The Right Way and the Wrong Way to Coach Players Who Seem to Have bad Personalities or Styles

If you run a search here you’ll see that Quest for the Ring (QFTR) has been focusing on J.R. Smith and especially on his treatment by George Karl year after year. Now this year will be no exception because here is another installment in this saga of how a coach half ruins and maybe completely ruins a guards’ career.

J.R. Smith was benched in the Nuggets loss to the Phoenix Suns on November 15. He has been benched on and off ever since he became a Nugget in 2006. As has been reported here more than once, head Coach George Karl hugely dislikes’ Smith’s personality and his playing style and Karl is seemingly compulsive about benching and/or cutting playing time of players he doesn’t like, regardless of how good they really are, objectively speaking. Unfortunately for coaches like Karl, it is very possible for players with bad personalities and/or seemingly bad styles to actually be, objectively speaking, very, very good players.

Unfortunately for the Nuggets, while it is not the only thing that matters, Coaches who repeatedly overreact to dislikable personalities and playing styles (and what results from them) are very often the same ones who because of those overreactions and because of other failings that seem to very commonly go with that can not reliably win in the playoffs.

If you really want to win in the playoffs, you need to pick them up from whatever their latest transgression is, smooth out the rough edges on the personalities and styles as best you can, and carry your quality players who have those poor personalities and unusual, questionable and/or unpredictable playing styles, warts and all, through the regular season and into those playoffs. If you don’t, if instead you bench or at least cut a lot of the playing time those players really deserve, you will turn those players into “black sheep” who, if and when they finally do get to play, will most likely be rusty and will to one extent or another be denied the ball by teammates meaning that there will really be four and a half players on the court when the black sheep is out there instead of five. Rather than getting hung up about poor personalities and playing styles, the quality coach will do everything possible to smooth out the rough edges of those personalities and styles and will seek to benefit as much as possible from the basketball abilities and production of those players.

There is no magic wand to make a highly skilled but problematic player like J.R. Smith more mature or more predictable or more stable. There aren't even any good textbook ways that guarantee you can do it. But the objective itself is highly overrated. You can and you must smooth out the roughest edges and then you just have to live with whatever unpredictability and roughness is left. And there might be a lot of unpredictability left even after you have smoothed out the roughest edges, and it might seem intolerable, but nothing is really intolerable but death and taxes.

There is a dunce cap that the coach will have to wear if he overreacts and decides to bench (or just cut a lot of objectively earned playing time from) a valuable player like Smith. The theory (which George Karl is a major believer in) that you can change the playing style or personality of a basketball player by denying playing time (which is actually deserved playing time, objectively speaking) is absurd.

For many reasons, no NBA team can afford to bench a skilled player due to a poor personality or an objectionable style. To name one reason, no team can afford it because skills are in much shorter supply than many coaches think they are. To name another reason, in both the regular season and in the playoffs, when you run an eight man rotation because your ninth man is benched due to what we are discussing, you are in most cases over playing many of your eight players and giving the energy advantage to the opponent. The best coaches have nine and sometimes ten man rotations through the whole regular season (except when two or more injuries prevent it) and in the playoffs they run nine man rotations unless their bench is really suspect or unless, again, injuries prevent it.

Yet George Karl clearly disagrees with all of this because over and over and over again he completely benches players due to personality or style issues and he runs just eight-man rotations in both the regular season and the playoffs. In fact, believe or not, George Karl has been known to run a seven-man rotation while all the other players are benched due to personality, style, injury, and/or they are about the worst player on the team and would stick out like a sore thumb if they played with the other seven. When a coach runs a seven-player rotation, it is not very far away from forfeiting the game (since the energy advantage for the opponent when it is nine or ten against seven is huge) yet Karl reserves the right to do this.

By definition, on every team there will be a player with the worst personality and there will be one with the worst playing style. It is fairly common that they will be one in the same, because unusual and/or inconsistent playing styles that are questioned by a lot of people are correlated with unusual or poor personalities. On the QFTR winning Los Angeles Lakers, it is fairly well known that Ron Artest is that player. His personality is notoriously volatile, often thought of as dubious or poor, and at the same time but less well known is that he is less consistent a defender among all the good defenders. Offensively, Artest is quite inconsistent. But overall, Artest is a very good three (small forward) whose Real Player Rating for 2009-10 was .752 which is in the solid starter category for small forwards.

Phil Jackson, who has won the Quest for the Ring an astonishing eleven times, gives Artest every last minute his real playing skills and production justify and he reliably starts Artest. Jackson would never think of doing what Karl does with his players who have problematic personalities and/or styles. Phil Jackson doesn't try to play amateur psychologist or amateur police officer and nor does he try to use negative reinforcement as Karl does. Rather, Jackson does what he can while at the same time getting all the basketball production out of the situation he can.

Specifically, Jackson smooths out the roughest edges of the rough personalities and styles. Smoothing out the roughest edges means that he complains during and after a game to Artest when Artest fails at his most important skill, when in this case Artest defends poorly during a game. A great coach complains to his players about this, that, and the other hand but he doesn't start slashing playing time unless the problem goes on for at least a month and unless the problem really does mean that real basketball production is down substantially. Smoothing out the rough edges also means that all players including the players with the most unusual, roughest, or "poor" styles are integrated into both the offense and the defense of the team. For example, if Artest likes to go baseline alot, even if that is thought of as a bad style, Jackson makes sure that Kobe Bryant and Derek Fisher are aware of that and are willing to get the ball to Artest where he wants it so he can go baseline. The player's style is respected rather than trashed because, again, you are not going to be able to ever completely change any players' style.

Also, Jackson most of the time uses positive reinforcement and very rarely uses negative reinforcement. Jackson is not going to make huge cuts in playing time that are not justified by actual basketball performance, just because he thinks that might make someone's personality or style a lot better. Jackson's strategy involving volatile, unpredictable personalities and styles is dominated by ignoring the problem because, can you guess why? It's because those things are often hardly a problem at all in basketball terms. Jackson is smart enough to separate personalities and styles from basketball skills and production, and he is smart enough to rarely use negative reinforcement. Maybe in the army during a war negative reinforcement might work better (and maybe possibly in American football it might work roughly as good) but in basketball, positive reinforcement is far, far better than negative reinforcement. Reward a player if he gets better but don't penalize a player for staying the same just because he won't change his personality or style. Basketball styles can be changed only very slowly and personalities can hardly be changed at all.

Now if Artest played for the Nuggets it is fairly likely that his playing time would be much less and that he would not start because, you guessed it, Karl would overreact to Artest’s ultimately minor (from a basketball perspective) style and personality flaws and would do what he always does and slash his playing time.

On the Artest subject, it should be noted that in the 2008 off season when he was coming off the Sacramento Kings, Artest wanted to play for the Nuggets (which makes him crazy right there; just kidding of course). Nuggets management wanted to get Artest but George Karl, who like everyone else was aware of Artest’s far from perfect personality, vetoed the idea and the owner, who always has reserved the right to make key player acquisition decisions, failed to support management. So Artest went to the Lakers and both Artest and the Lakers were better off for it.

J.R. Smith was born September 1985, went to Saint Benedict's Prep (High School) in Newark and went straight from there in 2004 to the New Orleans Hornets. From there, in 2006 Smith came to the Nuggets.

J.R. Smith is a major challenge for a coach for many reasons, most notably:

--His personality is immature because for one thing, he never went to college and, for another thing, his personality is just naturally less mature than average.

--His basketball style is nerve wracking to try to put it positively or it is frustrating and annoying to put it the way some coaches including George Karl would. His very well known inconsistency shooting the basketball is just a part of it; when you watch him you realize after awhile that his style from top to bottom and from game to game is inconsistent.

--His daily work habits are inconsistent. Although obviously he is on time for practice most of the time, he isn’t on time all of the time. Similarly, his off court behavior is inconsistent. Although (since he is not in jail) he is a reasonably good citizen most of the time, every once in a while he does something bad.

SMITH'S INCONSISTENCY WAS READY TO BE COACHED CORRECTLY
When you see a player like J.R. Smith who one game is jacking up threes as if the three is going to be outlawed after the game and the next game is driving toward the rim much of the time, and when you see him totally selfish one game and then the next game he gets four assists and plays the best defense on the team, you know you are seeing a very, very inconsistent player. What does this really mean and how should a coach react to this?

It means the player who is talented enough to play several different styles well has not decided on which one he wants to settle in and/or it means that the coach has confused the hell out of him. Or perhaps being benched or having had playing time slashed has been counterproductive, as will often be the case. Whichever of these are true, the coach has failed.

The solution is similar to the one you want for any highly talented basketball player. You tell that player exactly what his most valuable skills and abilities are and you tell him that he should do everything possible to get even better at those things. Why? Because for each player it's what he is the best at relative to other players that matters the most in playoff games. J.R. Smith came into the League as one of the very best 3-point shooters and also as a quality steal the basketball player and so his coaches should have told him to keep going for steals and to keep his 3-point shooting percentage above .400 (40%, which is the gold standard on threes) at all costs.

Now I know all the doubting Thomas’s are going to say right here “if a Coach told him that than J.R. Smith is going to selfishly jack up ten threes every game and all his defenders will be out on the perimeter line in his face knowing he probably won’t break around their defense and head for the layup so he'll miss the vast majority of those threes". Oh ye of little faith! The quality coach would say a lot more besides “keep your 3-point shooting up”. A great coach explains that all the best 3-point shooters mix in drives so that their defenders hang off them out on the 3-point line. And he explains that all the best 3-point shooting 2-guards make some assists, make some steals, and play some defense. In fact, most of the very best 3-point shooters who are 2-guards also play very solid defense. You tell him the objective is to start with his highest (or most rare if you prefer) skill and use that as a base but that in order to be a playoff caliber player he will have to have some of those other abilities and efforts. At the same time, a player needs to keep the defense guessing as much as possible so a player has to mix up what he does and never telegraph what he does and never fall into a rut where for example he starts to jack up a three four or five times in a row.

So now after instructing him that way and after practicing him under those assumptions and “rules” you see what happens in games. If he starts jacking up threes almost every time he gets the ball, and unless he is making at least half of those threes, you sit him down at or just before halftime and probably you don’t play him in the second half. Then a good coach would explain to him after the game why he didn’t play in the second half.

JR SMITH IS NOT AS GOOD AS HE WAS AND GUESS WHO IS MOST LIKELY AT FAULT
In 2008-09 J.R. Smith’s Real Player Rating (RPR) was .824 but in 2009-10 (with almost the exact same rating system in place) it was .738. That was a major drop. In 2008-09, using the shooting guard evaluation scale, Smith was a star and well above normal starter and was not very far from being a super star (think Manu Ginobilli or Ray Allen). Whereas in 2009-10 he was down to “very good / solid starter”. He dropped down almost exactly one ranking level on the evaluation scale, which is a significant and disturbing drop. People who want to excuse George Karl for his failures are going to want to ignore what J.R. Smith actually did in both 2008-09 and in the year before that.

In 2007-08, J.R. Smith was an incredible 3-point shooting machine and his RPR was at least .850 and was probably actually at least .875, which made him just about as good as Manu Ginobili that year. (His published 2007-08 RPR was a sky high .924 but that was before the defensive factors became much more important so that year’s RPRs are not exactly comparable to those in subsequent years).

So far in 2010-11, as is usually the case with J.R. Smith, there is some confusion about how good he really is. On the one hand his 3-point shooting is back up over 40% (which is the gold standard) but on the other hand his overall shooting percentage is a miserably low .368 and it seems his defense is down from when it was really, really good in 2008-09. Overall and so far this year, at best Smith’s rating is about what it was last year which, again, was far less than it was in 2008-09 and the year before that.

THE GEORGE KARL STRATEGY FAILED AND WILL ALMOST ALWAYS FAIL IN BASKETBALL
George Karl’s strategy of always treating J.R. Smith as if he is a poorer basketball player than he really is (due to his personality and playing style) has failed miserably. Instead of becoming more consistent and predictable J.R. Smith is about as inconsistent and unpredictable as always, except now his overall, real production and quality is DOWN from what is was when he first came to Denver. When he first started with Denver, J.R. Smith, half crazy style and unpredictability and all, was good enough to be a key factor in playoff games. Karl and the Nuggets would have been better off had they not tried anything at all to change Smith's personality and style. Now, while he is still technically good enough to start on an average NBA team, he is not right now good enough to be all that much help winning playoff games.

Since Arron Afflalo is playing great and is so far this year better than J.R. Smith, for the first time since Smith arrived in Denver, I can’t argue that J.R. Smith should be the starting 2-guard for the Nuggets. This is a classic, textbook case of a self-fulfilling prophesy: George Karl swore that J.R. Smith was not really good enough to start (even though he was for several years) but now at the moment he is NOT good enough to start if you have a really good 2-guard, as the Nuggets do with Afflalo.

JR SMITH NEEDS A BAD TEAM BAD
George Karl in particular and the Nuggets in general have badly failed J.R. Smith and to say that the Nuggets are a bad fit for Smith is an understatement. Smith needs a team which is desperate for three-point shooting (and there are close to twenty of them) and he needs a team that is not obsessed with good personalities and pleasing styles the way the Nuggets are (and there must be at least twenty of those). Most likely Smith needs a bad team. How about for example the Toronto Raptors? The Raptors have a way of smoothing out rough personalities and playing styles and they always are in need of a new, excellent 3-point shooter. Or how about the Washington Wizards or the Philadelphia 76’ers?

New York and New Jersey should probably steer clear because it is plausible that Smith’s off court problems would become truly dangerous if he returned to where he grew up. Or, should I say, the New York / New Jersey area is where J.R. Smith sort of grew up.

The bottom line lesson here is this: do what George Karl does with questionable personalities and styles and you will suffer the same bad consequences. Do what Phil Jackson does and what I instruct you to do and you will be able to say you did the best job you could and got the most rewards you could from a not easy to figure out or deal with player. At the end of the day, any coach who does what George Karl does with the player who has the worst personality on the team instead of doing what Phil Jackson does with that player is nothing more than a fool, and there are stronger words that could apply.