Laugh Out Loud George Karl!: The Incredible Shrinking George Karl
Every year something very disturbing happens regarding the Coach of the Denver Nuggets, George Karl. His reputation, or his presence if you will, starts out as massive but then shrinks as the regular season goes along and then shrinks even more so later on as the playoffs progress. The Nuggets, using strategies and tactics that work well in the regular season, especially against poor and mediocre teams, are, sure enough, early in the regular season beating up on most of the poor teams they play and are soundly defeating many of the mediocre teams they play. The regular season strategies and tactics that Karl and the Nuggets use are even good enough to possibly steal an occasional early to mid regular season win against one of the primary contenders!
So in the early weeks of the regular season, Karl is a towering figure, someone who everyone has to bow down and worship. The announcers calling Nuggets games gush out their praise of the "can do no wrong" Karl, "one of the very best NBA coaches" (even though he has never come close to winning a Championship). Fans bow down and worship Karl both when they are at home and during games at the Pepsi Center. So early in the regular season Karl looms large over the Pepsi Center:
MIDDLE OF THE REGULAR SEASON
By the time the middle of the regular season arrives (usually in late January but this season in mid-February due to the late start due to the lock-out) some teams have begun to figure out how to deal with the Nuggets cheap ways of winning regular season games. So Karl is not quite the giant that he was. But many teams (some still in ignorance and some too lazy or inept to adjust) still fall into the traps that the Nuggets have set. In the middle of the regular season, many teams are still not prepared to deal with and to correctly defend the Nuggets obsessions with fast breaking and running plays right into the teeth of paint defenses.
So at mid-season, Karl is still a very large figure and is still worshipped by a big majority of fans and announcers:
LATE REGULAR SEASON
Late in the regular season (for the last 25 games of it in a normal season and for the last 20 games of it this season) a large majority of teams have learned about how the Nuggets strive for cheap regular season wins using cheap tricks that generally involve the Nuggets' exploiting relatively obscure options that exist at the margins of basketball. (Note that we can not possibly go into much detail in a Laugh Out Loud; for the details you have to read some serious QFTR Reports.)
Since by now most teams have received the memo of how the Nuggets get easy and cheap regular season wins, most teams are prepared to put up some resistance when they play the Nuggets late in the regular season. So now George Karl is not so big anymore:
It looks like he is starting to come back to Earth now! Or it's a hell of a diet!
THE PLAYOFFS ARRIVE
In the playoffs teams don't get to play any poor teams anymore because none of them make the playoffs. As for mediocre teams, often the top seed in each Conference gets to play a mediocre team. Now Denver is never the top seed because even if they have the best players, the George Karl regular season strategies and tactics, although they work very well in the regular season, are even in the best of seasons and even if he has the best players are not quite good enough to get the Nuggets into that top seed slot. Typically, the Nuggets end up with between the 3rd seed and the 7th seed and so typically, the Nuggets are playing in the first round of the playoffs a team which is somewhere between slightly above average and well above average (but not among the primary four of five contenders).
When the playoffs come every team gets much more serious and every team ramps up it's defense (especially the paint defense) and on offense every team tries harder to avoid turnovers (that result in fast break scores for the other team). All of a sudden, Karl and the Nuggets' strategies and tactics are worth only a small fraction of what they were worth in the regular season! And so all of a sudden, Karl's stature and reputation and presence have shrunk to the point where Karl is not much larger than the referees or the fans that come to the games!:
Oh dear, how is Karl supposed to get cheap wins now???
BY THE THIRD OR FOURTH GAME OF ROUND ONE, THE NUGGETS ARE FALLING BEHIND IN THE SERIES!
Another very important feature of the NBA playoffs is that they are composed of a lot of series between teams. Each series is a best of seven, meaning whichever team wins four games first wins the series. Coaches get to make adjustments not only during games but in between games. They have at least 45 hours between games with which to come up with strategies and tactics with which to counter the strategies and tactics of their opponent. So unlike in the regular season, a team playing George Karl and the Nuggets in the playoffs has plenty of time and opportunity to make changes to strategies and tactics. More specifically (but remember, we can't here go into a lot of detail) teams come up with ways to slow the game down, to reduce turnovers so as to reduce easy Nuggets fast break scores, and to reduce the Nuggets' production from obsessively driving plays into the paint.
So by the time the third or fourth game of the first round of the playoffs has arrived, George Karl has shrunk to the point where:
--The referees are bigger than he is and they will T-up his ass in a heartbeat!
--Many of the fans are about as big as George Karl is now! The worshipping is over with and now (gasp) some of the fans actually criticize Karl.
--Even Rocky, the Nuggets' mascot, is now bigger than George Karl!:
THE NUGGETS ARE ELIMINATED IN ROUND ONE OF THE PLAYOFFS
In most years, George Karl and the Nuggets are eliminated in the first round of the playoffs (regardless, by the way, of whether they had home court advantage or not). Just after the Nuggets have been eliminated, no one is in the mood to worship George Karl anymore. Although there may be dim memories of how nice the regular season was, no one is pleased with the way the Nuggets were easily handled in their one and only annual playoff series. So now the Incredible Shrinking George Karl has shrunk so extensively that it's actually fairly disturbing:
Oh dear, after the Nuggets have been defeated in Round One, Karl is so small that he is now smaller than the fans. Instead of the fans worshipping Karl, it's time perhaps for Karl to worship the fans! And the referees now tower over the shrunken Karl. And, oh my god, Rocky the mascot had better be careful not to run over George Karl; he's become awful hard to see now!
REACTIONS OF NUGGETS PLAYERS TO THE SHRINKAGE
As for the players, they tower in fear of the Giant George Karl at the beginning of the regular season. They will do whatever he says without hesitation. By late in the regular season, with Karl still big but not anywhere near the giant he once was, the superstars (who think they deserve a ring or two or three) and also the players who are not getting playing time they should be getting are possibly starting to scrap with Karl a little. They might even voice mild criticism when interviewed by a reporter.
During the playoffs, (with Karl now shrunk down to the same size as the players when game one begins, and then he becomes smaller than the players as round one progresses) criticism of Karl by players often escalates. There might possibly be friction during a game. More likely, one or more Nuggets players might break down and voice criticism of George Karl when they are interviewed by the media! (Even if the Denver Post refuses to print the criticism it can leak out since, after all, this is the Internet age and secrets are hard to keep these days.) For a short while after the Nuggets have been eliminated in the first round, the players are still more likely to be openly critical.
However, having said all that, keep in mind that only a small minority of players will ever at any time openly criticize Karl because they do not want to endanger their contract status with the Nuggets in particular and with the NBA in general. In particular and for example, they don't want to endanger getting a raise when it's time for a new contract. If a player openly criticizes a coach it can endanger getting a good future contract from ANY team, not just from the team whose coach he criticized.
The bottom line is that while you do typically finally hear a little criticism of Karl during and after the Nuggets imploding in round one (from fans and perhaps from a player or two or three) it's not really all that much, and then it blows over and is forgotten by most during the off season.
When the next regular season arrives, it's like in that movie where history repeats itself over and over again, "Groundhog Day". Karl is once again a massive, towering figure in the early days and weeks of the regular season that no one except Quest for the Ring, (QFTR) would dare criticize and that almost everyone (except QFTR) feels the need to worship.
To emphasize this amazing annual transformation, here they are side by side, the early regular season Giant George Karl and (off to the right in case you miss it) the Horribly Shrunken George Karl just after the Nuggets have been eliminated in round one of the playoffs.
Oh dear, laugh out loud.