J.A. Adande's Garbage ESPN Article Reminds me why Quest for the Ring is Important
After surging way ahead of the production time available for Quest for the Ring (QFTR) in October, and after about a month of nothing new, its about time for me to get to work on QFTR again. So now, warming up after a few weeks of no new posts, a special little fast break...
Aside from the important stuff like reporting to you exactly how and why NBA playoff games and championships are won, another outstanding reason why QFTR is so necessary is that the standard of sports reporting at the main stream media is often worse than garbage.
Consider this article which was the first piece of smelly trash I see when checking on the latest Nuggets developments at ESPN.com: “George Karl, Ultimate Players’ Coach” by J.A. Adande. Actually, this article is worse than garbage.
I am not going to link to it; look it up yourself if you want to read that fluff piece of garbage. It was posted Nov. 5, 2010 at ESPN.
If Karl is the “ultimate players’ coach,” than why has Carmelo Anthony concluded that he has to leave Denver if he wants to get even better than he is and/or to have a real shot of winning the Quest? (I think he wants to achieve both of those things). Why has Karl over the years attacked what Anthony loves to do: score, as if it were some kind of problem, and some kind of sick obsession, that a basketball player likes to score and be responsible for producing enough scoring to give a team a chance to win every single game? Does a “players’ coach” often criticize what his players do best as if that is the reason why they are not the best in something else? Does that make any sense to you at all?
If Karl is the “ultimate players’ coach,” than why has J.R. Smith gotten worse since arriving in Denver? Incidentally, now the Smith situation is that the Nuggets, who might wish to trade Smith when they have to rebuild after Carmelo Anthony is gone, are having and are going to have in the future a lot of trouble trading him because Smith is not as good as he used to be and because Karl has bad mouthed, refused to start, and shorted Smiths' playing time so much that most of the general managers of the League think that Smith is nothing more than a moron with other personality problems (although to my way of thinking just being a moron would be enough, laugh out loud.)
If Karl is the “ultimate players’ coach,” than why did Karl criticize Allen Iverson (behind his back, after he was gone) for “not being a good point guard” when Iverson was virtually never designated point guard when he was playing for Denver? Don’t kid yourself, Karl is partly to blame for Iverson being kicked out of the NBA a year or two or three before that should have happened.
If Karl is the “ultimate players’ coach,” than why has one of the better young defensively oriented forwards in the NBA, Renaldo Balkman, been completely benched for 2009-10 and now for 2010-11? When Balkman was playing in 2008-09 (before Karl declared Balkman’s personality unacceptable) he was just about as good as Serge Ibaka of Oklahoma, and if you don’t know, Ibaka is a very outstanding up and coming young power forward who is helping Oklahoma win games they would not win without him. In the case of Balkman (and in some other cases as well) the “ultimate players’ coach” is just about ruining a players’ career. If that is a players’ coach, I don’t want to even think about what an anti-player coach would be like.
And I could go on but you get the point.
For the record, first of all, the Nuggets did not “fall apart” during the 2009-10 regular season after Karl left to deal with another bout of cancer. What happened is that the Nuggets’ luck ran out, their schedule got tougher, and most importantly what happened was that the Nuggets’ inability to defend the paint well became more and more of a liability late in the season for two reasons: teams finally got the memo that the Nuggets could be beaten in the paint and opposing teams ramped up their driving to the rim later in the season as they generally do. The inability to defend the paint well was the direct reason and was essentially the one and only reason why the Nuggets lost the first round 2010 playoff series to the Utah Jazz.
The Adande article does represent the prevailing attitude toward Karl, which even before his latest bout with cancer was predominantly fawning and obsequious. In case you don’t know those unusual words, fawning is what a parent does to his or her child and obsequious is what a master requires of his slave. For some set of reasons (with the sheer length of Karl’s coaching career the number one reason) it is common for writers to be, as I said, fawning and obsequious regarding Karl. This is like one of those dumb traditions that people do just to be in “the in crowd”. Whereas QFTR refuses to be a part of those dumb ass traditions.
Having said that, there are many other writers besides me who know the truth, that Karl is at best a mediocre coach. Many writers besides me, even if they never put it the way I do, know instinctively that Karl has too many misconceptions about basketball to ever be able to win a NBA Championship.
But consider the plight of your distressed writer! Before going on a short hiatus, I post a George Karl, Laugh out Loud! that reminds you (and me) that Karl has been FIRED FOUR TIMES before ending up with the Nuggets and then now coming back from the time out the first thing your QFTR producer sees is an article that makes it sound like Karl is one of the best coaches of all time. On the one hand this greatly ticked me off but on the other hand it reminded me of one reason why QFTR is important: I don’t ever do meaningless and inaccurate fluff pieces like you often see at ESPN and similar places.
I’ll tell you a little editorial secret. When deciding which ESPN writers’ article titles I wanted to scroll near the bottom of the right column of QFTR, I checked the work of all of the “senior writers” of ESPN. With space very limited due to our “page will load in no more than 10 seconds policy,” only Henry Abbot’s article titles ended up posted to QFTR.
The interesting thing about J.A. Adande is that I noted when I was checking out the ESPN writers that Adande would be about the last of the ESPN writers I would ever place on QFTR, meaning I never would. Simply put, Adande’s articles are generally light on facts, light on useful criticism, and heavy on syrupy or fluffy fawning. If you have a week stomach, Adande’s articles will sometimes make you kind of sick. Adande is nothing more than “Mr. Nice,” where his game plan is to say all nice things about players and coaches who I suppose he thinks are his betters because both players and coaches make far more money than writers, and I suppose he thinks that writers need to praise their betters all the time.
THE CAT IS BACK SO THE MICE BETTER RUN AWAY NOW
Remember, QFTR is produced according to a plan and according to a set number of hours. Sometimes (not often enough, actually) I end up “ahead of quota” and then I might have to spend several weeks away catching up with other stuff. The point being, don’t think I am going away even if a whole month or even two months go by and nothing new appears. In other words there is variability from month to month, but each and every hour assigned to produce QFTR happens sooner or later. QFTR is going to continue to be produced until the day I get buried.
How could the number of production hours go up? Simple: if traffic goes up (more than it already has gone up recently, which I am grateful for; better late than never) more time will go to producing QFTR, which means more posts.
So I’m back. In the can and appearing next week is the long awaited, improved and expanded Real Coach Ratings Report. It has been upgraded to the point where it is about as reliable and important as the Real Player Ratings. There are many reasons why you don’t want to miss this. My favorite reason is that you can find out which coaches can win a Championship and which can’t.
For example, finally, next week, you will see proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that, unless several teams were lost in plane crashes, George Karl could not possibly win the Quest for the Ring. I already explained this on the pages of QFTR, but since I am a perfectionist (and more recently an Excel fanatic) I had to produce a big database and scientifically prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. It was worth all the time that went into it. Next week, it drops.