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GIVE DENVER A KICK
IN THE NUGGETS!
IN THE NUGGETS!
-VS-
Game Time Start: 9:00 PM ET
Where: Pepsi Center, Denver, CO
Officials: J. Capers, K. Fitzgerald, P. Fraher
Media Notes: Indiana Notes, Denver Notes
Television: FOX Sports Indiana / Altitude
Radio: WFNI 1070 AM / 950 AM, 104.3 FM
NBA Feeds:
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REMINDER: Per PD policy, please do not share a link to, describe how to search for, request a link to, or request a PM about streaming video of a NBA game that is not coming directly through the NBA. Not even in a "wink-wink, nudge-nudge, know-what-I-mean" round-about sort of way. Thank you
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 PACERS Danny Granger - left knee tendinosis (out) DENVER None |
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Pacers Try Hard to Lose then Try to Win for a Few Minutes, Accomplish the Former This was 46 minutes of sloppy offense and wet-cardboard defense from the Pacers. It was a very strange game overall. The Pacers actually shot really well, but couldnโt hold onto the ball. At one point in the third quarter, the Jazz had 16 steals to only 15 rebounds. Thatโs not normal. And on the other end, the best defensive team in the NBA just got man-handled by Utah in the paint and allowed a ton of easy buckets. Itโs hard to put the blame on any one person for such a strange funk that just seemed to pervade the entire fabric of the team. What is certain, however, is that the Pacers got out-worked and the Pacers got worked. Still, they somehow managed to make a game of this late. Paul George hit a three, David West hit a jumper, George Hill made a layup, and Indiana held Utah to just one point over the final 2:30 of regulation. The Jazz had the ball, up two, with little time left. It seemed as if the Pacersโ comeback would come up short. Then Hill stole the ball, Indiana ran the same play the used to beat Memphis to tie the game (Paul George got fouled amid chaos after Utah shut off Hillโs drive) and then West made a huge steal of his own, taking the ball directly away from Gordon Hayward. Overtime. I wonโt bother to recount all the happenings. Mainly, the Pacers got destroyed in the half court and when they did stop the Jazz, the couldnโt finish the possession with a rebound. Earl Watson, in particular, was the first one to the ball โ if not the last. Again, however, Paul George hit a big three, cutting a six-point Utah lead to three with thirty seconds left. The patient was on life support, but not dead. But the Jazz made a free throw to go up four so โฆ good try, good effort. BUT WAIT โฆ Hill rushed down the court and stuck a long three with two seconds left. It seemed meaningless. The Jazz merely needed to inbound the ball and the game was all but over. Maybe the Pacers get a very quick foul and the Jazz only hit one, which would have given them a chance to hit one more three with like a second left to send it to overtime. But as Utah inbounded the ball, it hit the side/bottom/back of the backboard. In my mind, thatโs out of bounds. I saw this happen in JV basketball several times and it was always hilarious. I remember learning at a young age that you ALWAYS move over to the side of the lane before throwing the pass to avoid this exact scenario. Nobody wants to be laughed at so I was vigilant about it. Apparently, however, the refs...CONTINUE READING AT 8p9s |
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| Inside the Problem: A Breakdown of the Nuggets Turnovers When JaVale McGee is on the court he uses a big chunk of Denverโs possessions. According to Basketball-Reference.com, among regular rotation players, he has the highest usage rate on the team at 23.9 percent. Despite this, he also has the third lowest assist rate at 3.6 percent. Kosta Koufos has the second lowest, 3.1 percent, and Kenneth Faried the lowest assist rate, 2.0 percent. Naturally, all three of the Nuggetsโ main frontcourt players earn their keep around the rim, finishing plays and putting back offensive boards, the big difference between McGee and the other two is that he actually spends a significant amount of time with the ball in his hands. As anyone who has followed the Nuggets this seasons knows, a couple things have plagued the team all season; inconsistency, a lack of perimeter shooting, and turnovers. I decided to look further into that turnover issue to see why the Nuggets continued to turn the ball over at such an alarming pace, 14.8 per game good for fifth worst in the league. To figure out what Denverโs problem was I decided to take a look at each turnover the Nuggets have committed all year via synergy and keep track of three factors; who committed the turnover, what kind of turnover was it, and was it a live or dead ball turnover. After tracking 667 turnovers (I must have missed a game somewhere but have no idea which) I did a bit of analysis of the numbers and found some interesting facts. I have attached the document as a link to a public google doc at the end of the post so readers can download it and look for themselves. Before I break down the things I saw first I want to list the categories I put the turnovers in and explain a few of them: Self Explanatory: 3 seconds, Bad Lobs, Bad Passes, Double Dribbles, Lane Violation, Fumbled Catches, Fumbled Shots, Offensive Interference, Inbound Violation, Missed Pass, Offensive Fouls (Both Charges and Illegal Screens went under this), Fall/Step Out of Bounds, Palming, Shot Clock Violations, Stepped Out of Bounds, Slipped Out of Hands, Stripped Shots, Travels. Explanations: Andre Got Confused: There was one play where Andre Miller got into the lane and had no idea what to do. It resulted in him throwing the ball straight up into the air. I wasnโt sure whether or not to categorize it as a pass or shot so it went under Andre got confused. Bad Decision: Andre Iguodala got into the air and had no idea what to do leading to this turnover. Unlike most of the other ones that fit into a category simply this was another one that was up in the air so it went just as a bad decision. Dribbling: Plays that Nuggets players were stripped of their dribble, had the ball poked away from behind, or dribbled the ball off themselves and to an opponent or out of bounds. Stripped: Plays that the Nuggets were stripped off the ball after or before using their dribbles. Not on shots as that is its own category. Now onto the data: The Nuggets have committed almost every type of turnover imaginable. From 3 seconds, to bad passes, to lane violations and palming the ball. If you can name it the Nuggets have probably done it. 56 percent of the teamโs turnovers are live ball turnovers. This number is part of why the turnovers have been such a problem for the Nuggets all year. A team can live with turnovers if the majority of them are dead ball turnovers. While no turnovers are good, dead ball turnovers eliminate run out opportunities and easy buckets for opponents. Unfortunately for the Nuggets that hasnโt been the case all season. Not only are the majority of turnovers live ball turnovers, but there have been plenty of live ball turnovers that have occurred on the opponentโs side of the floor. If this number doesnโt get below 50 percent the Nuggets are going to continue to lose games they shouldnโt, purely because they are giving up easy baskets. 73 of Andre Millerโs 96 documented turnovers have been live ball turnovers. Andreโs lack of athleticism really hurts him as he continues to get into the lane and be stuck without anything...CONTINUE READING AT ROUNDBALL MINING COMPANY |
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| Matthew Zeitlin: Why We Watch - JaVale McGee, The Unexplainable If it seems like JaVale McGee is playing a different type of basketball than everyone else in the NBA, it's because he is. He's playing it the way he sees it.  In 1974, the philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote a groundbreaking essay, โWhat Is It Like To Be Bat.โ He argued that the very difficulty of answering the question suggests that there must be something irreducibly extra-physical that generates the mental experience of being like something, which we call consciousness for short. Nagelโs argument, in brief, was that theories of the mind that tried to explain conscious experience as something reducible to different physical states of the brain (more or less), could not account for the feeling of being a conscious being. Nagel challenges the reader to think about bats, or more specifically, to think about being a bat. You couldโand you might as well, there are worse hobbiesโlearn all there is to know about the physical laws governing a batโs cognition, the circuitry of the bat-brain, the function of the batโs sensory systems. But for all that knowledge, you will still be none the wiser when it comes to understanding the qualitative experience of batness. This all relates to JaVale McGee not simply because both he and bats are comfortable off the ground and broadly uncanny, although thereโs that. Itโs more that JaVale McGee presents a similar philosophical challenge: what might it be like to be JaVale McGee, to move around in that body, with that mind? Granted, figuring out what itโs like to be seven feet tall -- with arms that stretch another half a foot beyond that and a 32-inch vertical leap and an avant-garde brainโmight be as difficult as imagining navigating through a dark cave with echolocation. It doesnโt necessarily help that the results of JaValeโs cognition can appear just as confounding and foreign. Running back on defense when your point guard is dribbling at the top of the key? Apparent innocent ignorance of the rules governing goaltending? You donโt need Andre Millerโs basketball IQ or Shane Battierโs extra-numerate savvy to figure that stuff out, right? And the details of McGeeโs biography, while interesting, are not particularly useful in explaining the mystery of JaValeness; if anything, his familyโs basketball-heavy bloodlines should have selected against just this airy cluelessness. But none of that, really, explains how JaVale McGee is JaVale Mcgee. He is his own creation, and lives in his own space in his own way. At times, itโs not clear that he quite knows what itโs like to be JaVale McGee, himself. JaVale is hardly the only extremely talented NBA player with a tendency to behave mysteriously on the court. But JaValeโs particular brand of blithe knuckleheadness diverges from the great Talented Headcase NBA archetype. Ron Artest has a psychology thatโs multiply abnormal, but genuinely and meaningfully so; Royce White has an actual mental illness. JaVale isnโt violent or troubled or even apparently haunted so much as heโs just JaVale, his own weird self. In that sense, if maybe only in that sense, heโs just one of us. This is, actually, a remarkable thing. Because what would it do to someone, to anyone, to be born with a body and collection of physical gifts that essentially guaranteed a decade of employment in the NBA, no matter what? And moreover, what if that person could score simply by taking long strides around the basket and jumping higher into the air than anyone else? And as such could regularly send most shots near the rim into the stands? And if that person just enjoyed doing those things in a mostly uncomplicated way, and for good measure also had asthma? Or, more to this point, what if that person who is JaVale McGee was you. It is not necessarily any more difficult to imagine life as a bat. Letโs start with the first great JaVale moment, or in this case, series of moments. The triple-double. In a March game in 2011, the Wizards were down in the fourth quarter against the Bulls. Down by a lot, as it turns out; the Wiz would finish the season 23-49, while the Bulls would finish with the leagueโs best record and make it all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals. JaVale already had 12 rebounds and an astonishing 12 blocks, but only nine points with 3:43 remaining the game. And so the JaVale Moment began, enfolding some very determined if not necessarily helpful fadeaway jumpers and off-balance leaners and attempts at taking his man off the dribble. Finally: a huge dunk, in traffic, from the beginning of the restricted area, and then immediately subsequent a technical for hanging on the rim and celebrating. An ESPN writer said McGee was โacting like a buffoon.โ Kevin McHale called it a โbad triple-double.โ โI got a triple-double,โ was JaVale's response. โWho can say they got a triple-double? Iโm not really worried about it.โ His performance at the dunk-contest...CONTINUE READING AT THE CLASSICAL |
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Pacers Mike Wells @MikeWellsNBA Jared Wade @8pts9secs Tim Donahue @TimDonahue8p9s Tom Lewis @indycornrows |
Nuggets Benjamin Hochman @nuggetsnews Jeremy Wagner @RoundballMiner Aaron J. Lopez @Lopez_Nuggets Pierre @JaValeMcGee34 |
) or Wilson Chandler tonight for the nuggets.
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