Former Denver Nuggets head coach George Karl rained criticism with comments about his former players in his new book: Furious George — among them, Cleveland Cavaliers swingman J.R. Smith.
According to some excerpts given to Newsday early on Thursday, the tenured coach was unapologetically blunt with his thoughts about a Nuggets team that never quite achieved close to its capabilities.
Karl spread blame across his former star forward Carmelo Anthony, a young Smith, and mercurial forward Kenyon Martin.
Early in his career, Smith was a high-flying dynamo with no such thing as a conscience for his shot-taking, his greatest fault that would later on in his career turn into his greatest asset — becoming not only a bad shot-taker, but a bad shot-maker.
The 65-year-old Karl was ruthless in his description of Smith, going as far as saying he had a “huge sense of entitlement, a distracting posse, his eye always on his next contract and some really unbelievable shot selection.”
Karl also wrote that Smith’s father “urged his son to shoot the ball and keep shooting it from the very moment I put him in the game.”
He now becomes the second white former head coach to make use of the word “posse” to describe the company of a particular NBA player, just as New York Knicks president Phil Jackson did so last month while talking about LeBron James.
J.R. Swish wasn’t impressed with his former coach’s comments, addressing it vaguely over Twitter.
George Karl’s comments do come across as sour and indignant for something that happened so long ago. The North Carolina alum has been criticized in the past for having favorites and taking preference to playing other guards instead of Duke product Seth Curry during his stint with the Sacramento Kings.
The book, which will hit stores in January, is bound to reveal more of what made furious George so upset throughout his career. As these excerpts get back to players like Anthony and Martin, don’t necessarily expect them to take the high road like Smith did.