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Last Wednesday, a note by the Denver Post's Benjamin Hochman about the Denver Nuggets got a lot of play around the Internet. With their core players (Carmelo Anthony, Chauncey Billups, Kenyon Martin and Nenê) healthy, Hochman noted, the Nuggets had gone 27-6 (now 28-7 after Sunday's loss to the L.A. Lakers). That .800 clip is better than any team has done overall this season.
While interesting, that statistic is missing some context. First, as Hochman pointed out, other teams have also faced injuries, so their overall winning percentages don't get the same benefit of cherry-picking periods when they are short-handed. Second, we don't know what Denver's schedule was like in those games or the team's point differential. Wins and losses alone are not a perfect measure of team performance.
To dig deeper, I decided to break down the seven top contenders in the NBA--Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland, Denver, the L.A. Lakers, Orlando and Utah--by their performance at full strength and with various key players out of the lineup. For each game, we're using a schedule-adjusted version of point differential. So, for example, on Sunday the Lakers beat Denver by six points. An average team playing at home against the Nuggets would lose by 1.1 points--the difference between Denver's own schedule-adjusted differential over the course of the season (+4.6) and home-court advantage (worth 3.5 points). L.A.'s performance, then, was a +7.1 in that game compared to an average team. Even in a loss, the Nuggets were +3.7 above average because of the difficulty of beating the Lakers on the road.
Some of the results at the team level were expected, but others were surprising. Let's take them one at a time.
Atlanta Hawks
Absence G Diff
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Jamal Crawford 1 -19.7
Marvin Williams 1 8.7
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Healthy 56 4.4
John Hollinger beat me to this observation last Friday, but if you're curious why the Hawks have exceeded expectations by so much in 2009-10, the above table isn't a bad place to start. (I'd also recommend Josh Smith's stat line.) Atlanta has been amazingly healthy, with just one game missed by a starter all season. I'm also including one or two key reserves per team in this analysis, and Crawford certainly qualifies. The Hawks missed him tremendously when he sat out a 94-76 home loss to Miami on Feb. 10, but overall their schedule-adjusted point differential barely budges, naturally. Every other legitimate contender has played at least 20 games minus one of their key players. Compared to that, the Hawks have been extraordinarily lucky in terms of health.
Boston Celtics
Absence G Diff
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Kevin Garnett 9 -0.2
Paul Pierce 8 -4.1
Ray Allen 1 -6.0
Garnett + Pierce 1 -11.4
Garnett/Pierce/Rondo 1 2.6
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Healthy 37 7.5
Perhaps the Celtics' loss to New Jersey on Saturday shouldn't be so surprising given how poorly the team has played with Paul Pierce out of this lineup this season. Nope, still a shocker, but Boston certainly has missed Garnett and Pierce (though oddly, the Celtics won the game they played without both veterans and Rajon Rondo, toppling Toronto at home). Boston's adjusted differential when healthy looks pretty robust, but there are two important caveats. First, can we count on the Celtics to truly be healthy again at any point this season? Second, most of that impressive score was built up in November and December. Over the last two months, Boston has played just 10 games at full strength and has a middling +3.7 adjusted differential in those outings.
Cleveland Cavaliers
Absence G Diff
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West + Williams 9 7.1
Delonte West 6 5.8
West + O'Neal 3 7.8
Mo Williams 2 9.8
Shaquille O'Neal 2 5.1
O'Neal + Varejao 2 -9.2
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Healthy 36 7.5
The Cavaliers have faced plenty of injuries this season and have done an admirable job of handling them. The only time Cleveland has looked vulnerable has been when centers Shaquille O'Neal and Anderson Varejao both went down in mid-November. The Cavaliers managed to cover for the absences of guards Delonte West and Mo Williams with little to no drop-off. They'll get another chance to show their depth with O'Neal likely to miss the next 6-8 weeks following thumb surgery. With Zydrunas Ilgauskas unable to re-sign with the team until at least March 22 (assuming he doesn't stun observers by choosing to head elsewhere), Cleveland will be thin in the middle, but a smaller, quicker lineup with J.J. Hickson in the middle showed promise in a win at Boston last Thursday.
Denver Nuggets
Absence G Diff
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Carmelo Anthony 9 4.1
Kenyon Martin 6 0.6
J.R. Smith 6 10.0
Chauncey Billups 5 0.2
Anthony + Billups 4 0.4
Martin + Smith 1 -17.4
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Healthy 29 6.5
The numbers show that injuries to either Chauncey Billups or Kenyon Martin have essentially reduced the Nuggets to an average team, though they've been able to survive the absence of Carmelo Anthony more successfully and thrived when J.R. Smith was suspended by the NBA for the season's first seven games. That fact explains part of why Denver's adjusted differential when at full strength doesn't seem quite as impressive as advertised by the record. Add in games Smith missed (they were included in the original healthy 28-7 record) and the Nuggets' adjusted differential improves to +7.4, which is good but still by no means best among these teams.
Los Angeles Lakers
Absence G Diff
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Pau Gasol 15 -0.4
Ron Artest 5 5.4
Kobe Bryant 3 8.5
Bryant + Bynum 2 17.8
Bynum + Gasol 2 11.3
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Healthy 33 8.1
Your best team in the NBA at full strength is the same team that took home the trophy last year. The difference for the Lakers is almost entirely the 17 games Pau Gasol missed at the start of the season and in January. The Lakers weren't exactly a lottery team without him, going 11-6, but they benefited from a home-friendly schedule in those periods and were only average when we account for that. The Lakers were much more successful during the five games Bryant sat out after spraining his left ankle before the All-Star break. Add in the two games that Andrew Bynum also missed and the Lakers posted a +12.2 adjusted differential in Bryant's absence, winning three games against playoff-bound teams--two on the road.
Orlando Magic
Absence G Diff
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Jameer Nelson 17 7.5
Rashard Lewis 6 2.9
Lewis + Carter 4 2.9
Vince Carter 3 14.4
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Healthy 30 4.4
The Magic has actually been better this season when short-handed than when at full strength. That fact probably owes largely to the fact that Jameer Nelson was a shell of his healthy self when he returned from arthroscopic knee surgery in late December. Orlando was rolling without Nelson, and now that he's playing better basketball--reaching double-figures scoring in his last eight games and averaging 6.7 assists per game in February--the Magic has returned to that same level, posting a +7.6 adjusted differential in the month.
Utah Jazz
Absence G Diff
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Andrei Kirilenko 8 5.9
Mehmet Okur 6 8.1
Deron Williams 4 12.0
Williams + Boozer 1 -0.5
Williams + Kirilenko 1 -4.4
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Healthy 37 3.8
Even more than the Magic, the Jazz has been the league's most resilient team in the face of injuries--until two of the team's starters go down at the same time. Still, by looking outside the top six of the rotation, it's possible to find an explanation for why Utah has played so much better since the start of 2010. The Jazz played the first 17 games of the season without both Kyle Korver and C.J. Miles, compromising the team's depth on the wing. Since getting Miles back, Utah has posted a +5.8 adjusted differential.
Having looked at all these numbers, I'm not entirely sure how to interpret them. Injuries happen in the playoffs, and deeper teams will have the ability to overcome them. At the same time, my instinct is that it is probably preferable to have a higher ceiling when healthy. That being the case, if Pau Gasol stays healthy, the Lakers are going to be very difficult to beat this spring--as they reminded a Denver team at full strength yesterday.
Follow Kevin on Twitter at @kpelton.
Kevin Pelton is an author of Basketball Prospectus.
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