George Karl Talks About Capitalism in the NBA

Robert Sanchez penned a great article on Denver Nuggets coach George Karl in the March Issue of 5280 Magazine. I highly recommend you read the piece in its entirety. Here’s one of my favorite passages:

George Karl might be a different guy from the basketball-obsessed Genghis Khan who just a few years ago prowled the sidelines, but he’s still a coach unafraid to speak his mind. Four games into the Nuggets’ 2008-2009 season, the team traded aging superstar Allen Iverson for another veteran, Chauncey Billups, a Denver-born point guard who won a ring with Detroit in 2004 and is considered among the best game-managers in the league. A few weeks after the trade, Karl did an interview in which he praised Billups: “For me, it’s the efficiency of how we play,” Karl told reporters. “There’s less bad plays, more solid plays, and we still have good plays. But I think the elimination of the wasteful, cheap possessions that we have sometimes had 10 to 15 a game, they don’t exist very much anymore.” His words were perceived as a jab at Iverson’s on-court decision-making abilities, which Karl says he didn’t intend. Still, he admits that A.I. perhaps wasn’t the best fit for the team. “He’d plateaued,” Karl told me. “You don’t want to be coaching a guy in his down years. When we made the trade, we got better.”

Even if the league as a whole, in his mind, has not gotten better.

“We’ve got this ‘how-much’ syndrome in basketball,” Karl says after one practice. “Capitalism has taken over. Things have changed since I was growing up. All these guys have been coddled since the second they showed they had some talent. There’s no desire to learn the history of the NBA, or the Globetrotters, how the drug culture almost bankrupted the league. Our depth of knowledge today is so shallow.”

When Karl talks capitalism, it’s not in the ironic, guy’s-made-50-million-bucks-in-his-career sort of way. Instead, it’s his Marxist instinct about the game. Every NBA team is stacked with guys who were the best players to come out of their towns, McDonald’s High School All-Americans who signed million-dollar shoe contracts before they could legally pop Cristal at the club. But the best teams—the Lakers of the 1980s, the Spurs of the 2000s—have players who share their talent with their teammates, who know their place as a cog that will advance the game for generations of other kids.

I found the 5280 article at DenverStiffs.com, where they conducted an interview with Sanchez. Check out the exchange here. Karl is a polarizing figure in Denver. Fans love him or hate him. There’s very little in between. I think George is a very good coach. He’s done a great job of setting expectations and making his players accountable this season. He’s also a great quote. It’s no coincidence that Karl bemoaned the lack of respect for the game’s history. Karl is known to tell stories about the good ole’ days when addressing the media before games. Karl often recounts his stints in the ABA and CBA.

I knew about George’s win total and playoff appearances, but I didn’t know that his coaching lineage dates back to James Naismith: “He played point for the legendary Dean Smith at North Carolina, who played for Forrest ‘Phog’ Allen, ‘the father of basketball coaching,’ who played for Dr. James A. Naismith—the guy who invented the game.” And I’m definitely going to ask him about punching Pistol Pete.