A volcanic reputation and a nickname to match trailed George Karl in his four NBA stops before Denver.
The coach known as “Furious George” had occasional public rifts with World B. Free in Cleveland, Ray Allen in Milwaukee and Gary Payton in Seattle, where he returns tonight for the first time with the Nuggets. Karl was once said to have challenged Golden State’s Joe Barry Carroll to a game of “Jeopardy!” after the center said his coach had “moronic tendencies.”
Karl could have lobbed a thousand and one barbs at his players during a 1-6 skid he hopes ended with Friday’s win over an elite Dallas team. But the coach held his fire, as he has for most of his first year-plus here.
“It’s an evolution,” he said Saturday. “In my younger days I would probably not be this philosophical or mellow.”
Karl may not have transformed into the Dalai Lama. And it should be noted that even a decade ago he claimed to have found religion on this subject, only to relapse. But so far he has upheld a pledge to save his harshest criticism for team- only settings.
“Don’t get me wrong – I’m angry all the time,” he said. “I’m angry every game. I was angry (Friday) night. I was angry we blew an 18-point lead in about two minutes. Anger has got to be managed and motivated.
“There are moments in the NBA season where you’ve got to express your anger. I prefer to do that now in my career behind closed doors rather than in front of 20,000 people. There’s no reason for me to embarrass any one of my players.”
Karl has more often showered his team in compliments, even during recent stretches when the Nuggets hardly looked deserving. Saturday he said that even if his players might disappoint him sometimes, they make him proud “almost on a weekly basis,” and that their home loss to a sub-.500 Chicago team Wednesday was the only game Denver has “kicked” in the past 2 1/2 months.
He reasoned that when a team loses, the last thing it needs is the added negativity and chaos that ensue when harsh words go public.
People inside and outside the team are noticing. Nuggets guard Andre Miller said Karl speaks his mind without reporters around.
But, Carmelo Anthony added, “He’s calmed down on that aspect. He’s still the tough guy, going to get at you. He ain’t going to tell you what you want to hear. Sometimes we need that.”
Portland coach Nate McMillan, who played for Karl’s SuperSonics, remembered a coach who called out players in print regularly.
McMillan added that when he looks at Karl now, “He’s much calmer on the sidelines than he was with us. He was different with us. He had changed his demeanor from when he was in Cleveland. I heard he was just a wild man in Cleveland. But now I see him and I’m watching him, he’s a little calmer.
“Now what he’s doing, his coaching is more during practice and shootaround as opposed to during the game. He has learned.”
Karl said he will never please every member of his team, and that he doesn’t want to. But the year-and-a-half gap between his Bucks and Nuggets gigs also taught him how NBA teams have morphed from dictatorships to democracies and that he too had to adjust.
“I still think it works a little better toward dictatorship,” he said. “When the games are played or practices are played you probably only need one chief. But (with) big contracts and organizational structure, there’s more than one chief.”
After preaching to his players to stick together when things go wrong, he figured it would be hypocritical not to follow that advice himself.
“Maybe I’m maturing,” he shrugged.
Adam Thompson can be reached at 303-820-5447 or athompson@denverpost.com.
