Fast Break: The George Karl Knock Against Iverson is a Disgrace and Nothing More than Part of a Karl Career Building Scheme

George Karl is at it again; he has once again tried to blame his inability to coach in a quality way on a player who by default was doing some coaching for himself. This time he has criticized the obvious target, a player who just left the team more for financial reasons than basketball reasons actually: he has made false claims while knocking Allen Iverson.

If you read The Quest for the Ring you see through this ploy immediately. I have been telling you about this crucial controversy for many months. I told you this: Karl refused to direct Iverson in any way. He is either unwilling to, unable to, or both, to direct any of his historic players in any significant way. A perverse advantage of what actually may be a clever scheme by Karl is that when things don't work out optimally he can blame things on the player (who is making all of the decisions) rather than on himself. There is some evidence that he has been using this career climbing or career maintenance scheme for many, many years. In my opinion this is not only negligence but it is also disgraceful and very, very cheap.

Moreover, it is very disturbing how many Nuggets fans who have circled the wagons and rallied around the scaled back and shrunken Nuggets following Billups for Iverson are pretending that coaches are not allowed to or are unable to have any impact on how their players and teams play. They are pretending in effect that "quality players can always coach themselves." And they are also pretending that Iverson would not have changed anything had he been asked or ordered.

It's uncool to openly support Karl of course, but a lot of the Nuggets fans are indirectly supporting Karl by giving him a pass on his huge Iverson blunder. Those fans need to live in the real world of competitive franchises, where players are not 100% free to do whatever they want. That includes Kobe Bryant: he gets instructions from Phil Jackson quite often. Nuggets fans are kind of sad when they live in Karl's world, where historic, great players can not be instructed or directed at all and are allowed virtually 100% freedom to do whatever they want.

And meanwhile, younger, inconsistent players such as J.R. Smith are overlorded, over managed, and generally harassed by Karl.

So yes, what I said recently is true: Iverson was punked by Karl and the Nuggets. All players deserve a boost from quality coaching and he didn't get one. Then he got the kick in the rear from Karl on his way out.

The headline for this latest Karl outburst against a player in the Denver Post is: Point guard praise: Billups over A.I.

This is an ultra cheap and unsportsmanlike shot, and this is a disgraceful lie posing as real information. The Nuggets organization and the Denver media are trying to, and succeeding in, largely, because most fans do not follow the Nuggets closely enough to see through this, create the belief that Iverson was not a good point guard and that is why he had to be traded and that is why everyone is so happy now that Billups is on the team. This is nothing more than garbage. Iverson was treated as a pure shooting guard from start to finish by Karl and the Nuggets. So now we have the Denver Post joining all the common Joes who foolishly criticize Iverson for being a poor point guard while he is not playing that position.

Jeesh, this is why the open community internet is so important. You go to independent forums and web logs to get the real truth about things, because you are only going to get a lot of manure shoveled into your brain if you try to get informed from big Corporation sites such as the Denver Post.

Editorial Note: Please be aware that a "Fast Break" is a short and quick preview of some of the topics that will be explored and proved in more detail in upcoming regular reports. Fast Breaks will often reappear in full reports with only minor reediting, but there will be more important details, more evidence, and more implications and explanations in the full reports. Moreover, there will be topics that never appear in any Fast Break in a full Report.

Fast Breaks are especially useful for the first few days after major news breaks. They are also very useful for people who will seldom or never have enough time to read a full Game/Team/League Report. Fast Breaks are the type of article that more typical web logs feature almost all or all of the time.