Five Games After Which George Karl Should Have Told J.R. Smith He Played A Good Game

Yesterday morning J.R. Smith tweeted this: "First time I heard good game in 6yrs from my head coach! This Man gives me confidence!" I love getting yet another bit of confirmation that Mike D'Antoni encourages his offensive weapons with regularity. But we're not here to talk about Mike D'Antoni.

We're here to talk about George Karl.

He never said, "Good game," to J.R. Smith once? Never? Six years goes back to Smith's New Orleans days, so his entire tenure with the Karl-coached Nuggets is encompassed here. And Karl never, not once, told the guy he played a good game? Are we making jokes here? Karl, who seems like a good dude, had literally hundreds of chances to utter these two syllables in Smith's general direction. Such a simple thing to do. And such an important thing to do, especially when we're talking about a player who made "mercurial" a household word.

Sorry if I'm taking the scenic route here. All I'm trying to say is this: George Karl should have told J.R. Smith that he played a good game at least a few times in his five seasons as head coach of J.R. Smith.

In fact, here are five games that would have worked.

No Regard Daily Previews: Florida Rivals

The First Game We'll Be Watching Tonight: Orlando Magic vs. Miami Heat

Tonight's Florida-on-Florida NBA action has the potential to be some serious eye-candy for NBA junkies and casual fans alike. Outside of the tight Eastern conference playoff race in which the top three seeds are barely separated by a few games, Miami, a side that's been criticized for both its inability to win close games and have success against the top-tier teams in the league, has a chance to gain some confidence and silence their haters temporarily. For Orlando, it's an opportunity to continue the momentum it gained from their comeback victory over the new-look Knicks and tinker with a roster that still hasn't figured out its identity since being revamped a few months back.

Text Messages and Google: Knicks and Nuggets React to Blockbuster Trade

(Staten Island native, Renaldo Balkman, is back home for a second stint with the Knicks. He's ready to contribute!)

With the Melodrama finally coming to a close late last evening, the reactions have been pouring in. Seems like just about everyone who's ever seen an NBA game has an opinion about this blockbuster trade.
So we figured we'd give you a break over here at No Regard and instead of waxing poetic about whose gonna take the last shot for the new-look Knicks (it will be Chauncey, FYI, not because that's how Mike will draw it up but because Billups thinks he's the man), we've decided to hypothesize the sorts of texts messages and Google searches the different individuals involved with the deal have been firing away in the last 12 hours.