Advanced Scouting: San Antonio Spurs at Denver Nuggets - Reaction to Duncan’s injury

GO SPURS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Beat the new Nuggets, they are a bunch of underachievers anyway.

I agree that the nuggets should win this game but I also think the Spurs will give it their all and come away with a win.

Go Spurs Go!!

Hopefully Bonner will get some open looks and shoot himself out of his current mini-slump. Hopefully he can get his stroke right by the playoffs … if not, Novak is going to be taking his minutes.

Splitter should improve a lot with playing time, so this is going to be a chance for him to improve how comfortable he is on the court. IMO, he has looked nervous on the court in the few game moments he has gotten so far. As his minutes increase, his comfort level improves.

Unfortunately, I noticed he was tiring more quickly than he should, probably because all of his injuries kept him from being as fit as he could be. These 3 weeks should get him into peak game shape, so long as he doesn’t get himsef out of games early with foul trouble. I think the fouling is partly caused by him trying to do too much too quickly since he knows he’s only going to be in a short time. We’ll see … even though there’s no Duncan, I’m sure Pop won’t hesitate to pull him off the floor if he’s not doing what Pop wants him to do.

I’d like to see him develop. This three week stretch is going to let us see how much he can contribute to this year’s playoff run. If he doesn’t do well, then it’s back to the end of the bench until next year. He’s the center of the future for the Spurs, the biggest question of how soon that future begins.

Get well, Tim. I almost got sick when they kept replaying the injury on TV. Ankles aren’t supposed to bend that way. Hopefully he can be right by the playoffs. In the west, there are a lot of good teams, and even the first round is going to be tough. It’s too bad we can’t play one of the East’s #7 or #8 cupcakes.

This next couple of weeks will truly test the mettle of this team.

Duncan going down is going to either galvanize or fracture the psyche of this team but based on everything we know about this team, I would go with the former rather than the latter.

Splitter is going to get a ton of time on the court, Blair will get to spot Dyess, I also feel like Novak is going to be huge for this team coming down the stretch and into the playoffs.

This team has it in them to go 2-1 on this road trip.

The Nuggets are a rejuvenated franchise and looking to stick it to the naysayers. They are discovering depth and allowing their young talent to develop, and with Gallinari healthy again there is more reason to be concerned. Lookout for JR, Gary!

Thanks for the essay, as usual, Scott. However, I hate to say it, but I think that you might have a false correlation. League history alone amply demonstrates the value of HCA-particularly the cumulative effect over more than one series (not that it’s an issue for us, thankfully). When that’s backed up by several generations’ worth of first-hand comments from players and coaches, it suggests that you might want to be certain that this isn’t an overly facile conclusion.

Rather than running a projection based upon the assumption that HCA in a Game 7 is worth its conventional value of 4ppg, why not look at the relatively rich history of NBA Game 7 results to see how much it’s worth in those particular circumstances? In other words, just throw out the data for regular season games and games 1 through 6 entirely. Perhaps look at Game 7s round-by-round, because I suspect that the value of the home court increases with each round in the playoffs.

Why am I so suspicious? First, the playoffs are fundamentally different than the regular season because you’re locked into games with a single opponent. When a series goes passed five games, it means that the teams are matched evenly enough that each has demonstrated the ability to beat the other, more than once. Therefore ANY edge will be magnified because the teams are so comparable. Additionally, rest is more important in the playoffs because of the wear and tear of the long season, which means the home team has an advantage. And the chaos and heightened attention of the playoffs (especially a climactic Game 7) are more easily escaped at home than at an NBA hotel where the media are camped out. Finally, it’s important to remember that benches tend to shrink in the playoffs and can become almost non-existent in a Game 7. As a result, bench players will have far fewer chances to contribute to a victory.

Anyway, just my thoughts. Thanks for the preview.

This Nugget team by far is better without Carmelo. They seem to have better team chemistry and not have to focus on a superstar to score all their points.
It will be close and the spurs may lose only because its at Denver and because they don’t know what to expect now that the team has realized its without Duncan for a while. But like 2/3 of the core are still active this may be enough for the young guns to have enough confidence to not even care about Duncan’s situation once they hit the floor. These guys are gamers from 1 - 13. They’ll be ready. GSG!

The two organizations that feel good about the Melo trade now are the Nuggets and the Nets. By leveraging the Nets offer to get the Knicks to give up the store, the Nets are set for years with talent and also got some salary cap room.

The Knicks got a player who doesn’t play defense and they destroyed their bench and messed up their salary structure to the extent that they won’t be able to improve their team next year. They got played. And if they had just waited until Melo’s contract ran out, they could have signed him and gave up a whole lot less. They did get Billups, who is a really good player, but he’s not going to be that effective when neither Anthony or Stoudamire play a lick of defense.

second sentence, first paragraph … should be Nuggets. The Nets were also improved since the Melo trade set them up to get Williams, who is a much better fit for them than Anthony would have been.

Interesting point about the value of home court advantage vs. player value. It’d sure be nice to have both.

Hey, how do you stat wizards measure the value of having to play either the Lakers or the Mavericks, as opposed to both of them?

Just wondering, since you seem to place so little value on HCA.

Forget the advanced basketball stats, the first half-season “Melodrama: He will/won’t sign” &” the top 10 Melo-trade rumors & preposals”, along with the post-Melo team record.

The Nuggets have been very hard to defeat at home, PERIOD -all season long.

28 Ws, 7 Ls- 4th best in the ENTIRE league.

1 loss in Nov; 2 losses each in Dec, Jan & Feb.
None of those defeats are to sub .500 teams.

Their road record is what drags them down-it’s the thick air @ sea level-”hard to breath in it.”
A very difficult task for the Spurs to go back there and get another victory without our #1 post player.
But__if it’s gets accomplished….

Give the Denver Nuggets 48 minutes of Team Hell Defense!!! Go Spurs Go!!!

@Tim in Surrey and
@Czernobog

There may be subtle effects for the cumulative advantage of home court and, yes, the home team does win around 72% in do or die games according to the following article (home teams win 60% of regular season games), but this should be expected since the home team is usually better anyways.
http://www.nba.com/2009/news/features/john_schuhmann/04/17/homecourt20090417/

The sample is very small at times, but home teams actually win more than 75% of non-clinching home games (game 1, 2 and 5). This could be by chance or it could be caused by the fact that road teams that reach game 7 tend to be better than those that don’t.

A couple factors that I didn’t mention:
As Czernobog indicates, seeding can be important. How important depends on the year and situation. Obviously, the road for an 8th seed will be much tougher than a 1st seed, but it might not be much different between a 1st seed and a 2nd seed.

How much more likely is the 7th seed to beat you than the 8th and how much more likely is the 2nd seed to beat you rather than the 3rd (given the probabilities that they advance)? At this point, I don’t know if the West’s 8th seed will be more dangerous than the 7th seed or not. Comparing the likely 2nd and 3rd seeds, both Dallas and OKC could be very tough matchups. OKC is already playing better with Perkins (in limited minutes) than they played with Green. Dallas, meanwhile, has yet to put it together after their acquisitions. Seeding is important enough to play the regular season, but not important enough to risk injury in the Spurs unique situation.

Additionally, home court advantage could very well be modestly stronger during the playoffs. As my research indicates, a larger attendance figure correlates with home winning percentage, even after accounting for team strength. Others have found this to be stronger in the game’s more crucial moments. (Referee bias seems to be the primary catalyst.)

Finally, the Spurs have an excellent chance at sealing home court even if they don’t focus on it. The Spurs are highly unlikely to rest everybody for the remainder of the season, which is reasonable, and even an average team would have greater than a 90% chance of clinching HCA in the Spurs situation.

If we don’t start running something for RJ I’m going to PASS OUT and start convulsing……………

He is getting 9 mil to basically float around and take 4-6 shots a game….. grab a couple boards, and that about it……

@
Carlos Martin
March 23rd, 2011 at 3:38 am GO SPURS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Beat the new Nuggets, they are a bunch of underachievers anyway

Denver is 10-4 since the trade man.. if anything they are overacheiving my friend…..

It could be a scary game as they can run the spurs out of the building…

..addition: SA/DEN score at 1/2 time: 69/64

Agree TD=best ever, RJ needs to be getting like
8-10 shot/game with 4 at the rim as it helps his defense too; he & Neal have not closed out on
3-point shooter in 1st half…

Splitter has been ahhh..ok

wow.. Denver trapping TP hard..nice strategy..
now Popovich must counter..we’ll see how…

Blair needs to be more accurate & precise on plays and to do that he needs to be patient…that will only come with a good shot and he just can’t shoot…

The trapping of TP continues and POP put in Blair and that worked some but Duncan would have solved that in the middle of the trap…

Bonner can not guard Harrington…

POP was yelling at Neal for going under screen on J.swish… we need better defense..

DEN scores 90 by 3rd quarter… wow.. hope u r back soon Duncan….

POP needs to have a better way in coming games about how to deal with the TP/Manu Trapping…

Manu’s Grade: F

Veteran let his moxie overcome leadership
Did not trust his teammates- 7/18 4/12 on 3s

Bonner: C- His 3s still not falling-but he did not let it affect his overall play -went to basket to try & get points; put forth an effort on D.

Lost this game defending Al Harrington-dude has been in the league forever-can only hurt you if you don’t guard him (Spurs should remember that from MLK Day game 3-4 seasons ago: 3

31 points in 1st half;.

Gary Neal—from here on his name is GUTS-came up big tonight; team wasted his effort not getting the win.

Pop brought Tony back in too late====
Spurs had this one—

Blair needs to get his vacation out of the way earlier after post season————-then come back and work on his offense 8 hrs/day, 6 days/week.
I only see Silver & Black on national telecasts-he hurts this team every time out by missing 4-5 gimmes-bunnies-putbacks-then compounds it by missing D assignment or fouling unnecessarily!!!!!

Man, tough loss. Game tied with less than a minute left and we have the ball, and Tony misses, then Ginobli misses yet another 3 (he was 4 for 12), all the time Gary Neal is having a career game and doesn’t get a sniff.

And Novak doesn’t log a single minute, even though Bonner can’t throw it in the ocean.

I’m blaming this one on Pop. My guess is LA overtakes us now that Tim is hurt.

Not surprised by the loss, game came down to the last seconds. Manu should have set up Neal for the last shot given the way he shot the rock tonight. Splitter played Nene pretty well, rebounded well. Splitter will be more effective, if he plays, during the playoffs. During the telecast it was mentioned TD has a grade 1 sprain so he should not be out that long! This game proves how much he is needed despite his advanced age of 34. He can set up his shooters from the low block better than any of our other bigs. He certainly would have adjusted to denver’s second half defensive strategy and found the open man alleviating the pressure on manu and tp who just wore down.

@ ribanez1

With all due respects-you got this wrong. DEN is 28-7 at home-losing 1 time in Nov & twice each in Dec-Jan-Feb; You could expect a loss.

But===we had this game ===led it nearly all the way from 10:46 in the FIRST QTR - 4-3 - to 7:24 in the FOURTH QTR - 98-97; then this sequence:
Manu misses 3ptr, misses jump shot, Blair misses layup.

@ Dorie

I agree about the Blair needs to work on his D alot……. But all and all he still out played Splitter…… And was better than Bonner as well, who seemed to have picked up a fouling problem…… this game is one that really hurts to loose because of how well we shot the ball…… it’s really hard to loose games where you are basically on fire for 36 min….. Manu did rely way too much on the 3 ball and where on the hell was Novak today……. He could have played Harrington(not a very physical PF) and may have actually made a shot…..

I said before the game that we needed to get a few players back on board the Offense express wagon and if we did we would be fine…… Hill, Bonner, RJ are all still missing in action and its starting to get really frustrating…… I think POP is on some of that Phil Jackson BS…… where he doesn’t coach enough during the games….. like telling Manu to stop chucking up 3′s. Of just changing things up….. it was pretty clear that Bonner, Hill, and RJ didn’t have it going tonight. So why no try Novak, Green, or Anderson…… it’s not like anyone was playing Defense anyway and Offensively all of our DNP-CD’s could have stepped in and produced……

George Hill is NOT a PG. DeJuan Blair IS too small. Ginobili is NOT Dale Ellis. RJ NEEDS to attack. Mentally repeat 500 times.

By the way….Matt Bonner…his annual migration away from playing well seems to be as dependable as Canadian Geese flocking north this time of year. I’d give Novak some of his minutes.

Accept this instead of forcing what never will be and the Spurs could win these types of games with Duncan out.

Pop didn’t do a very good job managing his players this game.

But it was the Nuggets with a really good home record and the Spurs without Duncan. The outcome shouldn’t have been a suprise, but the game was in hand if the facts above would have been addressed.

They’ll have several games to try and adjust without Duncan. Hope they do a better job than like this one that was allowed to slip away. Would have been a great win during this rough stretch of road games.

Next. Go Spurs Go!!!

DorieStreeT

Respectfully, but without Duncan in a location where the altitude is a factor and your biggest player, Splitter, tires to the point that he can not play in the last minutes where his size and rebounding could have been a factor, the loss is not a surprise. Moreover, the Nuggets had lost 3 games to us including the game where Manu took Melo’s charge to seal the game. Their motivation to avenge some of those losses was a factor. They kept running and just wore us down as planned. Still, the Spurs were in the game to the last minute but the loss is not a surprise. Denver without Melo or with Melo is always tough at home. I am encouraged by Splitter’s performance, defense and rebounding.

Scott, Czernobog, and Tim in Surrey have each pointed out good points about the HCA. Even then, if there is value in calculating a HCA metric, it seems one should consider the structure of the playoff series. There is no home court advantage after a series that ends with an even number of games. In series with an odd number of games, one team will have a cumulative total advantage of 4 points. In a 2:2:1:1:1 format, the team with HCA will actually have the advantage twice (games 5 and 7). With this in mind, shouldn’t the correct statistic representing HCA be:

(fraction of 5 game series * 4 pts) + (fraction of 7 game series * 4 pts)

Things are different in a 2:3:2 format. The team with HCA will actually have a disadvantage in a five game series but will have only have the advantage in seven game series.

@Dogmer

I think you’re right, kind of… The expected advantage would be similar to your formula. However, if you relate it to HCA for winning the series, only the last game matters.

If the home or road team wins in 5 games, then although home court was an advantage, it wasn’t a deciding advantage. The winning team would have won even if they didn’t have the benefit of HCA. That’s why I didn’t include it.