But ever since George Karl arrived to coach the Denver Nuggets in January 2005, he has been on a twisted mission to reduce Carmelo Anthony's scoring and to increase other things, especially his defending and rebounding. Of course, Mr. Karl neither states it that way nor thinks of it that way, but as is so often with him, the reality of what he is doing is different from what he thinks he is doing. Instead of openly admitting he wants Anthony to score less, Karl, not to mention numerous everyday fans, who don't like the idea of what I will call a "power scorer," speak glowingly of Anthony becoming a "complete, well rounded" player.
For some reason, a substantial minority of basketball fans, and the more intense the fan, the more likely he or she is in this minority, are biased against natural and power scorers. In their view, you are not a complete basketball player if scoring is by a wide margin your top priority, particularly if you are below average in the one thing that this persistent minority generally puts on a pedestal: defending in general and especially man to man defending. But the truth is, what these people really want is a different game, a game rigged in favor of defense the way the National Football League is.
Worse still, the "substantial minority" seems to grow to be possibly a small majority among coaches and perhaps among managers as well. Power scorers who are not good man to man defenders are subject to being downright mistreated if they end up with coaches who are heavily biased against power scoring. For example, power scorers who are not good defenders will lose playing time regardless of any net negative effect on the team, if they have a coach who is biased in favor of defending. A textbook example of this is how JR Smith has been treated more or less like dirt by George Karl over the last two years and two months.
But is it a good thing for a power scorer to become a complete, well rounded player? It certainly sounds nice. No, it's generally not a good thing with respect to the Quest for the Ring although, as an objective in itself, how good a goal it is would be in the eye of the beholder. Some basketball watchers like power scorers and some don't. Some are obsessed about defending and some aren’t. But whether you like them or not, you need at least one and preferably two power scorers to be able to contend for the NBA Championship and the Ring.
Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Manu Ginobili, Richard Hamilton, Dwyane Wade, these are some of the power scorers who have won or come very close to winning the Quest for the Ring. Some of these are good defenders and some are not so good. These players and many others are proof that it is not a basketball crime to put scoring above everything else, as Mr. Karl feels it is. There is nothing wimpy about a scoring obsession, nothing to be skittish or nervous about. Quite to the contrary, having a player with a full scale scoring obsession is probably a necessity for winning in the playoffs. If you as a Coach become hell bent to make a "well rounded player" out of a natural power scorer, you are skating on dangerous ice, because you may end any chance your team can go far in the playoffs if you “succeed.”
Nor is it a crime or a strategic error to have one or two players as more responsible for scoring and less responsible for other things as compared with other players. Dividing up responsibility for different things is known as “division of labor” in economics, and is how all smart companies and countries achieve high productivity and high standards of living.
George Karl instructed Carmelo Anthony to “not worry about scoring”. Did Phil Jackson ever instruct Kobe Bryant to "not worry about scoring"? Did Greg Popovich ever instruct Manu Ginobili to "not worry about scoring"? Did Byran Scott ever instruct Chris Paul to "not worry about scoring"? Did Mike Brown ever instruct LeBron James to "not worry about scoring"? No to all of these questions, and nor did they ever set out to make these players "well rounded players," the definition of which would differ from coach to coach in any event.
Consider the following:
CARMELO ANTHONY POINTS PER 36 MINUTES
2003-04 20.7
2004-05 21.5
2005-06 26.0
2006-07 27.2
2007-08 25.4
2008-09 23.2
Career 24.0
A good way to look at Anthony's career so far as far as scoring is concerned is to divide it into three 2-season periods. The first two years, he was a very young, inexperienced player, who like virtually all such players, was not able to be at his best right from the start. The next 2-season period was the golden period in my view; it's where Carmelo Anthony was doing what he wanted, which is score a lot. The last (most recent) 2-season period should be called the George Karl phase of his career; it's where Anthony has reduced scoring and increased other things, with by far the biggest increase going to defensive rebounding.
The Allen Iverson years were 2006-07 and 2007-08. Contrary to expectations of many observers, not including me, Anthony did not substantially reduce his scoring when Iverson arrived on the team. In fact, he increased his scoring, from 26.0 to 27.2 points per 36 minutes! This is very surprising even to me; while I was not dumb enough to predict a big drop, I did expect a slight drop, and certainly not an increase! This is more proof that Anthony is a natural power scorer, and that about the last thing any Coach should do is to tell him to not worry about scoring.
Now look closely at the next two years, 2007-08 and 2008-09. You see a drop of about 2 points per 36 minutes for each year. You are now observing how George Karl, being a persistent son of a gun, finally persuaded Anthony to reduce his scoring.
To me this is bad, pure and simple. The Nuggets don't have any power scorers if Carmelo Anthony is not going to be one, while the vast majority of teams that win a playoff series have at least one power scorer. Chauncey Billups is a good scorer but he is not really close to being a power scorer. Billups may be obsessed about being a good point guard, but being the dominant scorer is beyond his horizons. Nene has missed so many games over the years that he is, for all practical purposes, not far from being a rookie. So even if he is a natural and a power scorer, which he may very well be, he is no where near experienced enough to be one in the playoffs this spring.
Furthermore, it makes no sense for Carmelo Anthony to be pulling down a good number of rebounds when any number of teammates who do not want to be power scorers, and/or could not be power scorers if they wanted to be, could be making those same rebounds. George Karl is violating a major theory in economics called comparative advantage. This theory is actually very simple: each country, each company, each worker, and each basketball player is supposed to do more of what he is the best at (or more of what he can do at less cost) and less of what others can do just as well or better.
Now let’s look at the overall player ratings, year by year:
CARMELO ANTHONY'S CAREER TO DATE
REAL PLAYER RATINGS
(Basic--Not Adjusted for Hidden Defending)
2003-04 0.646 A Very Good Player: a Solid Starter
2004-05 0.632 A Very Good Player: a Solid Starter (not far above boundary with Major Role Player!)
2005-06 0.788 Superstar by a small margin
2006-07 0.838 Superstar by a good margin
2007-08 0.868 On the borderline between Super Star and Historic Super Star
2008-09 0.780 Superstar by a small margin
Career 0.755 Star Player, not far from the boundary with Superstar
SCALE FOR REGULAR SEASON REAL PLAYER RATINGS NOT ADJUSTED FOR HIDDEN DEFENDING
Perfect Player? Is there Such a Thing? 0.915 and more
Historic Super Star 0.865 and more
Superstar 0.765 0.864
A Star Player: An Outstanding, Above Normal Starter 0.690 0.764
A Very Good Player: A Solid Starter 0.615 0.689
Major Role Player 0.565 0.614
Role Player 0.515 0.564
Minor Role Player 0.465 0.514
Very Minor Role Player 0.415 0.464
Poor Player at This Time 0.365 0.414
Very Poor Player at This Time 0.265 0.364
Extremely Poor Player at This Time / Disaster and less 0.264
During Carmelo's first two years, he was very good but not at all a star. He was a solid starter; but he was not a star, let alone a superstar. Then in 2005-06, the year before Iverson arrived, the year the Nuggets ended up losing to the Clippers in the first round of the playoffs, Carmelo Anthony became far better, as he leapfrogged past the star category and became a superstar by a small margin. This was before George Karl succeeded in reducing his scoring.
As we saw above, the big year three rating increase was due mostly to a big increase in scoring. Anthony wanted to be a power scorer from day one, but it took until his third year before he was actually delivering as a power scorer. He became a superstar as soon as he started to get the payoff from being obsessed with scoring. He became an even stronger superstar in year four, 2006-07, which was the first of the two Iverson years, and was when his scoring per unit of time peaked.
In year five, 2007-08, otherwise known as last year, Carmelo Anthony’s scoring was starting downhill, but his overall Real Player Rating peaked, and he actually reached the border zone between Superstar and Historic Superstar. His scoring was down only slightly, and it did not concern me in the least, and now I can see I was right to not be concerned, because his overall rating was up nicely. His rebounding went up from 5.7 to 7.3 rebounds per 36 minutes from 2006-07 (year 4) to 2007-08 (year 5), so this would largely explain the increase in the overall rating.
But in year six, 2008-09, the George Karl transformation of Anthony into what for him and other defensively biased folks would be a wonderful thing has taken a very ugly turn. Anthony’s rebounding has hit a plateau at 7.5 rebounds per 36 minutes, while his scoring has dropped from 25.4 to 23.2 points per 36 minutes from last year to this.
For more grisly evidence of another Karl fiasco, consider the record on field goal percentage:
CARMELO ANTHONY FIELD GOAL PERCENTAGE
2003-04 .426
2004-05 .431
2005-06 .481
2006-07 .476
2007-08 .492
2008-09 .441
Career .461
Ok this is important: you can see that his field goal percentage has all but collapsed, dropping .051 in one season, from .492 to .441. Be careful Mr. Karl, you might get what you wish for! What this appears to show is that if you try to reduce a player’s scoring, you might pay a whopper of a price, as the player starts to miss a lot more shots than before as he follows bad instructions.. In other words, the coach can’t simply say: “Don’t worry about scoring fewer points than in previous years” and expect that the shooting percentage will remain about the same. If a player consciously follows bad coaching instructions regarding reducing shooting, he is liable to lose the intensity needed to maintain a high shooting percentage. In other words, one of the nicest things of all about natural, power scorers who are obsessed about scoring is that they maintain very good shooting percentages. The last thing you should do is interfere with that.
Other details for this year are that he is assisting more than ever before: 3.9 assists per 36 minutes, versus a career average of 3.1. And he has slightly improved his 3-point shooting accuracy this year, but the volume of 3-point shooting, although higher than ever, is still surprisingly low.
On the other hand, his blocking and stealing this year are at the very low end of his career ranges for these.
So now in year six, Anthony is back to where he was in year three, 2005-06. And his overall rating is only a little bit better this season than his overall career average. His shooting percentage this year is substantially lower than his career average, and the actual scoring is slightly less than his career average.
The Real Player Rating drop for Carmelo Anthony this year is truly alarming and is very large. He played only one year at Syracuse University, so he was only 19 years old in 2003-04 when he started in the NBA. He is 24 years old this year, which means he is in the heart of the prime years for star basketball players, the years when such players should be establishing themselves as superstars, the years when they should be getting better, or at least staying about the same from one year to the next. But Carmelo Anthony has just gotten much worse!
And the gap between Carmelo Anthony and players such as Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant, and LeBron James, which was not all that large the last couple years, has now become large indeed. Anthony is most definitely not in their League anymore.
But it’s only a relatively small disaster so far. A catastrophe would be if Anthony’s rating falls back to what it was in his first two years, completely out of the star range. Trying to be optimistic, you might speculate that Anthony is "taking the year off," and will resume being a strong superstar next year or the year after. It is unknown, however, how much damage a player does to himself if he does “take a year off. He could be doing a lot of long term damage to his ultimate potential. He could be wiping out just about any chance to win the Quest for the Ring. I don't know what the damage is, but why would anyone in their right mind want to risk losing out just to be able to follow the stupid instructions of a Coach who (hopefully) is about to retire?
So George Karl, tear down your wall! I want Carmelo Anthony back the way he was. And if Mr. Karl will not reverse course, which most likely of course he won't, it's time for Carmelo Anthony to make plans to play for a different team as soon as possible.
The moral of this story is, if you are an outstanding player, do NOT do everything your Coach tells you to do. How do you know for sure your Coach is always right? You don't. Specifically do NOT EVER let your coach tell you to "not worry about" your primary objective, whether it is scoring, defending, rebounding, assisting, or whatever. In fact, don't ever listen to anyone telling you to do less of anything (that’s good). There is a reason why you want to do what you do, and why you are doing more of some things than other things, a very good and powerful reason.
It's alright to want to do more of anything that is good, but don't ever try to do less of anything good. When the Coach that told you that garbage is gone, and you have a new Coach, the new Coach is not going to be working from the same basketball bible chapter as the previous one, and he is going to look at you as you are now, doing less of that thing, and very possibly downsized overall. Then that means you will get less playing time and fewer possessions, which in turn means you could easily be downsized some more. It can be a downward spiral.
So don't risk going into the spiral; never listen to any Coach who tells you to do less of something that is good on the basketball court. Don't disrespect the coach, and don't even openly say you are not going to follow his instructions. Play like you are complying, but don’t actually comply. Just ignore an instruction like that without saying anything about it. Keep it on the down low.
But Carmelo Anthony, not being aware of what we are aware of, has fallen into the trap, and is now starting to pay a heavy price.
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