You're right and I think PDA might be displeased at some point. Excuse my posting of Karl articles but I'm sifting through some material on him right now and this applies to the conversation.
He’s pigeonholed now as someone whose offensive philosophy amounts to “outrun an opponent until they can’t breathe,” but that’s not really accurate. Karl had very little history as a proprietor of a fast-paced offense until arriving in Denver, where he correctly concluded a speed game would work best with young, athletic rosters playing in mile-high air. We remember Karl’s Seattle teams as helter-skelter transition machines, but in only two of Karl’s seven seasons there did the Sonics rank above the league average in possessions per game — i.e., pace. Those Seattle teams pioneered an aggressive style of trapping, chaotic defense that was ahead of its time, with zone-ish principles and heavy switching that made it difficult for offenses accustomed to dictating the terms of engagement. The Sonics ran opportunistically off turnovers their defense created, but with the exception of those two fast-paced seasons, they were not a Denver-style “run at all costs” bunch.
And Karl’s Milwaukee teams were mostly slowpokes, and yet still managed to rank in the top 10 in points per possession in each of his five seasons there.
Point is: Karl, on offense, is adaptable. Just because the Nuggets ran like all hell does not mean Karl would be a bad bit for snails like the Nets and Grizzlies. And while Karl’s Denver offenses looked almost simplistic, they gradually gained the excited admiration of the NBA’s more analytics-oriented front-office folks. Karl understood that his offense generated the most efficient shots available — shots at the rim, and 3-pointers — and on an even deeper level, he was early in understanding that NBA defenses were evolving in ways that made scoring in the half-court a more difficult job. He was also ahead of the curve in getting that post-up plays, while appealing in a traditional way, are a very low-efficiency strategy without really good post-up players to run them.
I'm not at all convinced we'll see something like we saw in Den under him, not with Cuz here. He's a smart guy, a creative guy and I don't see him taking the rock out of Cuz's hands. That's foolish. You're not going to get an efficient offense and maximize Cuz by having him jacking up jumpers non-stop like we've seen under Corbin. And to maximize spacing, which Karl is very good at would require getting Cuz in the post and spacing off him. What I expect is Cuz to be the focus of our offense much as Webber was under Rick, with better spacing and movement off Cuz than we've seen.
I fully expect some roster movement this summer and the acquisition of some 3&D guys to space off Cuz. The corner 3 will be important. I'd also hope, and he's valued them before, that he'd want a defensive presence next to Cuz, something like a Kenyon Martin or even going back to Irvin Johnson. Actually, Karl has almost always had a pretty good defensive big and a number of times multiple, guys who'll do the dirty work. My guess is Oct 1st, Ben is still here and DC isn't. DC doesn't strike me as his type of starting PG. With Karl I could see us going hard after Dragic.
