George Karl is Losing Home Court Advantage due to not Defending the Paint

One of the many elements of last year’s storybook season for the Nuggets was their having home court advantage in the first two rounds of the playoffs. That came as a result of, among other things, a whole lot of intensity and energy on defense, unusual generosity toward non-starters by George Karl, and also as a result of a large amount of luck: more lucky wins than anyone and getting the playoff seeding tie breaker.

Most seasons are not storybook seasons unless you are the Celtics, the Lakers, or the Spurs and hell, even those franchises have numerous rotten seasons in their histories to go along with all the storybook ones. So you have to treasure every storybook season you have and you have to pay close attention to the prerequisites for that kind of good memories season.

One of the main dividing lines between whether the season of an NBA team is a storybook one or not is whether the team was good enough to get home court advantage for at least round one of the playoffs, preferably for the first two rounds. Having home court in round one is a very basic requirement for both the team and of course for the fans. Strictly speaking, the road teams in round one generally don’t deserve to be in the playoffs at all. The NBA qualifies 16 out of its 30 teams for the playoffs every year, whereas in the good old days 8 teams making the playoffs in a League with 30 teams would have been regarded as enough. Even today the National Football League is more restrictive: only 12 out of 32 teams make the playoffs in the NFL.

But the NBA is never going to get rid of its 16 teams in the playoffs format because it is a good money maker and also because having the road team knock off the home team in round one (before things get serious in the playoffs saga and before the TV ratings get really high) is a very good way to quickly put an otherwise very good team that has been devastated by injuries during the season out of it’s misery and off the live games on TV schedules. (Trust me and the League, you don’t want to see the Portland Trailblazers with no Joel Przybilla and no Greg Oden play the Lakers in the West final this year). So think of round one as the injury wash out round, although if a major contender has big injury problems it will often not be washed out until round two. For example, the Celtics with no Kevin Garnett squeaked by the Chicago Bulls in round one but lost to the Orlando Magic in round two despite heroics form Rajon Rondo in 2009.

Anyway, it’s time to get back to that team that I am obsessed with because their coach drives me up the wall and yet the team is very dangerous to the Lakers again this year because it has skills, especially offensive ones, coming out of the woodwork due to unbelievably nice (lucky?) pickups from teams that were somehow willing to let some of their best players go for next to nothing: the Denver Nuggets. (Why did the Bulls give up J.R. Smith for very little; why did the Hornets give up Chris Andersen for next to nothing, and why did the Timberwolves give up Ty Lawson for little or nothing?)

Ok, now what’s up with the Nuggets? Well, you have to first keep in mind that they are as I said overloaded with offensive talent. For example, the Nuggets have even moved a little above the average 3-point shooting percentage for the first time in many years despite the fact that J.R. Smith is not shooting them as well as he did in prior years. But overall the Nuggets remain below average in this very important playoff factor, because they are still short one good 3-point shooter (they need another forward or center who can make threes) and the 3-point shooters they do have are discouraged by Nuggets coaches from putting up a good number of threes.

The next thing you have to understand is that the Nuggets are unexpectedly going back to their traditional poor defensive strategy and are in fact tanking with respect to defending in general and especially with respect to defending the paint. See this Report for the details about how the Nuggets are falling short defensively this year.

I stated in that Report that if expert paint defender Renaldo Balkman (.808 Real Player Rating in 2008-09, slightly higher than Kenyon Martin) was not given more playing time that the Nuggets were going to be hurt more and more as time went by and, sure enough, that is what is happening as more and more teams discover the Nuggets are no longer a lock down paint defending team. The Nuggets are only 4-6 in their last ten games.

The main reason I did this Report, which I am trying to keep relatively short and sweet (good luck with that, laugh out loud) is to emphasize what I already reported and to tell you that it is a 100% certainty that George Karl is blowing games by not playing Balkman.

Just to name two obvious examples, had Balkman played 20 minutes or more, the Nuggets could easily have defeated the 76’ers in Denver on January 3 (instead of losing to them by three) and they could have easily defeated the Kings in Sacramento on January 9 (instead of losing to them by two) By losing these and a few other clearly winnable games, Karl with his refusal to play Balkman at any cost is setting up for the Nuggets to not have home court advantage in the playoffs, not even in round one. So Karl is spoiling the Nuggets’ opportunity to have the second storybook season in a row, regardless of whether they can win a Ring or not.

Now you probably know there are two guard positions and three front court positions (two forwards and a center) in basketball. Obviously, the front court players are always taller than the back court players because they can use their height to greater advantage in those positions whereas guards can use their speed, passing, and ball handling to greater advantage in the back court. Guards are simply too short and not bulky enough to be good paint defenders and when defending they generally remain out of the paint guarding other guards unless the player they are guarding drives into the paint.

Regardless of what specific strategies and tactics you are following on defense, if you don’t have the right players with the right physical characteristics in the right positions, you are not going to be very successful in stopping the other team from scoring. What’s more, you absolutely must as you rotate players in and out of games make sure that in every lineup that is out that you do not make the blunder of failing to balance the back court and the front court. And you have to maintain some kind of balance between guards and the taller front court players for the game as a whole. If you over play guards and under play forwards and centers, your defending will be inferior to what it needs to be. If you over play forwards and centers and underplay guards, your offense will usually simply not score enough points.

As we now go more specific, we’ll first remind you that the small forward position lies between the big man positions of power forward and center and the two guard positions (point guard and shooting guard.) There are 48 minutes in a game, so there are 5 X 48 = 240 player minutes that the coach is responsible for allocating. If the 240 minutes were exactly allocated, the big men (the power forwards and centers) would total 2 X 48 = 96 player minutes, the guards would also total 2 X 48 = 96 player minutes, and the small forward slot in the middle would have 1 X 48 = 48 player minutes.

Now let’s see how George Karl allocated playing time when he and his much more talented and harder working on defense Nuggets blew their game in Sacramento on January 9:

NUGGETS PLAYING TIME VERSUS SACRAMENTO ON JANUARY 9 2010
BIG MEN: Power Forwards and Centers:
Kenyon Martin: 37 minutes
Nene: 37 minutes
Chris Andersen: 22 minutes
TOTAL: 96 MINUTES versus 96 minutes standard

IN THE MIDDLE: Small Forward
No One: 0 minutes
TOTAL: 0 MINUTES versus 48 minutes standard

GUARDS: Point Guards and Shooting Guards
Joey Graham: 19 minutes
Aaron Afflalo: 26 minutes
Chauncey Billups: 39 minutes
J.R. Smith: 37 minutes
Anthony Carter 24 minutes
TOTAL: 145 MINUTES versus 96 minutes standard

Ok, so now you can easily see how Karl blew this game.

Karl had small forward (the position in between the two categories that need to be closely balanced that you see above) superstar Carmelo Anthony out due to a knee contusion. You can argue that technically Melo is the only small forward on the team. (Although this is definitely not a good thing, it is not necessarily gross mismanagement by the Nuggets’ general managers, because Melo plays most of every game, because Melo is a superstar and the Nuggets are ruined without him, and because you can usually slide either a shooting guard or a power forward into the small forward slot and usually not suffer too much damage. While I am not saying that the Nuggets didn’t make a mistake by not having a bona fide small forward to back up Carmelo Anthony, I am not on the other hand claiming it is some huge blunder. I’d say it was a small to at most moderate mistake.

But guess what? Karl is screwing up again, you ask? Bingo, how did you know? Laugh out loud. No, seriously, Renaldo Balkman at 6 feet 8 inches is classified as a power forward, but he can easily be considered to be holding down the small forward position if the need arises. Were he not a defensive specialist type of power forward, Balkman could be a full scale PF/SF, as are other players who are 80 inches tall. Whereas those who are an inch or two taller are much more often exclusively power forwards or they can be power forwards / centers.

I said that Balkman can be small forward if the need arises. Well, having small forward Carmelo Anthony out with a knee contusion is the need arising to put it mildly. Yet Karl was oblivious to the obvious need to play Balkman.

So now we have caught George Karl blowing a game through what amounts to gross negligence. This has gone beyond coaching discretion: no rational coach would fail to play Renaldo Balkman in games where Carmelo Anthony is not playing at all. Karl has in Balkman one of the best young paint defenders and a very good rebounder, two qualities the Nuggets are badly in need of and will be even more in need of in the playoffs. Balkman established himself as a high quality paint defender both last year when Karl was unusually generous with playing time for non-starting forwards and in a prior sting with the New York Knicks.

Not only that, but Balkman can be a small forward for a team that has no small forwards when Carmelo Anthony is out due to injury. The need for Balkman to play has become overwhelming to the point where it is gross negligence not to play him. But instead of providing his team with paint defending, rebounding, a small forward, and balance between forwards and guards, Karl trashed all of those things and gave every single “Carl Anthony minute” allocated to the small forward position to his guards.

So there are really two gross errors here. The first is that Balkman was not put in to fill the gaping hole at small forward. The other gross error was giving every last small forward minute to guards. Had Karl better split the small forward minutes between the guards and the big men, he most likely would have defeated the Sacramento Kings on January 9 even without Balkman.

Looking at number of players, first be informed that Karl typically plays just eight players in games whereas top coaches typically play nine (and sometimes ten). In the Sacramento loss you had Karl playing five guards and three forwards and centers. Whereas the top coaches more often play 4 guards and 5 forwards and centers than they do 5 guards and 4 forwards and centers. Karl was short at least one forward or center and arguably he was short two forwards or centers.

With regard to specific guards that Karl insists on playing: it is obvious that Renaldo Balkman would be more important to the Nuggets winning both regular season and playoff games than would 2-guard Joey Graham and 1-guard Anthony Carter. Aaron Afflalo is working out great for the Nuggets, and obviously Chauncey Billups and J.R. Smith are your bread and butter. But to be cavalierly playing Graham and/or Carter over Balkman is a gross error.

Somehow, George Karl thinks that dedicated and fast guards can overcome the huge defensive liabilities you have when you are starved for long players up front. This is not true both in the regular season and in the playoffs. I don’t care how good your guards are, you can’t easily win basketball games when you have too many of them and when as a result you put a big sign up in your paint: “Come on in, we are keeping the paint open early and late for your scoring convenience”.