Presented by POOL SCOUTS.
This Day In Sports…May 12, 1951:
The birthday of one of the NBA’s most underappreciated coaches. George Karl won 1,175 games with six different franchises and was NBA Coach of the Year with the Denver Nuggets in 2013. Karl took his teams to 22 postseason appearances in 27 seasons. He is one of only nine coaches in NBA history to log 1,000 wins and won 50 or more games in a season 12 times. Karl was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2022.
In 1984, Karl became one of the youngest head coaches in NBA history when he debuted with the Cleveland Cavaliers at the age of 33. From there, he coached Golden State, Seattle, Milwaukee, Denver and Sacramento, where his career came to an end 10 years ago. His best years were with Seattle from 1992-98, when the Sonics’ 384-150 record was second only to the Chicago Bulls dynasty. Karl led the Sonics to their best season in franchise history in 1995-96, when they fell in the NBA Finals to a Bulls team beginning its second three-peat. Today, Karl is a vocal advocate of the NBA returning the Sonics to Seattle as an expansion team.
Karl spent a lot of time in Boise when his son, Coby, was a star guard for Boise State. It was then that father and son were both touched by cancer. First, George was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2005 and had surgery while coaching the Nuggets—and while Coby was a freshman for the Broncos. “Then a year later my son gets cancer,” George told ESPN in 2008. “I’ll remember that moment more clearly than any win or loss or anything that ever happened on the basketball court. Those are days when time stood still for my family.”
Coby, who spent this past season on Leon Rice’s Boise State staff, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer before a game against Utah State in January, 2006. He had his thyroid removed in April of that year, but he continued to play for the Broncos the following season (his senior year). In April, 2007, Coby underwent a second successful surgery to remove cancerous lymph nodes. George’s battles were far from over: head and neck cancer in 2010 and ocular melanoma in 2017. But father and son are survivors. George Karl…thankful, no doubt, to be 75 years old today.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
