George Karl: Hall of Famer?

While watching Tuesday’s agonizing Laker win against the Nuggets, I overheard an interesting comment from Jeff Van Gundy. I’m paraphrasing here, but the gist of it was:

“A guy like George Karl, you talk about those other guys [the trio was in the midst of discussing coaches], and George Karl is a Hall of Fame coach.”

Quite a bold pronouncement, no? I’m sure Van Gundy was speaking more off the cuff than he was providing a cogent, nuanced argument, but regardless, it’s one I had been thinking about for the past few days.

Specifically, where does George Karl – wearer of funny ties, most intriguing coach in Sonics history, resident grouch – rank among the NBA’s all-time coaching greats?

Karl is a Gene Mauchian character. With no ring on his finger, he lacks the cache of such renowned “winners” as Gregg Popovich, Phil Jackson, or Chuck Daly. A wonderfully successful regular season coach who revitalized five different franchises (Cleveland, Golden State, Seattle, Milwaukee, and Denver), Karl has, sadly, proven incapable of capturing the brass ring.

And so it is that, rather than lounging on the patio with the Auerbachs and Rileys, Karl is relegated to the kitchen with such lesser-knowns as Cotton Fitzsimmons and Rick Adelman. But is that a just scenario, or is his greatness being overlooked?

To make the case for Karl as a Hall of Famer, one could easily turn to his regular season accomplishments. He’s 10th all-time in victories, and almost everyone ahead of him is in the HOF.

Only ten men have coached as many regular season games as Karl, and take a guess as to how many have a better winning percentage.

Would it surprise you to find out that the answer is two? Or that those two – Jerry Sloan and Pat Riley – are both in the Hall of Fame?

With plenty of years left in his career, Karl now has more wins than Hall of Famers John Kundla and Alex Hannum, combined.

Fine, you say, but Kundla and Hannum are poor comparisons from a different era. What about someone who had a career of a roughly similar length to Karl in the same era, how would your boy match up then?

Well, if he lost every game for the next two and a half seasons, Karl would still have a better career winning percentage than legendary Hall of Famer Jack Ramsay. How’s that for a matchup? Further, even if Karl’s Nuggets flame out against the Lakers this spring, he’ll still have a better playoff winning percentage than the former Blazer coach.

Yes, the critics say, but Karl never won a title, so how can he deserve to go into the Hall?

Well, Jerry Sloan never won a title as a coach, his winning percentage is only marginally better than Karl’s (.602 to .592), he’s got a losing record in the playoffs (94-98), and he only managed one more conference championship than George, despite the fact he’s coached an extra five seasons. And Sloan’s in the Hall, right?

Or Hubie Brown. Sure, he’s great on tv, but he wasn’t all that great as a coach (70 games below .500, no conference titles, .368 playoff winning percentage), and he’s in the Hall, right?

You hear all of that, and you start thinking, hey, maybe Van Gundy’s on to something, maybe George Karl does deserve to get into the Hall. Top 10 in wins, brought five different teams to the playoffs … I know he doesn’t act or look like a Hall of Famer, but, geez, when you look at those numbers, it’s hard to argue, right?

Well, that’s one side. Here’s the other.

Of all the coaches in NBA history who have won 933 games (Karl’s total at the end of this season), the only other two without a title are Don Nelson and Jerry Sloan.

And while his regular season winning percentage ranks 12th all-time, cheek and jowl with Daly, Sloan, Kundla, and Sharman, his playoff winning percentage is a pedestrian 33rd, alongside the likes of McMillan, MacLeod, and Silas.

To get a better picture of Karl’s “greatness,” I crunched the numbers for the 50 coaches with the most regular season games, taking into special consideration four factors: Playoff Winning Percentage, Regular Season Winning Percentage, Conference Titles, and Championships. I further multiplied their career wins times winning percentage to give a truer indication of their accomplishments, divided the results by five to bring the total into a more manageable figure, gave each coach five points for a conference title, and finally 15 points for a championship. Add it all up, and you’ve got a list of the best coaches in history. (See chart accompanying this article for the complete numbers).

As expected, Phil Jackson is the top dog, with Riley, Auerbach, Popovich and Wilkens rounding out the top five. (Yes, Auerbach is ill served by his lack of “conference titles,” inasmuch as there were no conferences during his era. However, even if we give him credit for eight “Division” titles, he still falls short of Jackson. Regardless, any chart with Riley, Auerbach and Jackson as the top three can’t be all wrong, can it?).

Not surprisingly, the majority of the top ten are Hall of Famers, with the exceptions of active coaches and KC Jones, making him the only member of the Celtics not to be in the Hall (a little anti-Boston humor there).

In reality, the most comparable coaches to Karl are Don Nelson and Rick Adelman, neither of whom are in the Hall of Fame, although I’d have to imagine that eventually Nelson will be enshrined, considering that next year he’ll pass Lenny Wilkens for the most wins in NBA coaching history (or, at least Golden State fans hope he will; Nellie needs 24 to pass Wilkens).

Adelman, like Karl, has a strong regular season pedigree (even topping George in winning percentage), has taken multiple teams to the post-season, but is 0-for-Career in winning a championship.

For both gentlemen, barring a title run in the future, they will need to rely upon the length of their careers to gain access to the Hall of Fame. Unfortunately for both of them, the NBA landscape is littered with proficient coaches who couldn’t capture that one glorious season which catapulted them into the league’s upper class.

And so, to answer Jeff Van Gundy’s statement from Tuesday: Is George Karl a Hall of Famer?

Maybe someday, but not today.

Magic Thoughts

A few things I was thinking after Wednesday night's surprising Orlando win over Cleveland:

1. I agree, in the long run, Rashard Lewis' contract is going to be a killer for the Magic and as soon as Dwight Howard is done with his rookie deal, Orlando will be in for a world of hurt. So, yes, Otis Smith overpaid for Lewis and all that. But, look at it from Smith's perspective: What's the shelf life of an NBA GM? 4 years? Maybe 5? So, let's assume Smith looked at it that way two summers ago. He's got a young Dwight Howard just reaching his prime, and the one thing he needs to make his team contend for a title is a versatile PF/SF who can hit 3's. On the market is a still-young Rashard Lewis who fits the bill perfectly. Granted, Smith went overboard on the contract, and offered an extra year when he didn't need to, but considering that he thought that Lewis would be the one piece to complete the puzzle, it's somewhat understandable.

And, as to what happens in a few years, well, let's say Smith doesn't sign Rashard Lewis and the Magic continue their parade of 35- to 45-win seasons ... pretty good odds that Smith wouldn't be around, either.

2. A good reason for a Sonic fan to root for Orlando and Denver - it's exactly what David Stern doesn't want to see this June. Naturally, the Lakers are the A #1 choice to be in the Finals, and while LeBron doesn't have the ratings appeal most people think he does, a matchup of Kobe v LeBron is ratings gold. A matchup of Dwight Howard against Carmelo Anthony in two mid- to small-range markets? Not so much.

3. How glad are the Magic that Billy Donovan changed his mind?

4. More than anything, I'm happy as heck for Rashard Lewis this morning.

Win it for George

How long must a man stand outside the door before they let him in?

How long must he submit applications before he gets approved?

Surely, surely, George Karl asks these questions every year.

On the one hand, Karl is a remarkably successful head coach. He’s been on the plus side of .500 nearly every year of his coaching career. He’s taken five different teams to the NBA playoffs, and most of those squads were languishing in mediocrity before Karl brought his unique blend of enthusiasm and nastiness on board. Instead of Jordan or Shaq or LeBron, Karl had World B. Free and Joe Barry Carroll and Ricky Pierce, and yet he still got those clubs into the playoffs.

A starter at North Carolina and a draftee of the Knicks, the gritty Karl parlayed a modicum of talent into five years as a professional basketball player, not a bad accomplishment for a 6’2” kid from Pennyslvania. He followed that with one of the best stretches of coaching in CBA history, with the Montana Golden Nuggets and Albany Patroons, including a remarkable 50-6 record for Albany.

And yet (you knew this was coming), Karl has seen his share of frustrations. To wit:

21 NBA seasons, no championships
2002 FIBA World Championships, lost to Yugoslavia
2 Real Madrid seasons, no championships
5 CBA seasons, no championships
2 seasons, San Antonio Spurs, assistant coach, no championships
5 seasons, San Antonio Spurs, player, no championships
4 seasons, University of North Carolina, no NCAA championships

And it’s not as if he was with lousy teams all those years. The Sonics’ failures are already all-to-familiar to our readers, but don’t forget that the Bucks went from being a #1 seed to watching the playoffs on television under Karl’s watch, that the Nuggets lost in the first round after winning their division, that Real Madrid won seven titles in less than two decades, but none under George, that the Spurs parlayed two consecutive first-place finishes into two consecutive early exits, that the Tar Heels fell short in the ’72 Final Four …

The ultimate knife in the back had to be Karl’s experience in Madrid. He was unable to guide the team to a title during his two-year run, grew dissatisfied with the situation (shocking, I know), quit mid-season to return to the NBA, then watched Real Madrid captured the Saporta Cup in his absence, something they had been unable to do during his tenure.

Of course, it could just as easily be 1991, when Albany went 28-0 at home and 50-6 overall … and didn’t even make it to the CBA Finals. Instead, they lost in six games to Wichita Falls in the semifinals.

That’s how it is with George Karl, though: Studying his coaching career is akin to studying the history of modern Italian warfare. The talent and passion are there in abundance, but the results always fail to materialize.

Pair Karl’s experiences with those of Phil Jackson, his coaching nemesis for the next fortnight. The Zen Master saw success as a collegiate athlete, as a professional with the Knicks, as a head coach in the CBA (two titles), then finally in the NBA (nine more). By my count, Jackson, now a Hall of Famer, has won 13 championships in his career.

George Karl? One.

In 1970-71 the Tarheels won the NIT.

That’s it.

Nearly 40 years ago, George Karl got to win the last game of his season and he hasn’t done it since. 40 years, man! An entire generation has been born, gone to school, graduated, gotten married, had children, and slouched towards middle age since Karl called himself a champion.

So, with that in mind, tell me, just please tell me, you’re rooting for George this year. Forget Kobe, forget Carmelo, forget Phil, forget all of them.

Instead, remember the Sonics losing to the Nuggets in 1993, remember the debacle with Wally Walker, remember the Bucks falling to the Sixers in 2001, remember how the 1991 Albany Patroons managed to go 50-6 during the regular season and lost the title, remember the Spurs losing year after year in the ABA playoffs … remember all of that.

Then, fellow basketball fan, ask the basketball gods to smile just this one time onto George Karl’s lumpy, looking-more-like-WC-Fields-every-day physique.

He’s earned it.