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Fresh off signing a three-year contract extension, Nuggets coach George Karl appeared on ESPN’s PTI yesterday in the segment dubbed “Five Good Minutes” — and good they were. At one point in the clip, on view below, he admitted that the drawn-out Carmelo Anthony trade process was “probably the hardest thing on a daily basis that I had to wake up to” — a remarkable statement for someone who survived a prolonged cancer fight.
By the standards of professional athletics, Karl is extremely forthright, and he freely admitted that while under the Melo-deal shadow, “there were days I didn’t want to do it, and there were days you felt really kind of hopeless, because you didn’t know where it was going to go, if it was going to end, when it was going to end.”
Karl also discussed Anthony’s lack of interest in D, albeit without blaming him entirely. “I couldn’t get the team to value the defensive end of the court,” he conceded. As a result, “we had a lot of excellence, we had a lot of great wins, but we lost in the first round probably too often.”
No wonder Karl’s so upbeat these days. His excitement about the current Nuggets squad, featuring a slew of New York Knicks obtained in the Carmelo transaction, was palpable. He’s clearly excited to start his next chapter with the Nuggets, and his enthusiasm is infectious.
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