Born a Nuggets Fan has moved to Pickaxe and Roll
Jon Hollinger pointed out in a recent chat that the Nuggets are third in the league in defensive efficiency. I almost fell out of my chair.
What is the one area that we can all point to where the Nuggets have struggled mightily almost all season? We are all constantly railing on the Nuggets defense. How on earth can the Denver Nuggets under any statistical measurement be one of the league leaders in any defensive category other than steals? The Nuggets are only yielding 97.9 points per 100 possessions safely ahead of teams such as San Antonio, New Orleans, Detroit and Chicago. Good for third in the league.
How on earth is this possible? I had to investigate. My initial gut feeling was that the Nuggets had built up such a solid defensive efficiency rating during their six game winning streak earlier on in the season was somewhat artificially inflating their rating.
Defensive efficiency is determined by how many points a team gives up per 100 possessions. To test that theory I added up the total possessions in each of those six games then divided the number of points they gave up in those six games by the number of possessions. Then I multiplied that points per possession number by 100 to get points per 100 possessions and my rough estimate of their defensive efficiency.
The Nuggets opponents had 616 possessions over those six games, but they only scored 565 points. That amounts to a 91.7 defensive efficiency rating which is absolutely stellar. There is the smoking gun. They only reason they have such a good rating is because those six games were so low that it has placed them far above where they should be.
To prove that point further and show how absolutely atrocious the Nuggets defense has been I decided to determine what their defensive efficiency rating is for the other 14 games they have played. I will not bore you with my eighth grade algebraic methods, but the results were not exactly what I expected.
Using the Nuggets’ pace factor (don’t ask unless you want to be bored by more math talk) their opponents had roughly 1,468 possessions over those other 14 games and they had scored 1483 points. That amounted to a 101.0 defensive efficiency rating. That is just over three points per game worse. That sounds bad, but here is the kicker. After removing those six games where they undoubtedly played very good defense against some poor teams that 101.0 rating still would rank ninth in the league ahead of teams such as Miami, Toronto, Dallas and Cleveland who much more well known than the Nuggets for their defense.
My next guess was they were putting up such a good defensive rating because thanks to Marcus Camby, they league’s leading rebounder, they prohibit teams from getting many second chance opportunities.
Upon further review that is definitely not it. From watching their games it seems like the Nuggets give up more than their fair share of offensive rebounds and they do. They are the sixth worst defensive rebounding team in the league, even with Camby having such a great season on the boards. The truth is they have a very good defensive efficiency rating despite the fact that they allow a bunch of second and even third chances to the other team.
What conclusion can we draw from this information? Perhaps the Nuggets are athletic enough that even with a subpar effort and lack of focus, they actually are a decent defensive team. If that is true, just think how good they would be if they put forth a maximum effort on defense every night. They could be an absolutely dominant defensive team.
This has rocked many of my assumptions to the bone. Perhaps bacon double cheeseburgers are not healthy for me to eat every other day. Maybe Santa doesn’t actually exist. Could it even be that I am not as suave and good looking as I think I am.
Nah, I bet by the end of the season the Nuggets will plummet down the defensive efficiency list and I will be as good looking as ever. However, we will have to pay close attention to the Nuggets place on the defensive efficiency rankings throughout the remainder of the season.
