Denver Nuggets: the signal and the noise

It was the best water I’d ever tasted.

I lived in Fort Collins, where the water was already pristine and cold coming straight out of the tap. My father had stumbled across an affordable water filter that mounted to the end of the tap to possibly make it even better. We were excited to try it out, and installed it right as he got home. We both grabbed glasses of water and stood at the kitchen sink, gulping it down. I’ll be damned if the water wasn’t even better. I was thrilled.

A couple weeks of the-best-water-in-the-world later, I came running into the house from mowing the lawn, as I was parched. There was no time for a glass, I simply stuck my head under the tap and flipped on the water. As I gulped, I ended up looking at the underside of the filter, and noticed a nasty crack running down one side, from end to end. Almost like… a different piece…

I stood up and stared at the filter for a second, and twisted the side where the crack was. The water stopped completely.

For a second, anyway. Then, the filter sputtered, and water started coming out of the filter itself. For the first time since I’d seen it, the water was actually being filtered. I’d been drinking the same water the whole time. Son. Of. A. Bitch.

I don’t trust my eyes or heart as much ever since.

I’m admittedly a pretty big fan of Kenneth Faried’s game, even acknowledging that it has a weak spot or two. Most players have at least one weakness, and the Manimal often makes up for his with one of the most exciting and dynamic baseline games out there. So when Faried stepped out to speak about the upcoming season two days ago for Media Day, I was interested in hearing him out when he spoke up about his beliefs in himself and his feelings about being a starter. There were moments during the last four seasons in which the Manimal was one of the few reasons to watch the Denver Nuggets play. And the Faried/Nikola Jokic combo last season was a dangerous pair that saw a great deal of success for the Nuggets.

But having watched Paul Millsap from afar in Utah and Atlanta, and seeing his play, I had a hard time believing Faried was on par there, right? Should Faried start over Millsap? I thought a bit of data in order, to make sure I wasn’t drinking the water.

With Basketball Reference as my guide, I started pulling some career stats for both gents, to see for myself. I’ll include screenshots below, but the link in the first sentence pulls up the same comparison, if you prefer the HTML in another tab.

I compared four sets of numbers through two different lenses. I looked at each players per-game, per-36, per-100, and advanced stats for their careers and for last season (as they are in different parts of their career arc with a four-year age gap between the two. Here’s a little of what I saw: