Behind closed doors, George Karl is likely to call successful black people “arrogant.”
This hypothesis stems from the former coach’s past and a recent thoughtless and unnecessary tweet directed at one of his former players, DeMarcus Cousins. in one recent interview with ESPNCousins reflected on his turbulent times with the Sacramento Kings and how he feels a franchise with a long history of wasting the talents of countless players and coaches over decades has done nothing for him.
That’s where the “pride” thing comes in, because that’s the term some white people like to use when describing a black person who’s gotten “too big for their pants.” In other words, it’s coded language for a black person who sees themselves as something more than white gaze thinks they should be, which can be annoying.
Cousins: What did Sac do for me? Also say my name [draft day]. I did more for her than she did for me. That’s just being honest. Just be 100% honest. I’ve had two owners, three GMs, seven coaches in seven years. I was there for seven years. I had three GMs, two owners and seven trainers. You don’t have to say more.”
Karl: “I paid you about $50 million and gave you a chance to play professional basketball for a living.”
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In the spirit of fact-checking, the Kings Cousins paid just over $56 million during his time in Sacramento. corresponding spotrac.com. But still, it’s not like it was a donation to an at-risk youth, it was the contract a franchise agreed to pay a player with cousins’ talents for being one of the most dominant big men of his time was. Karl doesn’t care, however, because for him, a high school All-American, who was the fifth overall pick from Kentucky, who became a four-time All-Star and two-time All-NBA, should be grateful that Kings “allowed” him to earn his living like every team in the league hadn’t signed him for a multi-million dollar deal.
But this isn’t about a negotiated NBA contract or a long-standing feud between a player and a coach who never got along. It’s about Karl’s penchant for knocking down black men in the NBA.
Here is a Link from the old days of ESPN.com when legendary NBA reporter David Aldridge wrote a column about having to check Karl for his comments about black coaches. It’s from 20 years ago – when Cousins wasn’t even a teenager.
“Doc (Rivers) is doing a great job — and now there’s going to be four or five more anointings from the young African-American coach,” Karl said esquire magazine in the April 2002 issue. “Which is fine – because I think they were screwed deep down. They were screwed. But I have a great (white) assistant coach who can’t even get an interview. So I get mad.”
The title of Aldridge’s column was Why George Karl’s Comments Were Stupid. As you can see, some things never change. Even then, Karl was pissed that the white guy coaching next to him couldn’t get a shot because all those “haughty” black guys who probably played in the league would get chances before his guy because some “haughty” black guy was coached Success.
Do you realize how toxic the mentality of people like Karl can be?
Excerpts from a book that Karl was about to publish were published back in 2016. One of the trigger points was Karl’s comments about Carmelo Anthony, Kenyon Martin and JR Smith as he used coded language to discuss the “obsession” that went with them and what he felt was holding them back as men and players.
“Kenyon and Carmelo carried two big burdens — all the money and not having a father to show them how to behave like a man.” he wrote. It’s always funny how white men are seen as triumphant for managing to not have a father in the house, but black men are portrayed as lacking in masculinity.
Oh, and the book’s name was a shot at Karl’s former black players too, as it was titled “Furious George: My Forty Years Surviving NBA Divas, Clueless GMs, and Poor Shot Selection.”
Every few years, Karl does something that reminds us how terrible he is. But like clockwork, people either forget him or grant him an everlasting blanket of grace because he and his family beat cancer. And that’s not to say that Karl and his family weren’t heroic in the fight against an illness that had disheartened almost everyone at the time. That said, just because something bad happened to you doesn’t allow you to be an idiot. Because when that happens we just forget how great coach George Karl was because we keep being reminded how shallow he is. Sounds like he needs a father figure in his life.
