The George Karl factor

[Mike G]

In another thread, this was succinctly defined as:

Prevents his team from advancing beyond the 1st round

How apt is this? He's taken some non-competitive teams and turned them into perennial playoff teams.
Has he led mostly weak teams to playoffs, where they have often been overmatched?

His teams are 13-22 in playoff series.
Against higher-seeded teams, he's 3-15. Against lower-seeded teams, he's 10-7.
Versus teams with better SRS, his teams are 2-15. When he's had the better team, he's 11-7.

Average seeding of playoff opponent has been 3.77 -- same as Karl's playoff teams.
Average SRS of Karl team in a playoff series is 3.85, vs 3.75 for opponents.

[Crow]

This is useful additional analysis. I'd be interested in seeing how his playoff performance splits compare to other "top" coaches. I've previously paid attention to overall playoff win % but your approach gives detail and insight.

I'd also like to perhaps see an Adjusted +/- run for Coaches just in the playoffs using this type of input information and probably studied at game level, accounting for home court.

[v-zero]

I wouldn't say he has had to deal with many rosters of anything other than good-to-very good. Certainly some rosters of 'unorthodox' nature, but that isn't the same as lacking talent. He doesn't appear to adjust well to opponents in the playoffs, as evidenced by his choosing to play small against Golden State (although that series wasn't as much of an upset as everybody likes to say).

[JonCBK]

Initial premiss is wrong. His rosters have been good and they have consistent home court advantage due to Denver altitude. That plays much more of a factor in regular season than in playoffs.

I suspect based on the W-L record going into the playoffs, he will have the worst record of any coach who has coached a similar sample size. But again part of that is just that his team's W-L record is inflated during the regular season due to altitude.

[jbrocato23]

Initial premiss is wrong. His rosters have been good and they have consistent home court advantage due to Denver altitude. That plays much more of a factor in regular season than in playoffs.

I suspect based on the W-L record going into the playoffs, he will have the worst record of any coach who has coached a similar sample size. But again part of that is just that his team's W-L record is inflated during the regular season due to altitude.

Then why did we see the same thing in Seattle? He consistently had great regular season teams there and consistently underperformed in the playoffs. In fact, I imagine the disparity was greater in Seattle.

Neil Paine wrote a good article on this subject a couple of months ago (insider): http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/story/_/ ... f-coaches/

[AcrossTheCourt]

Initial premiss is wrong. His rosters have been good and they have consistent home court advantage due to Denver altitude. That plays much more of a factor in regular season than in playoffs.

I suspect based on the W-L record going into the playoffs, he will have the worst record of any coach who has coached a similar sample size. But again part of that is just that his team's W-L record is inflated during the regular season due to altitude.

Then why did we see the same thing in Seattle? He consistently had great regular season teams there and consistently underperformed in the playoffs. In fact, I imagine the disparity was greater in Seattle.

Neil Paine wrote a good article on this subject a couple of months ago (insider): http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/story/_/ ... f-coaches/

Yeah I was going to say ... Seattle had an SRS of 8.7 and lost in the first round in 1994. The teams with that kind of strength without a title are ones with another team of the same strength or higher like the '86 Celtics with the exception of the '09 Cavs. But Seattle lost in the first round.

[Mike G]

With Seattle, Karl's teams scored just one upset against a better (SRS) team, in 4 series.
His teams were upset by lesser teams in 4 of 11 series.

Of 5 upsets, 3 were in first rounds when it was best of 5.
But the game W-L mark is not impressive either. He was 33-27 against lesser opponents, and 7-13 against betters.

How do we know Denver's HCA is much less in the postseason? Maybe it's really the George Karl Factor?

In Milwaukee, Karl won the only 2 series he was supposed to and lost all 4 the Bucks were expected to lose. They made a couple of series very close which should not have been that competitive.

Denver's been his worst stop. He's 0-6 against better (SRS) teams, even as the higher seed in 2 of the matchups. Against lesser teams, he's now 2-3; but again twice the Nuggets have held the lower seed (no HCA).

And W-L in games: 7-24 vs better teams, and just 14-14 vs lesser teams (avg 3.74 SRS advantage for Den)

For his career, by round of playoffs:

Code: Select all

round   W-L    games  avg SRS
1st     8-14   44-63   +0.49
2nd     4-4    22-23   -0.02
3rd     1-3    12-15   -0.74
finals  0-1     2-4    -4.41

Last column is avg SRS differential vs opponents.