Tuesday, June 7, 2005 | 9:48 a.m.
Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
When I turned on my cell phone Sunday, there was a voice mail from a guy who sounded an awfully lot like Mike Hamrick but was actually a pal doing an impression of the UNLV athletic director, saying things such as "See, I told ya' we couldn't afford to har (hire) George Karl."
That was a day after Karl was suspended for the first three games of next season and the team he coaches, the Denver Nuggets, fined $200,000 for what amounted to a recruiting violation.
The problem arose when Karl watched his son Coby, a shooting guard at Boise State, work out with several players at Marquette University.
The NBA does not have a rule preventing a father from watching his son work out. It does, however, have a problem with fathers, if they happen to be NBA coaches, watching sons work out with players who are eligible for the NBA draft.
In addition to Coby Karl, the Rocky Mountain News reported the workout included Marquette guard Travis Diener, Illinois guard Deron Williams and Indiana guard Bracey Wright.
"This is probably the most expensive camp that George ever paid to send Coby to," joked Rick Majerus, the former Utah coach and Karl's longtime buddy, who orchestrated the workout.
Majerus told the News that Karl only was interested in watching his son, not the other players.
"This wasn't in the cover of darkness. He didn't even know there was a rule out there."
Exactly. Which is partly why Karl spent this past season coaching Carmelo Anthony instead of Odartey Blankson.
For those scoring at home, or at least fudging on their tax return, this was the third time in three years that the NBA has handed down penalties for rules violations regarding amateur players.
If Karl wasn't aware of that or the NBA's few rules governing recruiting, what makes you think he would have read up on and memorized the NCAA's myriad restrictions on the subject?
Karl did a fantastic job upon taking over the Nuggets in mid-season before Denver was eliminated by the Spurs in the first round of the playoffs, which is a little different than being eliminated from the second round of the NIT by South Carolina, the fate of first-year Rebels coach Lon Kruger.
It was about that time that Rebels fans who hadn't had their George Karl masks confiscated by Thomas & Mack Center security began to bring them out of the closet and wonder what might have been.
What might have been, of course, is that Karl became the UNLV coach instead of Kruger. If you believe Majerus, which I do at least 25 percent of the time, the Rebels could have had Karl for a song and a dance by the Rebel Girls when he was out on the NBA's off-ramp with a cardboard sign seeking work.
"It's weird," Majerus told the News in April. "At this time last year, I was trying to get him the Vegas job (You know, the one Majerus turned down about six times). I called Vegas and said 'You should hire this guy. This guy is a great coach.' They just blew him off. Now he's the hottest coach in the NBA."
And his team is $200,000 the poorer for it.
Not that George Karl is the NBA's Bob Huggins. Quite the contrary, this is the first time he has been suspended in 17 seasons as an NBA coach, although he deserved at least 30 days in the hole for having the audacity to pull a retro jersey over his middle-age paunch and coach a Nuggets game in that getup in March. The NBA let him slide, although Karl did catch all kinds of grief from Mister Blackwell and Pat Riley.
Almost as much as Hamrick caught from that small but vocal group who wore the Karl masks at the BYU game. For what it's worth, Hamrick did sit down with Karl for an informal chat. But it was just too risky to go any further.
Did that give Hamrick the right to have those masks and signs in support of Karl removed from the arena? Not if you believe in the First Amendment.
But if you believe in fair play the way the NCAA manual defines it, you almost have to side with Hamrick in the case of Karl.
Anytime you are coming off double-secret NCAA probation, as the Rebels always seem to be, an athletic director simply cannot afford the risk of hiring a basketball coach who is ignorant of the rules.
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