Okay George Karl, You Can Shut the Fuck Up Now

The 2023 NBA MVP debate was obliterated when JJ Redick and Kendrick Perkins fought on First Take over the idea of racial bias skewing the voters’ decision-making. Now, every thought surrounding Joel Embiid or Nikola Jokic begins with people dissecting some intangible, unmeasurable vibe instead of talking about what is actually occurring on the basketball court.

Former Coach of the Year and current old man yelling at clouds, George Karl, added his take to the MVP race. I wish he hadn’t.

“To me, I don’t want to bad mouth Embiid because I think he’s really, really good,” Karl began. “A lot of my assistant coaches were in Philadelphia when he was a young player and they kept telling me he’s going to be the best guy to ever play the game. I see him moving in that direction. But he takes too many possessions off. He has lazy body language. He gets angry at things that we don’t understand why. I just don’t know if he’s that NBA pro that we all love because he’s a competitive SOB and he’s tough.”

Before we even touch this bullshit, we first have to visit an excerpt from George Karl’s book where he breaks down the difference between his upbringing and Carmelo Anthony’s.

Full graph from George Karl’s book on Carmelo/Kenyon father comments pic.twitter.com/YNzWKisf5x

— Chris Mannix (@SIChrisMannix) December 23, 2016

So to recap, Karl has called Joel Embiid lazy—despite him playing 35 minutes a game and being third in the entire league in usage rate which means he’s doing all the heavy lifting on offense and literally doesn’t have an opportunity to be lazy—and Karl has attacked former black players he coached for simply growing up without two parents.

We do not need to keep asking this geriatric Jim Crow stan what he thinks about the NBA anymore.

Just remember, George Karl never retired. The man has 1,999 career wins. No one in that situation would retire before winning their 2,000th game. No, he missed the playoffs with the Sacramento Kings in back-to-back years and was fired. NBA front offices stopped calling him.

I reckon the one thing I appreciate about the annual George Karl garbage radio appearance is being around that old school racism. Like, so many content creators today pussyfoot around or they dog whistle but don’t actually step over that line.

Not George. That man is not intentionally signally to his audience of white people so he can trick them into funding his beach house. Nah, George truly thinks black people are less than.

It didn’t even sound like he’s watched many Philadelphia 76ers games. I’m imagining he was just looking at a photo of Joel Embiid and drew up the conclusion that he’s “lazy” without much film study.

Fuck George Karl. I cannot stress that enough.

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