Former NBA Head Coach George Karl has always been known to be outspoken. He is one of the most successful coaches in league history, and is fifth on the all time wins list. Karl is now turning the same outspoken and combative persona onto paper and is releasing his memoirs.
The book is titled “Furious George: My Forty Years Surviving NBA Divas, Clueless GMS, and Poor Shot Selection.”
George Karl references back to his days as Anthony’s coach in Denver and claims that he was a user, not a leader, and that he was a “conundrum” according to a copy that was obtained by the New York Post. He spent six seasons with Melo in Denver and stated that he was unwilling to share the spotlight or play defense in the book.
Karl emphasized his displeasure with Anthony on the defensive side of the ball.
“He really lit my fuse with his low demand of himself on defense. He had no commitment to the hard, dirty work of stopping the other guy. My ideal — probably every coach’s ideal — is when your best player is also your leader. But since Carmelo only played hard on one side of the ball, he made it plain he couldn’t lead the Nuggets, even though he said he wanted to. Coaching him meant working around his defense and compensating for his attitude.”
In his book the former Nuggets coach takes multiple personal shots at Carmelo Anthony and his former teammates J.R. Smith and Kenyon Martin. Karl referred to the three of them as “AAU babies’’ — akin to “the spoiled brats you see in junior golf and junior tennis.’’ He said that Smith had “A huge sense of entitlement, a distracting posse, his eye always on the next contract and some really unbelievable shot selection”
Smith, who is now with the Cleveland Cavaliers, just witnessed the disrespect his teammate LeBron James felt when when Phil Jackson referred to his associates as his “posse”. It will be interesting to see how he responds to this.
The book is slated to be released in January of 2017.
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