George Karl Claims NBA Has A Steroids Problem
Former longtime NBA coach George Karl insists the league has a deeply-rooted steroids abuse problem.
Karl makes his shocking, though largely unsupported assertions, in his new NBA tell-all Furious George: My Forty Years Surviving NBA Divas, Clueless GMs, and Poor Shot Selection.
“We’ve still got a drug issue, though a different one than thirty years ago,” Karl pens is the still yet-to-be released novel. “And this one bothers me more than the dumba**es who got in trouble with recreational drugs.”
While not providing any hard evidence for his claim, the man who has served as head coach of six NBA teams based his reasoning on the way many older players are now able to stay in better shape and even get thinner as they age and their careers progress.
He also questions how so many of them can recover from injuries as quickly as they do and why more and more of them now spend their summers traveling to such far-away places as Germany, where the latest and most advanced blood boosters and PEDs are far more readily available.
“I’m talking about performance-enhancing drugs,” he wrote. Later, he added, “drug testing always seems to be a couple steps behind drug hiding. Lance Armstrong never failed drug test.”
Some have interpreted Karl’s specific mentioning of Germany to perhaps be a direct shot at now retired L.A. Lakers longtime star Kobe Bryant, who over the last several years of his surefire Hall of Fame career spent significant time there being treated for various lingering injuries.
The league long ago instituted a drug policy that includes blood testing for players and over the years has been largely free of any large-scale PED-related scandals.
Meanwhile, released excerpts from Karl’s to-be-released in January book have generated all sorts of controversy, particularly his comments about former stars Carmelo Anthony and Kenyon Martin being hard to deal with while he coached them with the Denver Nuggets because neither one of them had a father-figure around while they were growing up to teach them “how to act like a man.”
Karl went on to describe the two along with then teammate J.R. Smith as “AAU babies,” who were like “the spoiled brats you see in junior golf and junior tennis.”
Now starring with the New York Knicks, Anthony was particularly signaled out for even more harsh criticism with Karl insisting he found the star forward to be a true conundrum.
“He was the best offensive player I ever coached,” he added. “He was also a user of people, addicted to the spotlight and very unhappy when he had to share it.”
Karl went on to add he viewed Anthony as a one-dimensional player only concerned about scoring the ball and coaching him always meant having to compensate for his bad attitude.
While Anthony has only publicly responded that he hopes his now 64-year-old former coach “finds happiness in what he is doing,” Martin and other former Nuggets players have blasted him in a series of posts to social media.
“I never knew I was a— what’s the word?—conundrum,” said Anthony, hinting that he’s pleased several of his former teammates have rallied to his defense.
Karl last coached in the NBA in April of last year when he was fired by the Sacramento Kings following a season where he openly and frequently feuded with star center DeMarcus Cousins and veteran guard Rajon Rondo.
He took his first NBA coaching job in 1984 and spent several seasons with the Seattle Supersonics, where he once led the star tandem of Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp to the NBA Finals against Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.
[Featured Image by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images]
