this team.

What must have impressed Karl too, though he would never admit it in public, was when Jones tripped to the floor Grant Hill, who for the Suns was driving to the hoop with about 3 seconds left in a tie game in Denver recently. Amazingly, the Suns did not win the game as they were entitled to, because the refs blew the call and did not allow Grant to shoot free throws. The Suns seemingly ran out of oxygen in the 5th quarter in the high altitude and so went on to lose.

In summary, Dahntay Jones would be lucky to be playing at all for any real contender, yet for Denver he is starting over J.R. Smith, Renaldo Balkman, and Chris Andersen. He is getting 20 minutes a game, far more than in any other season, with the exception of 2006-07 for Memphis, when he received about 21 1/2 minutes per game. It's this year's "Karl Special," and like all the previous specials, it will be nothing more than road kill in the playoffs.

BASKETBALL REFERENCE PAGES YOU MIGHT WANT TO CHECK OUT
J.R. Smith
Renaldo Balkman
Chris Andersen
Dahntay Jones

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Fast Break: Michael Curry and Joe Dumars Attempt to Solve the Iverson Puzzle

The heavy duty Iverson fans got their wish this week, Pistons Coach Michael Curry (or it might have been General Manager Joe Dumars, or both of them together) decided that Allen Iverson would start and that Richard Hamilton would not be starting for the first time in years, despite the fact that he is one of the best shooting guards in the League, despite the fact that his shooting is desperately needed by the Pistons both now and in the playoffs, and despite the fact that Hamilton's only sin was being disturbed and distracted by not knowing what Iverson was going to do on any particular play. Iverson decides on each and every play which guard position he is going to play for that particular play, and since he plays both of them well, and since this has been going on for many years, no one wants to tell him to stop doing that.

I was on the losing side of the great "Who Starts, Hamilton or Iverson?" debate. Among other reasons, the last reason for AI not starting that I grew to like was that it would make the Pistons' 2nd unit one of the most and probably the most deadly 2nd unit in the game. Since Iverson plays both guard positions at once and usually takes care of both of them well at the same time, you could have 3 forwards and a center in the game at the same time. Four quality Pistons defensive players and Iverson would be a much better version of the Sixers and a much more successful version.

The important things Curry must accomplish, regardless of what he knows or doesn't know about how complicated it is to make sure Iverson's game does not actually do more harm than good, are:

1. End what they are calling in Detroit "small ball". This is where Iverson and Hamilton play at the same time, along with who everyone agrees is a great, starting, and with any luck playoffs-qualified point guard, Rodney Stuckey. Small ball has been pretty much a disaster for the Pistons, due to rebounding and defending going down the tubes. Please, end it and don't bring it back.

2. Cut way back or eliminate small forward Tayshaun Prince running the point; this would work even less well in the playoffs than it has in the regular. This is too crafty to work in the real world. Prince has a lot more important things to do for the Pistons than run point, especially considering how both Hamilton and Rasheed Wallace have not been shooting well this season.

3. Keep the not working Prince/Iverson/Hamilton combination down, which mostly means, since Prince must play mega minutes, keep the Iverson/Hamilton combination down. Hamilton needs a traditional or standard point guard to work with and everyone agrees that Iverson is not that. And obviously Prince is not that either; Hamilton?Prince is never going to work as a backcourt either.

4. Keep the Stuckey/Iverson combination down too, for a very important indirect reason. Without Hamilton making some jump shots, the Pistons do not have enough offense for the playoffs. You can not run every play to the hoop, especially in the playoffs; you have to have some players knocking down jumpers. But Hamilton plays poorly with Iverson and much better with Stuckey. Hamilton is disturbed by someone playing both guard positions at once, and I can't say that I blame him; I've been reporting on how that can mess up an offense and make it less efficient for many moons.

Now since Stuckey can only play so many minutes, you have to divide his minutes between Stuckey/Iverson and Stuckey/Hamilton. If you start Stuckey/Iverson and go a lot of minutes that way, you don't have enough Stuckey minutes left for Stuckey/Hamilton.

5. No one is arguing that Iverson's minutes should be limited. As mentioned already, I would really want to see Curry make sure that Iverson gets his 35 minutes a game and have that filled out to a greater extent with Iverson and the bigger, quality defensive, but offensively less dynamic group of Pistons, players such as Antonio McDyess, Jason Maxiell, Kwame Brown, and Amir Johnson. You know and I know that Hamilton can't do much of anything with those players. Hamilton can't do much of anything with anyone except Stuckey.

6. You have to stick up for Hamilton's minutes too. This guy in recent years produced what are for a shooting guard some of the sweetest shooting percentages in history. He must play rock bottom minimum 30 minutes a game, or the Pistons are seriously shooting themselves in the foot.

7. Here is the bottom line number one objective for Curry in terms of minutes: Since Hamilton should be close to 30 minutes and Iverson 35-40, you will have to have up to 20 minutes of Iverson/Hamilton regardless of who starts. I would divide and conquer; I would make sure Stuckey is in for about 10 of those and be left with the situation Hamilton can't work with for just 10 minutes or so. You limit the damage to 10 minutes of small ball and 10 minutes of Iverson/Hamilton crazy ball.

Since Stuckey plays 30, his breakdown would be ideally 10 minutes of Stuckey/Iverson/Hamilton, 10 minutes of Stuckey/Hamilton, and just 10 minutes of Stuckey/Iverson. Alright class, let's sum it up and become less confused:

SUMMARY
Iverson/Hamilton with No Stuckey 10
Iverson/Hamilton/Stuckey 10
Stuckey/Hamilton with No Iverson 10
Stuckey/Iverson with No Hamilton 10
Iverson/ No Stuckey and No Hamilton 5-10

It's like a damn rubrick's cube! Just remember the number 10 Curry, the key to solving the puzzle is the number 10! Or if you have to have it even simpler still, just remember that when Hamilton and Iverson are out there and nether Stuckey nor reserve point guard Will Bynum is out there, your offense is most likely going to be bad and sometimes really bad.

Curry and the Pistons most likely fail offensively if the Stuckey/Iverson minutes are much above 10, because if so, there is no way to make sure Hamilton contributes. And then you also have the old Nuggets and Sixers Iverson problem. I call that problem the two point guard problem, and both your offense and defense are damaged to some extent by it. You are too small defensively. Offensively, you either have one guard of limited value that the defense can ignore, if you have what should really be a reserve point guard in there with Iverson. This was the Denver situation. Or, and this would be the potential Detroit problem, you are wasting the overall game potential of two starting, playmaking guards by having them in there at the same time. So I'll be monitoring the Stuckey/Iverson minutes especially, because you can't solve this unless they are limited.

You want to know the truth? The truth is the Nuggets' Iverson puzzle was easy compared to this one, yet Nuggets Coach George Karl could not even begin to solve it, whereas Curry and Dumars are at least aware that they have a puzzle to solve and are doing their darndest to solve it.

So solve this puzzle and keep the Larry Brown caused damage down Mr. Curry and you will win your playoff series and not be fired. But if everything gets blamed on Iverson you won't be fired even if you lose. Among coaches, including Larry Brown and George Karl, blaming Iverson for something he didn't do is an effective, tried, and tested way to dodge responsibility.

By starting Iverson instead of Hamilton, it is more difficult to get much of the above achieved, but it is still possible. I guess Curry just likes to solve complicated problems. That would put him several steps ahead of George Karl, who seemingly has blown off every complicated problem he ever encountered.

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Fast Breaks: Owners Going Cheap, and Keeping the Faith

TNT analyst David Aldridge recently had the following up at NBA.com in this article:

Many owners are cheap. In a rip-roaring bull market like we had in the mid-90s,
there were still NBA owners with little incentive or compunction to spend
wildly. In an environment like the current credit/housing/jobs freefall, the
likelihood that there will be a dozen or more teams throwing money around in a
year and a half is laughable. There are more than a few owners, I'm afraid, who
have absolutely no intention of using the cap room their GMs are currently
clearing, preferring to pocket the money instead of investing in a game-changing
player

This is so true in the case of the Nuggets, thank you Mr. Aldridge, and I hope you don't get disallowed from posting at NBA.com after just a few posts, due to a revolt by the owners.

Aside from that, I agree with this writer's main points:

1. Never underestimate any year's available to draft players
2. Always consider the demand as well as the supply; if demand is low, your team can do a lot better than if demand is normal or high.

A point I will add:

You can't win with just one or two $20,000,000 a year players automatically, you have to have quality, economical players at the mid and lower pay grades as well. Fortunately, who wins in the playoffs in the NBA is not just about who gets LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. They have to have quality teammates to win it all.

KEEPING THE FAITH
I still have faith that the Pistons will win their playoff series even if they do not have home court advantage, whereas the Nuggets will lose their playoff series even if they do have home court advantage. I think that when this relatively surprising but not shocking season is all said and done that I will be very, very satisfied because the Pistons will find the way to win their playoff series while the Nuggets will be unable to win theirs.

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Fast Break: Chauncey Billups is a Leader but Unfortunately Mostly of the X's and O's Variety

I think that teams such as San Antonio and Boston who have centers or forwards as motivational leaders are generally more successful in the playoffs than teams that have point guards as motivational leaders.

I'm not sold on Billups being all that great a motivational leader. Better than average I'll say yes but not a great motivational leader like Kevin Garnett or Tim Duncan or even Dirk Nowitzki.

I'd really like to see more coaches being good motivational leaders but I realize that's much more of a college thing in the modern age. Coaches motivating extra effort and speed and so forth is much more of a thing of the past in the NBA than a thing of the present. If you go back in time in the NBA, especially if you go back to the 1950's and 1960's, there was much less difference back in those days than there is today between how college coaches and how the pro coaches coach, and specifically with respect to how much the coach tries to motivate players to keep their energy and effort levels up.

While I wouldn't go so far as to claim that today's NBA coaches in general or George Karl in particular have no motivational leadership impact at all, I would say that the very high levels of energy and aggression that the Nuggets are showing this year are much more generated by the players themselves, acting collectively, than they are by the Nuggets' coaches.

To me Billups is leading more in the deciding what to do aspect but not as much on the motivating aspect. The Nuggets are motivated to win simply because they are a lot more happy than most teams are to simply be in the game. Individual Nuggets players have been hammered by injuries and other trials and tribulations over the years much more so than average.

As for the Pistons, I don't think Detroit is worrying about not having Chauncey Billups' leadership in the playoffs, regardless of the breakdown between and quantities of his X's and O's and his motivational leadership. They have a bunch of very veteran players all motivating each other, so they don't need it very much. Not to mention they have as many or more players than any team who motivate themselves extremely well.

Stupid sportscaster alert: if and whenever you hear a sportscaster claim that the Pistons "are missing Billups leadership," he is a bonafide fool for saying that. Rasheed Wallace, Prince, Dice, Stuckey, AI, Hamilton need to be motivated? I don't think so. The Pistons who were on the 2004 Championship team mostly motivated themselves, individually and as a team collectively. While there was a lot of X's and O's leadership going from Billups to the rest of the Pistons, there wasn't much motivational leadership.

The reason that the X's and O's leadership of Billups is so important to the Nuggets is simply that the Nugget's coaches are very weak on X's and O's leadership. The Pistons have more X's and O's leadership coming from their coaches and managers, including General Manager Joe Dumars who, don't kid yourself, is undoubtedly assisting rookie Coach Michael Curry with the X's and O's matters. Maybe not as much as I, a perfectionist, would want, but they probably have more than enough of it.

So in conclusion, I am not worrying about the Pistons in the playoffs with respect to either X's and O's leadership or with respect to motivational leadership. Whereas, with the Nuggets, I am quite worried about where the playoffs motivational leadership comes from. I think they still have a big problem in that regard just as they did last year.

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Fast Break: Nuggets Management and Coach George Karl are Often Not on the Same Page

The Nuggets have never decided for sure about just how much they want to worship George Karl. On the one hand they obviously worship him much more than most other franchises would. To the Nuggets, Mr. Karl's inability to win playoff games is a relatively minor demerit. The average franchise does need to be concerned about being successful in the playoffs, so the average franchise would have let Mr. Karl move on no later than this past off season.

On the other hand, Mr. Karl has never had a large amount of say over key player acquisition decisions in Denver. If Mr. Karl was always so dependent on having a good, traditional, veteran point guard who doesn't need any coaching to speak of, then why on earth did the Nuggets ship Andre Miller for Allen Iverson? They kind of pulled the rug out from under poor Mr. Karl with that move, didn't they? They left the poor man with nothing but an easy path with which to make a fool of himself with.

Similarly, Mr. Karl wanted to get rid of J.R. Smith, whereas the owner and the general managers said no way Jose and gave him a very good contract and pretty much every dollar that Smith could have received if he were starting for another team rather than being vindictively prevented from starting by Mr. Karl.

Yet another example of a big difference between Mr. Karl and Nuggets management would be that management was always much more keen on Nene and less keen on Marcus Camby than was Mr. Karl. Until this year, Nene could get good playing time from Mr. Karl only if either Kenyon Martin or Marcus Camby were not available. Were Karl in charge of the dismantling of the Nuggets, he would have gone out of his way to try to keep Marcus Camby.

So for a franchise that worships Mr. Karl, they have not allowed him to share in the management moves anywhere near as much as you would think.

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Denver Nuggets Real Player Ratings as of January 15 2009

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. We are 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 Outstanding, Above Average Starter 0.775 0.849
A Very Good 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 or Marginal 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

CLICK HERE TO REVIEW THE USER GUIDE FOR REAL PLAYER RATINGS BY TEAM, last updated Jan. 13, 2009

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.













































OTHER NUGGETS STARS OF 2008-09
NENE


























RENALDO BALKMAN





















CARMELO ANTHONY






































J.R. SMITH





















CLICK HERE TO REVIEW THE USER GUIDE FOR REAL PLAYER RATINGS BY TEAM, last updated Jan. 13, 2009

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Free Advertising Program for the Depression

Today I rewrote the link exchange section of the User Guide, and I added into the Guide a new Free Advertising Program. This is how those parts of the User Guide read as of now:

WHY NOT EXCHANGE LINKS WITH THE QUEST?
You can link to the Quest site with no permission needed. To link to this site, copy and paste the code below into your site. Thanks, and you can email nuggetsone@gmail.com with your site address, and we will link back. Your link will go in the right column in the same area where the other already existing such links are. You may wish to, for convenience, use the following code when you construct the link.

The Quest for the Ring

FREE ADVERTISING PROGRAM
The depression, or recession, or great heist, or whatever it is, means that we should work together, or else we will sink together. Therefore, the Quest is offerring free display advertising on this site until at least June 30, 2010. The program is for anyone who has a basketball related product or service. If the free program is not extended beyond that date, we will be offerring advertising at extremely low rates. The free display ad program is currently limited to four advertisers, on a first come first serve basis. Each advertiser gets 6 months free though if we think your product or service is especially important we will extend that indefinitely.

This program is not for large corporations; it is intended for small enterprises, especially newer ones. Nor is this program for those already affiliated with a major internet commercial site, such as ebay.

To advertise for free, email a request giving your web address and some basic information about your product or service. If you get approved, we will email you back. You will be approved unless you don't really have a basketball product or service, or unless you are a big company, or unless you are already getting a large amount of traffic. After you are approved, you can email your ad. Your ad should be sized to fit either in the User Guide or the right column. For User Guide ads, the width should be close to but nor more than 675px. The height should be 100px maximum. For sidebar ads, the maximum size is 240px by 240 px. We will even make a simple but nice looking ad for you if you want.

The email address to use is nuggets1nuggets@gmail.com












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