It’s all in the book. Almost all of it, that is.
The San Antonio Spurs’ shot charts are in another book. Everything else but their astrological signs is in this book on George Karl’s desk – every play the Spurs called in the fourth quarter of games decided by 10 points or fewer; every play they called against the Nuggets in four games this season and their success at running the play; each player’s success rate running each play and his stats before and after Tim Duncan sprained his right ankle.
The book is as thick as a lumberjack’s steak.
The Nuggets’ coach aimed to learn it all by tipoff of Game 1 of the team’s playoff series that starts Sunday night in San Antonio. But he wasn’t going to ask his players to learn it. He would boil it down to a single-sheet game plan.
The man who led the Nuggets to a stunning second-half turnaround can overanalyze San Antonio. He wants his players to just play.
“I don’t think thinking helps,” Karl said.
Almost to a man, coaches are Type-A personalities.
This huge scouting report, put together through sleepless nights by assistants in what he calls the best job of preparation a staff of his has ever done, suggests Karl is no different.
“Only as a head coach do you hit that level where it drives you to insanity,” assistant coach and confidant Doug Moe said of Karl’s attention to detail before big games. “Of course, George didn’t have far to go.”
Those puzzled at how Karl turned around the Nuggets might include his players. Few players fully understand why they listened to his entreaties to run when they so often blocked out the same pleas by his predecessors, Jeff Bzdelik and Mich- ael Cooper. In Karl’s view, it’s not just a question of what message he delivers, but a question of how. An unstated message often comes attached to the stated one.
“It’s a psychological game,” Karl said. “I know nothing that no one else knows. How I think it and paint the picture is different.”
Asked to explain, Denver guard said, “He makes the game simple for you. He doesn’t over-coach. He has simple rules. If you follow the rules, we’ve been successful.”
The 32-8 run he pulled off with the Nuggets, leading the team to 49 wins, fourth-best in franchise history, reminds Karl of another team, his first Seattle SuperSonics team. That team closed the 1991-92 season with a 27-15 record and upset the Golden State Warriors in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs.
“They’re playing very similar to the way we played in Seattle, to the way we played in Milwaukee,” said Warriors assistant Terry Stotts, a Karl lieutenant in those days. “They run up and down. They share the ball. They play hard. They enjoy playing. That’s always been a strength of George’s. Players like playing for him.”
Lines of communication
is the first player Karl names when asked who he did the best job of motivating this spring. The small forward echoed what Stotts said about Karl’s style.
“Before George came, (as a team) we were going our own separate ways,” Anthony said. “But George came in and put confidence in me. Put me back in my zone. He motivated me to want to get back in the gym and work.”
Karl did so by benching his young star twice. Anthony could have reacted differently and the Nuggets’ season could have kept spiraling downward. To Anthony’s credit, he didn’t. And other players saw that no one would receive special treatment.
“He’ll speak his mind,” said Portland Trail Blazers center Joel Przybilla, who played for Karl in Milwaukee. “I’ve been around where coaches don’t say anything to superstars.”
That approach helped Karl, at least for a while, in his last stop, Milwaukee, where he had to contend with at times difficult personalities such as Sam Cassell, current Spur Glenn Robinson and Anthony Mason. In time, though, Cassell clashed with Karl, as did other Bucks, and Karl was let go. Cassell, now with Minnesota, sees a better communicator now.
“George will be the first to tell you, don’t give him the credit for what has transpired,” Cassell said. “He just gave them some identity they were sorely missing. George is a fun coach to play for. I think he has learned from his mistakes from when he was at Milwaukee with me. He’s learned how to handle his players.
“That’s the only knock on him. Once he got that under control, George Karl is one of the top five coaches in this league. No doubt about it. He’s brilliant as far as X’s and O’s.”
As for getting the most from a team’s supporting players, Karl is at times unorthodox. Przybilla said Karl treated him in Milwaukee much the way the coach treats Nuggets center .
“I’ve gone times where I haven’t played five or six days and he’d put me in the starting lineup,” Przybilla said. “That’s motivation right there.”
It’s another case of the delivery counting as much as the message itself. Instead of sounding like a broken record preaching the necessity to run, Karl can add a spoonful of sugar to the medicine.
“Even during a defensive day you have to work on your defensive transition and you run,” Moe said. “I’ve never seen a practice yet that he’s been at that we didn’t go full-court.”
Keeping his cool
This time of year, while Karl attempts to keep his players loose, he tries to keep himself together. At a recent practice he wandered around the floor absent-mindedly swinging a golf club. When he’s nervous, he said he likes to have something like a golf club or a bat in his hands.
And he knew at that time his nerves were calm compared with what he would be feeling as today’s game got closer. His 13 previous seasons in the playoffs tell him the juices would really start flowing Saturday. Today, in San Antonio, he expects will be out of control. Probably not as crazy as he felt walking on the United Center floor June 5, 1996, when he saw Michael Jordan and the rest of the Chicago Bulls warming up to face his Sonics in the NBA Finals. But he can almost taste the tension.
“The higher the energy of the game, the spirit of the game, the bigger the butterflies,” Karl said. “The larger and the higher in the throat they are. There’s always some in your stomach, but the bigger the game, the closer they get to where you feel almost like you’re choking on them.”
Moe said those comments are so typical of Karl he would worry if his friend weren’t feeling on the edge. Minnesota center Ervin Johnson knows Karl as well as any player in the league, having played three years in Seattle and five in Milwaukee for him.
“One thing I can tell you, he gets really nervous before the game,” Johnson said. “I don’t want to put too much of his business out there, but he’s got to go to the bathroom quite a bit.”
Karl is also a coach who can pull obscure numbers out of thin air – Anthony’s 13-for-39 shooting from within 5 feet against San Antonio, for instance, one of who knows how many bits of data he collects and selectively shares with his players. It’s a big, heavy book, one he hopes he knows well enough to help his team get past San Antonio.
“I just want them to feel that the organization is trying to do the best for them and will do the best for them if they give us 100 percent work ethic and effort,” he said, pointing to the examples set by general manager Kiki Vandeweghe and owner Stan Kroenke.
“Kiki has shown that before I got here. Stan Kroenke has shown that with his ownership of other teams and while he’s been here. Now they’ve got a coach that, if you play hard and bust it, I’ll do anything in the world for you.”
Staff writer Marc J. Spears contributed to this report.
Staff writer Adam Thompson can be reached at 303-820-5447 or athompson@denverpost.com.
