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“I had this meeting with Dolan, I said, ‘I don’t want Carmelo back on the team; we’ve got to find a way to trade him,’ ” Jackson said in the book. “I said, ‘Let’s sit with [Anthony’s agent] Leon Rose and explain we’re not going to win a championship. Carmelo wants a championship; he wants to be on a team that has a chance, and he should be; he’s a Hall of Famer.’ ” Jackson also detailed a conversation with former Nuggets coach George Karl, who said Anthony, a star for Denver until being traded to the Knicks in 2011, rejected a defensive plan for selfish reasons in the 2009 Western Conference finals against Kobe Bryant and the Lakers.
“I was shocked. I have been very sad. I am hoping that this is a misunderstanding, a minimal situation where he can find a safe place to go on to have a great life,” said former Nuggets coach George Karl of Billups, who led Denver to the Western Conference Finals in the 2008-09 season. “He is one of the best leaders, if not best leader, I have ever been around. Great with the team, great one-on-one. He was so mentally strong. I don’t know if I have cried today, but I have been really, really down.”
You often defended Melo throughout his NBA career when he got criticized in Denver and New York. How George Karl and Phil Jackson’s criticisms about Melo land with you? Boeheim: “Well, the thing I think about the NBA is that he made every team that he was on better than they were. Whether it was Denver or the Knicks, he made them better. They had to go up against the Lakers and the Spurs in Denver. They couldn’t do it, but he made the team better. That’s all you can do sometimes as players. You can’t make a team a championship team by yourself. You have to have a lot of parts to it. His time in Denver, there were some great teams with the Lakers and the Spurs. He made them better, and that’s all you can do as a player.”
Brandon Krisztal: I’m hearing that longtime Nuggets assistant Ryan Bowen is set to become the new Head Coach of the team’s G-League affiliate, The Grand Rapids Gold, and former Nuggets assistant Coach, Chad Iske, will serve as the GM of the Gold. Iske, returned to the organization as a Pro Scout in 2022 after a decade on the bench with the 76ers, Kings, Wizards & Hornets. He was an asst. for George Karl from 2007-2013. After retiring from basketball in 2009, Bowen also joined Karl’s staff in Denver from 2011-2013. He spent the next 2 seasons on the bench in Sacramento before returning to Denver’s bench in 2015.
Kenyon Martin: I’mma keep harping on it. People gonna get tired of hearing me say it, probably... but if we had a different coach, we win a championship, bro. No doubt about it. I just said this earlier: your coach gotta get you one. If we had a different coach that was well-rounded—knew the game and people—not just the game and not just people, but both? Because it can’t just be one part. Nah.
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Kenyon Martin: So, did the man know basketball? Yeah. But it wasn’t in its totality. Not in-game situations. All the stuff you need—like, if you ain’t got no timeouts, or if they take something away, what are we going to do? We never worked on that. I played for this man for six and a half years. We never worked on end-of-game situations. Like, never worked on it, dog. So, we’re playing the Lakers—Western Conference Finals. We throw the ball away twice because we’re trying to zip Mello up. We didn’t run any action. Just zip him up, and they took it away. We turned the ball over.
Jorge Sierra: Tom Thibodeau is the second coach in NBA history to be fired by two different teams following 50-win seasons (in Chicago and New York. The first one was George Karl (Seattle and Denver).
George Karl: Jokic was the MVP again this season and it wasn’t that close. But I guess I’m the only former Nuggets coach who knows that.
“The Nuggets kind of drive me a little crazy,” George Karl, the Hall of Fame basketball coach whose resume includes three division titles in Denver from 2004-2013, said of Nikola Jokic when I called him Tuesday. “You’ve got the best player in the game of basketball and I want him … I mean, I want a Nuggets championship for Denver, yes. But I really want (Jokic) to be recognized … as one of the top 10 players of all time. “And if he doesn’t win another championship, I don’t know if he’ll get that recognition.”
The Nuggets aren’t in a pickle. They’re in a hoagie of hurt, sandwiched between two of the deepest teams in the NBA right now. While Oklahoma City and Minnesota are tussling in a steel cage match to reach the NBA Finals, Chopper Circle is without a general manager, without a head coach, without a draft pick in 2025, and without much cap space. “Personally, I would pick his brain,” Karl said of Jokic. “Not only is (Joker) a (generational) basketball talent — he’s a very bright player, a very intelligent basketball player. And I think (I’d) want to be getting him revved up and juiced up for next year, to support whatever changes they make. I’d still do whatever (he) wanted me to do.”
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His 74th birthday is approaching and Karl no longer looks or sounds like the barrel-chested, tornado of energy who stormed the sideline for 27 seasons while becoming the NBA’s sixth-winningest coach. Three bouts of cancer have withered his body, and his voice is raspy and weak. His nights are torture. He often awakens in a panic, fearful he is suffocating. Chronic mucus clogs his throat and lungs, a side effect from seven weeks of radiation treatments in 2009 to rid his head and neck of cancer. He has to suction the mucus out, much like a dental assistant, before returning to his pillow.
In 2004, he was treated for prostate cancer. In 2017, he had more radiation treatment for ocular melanoma. He can’t see well. Hear well. Or speak well. He meditates to ease the anxiety of suffocating and admits that most days he fears dying. “But being a meditative guy, the Buddhist always believed the greatest evolution is dying,” Karl said. Cancer is not his only fight. Karl, nine years since leaving the NBA, wrestles almost daily with what he calls the love of his life. His struggle with basketball is twofold. He is concerned about the direction of the game, and haunted by his painful and controversial past.
His insomnia went deeper than style beating substance. He couldn’t help but see himself. For all of Karl’s fame, fortune and friendships gained throughout his playing and coaching career, he is haunted by the thought he is a failure. He won 1,175 games and was brilliant and innovative enough to advance to the game’s brightest stages. Yet, he never won the biggest game.
He believes his opinion should carry weight, even if the radiation treatments have ravaged his voice box to a whisper. He doesn’t want to coach, and he doesn’t want to work full time. He just wants to be heard. “The league the last five to 10 years kind of runs how we played (in Denver),” Karl said. “And what’s funny is nobody comes to me and asks what the secrets are. And I’m going, ‘Oh, OK. You can figure it out all by yourself, eh?’ And I’m not saying you gotta buy my s—. I’m just saying, you might want to listen to my s—, you know?”