The Fellowship of the Pace-Setters



Posted by Kevin Arnovitz

You have to feel for George Karl. Last season, his Nuggets compiled the league's 10th best defensive efficiency rating, but if you asked anyone from studio analysts to the Denver press corps to diagnose the team's weaknesses, they'd all tell you that Karl's team didn't know how to defend. Critics pointed to the 107 points per game Denver surrendered, overlooking the fact that the Nuggets were, far and away, the fastest-paced squad in the NBA.

Statistical nits aside, it's no surprise that Karl empathizes with Knicks' coach Mike D'Antoni. Ken Berger asked Karl about D'Antoni's challenge of sculpting the Knicks into a Seven Seconds or Less team while fending off the "They Don't Play Any D" rap:

...Karl's smile wasn't born of disbelief, but rather kinship. Seated on a folding chair in the narrow hallway outside the visitors locker room Sunday, Karl wasn't the least bit surprised to hear the word "defense" come out of D'Antoni's mouth without a punch line attached to it.

"I feel for him," Karl said after the Nuggets escaped the dreaded matinee at Madison Square Garden with a 117-110 victory over the Knicks. "My feeling is, when you give up a lot of points, nobody's going to think you're defending. Last year in our halfcourt defense, we were a pretty good defensive team. But no one would ever write that, because we were awful in transition and we were awful in giving up a lot of numbers. So I don't know that anybody is ever going to give the due."

...The first difference he noticed in watching film of D'Antoni's Knicks is how frustrating they are to play. He noticed upon personal inspection that the energy has returned to the building, too&

"Mike is an interesting hire," Karl said. "My recollection of New York is the city game, the street game, the playground game. And he plays as fast and free as any coach I've ever played against. I know the Knick (teams) have been based on defense. But I was kidding with one of my assistants that I would like to see Mike D'Antoni get a Carolina or Kentucky or Kansas job, because people don't think (his style) can win. People don't think it can win championships. And I think that's crazy.

"I think if you get the best players," Karl said, "this style will be incredibly difficult to play against - impossible, maybe, to play against. But we have so many experts who think that you have to play defense, you have to rebound, you have to be a possession coach, you have to execute. I just laugh. Explosive offense is not as intimidating as dominant defense. But it is scary when you don't know how to stop someone."

The Pistons and Spurs have lived off a defense-first mentality for years. The same mentality won a championship for the Celtics last season and has the Cavaliers looking like worthy challengers. Given the trend, D'Antoni's intentional departure from this approach would seem to be suicidal. Maybe that is why D'Antoni made a point of inserting defense into the conversation after the game even though he wasn't asked about it. If the Knicks continue to drift further out of playoff contention, D'Antoni knows the daggers will be aimed squarely at his biggest perceived weakness.

"We've got to play better defense, there's no doubt about it," D'Antoni said. "I know I joke around a lot about it, but the only way we're going to win is get better at it. I've always felt like we're going to score no matter what. I don't care who's out on the floor, we're going to score. So now we've just got to find a way to stop people. And we have to continue to get better at it."

But this is where D'Antoni's definition of defense differs from that in Boston, Detroit or Cleveland -- and where it intersects with Karl's...

"I know that defense is extremely important," Karl said. "But deep down inside, every defense has a weakness. Every defense gives you something. Now can the team on the court, the players on the court, find what it gives you? That's what Mike teaches. He makes it fairly simple, fairly easy to read. Even though we won, watching them on film, I knew that we would have moments of frustration. Because of their intensity to play the way they like to play, you never totally control them."

D'Antoni has never pretended we were a good defensive team he has openly admitted we stink and need to get better and hopefully has been working on it.. so what more can u ask from a coach

Why are you so angry ALL the time?

lol u need the players too for more than lip service.. hes a coach.. what do you want him to do? play defense for them?