(This is a Fast Break Excerpt from the full "Game, Team, and League Report." Since a point guard in general and one of the best point guards in the world in particular has a greater strategic value to a team than a small forward who plays for a team without an offensive blueprint to make sure his offensive potential is consistently maintained, it is obvious that the Jazz were at a greater disadvantage without Williams than the Nuggets were without Carmelo Anthony. Generally and in theory, the two most important positions in basketball are center and point guard. And the Nuggets are hosed up, personnel-wise, with respect to both of those positions. In fact, thanks to George Karl and, as far as I know, no one else in the Nuggets organization, the Nuggets are probably about the only team in the NBA which does not subscribe to the theory that you need someone to “run” the offense, to at least some extent. That someone is the designated point guard, who in turn is supposed to be the best guard on the team who can run the offense, to an extent chosen by that point guard and by the coach of the team. Notice I said “the best guard on the team who can run the offense.” I did NOT say “the best point guard”, because it is theoretically possible (and it is a reality with the Nuggets as we speak) that a guard who is considered primarily a 2-guard is the best guard on the team who is qualified to make some plays without sacrificing Kobe Bryant type potential at the 2-guard. Does anyone honestly believe that Allen Iverson at 2-guard is really comparable to Kobe Bryant or Manu Ginobili at 2-guard? Unless you are a renegade and you have rejected the point guard framework entirely, if you are the Coach of the Nuggets, you have no choice but to slide Iverson over to point guard, whether you like his style or not. You might have to call it "making the best of a bad situation", but that's what you do. The point guard keeps the offense running by motivating his teammates to keep moving, cutting, screening, getting into well chosen scoring positions, and then making the scores. One playmaker and four movers, cutters, screeners, position establishers, and scorers is what the almost universally accepted basic framework for a basketball offense is. But the problem is, and it is one hell of a problem, that George Karl does not accept the universal framework for an offense! He was miked up during the Lakers four games to zero dismantling of the Nuggets and he was caught red handed on national television pleading with his team to pass the ball more and to try more to get the ball to the open man. Let me repeat that: he was pleading with his whole team to do that. Whereas more sensible and realistic coaches, if they ever plead for that at all, are going to plead with the specialist responsible for that kind of thing, their point guard. And I recently saw a video of him that was posted on the internet. In this video, he is instructing his players to do something quickly with the ball other than dribbling or holding it. This sounds good so far, but I must pause and point out that he has either never told Iverson this or else allows Iverson to defy him and everyone else on this, because everyone knows Iverson does not feel any need to quickly pass, shoot, or penetrate, as opposed to holding and especially dribbling. Iverson is dribbling and getting caught in traps and double teams and so forth as often as he always did in Philadelphia. So Mr. Karl has not insisted that Iverson follow the thou shall not dribble around and make our team easy to defend command. And if he hasn’t made sure that Iverson doesn’t do it, what’s the point of getting worked up too much if others do it? Because let’s face it: your offense is already messed up from just Iverson alone doing it. Who would have known that by outward appearances a man who seems the ultimate establishment basketball figure, George Karl, is actually a renegade on this and certain other tenets of basketball, tenets that range from widely accepted to almost universally accepted. In this world, there are wolves in sheep’s clothing and in basketball, apparently there are basketball renegades posing as traditional, boring establishment figures. Mr. Karl simply doesn’t think a point guard should be primarily responsible for making plays or for keeping the passing game alive. Because he thinks all players should be responsible for that. And I and most other basketball folks don’t see how his way of thinking can be the better way in most real game situations. Ever since cave man days, human society has been moving in the direction of more and more specialization. Because more specialization is almost always more efficient and is generally more effective than less specialization Even if the minority of coaches who agree with Karl and disagree with me is a bigger group than I think, it doesn’t change the fact that they are wrong. If they think, for example, that the faster pace and the greater “surprise the defense” advantages that might come with a basically “no real point guard offense” are greater than the advantages you get with a designated, responsible point guard, I feel sorry for them. All the other team needs is a few smart and quick defenders and they will largely offset the extra speed and ability to surprise that you get from having no real point guard. And then the remaining advantage you have left will be small compared with the advantages you get with the designated point guard concept behind the offense. A position in basketball is at the most only about 2/3 as fixed (or important if you prefer) with respect to figuring out how to coach the team and games. But to think that you can start distributing around all five positions what a point guard alone does for most teams, or what a center does for most teams, or what any other position does, you have gone way, way too far. You are a sports and basketball renegade in fact. The Nuggets “We don’t really know who the point guard is and neither do we care” offense produced a soft 17 assists, which equaled the Jazz’ 17 assists without their ace point guard. Roughly but accurately speaking it was a game without point guards, which incidentally most game watchers do not enjoy as much as a game with them. So don’t forget it: George Karl may be as establishment as you can get resume wise and officially speaking. But when you look at the philosophy and the beliefs that determine his chosen strategies and tactics for his team, he is more than a little bit of a renegade and more than a little bit of a, dare I say it, 1960’s hippie. Could it be that Mr. Karl never outgrew the Beetles, the Doors, and even the Greatful Dead? Maybe not.
