Rick Carlisle is Caught Red-Handed Making George Karl Type Coaching Errors
In the Real Coach Ratings that were reported at the end of November Quest for the Ring (QFTR) informed everyone that Dallas Mavericks Coach Rick Carlisle has been repeatedly badly beaten in the playoffs. In fact, Carlisle’s playoffs record is substantially worse than that of Denver Nuggets Coach George Karl! Rounding to the nearest whole number, both Carlisle and Karl have lost ten playoff games that should have been wins. But Carlisle has done this out of just 78 playoff games coached, whereas with Karl it took 167 playoff games for him to lose ten that he should have won. But both of them are near the bottom of the heap in terms of playoffs coaching and QFTR is certain that neither of them will ever win a Championship.
When in 2009 the Mavs and the Nuggets played in the West semifinal, the two most unsuccessful playoffs coaches among current coaches were matched up head to head. At that time, when the Nuggets thrashed the Mavericks, how bad Carlisle is at coaching in the playoffs was not known. This greatly increased the worry level here at QFTR that we might possibly have overstated how bad Karl is. Had we had to apologize for overstating how bad Karl is we probably would have shut down QFTR! But today, virtually everything that happened in 2009 makes total sense. There are as always a small number of mostly minor mysteries left over from that one of a kind Nuggets year, and there is one medium mystery: why did it take so long for the Lakers to buckle down and use their offensive system to overcome the Nuggets’ defensive overdrive strategy? Fast forward to now, and another similar Lakers mystery appears to be ongoing.
In the 2009 Nuggets-Mavs series, in accordance with the research showing how all the coaches do in the playoffs, neither coach coached well, but Karl clearly outcoached Carlisle. So after this the Nuggets amazingly appeared in the West final against the Lakers. Even more amazingly, the Nuggets in the first four games of that series created the illusion that they could possibly beat the Lakers in that best of seven. When the Lakers demolished the Nuggets to eliminate the Nuggets in game six IN DENVER, 119-92, it was the end of the illusions. Karl had ultimately been outcoached by the master, Phil Jackson. Whenever a team is blown out in an elimination game, coaching has to be at least partly involved, and it surely was here.
FAST FORWARD TO RIGHT NOW: CARLISLE IS CAUGHT RED HANDED
Last night the Dallas Mavericks, still coached by Carlisle, were defeated in their own building (99-93) by the big time revamped and reenergized San Antonio Spurs, coached by one of the very best coaches in the League, Greg Popovich. (Yes, I am starting to think that the Spurs are a real threat to beat the Lakers in the 2011 West Final; more on this later). Although we don’t know ALL of the ways in which Carlisle screws up yet, we do now know that he shares with George Karl the trait of cheating players out of minutes and starts due to personality and style evaluations.
Last night Carlisle refused to play the experienced and at least slightly underrated center Brendan Haywood. Instead, a very young and inexperienced center from France named Alexis Ajinca played. Ajinca has played only 242 minutes in the NBA so technically it is problematic to show a Real Player Rating for him because 300 minutes are wanted for that. But doing it anyway, even QFTR is surprised by how low Ajinca’s rating is. Prior to adding on the Hidden Defending Adjustment his number is only .297. Correctly calculating a HAD is not valid with so few minutes (and would be more difficult than it would be worth anyway) so we just made an educated guess in favor of Ajinca and assumed he is a better hidden defender than 75% of all other players, which gives him a HDA of .235. The resulting overall estimated Real Player Rating for Ajinca is .532. That puts Ajinca in the low end of the marginal role player category; a player with a rating this low should by rights not play in the playoffs and should play sparingly if at all in the regular season on a major playoff team.
So what we saw last night was Ajinca trying to prove himself as a pro in the NBA because he sure has not done so up until now. Ajinca’s game RPR was .736 using an estimated HDA of .140. (Because his plus-minus was miserable it would be absurd to use a HDA higher than this). That is just about the average RPR for centers in the League so you can say that Ajinca was decent in this particular game. (The announcers were gushing about Ajinca as if he was the second coming of Christ, laugh out loud).
But unlike Ajinca, Haywood might have had a game RPR of over 1.000. And the odds are quite high that Haywood would have been at least a little better than Ajinca. By contrast, Ajinca could easily have been a .500. To say that Carlisle was gambling with Ajinca is an understatement. Ajinca played much better in this game than in most prior ones, which matters a lot less than you might think. Ajinca could probably be safely played when the Mavericks were playing bad teams, but to play him when playing the mighty Spurs was just plain stupid.
Brendan Haywood in 2009-10 had a Real Player Rating of .929 for the Mavericks (Superstar) and .744 for the Wizards (Major role player and good enough to start). In 2008-09 Haywood hardly played due to injury. In 2007-08 Haywood’s rating was .833 (Star) using a conservative estimate of .200 for HAD. So Haywood is a bona fide, quality center in the NBA while Ajinca is a shot in the dark. And yet Carlisle plays Ajinca over Haywood in what was an important game for the Mavericks.
True, the Mavericks probably would have lost to the Spurs even if Haywood had played; after all, their historic superstar Dirk Nowitzki was out with a minor injury. But when Haywood didn’t play, anyone watching the game was wasting his or her time because there was no way in hell the Mavericks could possibly have won. So QFTR caught Rick Carlisle red handed making a big coaching error.
A little hunting and clicking around the Internet confirms that some people think that Haywood’s personality (as it shows up on the court anyway) is sort of undependable and a little “soft” at times. Coaches like Carlisle and Karl heavily penalize those who they think have undependable or soft personalities. So we can deduce that Carlisle thought that the very young and very highly motivated Ajinca would do better than the older and relatively inconsistent Haywood. Ajinca’s personality just seemed so much stronger and more dependable than Haywood’s to Carlisle (and to be fair, it might seem that way to others) that Carlisle could not resist making the move.
But this was the wrong decision. Haywood is so much better than Ajinca in basketball terms that the abstract and subjective stuff (that favors Ajinca) could not offset the real basketball stuff. Ajinca was decent in the game but Haywood could have been outstanding in the game if he had been given the opportunity. You might be able to win a regular season game against a medium or bad team with Ajinca but there is no way you are going to beat the Spurs in a playoff game with Ajinca (even with Dirk Nowitzki back).
Overall Haywood is being cheated of minutes by Carlisle, but for the Nuggets George Karl is cheating Renaldo Balkman much more so. Balkman is being robbed of everything by Karl whereas at least Haywood still gets to play in a fairly substantial number of games. By the way, Gary Forbes is apparently the Ajinca for the Nuggets: getting someone else's playing time.
CARLISLE, KARL, AND OTHERS LIVE IN THE NETHERWORLD
The bottom line is that Carlisle apparently lives in the same netherworld as Karl, where players who have personality or style characteristics not liked (by them) don’t get to play as much as they should. You want to know what the real truth is? Its Carlisle’s and Karl’s personalities that are the real problem with respect to winning games, especially playoff games. They are too sensitive about the personality problems of others, which makes their own personalities problematic with respect to winning playoff games.
Meanwhile, successful playoff coaches such as Greg Popovich and Phil Jackson do not overreact to perceived problems with personalities and styles. They coach rather than punish; they try to make little changes where possible, but most of all they try to correctly integrate even the “bad personalities” and the “bad styles” into the team’s offensive and defensive strategies and tactics. And they mostly succeed in doing that, of course. Coaches such as Popovich and Jackson do not expect players’ personalities and styles to magically transform into something completely different while the player is held out of games and is sitting on the bench. Rest assured that Karl and Carlisle are dead wrong: no basketball player’s personality or playing style ever changed worth a damn while he or she was sitting on the bench.
AND RILEY, INTERESTINGLY ENOUGH, SAYS RICK CARLISLE IS "WACK"
