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At 37-years-old, Carmelo Anthony is no longer a superstar player. However, fans were still excited when he signed with the Los Angeles Lakers this offseason. The 10-time All-Star has put together a Hall of Fame resume but has yet to win a championship despite playing with some really good teams.
Shortly after Anthony came into the NBA in 2003 as a Denver Nugget, the team hired George Karl to be his head coach. Karl and Anthony made the playoffs every single season they worked together but only got out of the first round once. Similar to Anthony, Karl has had a ton of success in the regular season but has never won a championship.
When the star forward was introduced as a Laker, he expressed the importance of winning a championship before he retires. Karl saw the quote and took the opportunity to bash Anthony for not playing defense or team basketball.
After he tweeted out the jab, Karl claims he received death threats from “at least 100 people.”
Despite the threats, Karl didn’t back down from his criticisms of Anthony and even used an NSFW term to describe the forward.
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Karl Has Long Been Critical of Anthony
Karl has had issues with many superstars that he’s coach, which is a big reason why he hasn’t coached an NBA team since 2016 even though he’s the sixth winningest coach in league history with 1,177 wins. This isn’t the first time he’s been publicly critical of Anthony. In fact, he included a number of criticisms against the star in a book.
“Carmelo was a true conundrum for me in the six years I had him. He was the best offensive player I ever coached,” Karl wrote in his 2017 memoir Furious George, via the New York Post. “He was also a user of people, addicted to the spotlight and very unhappy when he had to share it.”
Karl wasn’t done there.
“I want as much effort on defense — maybe more — as on offense,” he wrote. “That was never going to happen with Melo, whose amazing ability to score with the ball made him a star but didn’t make him a winner. Which I pointed out to him. Which he didn’t like.
“He really lit my fuse with his low demand of himself on defense… But since Carmelo only played hard on one side of the ball, he made it plain he couldn’t lead the Nuggets, even though he said he wanted to. Coaching him meant working around his defense and compensating for his attitude.”
Karl Has Had Beef With Multiple Superstars
Though some of Karl’s issues with Anthony are fair, in the player’s defense, the coach has had issues with other superstars. He had a very public beef with DeMarcus Cousins when he was coaching the Sacramento Kings. Cousins even openly mocked Karl in a postgame interview.
Now, Cousins and Anthony have had issues with others over the years so it’s not necessarily all on Karl but he even had problems with Ray Allen during his Seattle Supersonics tenure. Allen isn’t exactly known as one of the more controversial superstars. For whatever reason, Karl just doesn’t get along with star players and that’s likely played a big reason as to why he’s never won a championship.
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