Furious George

A few of us on staff here at Sonics Rising were given the opportunity to get a pre-release copy of George Karl’s book “Furious George” that will drop to the public January 10th, 2017. My copy arrived today. We haven’t committed to writing about the book, there were no strings attached in our getting them. But having now thumbed through it, it is going to be a good read.

I figured I’d share that with you and give a chapter list below with a few other nuggets (no pun intended) that I’ve seen thus far in about 10 minutes of eyeballing it.

It’s full title is “Furious George: My Forty Years Surviving NBA Divas, Clueless GMs, and Poor Shot Selection.”

Chapters:

1 Passion Play

2 Fun, With Anger

3 Fernando

4 George Karl Has Lost It!

5 Switch Everything

6 How To Beat Michael Jordan

7 Fired, Hired, Fired

8 We’re Number 6

9 Nothing To Do But Me

10 Now Entering The Game For The Lakers

11 Please Remit $470,000

12 Big Brother

Book is 228 pages long, published by Harper Collins.

The book opens with Karl comparing himself against Phil Jackson who he labels as “My coaching nemesis.” And it just goes from there. Karl appears to have held very little back in putting this book together. It is very much George being George. Furious George.

The center of the book has a few interesting photographs. In one he’s clear to state that Shawn Kemp was the best power forward he ever coached. Under another photo of himself and Boogie Cousins it says: "DeMarcus Cousins and I battle for postion. He won."

Coach Karl talks about his cancer in a number of places and ways. He details how he told his family about the cancer in his throat following the 2010 All-Star Game.

"We lost a defensive battle 141-139, and I fell to 0-4 in the All-Star exhibition, which bothered me not at all."

He talks some about how cancer changed him fundamentally as a person as well.

Karl also doesn’t hold back talking about some of his players. A very George thing to do.

"Why did Melo want out? To start with the obvious: From even before we met, he and I had a little conflict bubbling. As I said before, 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." - page 213

"I don't automatically hate a superstar, but he's got to buy in, he's got to play defense, and he's got to share the ball. And if his teammates and coaches don't like him, and if he doesn't help you win a championship...what good is he, except as bait?" 214-15

I can’t promise it is going to be War and Peace quality writing. But it is is going to be interesting reading. I’m looking forward to digging in deeper on it next week.