The Rockets dropped to 15-28 with today's loss to the Heat. In games in which Tracy McGrady has played, they're a more respectable (but still disappointing) 15-15. When McGrady is out of the lineup (due to back spasms), they're 0-13. Clearly, he has demonstrated through his absence just how vital he is to his team's success this season.

Which other players have proven themselves to be indispensable to their teams this year? Alternatively, along the lines of Bill Simmons' Ewing Theory, which players seem to be bringing their teams down? This analysis looks at players that have logged enough minutes and missed enough games to warrant inclusion:

• Appeared in at least 10 games
• Missed at least 5 games
• Averaging at least 25 minutes per game

For each player meeting these criteria, I compared his team's winning percentage in games in which he played to the winning percentage in games in which he didn't play. First of all, here are the players who appear to be doing more harm than good:

Expendable Players (through games of 1/29/2006)

Team	Player	Played	Missed	Difference
Raptors	Jose Calderon	11-29	4-1	(0.525)
Grizzlies	Mike Miller	20-18	5-0	(0.474)
Celtics	Mark Blount	14-25	4-1	(0.441)
Mavericks	Marquis Daniels	19-9	15-1	(0.259)
Kings	Shareef Abdur-Rahim	12-22	6-4	(0.247)
Nuggets	Kenyon Martin	17-18	8-3	(0.242)
Magic	Jameer Nelson	15-22	3-2	(0.195)
Kings	Peja Stojakovic	11-20	7-6	(0.184)
Bucks	Bobby Simmons	19-18	4-2	(0.153)
Bucks	T.J. Ford	19-18	4-2	(0.153)

Notes:

• No true Ewing Theory candidates here ... a few of them are former All-Stars, but none receives an inordinate amount of attention.
• Obviously, 2 of these players (Blount and Stojakovic) were literally expendable, having been traded last week.
• The Kings are 4-1 this year in games in which both Stojakovic and Abdur-Rahim do not play.
• Abdur-Rahim has posted solid numbers (19.6 PPG, 8.0 RPG) for almost a decade in the league, but famously has yet to play for a winning team.
• The identical played vs. missed records for the Bucks' Simmons and Ford are just a coincidence--they have no overlapping missed games.

At the other end of the spectrum, here are the players whose teams are doing much better when they're in the lineup this year:

Indispensable Players (through games of 1/29/2006)

Team	Player	Played	Missed	Difference
Rockets	Tracy McGrady	15-15	0-13	0.500
Jazz	Andrei Kirilenko	19-15	2-8	0.359
Magic	Steve Francis	17-19	1-5	0.306
Nuggets	Earl Boykins	23-17	2-4	0.242
Heat	James Posey	25-15	2-3	0.225
Pacers	Ron Artest	10-6	11-15	0.202
Heat	Shaquille O'Neal	18-9	9-9	0.167
Bobcats	Emeka Okafor	8-18	3-16	0.150
Cavs	Larry Hughes	18-10	7-7	0.143
Grizzlies	Damon Stoudamire	17-10	8-8	0.130

Notes:

• The Heat are winning more this year with Shaq in the lineup, although last year his presence throughout the regular season and playoffs seemed to have little impact on the bottom line: The Heat were 62-24 in games that he played, and 8-3 in games that he missed.
• Posey appears on the list because in most of the games that he missed, Shaq was also out. As with "unadjusted" plus/minus ratings, it's important to keep other factors like this in mind.
• The effect of Hughes' presence on the Wizards last season was very similar to his effect on the Cavs this year: both teams were several games above .500 with him in the lineup, and right around .500 with him out.

Kobe Bryant set a new career high tonight with 81 points--the 2nd highest total in NBA history. How does that game stack up against Michael Jordan's career-best 69-point game?

Player	Date	Min	FG	3P	FT	Reb	Ass	PF	St	TO	Blk	Pts	Game Score
Michael Jordan	03/28/1990	50	23-37	2-6	21-23	18	6	5	4	2	1	69	64.6
Kobe Bryant	01/22/2006	42	28-46	7-13	18-20	6	2	1	3	3	1	81	63.5

Here's a quick Nick Bakay-style breakdown:

Category	Michael Jordan	Kobe Bryant	Edge
Scoring	69	81	Kobe
All Around Game	18 rebounds, 6 assists, 4 steals, 64.6 Hollinger Game Score	6 rebounds, 2 assists, 3 steals, 63.5 Game Score	MJ
Opponent Strength	1989-90 Cavaliers (42-40, 7th seed)	2005-06 Raptors (14-27, lottery-bound)	MJ
Strength of Primary Defender	Craig Ehlo	Jalen Rose	MJ From Wikipedia: Rose is now focusing his attention on making his "Jalen Rose Messenger Toolbar" a success.
Venue Difficulty	Richfield Coliseum in Cleveland	Staples Center in L.A.	MJ The Bulls had eliminated the Cavs from the playoffs in the prior 2 seasons
Sidekick Contribution	Scottie Pippen 3-10, 7 points, 8 rebounds, 7 assists, 5 steals, 8 turnovers	Lamar Odom 1-7, 8 points, 10 rebounds, 7 assists, 2 blocks, 4 turnovers	Push
Coach	Phil Jackson	Jackson	Push
Overall	One of the greatest performances by the best player of all-time	Best performance by one of the greatest players (so far)	MJ

Shaquille O'Neal went through a lot this past MLK Day:

• Being shamed into a pregame Kobe Bryant acknowledgement.
• Bearing the Andrew Bynum dunk and subsequent brouhaha.
• Losing to the Lakers for the first time since joining the Heat.

Watching Monday's game clarified an unfortunate fact for me: we're very close to having zero superstar centers left in the league. As noted on TNT, Shaq is averaging career lows in points, rebounds, field goal percentage, and free throw percentage. His minutes are also way down, thanks to nagging injuries that seem like they'll never go away.

1994 MVP Voting 1. Hakeem Olajuwon 2. David Robinson 3. Scottie Pippen 4. Shaquille O'Neal 5. Patrick Ewing

1995 MVP Voting 1. David Robinson 2. Shaquille O'Neal 3. Karl Malone 4. Patrick Ewing 5. Hakeem Olajuwon

Looking back, the 1993-94 and 1994-95 seasons were good times for centers in the NBA. MJ was off playing baseball, which left David Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, and Shaq to dominate the league. They finished 1-2-4-5 in the MVP voting both years. Hakeem's Rockets won titles both years, knocking off Ewing's Knicks in '94 and Shaq's Magic in '95.

Since then, The Diesel has been pretty much carrying the mantle on his own. He's the last great true center, and the last of the 50 Greatest Players, but it doesn't look like he has much left in the tank.

To test this impression, I decided to chart John Hollinger's Player Efficiency Rating (PER) by age for our most recent star centers, to see where Shaq fits in on the curve:

As you can see, O'Neal got an earlier start than the other guys, and seemed to peak at an earlier age (26). His decline doesn't look too healthy, although at 33, his PER this year is still in the same ballpark as the other players' PER at that age.

However, since PER is a per-minute statistic, it doesn't take into account differences in number of minutes played. For Shaq this year, that makes a difference. He's playing 28 minutes a game, whereas the other 3 guys played an average of 36 minutes a game when they were 33. So, I decided to generate a per-game PER by multiplying the PER by minutes and dividing by 48 to build this chart:

Here, O'Neal's early decline is much more pronounced. His 33-year-old per-game rating is on par with the other center's ratings at 36-37 years. And at the current rate, he could be out of the league in another 1-2 years. This isn't such good news for the Heat, who owe him another $80 million through 2010.

Hopefully, Shaq will be able to turn things around and stay productive for another few years. If not, the league will have some big shoes to fill.

There was an interesting exchange a few days ago between ESPN.com's Bill Simmons (aka The Sports Guy) and 82games.com regarding Doc Rivers' merits as the Celtics head coach. In his January 12 article, Simmons has Doc on the wrong end of all 8 elements of his "Bad Coaching Index":

1. Lousy record in close games
2. Too many turnovers
3. Too many offensive rebounds allowed
4. Not enough winning streaks
5. Opposing 3-point percentage
6. Lousy record on the road
7. Lack of a consistent rotation
8. Downright stupidity

82games.com responded with some detailed statistics on blown leads/comebacks and clutch play, which showed that Boston has indeed blown a lot of leads this season. On the other hand, other aspects of their clutch play this year aren't that bad, and their comeback/blown lead ratio was one of the league's best last year.

I decided to take on this question from a different angle, by attempting to rate NBA coaches on their "game coaching" abilities. Game coaching includes clock management, player matchups, crunch-time play-calling ... a lot of the things that Simmons was complaining about with Doc. To me, the best way to measure this is by evaluating the difference between the number of games a coach's team should win and the number of games they actually win.

In his Basketball on Paper book, Dean Oliver includes a method for calculating a team's expected wins by incorporating their points scored and points allowed into a Pythagorean-like formula. The version that I used for this analysis also appears on ESPN.com's NBA RPI page:

Expected Winning Percentage = Points Scored ^ 16.5 / (Points Scored ^ 16.5 + Points Allowed ^ 16.5)

In the table below, I used this formula to calculate the actual vs. expected career regular season winning percentages for all 30 active NBA coaches (through games of 1/14/06). Once again, thanks to Basketball-Reference.com for providing most of the raw data.

		Actual			Expected
Rank	Coach	Wins	Losses	Pct.	Wins	Losses	Pct.	Difference
1	Terry Stotts	71	101	41.3%	57	115	33.1%	8.1%
2	Avery Johnson	43	12	78.2%	39	16	70.9%	7.3%
3	Lawrence Frank	86	70	55.1%	78	78	50.0%	5.1%
4	George Karl	759	526	59.1%	700	585	54.5%	4.6%
5	Eddie Jordan	119	177	40.2%	107	189	36.1%	4.1%
6	Maurice Cheeks	180	157	53.4%	173	164	51.3%	2.1%
7	Larry Brown	1000	762	56.8%	976	786	55.4%	1.4%
8	Mike Montgomery	51	67	43.2%	50	68	42.4%	0.8%
9	Nate McMillan	224	207	52.0%	221	210	51.3%	0.7%
10	Flip Saunders	440	331	57.1%	435	336	56.4%	0.6%
11	Scott Skiles	197	184	51.7%	195	186	51.2%	0.5%
12	Mike Woodson	22	95	18.8%	22	95	18.8%	0.0%
13	Mike Dunleavy	482	503	48.9%	483	502	49.0%	-0.1%
14	Pat Riley	1122	574	66.2%	1125	571	66.3%	-0.2%
15	Mike D'Antoni	121	108	52.8%	122	107	53.3%	-0.4%
16	Jeff Van Gundy	356	263	57.5%	363	256	58.6%	-1.1%
17	Bob Hill	259	217	54.4%	265	211	55.7%	-1.3%
18	Doc Rivers	230	227	50.3%	236	221	51.6%	-1.3%
19	Brian Hill	235	248	48.7%	242	241	50.1%	-1.4%
20	Phil Jackson	852	333	71.9%	870	315	73.4%	-1.5%
21	Rick Carlisle	225	138	62.0%	231	132	63.6%	-1.7%
22	Rick Adelman	722	464	60.9%	744	442	62.7%	-1.9%
23	Jerry Sloan	962	635	60.2%	994	603	62.2%	-2.0%
24	Bernie Bickerstaff	366	433	45.8%	383	416	47.9%	-2.1%
25	Mike Fratello	635	507	55.6%	670	472	58.7%	-3.1%
26	Byron Scott	184	222	45.3%	197	209	48.5%	-3.2%
27	Sam Mitchell	45	73	38.1%	49	69	41.5%	-3.4%
28	Gregg Popovich	483	242	66.6%	515	210	71.0%	-4.4%
29	Mike Brown	20	14	58.8%	22	12	64.7%	-5.9%
30	Dwayne Casey	17	17	50.0%	19	15	55.9%	-5.9%

A few notes:

• Using this metric, Doc is just below average, losing 4 games that he should have won for his career (including 1 this season).
• Terry Stotts did a great job in his 2 seasons with the Hawks, winning 8 more games than expected over that period. But he's done even better this year with the Bucks, leading what should be a 13-22 team to a 19-16 record.
• With his relatively passive bench demeanor, the fact that Phil Jackson should have won 18 more regular season games over the years isn't too surprising.
• Rick Adelman's relatively low rank isn't much of a surprise, either--after 16 years of coaching in the league, he still looks lost at times on the bench.

Of course, game coaching is just one aspect of an NBA coach's job. More importantly, he is expected to teach, motivate, and implement offensive and defensive schemes to maximize the output of his players. Or, as Simmons puts it:

See, it's not that hard to coach an NBA team. You need nice suits. You need a voice. And you need to keep it simple. Doc Rivers only does two of the three. And that's why he needs to go.

A few new enhancements were deployed to the lowpost.net NBA weblog tracker last night. Here are the most prominent features added since the last update 4 weeks ago:

• Rankings for the most popular players, teams, and other NBA-related personnel, sorted by the number of posts that reference them. It's no surprise that Ron Artest has dominated NBA blogs for most of the season.
• A search engine, available from most every page. It queries posts as well as players, teams, and other personnel (check the right sidebar of the search results page).
• Archived stories, available via the Recent Threads home page. With this, you can check out the top stories from yesterday or as far back as New Year's Day. This should become more interesting down the road.

Changes from here on will probably roll out less frequently, but if you have additional ideas or feedback, feel free to pass them along.

2006! Two months down, three and a half to go in the regular season. It's time again to look at the best and worst individual performances from the past month. The ratings are based on John Hollinger's Game Scores formula; see last month for an explanation.

Best Performances

Player	Date	Min	FG	3P	FT	Reb	Ass	PF	St	TO	Blk	Pts	Score	Outcome
Kobe Bryant	12/20	33	18-31	4-10	22-25	8	0	3	3	2	0	62	49.7	Win
Allen Iverson	12/23	45	17-31	0-1	19-21	6	5	0	2	0	0	53	44.6	Loss
LeBron James	12/10	43	19-29	5-9	9-10	7	7	5	2	3	0	52	42.9	Loss
Vince Carter	12/23	44	13-25	2-5	23-24	8	4	3	0	2	0	51	41.1	Win
Carmelo Anthony	12/13	40	13-18	1-1	15-18	8	4	4	4	4	2	42	39.2	Win
Dwyane Wade	12/11	47	15-27	0-1	11-13	10	8	3	4	2	1	41	38.6	Win
Elton Brand	12/23	40	14-25	0-0	10-10	20	5	3	1	3	3	38	38.1	Win
Vince Carter	12/09	44	15-21	3-4	5-8	11	6	1	4	4	2	38	37.0	Win
LeBron James	12/17	46	12-19	2-4	15-16	5	10	3	1	4	0	41	36.4	Win
Paul Pierce	12/02	42	12-21	5-8	14-18	11	5	2	4	6	1	43	36.2	Loss

With one of the top 10 performances since 1987-88, Kobe Bryant's 3-quarter, 62-point outburst against Dallas naturally tops this list. Many have commented on the fact that Black Mamba didn't get a single assist in that game, but it was still an amazing offensive display.

Other notes:

• All 10 of these performances beat out the best game from November. Gilbert Arenas' 43-point game from 11/12/05 now ranks 13th overall on the season. Apparently, guys entered the season feeling a little rusty.
• Top individual performances continue to lead to team wins in most cases. Philadelphia hasn't done that well in Allen Iverson's big games this year, though. AI now has 5 of the top 25 performances for the season to date, but the Sixers lost 3 of those games.
• 3 of the top performances were delivered on 12/23, including 50+ point games from Iverson and Vince Carter.

Worst Performances

Player	Date	Min	FG	3P	FT	Reb	Ass	PF	St	TO	Blk	Pts	Score	Outcome
Ronald Murray	12/28	28	1-12	0-2	1-2	2	1	1	0	4	1	3	-7.8	Loss
Antoine Walker	12/05	18	0-10	0-6	0-0	4	1	4	0	0	0	0	-6.3	Loss
Rashad McCants	12/13	6	0-6	0-4	0-0	1	0	1	0	2	0	0	-5.9	Loss
Maurice Williams	12/17	39	3-15	0-5	2-2	1	2	2	0	5	0	8	-5.4	Loss
Anthony Carter	12/30	12	1-3	0-0	0-0	0	0	4	1	5	0	2	-5.3	Loss
Mark Madsen	12/28	13	0-1	0-0	0-0	0	0	4	0	3	0	0	-5.3	Win
Eduardo Najera	12/10	19	0-3	0-0	0-0	2	0	5	0	2	0	0	-5.1	Loss
Matt Harpring	12/20	17	0-2	0-0	0-0	2	1	3	0	4	0	0	-4.9	Loss
Keith McLeod	12/14	11	0-3	0-1	0-0	0	0	2	0	2	0	0	-4.9	Win
Jumaine Jones	12/23	18	0-6	0-1	0-0	4	0	2	1	2	0	0	-4.8	Loss

The Northwest Division is the worst division in the league right now, and looking at this list, it's not hard to see why. 7 out of the 10 worst individual performances were delivered for Northwest teams. Seattle guard Flip Murray led the pack with a 1-for-12 outing on 12/28/05 that led to 2 of his teammates asking that he be traded.

Minnesota features 3 different players on this list:

• Anthony Carter, who qualified with a 0-assist, 5-turnover performance. I continue to be amazed by the fact that with a career FG% of .385, Carter is still in the league. Do we have that much of a shortage of backup point guards?
• Mark Madsen, whose weak showing came on the same night as Murray's poor shooting game. He banged for 13 minutes without collecting a single rebound.
• Rashad McCants, who is having a tough rookie season--currently ranking 2nd-to-last among shooting guards in Hollinger's Player Efficiency Rating. Nevertheless, teammates are campaigning to get him more minutes.