George Karl - Furious George: My Forty Years Surviving NBA Divas, Clueless GMs, and Poor Shot Selection

George needs to keep his mouth shut, first and foremost.

KENYON MARTIN, DENVER NUGGETS FORWARD (2004-2011)

I kicked a ball at a referee once. Kicked it hard.

It was a cold night in a hot gym in January 1991. It was the last three minutes of a CBA game in Knickerbocker Arena in Albany, New York. We were playing the Oklahoma City Cavalryremember them? Neither do I. Anywayalthough we were up by about 20, I saw a serious problem, but the louder I yelled about it, the more I was ignored.

Ive gotten a lot of techs in this situation, when at the end of a blowout, the refs just want the thing over with, so they stop calling anything. Reffing the scoreboard, I call it. That annoys me a lot, because when I played in the NBA, garbage time was my time. For a bench player like me, here at last was a chance to show the coach how good I was. So while the arena emptied, Id concentrate all my effort and skill into my two or three minutes on the floor. It made me mad as hell to get hacked but have the foul ignored because the refs didnt want to delay their postgame beer.

This wasnt one of those, not exactly. But a number of things were bothering meand I snapped.

We missed a shot, OKC got the rebound, and our Ben McDonald hustled back to play defense. Their Alvin Heggs got the ball, and took it toward the rim from half-court with all the subtlety and finesse of a bull running downhill. Ben had two full seconds to stand in the paint and brace for the impact. Bam! Both players hit the floor.

Blocking, said Monty McCutchen, now an NBA game official. Two shots.

What! I ran out on the court to put my face very close to Montys while I told him that hed just made the worst fing call Id ever seen, but he interrupted my tirade, by putting one index finger on top of the other.

Technical foul, Coach Karl.

I kept going. This is crap, I said, and not fair to players Im demanding to play hard and theyre not getting just calls from refs who arent paying attention and McCutchen interrupted again.

Turn around and shut up, he said.

I didnt do either.

While still screaming at Monty, I noticed the ball rolling very slowly toward us, and, without consciously deciding to do it, I tore into that orange Spalding Model 74 with a soccer-style kick, and I nailed it. Whomp. The ball flew over Montys head and 12 rows deep in the upper deck. Our crowd cheered. I got my second technical foul and was ejected.

It was forty-six-yard field goal, right up the middle, said Charley Rosen, the opposing coach, having fun with the writers afterward. But its easy to kick indoors. I want to see him do it with someone rushing and a little wind. Ha-ha.

At our practice the next morning, the coach of the local Arena Football League team showed up to offer me a job as a placekicker. Ha-ha again.

Okay, I know my goalie kick was childish, but it provided an instant of relief, it made my point, the fine wasnt too bad, and I didnt get suspended. As I mentioned, a few things had caused my temporary insanity: mail-it-in officiating; the sudden absence of Mario Elie and Vince Askew, our two best players, whod left for the NBA (Mario) and a pro team in Italy (Vince); and an early, inconvenient tip-off in order to accommodate a college game later in the evening. Thats the way it was in the minor league Continental Basketball Association, the home of the ten-hour bus ride.

There was also something deeper and darker going on with me back then. Twenty-five years ago, I was in my third year of being blackballed from the NBA, and I was moving my family all over the map so I could pursue my career. And even though the team I was coaching in 91 was in the midst of compiling the best record in the history of pro basketball, my phone wasnt ringing. I had a lot to figure out, personally and professionally. I needed to harness my passion for the game, a passion that had me kicking balls.

Obviously, I needed to evolve, to find a better way to get along in the world of games. But just as obviously, I needed to stay the same, because my emotional approach to coaching basketball worked. My teams won games. It was tricky. Its still tricky.

Maybe youve known someone like me, the maniac jock whos got to finish first, and maybe takes it too far.

At Penn Hills (Pennsylvania) High School, the University of North Carolina, and with the San Antonio Spurs, I dove for the ball, took charges, and started fights. I was still the same guy when I became a coach, and I gave up my body a second time.

How well I learned to control myself is a matter of opinion. A writer asked Ron Adams to analyze me in 2001, ten years after my field goal. Ron, a very smart man, was then one of my Milwaukee Bucks assistant coaches. Hes a little bizarre, Ron said. But that helps him. In every culture, a crazy guy gets respect because nobodys quite sure what hell do next.

I cant help it: I go after my team in practice and off the court. Nowadays I try to make my points gently, with happy sarcasm. Hey, man, I might say in a cheerful voice. You really sucked last night. But I havent always been so thoughtful. In my first two NBA jobs, at Cleveland and Golden State, I took some pride in treating everyone the same, in being unafraid to yell at the star as loudly as I yelled at the last guy on the bench. I got fired from both those jobs. Given another chanceeventuallyI learned that some people have to be handled gently, while others are secure enough to hear the truth without sugarcoating.

JaVale, I said to my center in Denver, in another world, I think you and I would be hanging out. But in this one, you dont play hard every night and you dont work on your game and I cant count on you.

Time will tell if JaVale McGee listened, but some players just cant hear you. Money in the ears.

What happens when you give a twenty-one-year-old $3 million or $4 million for his first job? He gets an entourage. He has less and less contact with people outside his group of helpers. He becomes less and less of a role model. And he thinks I cant tell him what to do because he knows Ive been told to play him twenty-five minutes a game.

JaVale, by the way, was making about $11 million a year when we had our little talk.

Im not saying that insulated, immature players have too much self-esteem. I think they hardly have any at all. Theyre fearful because they have so far to fall.

As my detractors perceive it, I have two big weaknesses. The first rap against me, the former garbage-time point guard, is that I cant coach a superstar. You may have read that I always fight with any player good enough for a Gatorade endorsement. True, over the years Ive had some monumental public arguments with a handful of high scorers. But almost without exception, the All-Stars on my teams have had the best years of their careers when I coached them. I dont mind some tension; tension can be good. And the NBA coach who cant manage a working relationship with his best players is not going to win enough games to last.

Yet theres always trouble when I have a player whose commitment is to his numbers or his money or his brandand not to the team. Remind me to tell you about the time one of us kept the rest of us Nuggets waiting in a bus under an arena while he got a postgame massage.... When I call a guy like this on his selfish behavior, when his ego is threatened, hes got to show that he controls me. A guaranteed contract much bigger than mine is his power.