RealGM

I have been following these (several) threads about JR and I think that one thing has become increasingly clear to me about most of the posts here: video games like NBA Live (a personal favorite of mine from childhood) have completely altered the way people think about sports.

This has been something that I have been thinking about for a while now, but it became more apparent when I recently read Jalen Rose's comments on the Knicks and how they were a top team in NBA Live but couldn't get it together on the court. I admit that this has certainly become, and will continue to be, a method of evaluating a teams talent "on paper" even though that's where the evaluation ends.

When it comes to the Nuggets I continually heard people campaigning for Allen Iverson to play the point before the season began to avoid mismatches on defense and to change his game to be more of a distributor. There were even articles in the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News when Iverson came here about how he had the potential to be more of a point guard than he had shown in Philly.

Additionally I continue to hear people on this board talking about how JR needs more minutes and how using him at the point might even be a good idea. While George Karl did open himself up for that by praising JR's play at the point earlier in the season, the stats continue to show that not only is JR at the point a bad idea, but JR anywhere on the court (for most games) is a bad idea. No one can deny that he has arguably as much potential as any young shooting guard in terms of his skills and athleticism, but I again see a lot of the NBA Live mentality coming into play here...

...and the one premise behind that thinking and behind that kind of evaluation is the ability to control all the players. Welcome to George Karl's, along with every other coaches, dream scenario. Unfortunately, that's exactly where video game basketball and real basketball part ways. For everyone watching and waiting to see young guys reach their potential, this is, without question, the most frustrating thing about watching a guy like Carmelo not rebounding every game or a guy like Nene not dominating in the post or a guy like JR not becoming the legitimate shooting guard that we all want him to be. Because each of those guys certainly has the talent to do those things yet lacks the consistency (although Carmelo has been rebounding much better).

The bottom line is that there is a huge chasm between what looks great on paper and what actually happens on the court, and while I'm no apologist for George Karl and some of his coaching decisions, I am pretty sure he knows a hell of a lot more about real basketball than anyone on this forum (or you wouldn't be writing here, you'd be working for a team) and he sees real basketball every day. Thus, he saw early on that Iverson "The Distributor" is now what most of us see and what he's always been, Iverson "The Scorer." He sees that Anthony Carter actually runs the offense and that JR doesn't actually play defense and that Carmelo will fall in love with outside shooting to a fault and that having a "non traditional" line-up with size issues is better than a "traditional" line-up with major offensive issues.

So the point of all of this is that I think most of the "expert opinions" offered here would work well if these games were played at the end of a Playstation controller instead of in actual NBA games. Jalen Rose admitted it to himself and actually made a lot of sense for a guy that I wouldn't have guessed would be writing articles for ESPN. His strategy just may be worth a try....

I for one hate NBA live. I'll just speak for myself on this one.

I completely see where you're going with the NBA Live theory. JR kills in video games. When I play 2K8 he's the best role player on the team and rarely has turn overs. My problem is the way that Karl is handling it. Making a joke of the kid in front of reporters is just isolating him from the team. That's not how you build chemistry. Whether we need JR or not is a debate of its own, but we all know that this team can use a legit threat from outside.

I quit playing NBA video games years ago, and while I agree it does cloud some peoples judgement, there are plenty of people who could care less about the video games, and just see things differently than the coaches, other fans, or front office. If they all saw things the same then there would never be a reason to make changes in the NBA, or to bother having a message board such as this one.

Additionally I continue to hear people on this board talking about how JR needs more minutes and how using him at the point might even be a good idea. While George Karl did open himself up for that by praising JR's play at the point earlier in the season, the stats continue to show that not only is JR at the point a bad idea, but JR anywhere on the court (for most games) is a bad idea.

can you explain why he had the 3rd best +/- on the team last season, and the second best per minute +/-
surely he was contributing positively to the team in some way to have those statistics. and if so...putting him on the court couldn't be a bad idea, right?

I am pretty sure he knows a hell of a lot more about real basketball than anyone on this forum (or you wouldn't be writing here, you'd be working for a team) and he sees real basketball every day. Thus, he saw early on that Iverson "The Distributor" is now what most of us see and what he's always been, Iverson "The Scorer." He sees that Anthony Carter actually runs the offense and that JR doesn't actually play defense and that Carmelo will fall in love with outside shooting to a fault and that having a "non traditional" line-up with size issues is better than a "traditional" line-up with major offensive issues.

a) karl's said multiple times that getting a gig head coaching in the nba is mostly just luck and someone taking a chance on you. (and he's proved it)
b) so now you know exactly what karl thinks while we're all analyzing the game after playing with iverson/smith/melo/nene/camby in nba live 08?

He sees that Anthony Carter actually runs the offense and that JR doesn't actually play defense and that Carmelo will fall in love with outside shooting to a fault and that having a "non traditional" line-up with size issues is better than a "traditional" line-up with major offensive issues.

smith has always been and will always be a better defender than chucky atkins (i can show this statistically if you like, or you can take my word for it). that doesn't stop karl from giving him significant minutes at the first opportunity he can....despite atkins being little more than a 3 point gunner offensively.
carter actually makes denvers offense worse by 2 points per 100 possessions, while the defense remains the same. the starting unit of carter/iverson/anthony/kmart/camby actually has a negative +/-....why use something non traditional if its not working?

not to mention we watched earl boykins kill our defense, and kill our ball movement for years with karl standing on the side doing nothing except letting him go for 25+mpg. so you have to understand that we're skeptics of his handling of players and his rotations, particularly when they involve short "veteran" players.

The only trouble I have with this theory is the Nuggets have 13 losses, a few that didn't need to be losses - and a big one against Phoenix that just was the end of somebody's rope.

If GK knew enough about basketball to make this an elite team - or at least keep it on pace for his own prediction of 55 wins, - why do we have the 13 losses?

You can attribute this to whatever you want - but the bottom line is not only does GK have to know more about basketball than the average joe, but he also needs to execute his coaching to a certain level out there.

And the work ethic and the energy and the motivation all comes from the coach, and that's what I see lagging - throwing ideas in there like play JR more are just desperate attempts from fans like myself to do better than what we see happening.

To be honest, I would be happy with just more hustle and a running team actually running.

corona wrote: bunch of team stats applied to individuals

I'm not entirely disagreeing with you, but the +/- stats can be affected by a lot of external factors.

I'd be interested to know a stat that tracks how many careless passes or travels or lack of awareness that the ball is coming - add those all up and call it a "careless" stat. A turnover is a turnover - but a careless player?

generally true, but you want to praise a guy, who wrote such a bull as Knicks are the most talented team on paper? He's clearly an idiot there. What is that talent? Washed up Marbury? Selfish Crawford, Curry and Randolph, who play no defense? Couple of terrible overpaid role players?

On an unrelated note, I once had a NBA Live lineup of:

Billups
Iverson
Kobe
Melo
Rasheed

and absolutely no bench. Thus proving Basketball video games lack any sort of realism, whatsoever.