{image1}George Karl's five-year tenure as head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks closed Sunday, skidding to an end after accomplishment and excitement were overshadowed by disappointment and recrimination. His stay was a success, but only a qualified one.

Karl's departure completes the stunning unraveling of the Bucks, so close to the NBA Finals just two summers ago before injury, acrimony and poor play stole the greater part of the following two seasons, leaving the franchise with a new roster, a new general manager and -- at some point in the next few weeks -- its eighth coach.

How the Bucks declined over the last two years is well-known -- a lack of consistent defense, rebounding and an overall team concept led to mediocre seasons and locker room in-fighting. Why is another matter, and it's the reason Karl will no longer grimace along the Bradley Center sidelines.

Karl rarely lacked for words, even if his verbal jousts prodded too closely to the tender pysches of his best players. The coach seemed to be in a public dispute with a different player each month, whether it was Glenn Robinson, Sam Cassell, Anthony Mason, Ray Allen or Tim Thomas.

Thomas differs from the rest in that he outlasted Karl. The "Big Three" was disassembled and scattered to Atlanta, Minnesota and Seattle; and if Anthony Mason is still a Buck in October, he must have some incriminating pictures of front office personnel in his locker somewhere. Mason, symbolic of Karl and the Bucks' travails since 2001, was signed to provide the missing toughness and on-court leadership the team lacked in their playoff run. But he proved to be as big a headache in Milwaukee as he'd been at every other NBA address he frequented. Worse, he didn't rebound much, either.

But weren't bad personnel moves more ex-GM Ernie Grunfeld's fault than Karl's? Probably, but the timing of Karl's departure may implicate him, as well. If there was ever a chance of Gary Payton staying in Milwaukee, doesn't it follow that Karl would have been a key persuasive factor? So did Payton's jump to the Lakers seal Karl's fate in Milwaukee? Sunday, GM Larry Harris said it had no factor. But wasn't it Karl who said GP could spearhead a run to the NBA Finals this summer, and that the Bucks had a better chance at re-signing him than everyone believed? Wrong and wrong.

Harris was vague about the team's reasons for dumping the coach, but he stressed that the Bucks are looking for someone to mold and grow with the team's young roster. Karl's methods were not deemed up to that task. And in an NBA run more and more by players and their agents, the Bucks front office couldn't risk alienating the team's new, young core.

Harris didn't say the next head coach had to be experienced, but that trait couldn't hurt. And the most obvious experienced name out there is that of ex-Detroit coach Rick Carlisle. Run out of town by the Larry Brown express after the season, Carlisle went 100-64 in two years with the Pistons, getting the maximum out of a roster that is merely average by NBA talent standards. Meanwhile, the Bucks have been reaping the minimum.

The coaching hires around the NBA this summer ˜ Paul Silas, Jeff Van Gundy, Mike Dunleavy, Kevin O'Neill, Randy Ayers, Tim Floyd, Eddie Jordan, and Brown -- signify a recycling trend, and Carlisle helped develop young players like Richard Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince, Chucky Atkins and Mehmet Okur in Detroit. Ex-Wizards coach Doug Collins is also unemployed at the moment, though his legacy in Washington is not nearly as impressive.

The eventual coach will not be saddled with unrealistic expectations because of the roster changes, but the local populace may have forgotten how bad it was before Karl arrived. In the seven seasons prior to Karl, the Bucks won 31, 28, 20, 34, 25, 33 and 36 games. In his first season, they went 28-22 and made the playoffs, and came within a whisper of the NBA Finals just two years later.

Two more years later, Karl is just another fired coach. Overall, he won 205 games, lost 173, and turned the Bucks into a winning program after years of futility. But he won't be remembered that way. He will be remembered as the coach who lost his team and couldn't control his own players, a man with the right ideas but either the wrong personnel or tactics to implement them.

In the final analysis, there is really one reason why Karl is no longer the coach of the Milwaukee Bucks -- the new regime would not risk committing the same failures as the old one.