The George Karl world tour is happening and he’s acting like the Kanye West of the NBA. He’s on full rant mode and is not holding anything back. He took and is still taking personal shots at Melo and he dragged his Denver Nuggets team through the mud. Now, this is all from his book so naturally, the media gives him attention for saying these things and he’ll say more because book sales.
This time, he went up north to talk about Portland and Damian Lillard. In an interview with NY Magazine, David Marchese asked Karl about him calling Melo and “user” and what exactly does that mean?
I think what I have to say about that is in the book. But here’s what I’ll say now: Melo is a hell of a player, the best offensive player I’ve ever coached. I owe him as much as anyone for my having a great record. But there’s a new generation of players interested in personal branding and gaining money and power off the court, and that’s all new to me. There were too many times with Melo when what was going on off the court was more important than what was happening on the court. It bothered me then and it bothers me now. That kind of thing bothered me just the other night.
So, why was he so bothered the other night?
I was watching the Portland Trailblazers play, and I was trying to figure out,What the hell is wrong with this team? My conclusion is that Damian Lillard is getting too much attention.
So, George Karl watches a game and immediately jumps to THAT conclusion? He elaborated a bit more about it.
Who controls the team? The coach and the point guard. And that team is not working. I think their coach, Terry Stotts, is a great coach. So I’m going to say the problem is Lillard. They were a together, connected, committed team last year. This year they’re not. What changed?
The Blazers are struggling this year but to say it’s Lillard’s fault when you don’t know anything about how the team is ran is outrageous.
Lillard has hobbies outside of basketball. He’s actually pretty good at rapping and he’s doing that on his own time. He’s focused on basketball and doing other things like most people do. They have their jobs and sometimes they do other stuff.
Damian Lillard’s agent, Aaron Goodwin responded to his comments via Chris Haynes of ESPN.
Flip the page to see what he had to say.
