Kenyon Martin trashes former coach George Karl in response to his new book

By Nunzio Ingrassia
Published

Kenyon Martin was an in-your-face power forward during his long NBA career, and it looks like he hasn’t changed much in retirement.

Martin unleashed a barraged of tweets at his former head coach George Karl, who has a tell-all book coming out titled “Furious George,” in which he called Martin a “spoiled brat” and claimed that Carmelo Anthony was a “user of people.”

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Karl coached both Martin and Anthony during his 2004-13 stint with the Denver Nuggets. Here’s more from the book, which was obtained by the New York Post:


















“Carmelo was a true conundrum for me in the six years I had him. He was the best offensive player I ever coached. He was also a user of people, addicted to the spotlight and very unhappy when he had to share it.

“He really lit my fuse with his low demand of himself on defense. He had no commitment to the hard, dirty work of stopping the other guy. My ideal — probably every coach’s ideal — is when your best player is also your leader. 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.”

[…]

“I want as much effort on defense — maybe more — as on offense. 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.”