I've decided to make this post because I read from multiple sources including NBA FanHouse and ESPN that Chauncey will probably miss the Friday Norleans game, and that Anthony Carter is going to start. I know that stats aren't everything, but I decided to see how AC has been doing so far this season, especially from the PG spot.
For this, I decided to use 82games.com's vast database of basketball-related facts and basketball-reference.com and its stats.
I decided to start with the 5-man units. Excluding the ones with Billups, Anthony Carter does not appear in any of them for more than 10 minutes apiece. Most of the 5-man lineups ended up in a negative plus-minus score (which will be my simple mechanism of measurement). The only two that resulted in a positive score were Lawson-Carter-Graham-Allen-Petro and Carter-Smith-Anthony-Andersen-Nene. The former is utterly useless, as those are our garbage time scrubs. However, the second one is interesting. It was only trotted out once for six minutes but ended up with a plus-minus of +3, and all 6 of those minutes came in the fourth quarter against the Rockets. Truth to be said, 6 minutes isn't enough to draw any conclusions about anything. Also, the other 5-man units ended up in some pretty bad negative numbers, including a -12 in barely over 6 minutes for the Billups-Carter-Anthony-Balkman-Nene lineup, although some of that can be attributed to Balkman's disappearance this season. Even so, that's still a -2 every minute, which, if that were extrapolated over 48 minutes, would be a 96 point loss (shudders).
Bonus interesting fact: 82games.com has given him a 'Hands' rating of 31.6 but I have no idea what the heck that means. So I looked at the ratings of some other point guards, and this is what I got: Lawson has a rating of 20.8, Billups has a rating of 25.1, Brandon Jennings has a rating of 18.7, Jason Kidd has one of 28.5, and Chris Paul has one of 39.6
The on-court and off-court ratings show how well a team does when their player is on the court as opposed to off the court. The Nuggets were a tad better defensively with him off the court (107.0 points per 100 possessions as opposed to 109.4) but were much, much worse offensively (115.7 off as opposed to a mere 106.8 on). On the other hand, Ty Lawson has an incredible on-court offensive rating of 117.6 and a 111.8 while not on the court. His defensive rating differential is similar to AC's. So, in other words, they are about the same defensively but Lawson is WAAAY better offensively. Again, on-court and off-court is just another stat, but they all show that Anthony Carter just isn't that great.
Anthony Carter's stats on basketball-reference are pretty horrendous. He has a win share rating of 0, his FG% is at 36%, and his 3-point % is at 27%. He gives about 5 assists per 36 minutes, which isn't that good for a pass-first point guard. He can't score (6.8 points per 36 minutes, which is a good deal lower than Petro's 9.2), and besides his average rebound rate, he doesn't do much else besides gamble too much for steals.
The point that I am trying to get at is that Anthony Carter, while not absolutely terrible, probably should not have gotten the start over Lawson. I know that there is the veteran quality, but seriously, Lawson deserves his first career start.
Update: According to Aaron Lopez's blog on nuggets.com (you should check it out), Lawson has a sprained left ankle. I knew that there had to be something bothering him, but he doesn't complain. Still doesn't make AC's starting over Lawson agreeable.
Update 2: Since AC is going to have to guard CP3, he should study some film of him.
Maybe he should try watching this. Or this.
If you managed to survive my ramble, or if you just decided to skip ahead past the jump, you should post your opinions in the comment section below.
