Legendary head coach George Karl has carved out his own particular place in the history of the Milwaukee Bucks, for both good and disastrous reasons.
Save for Mike Budenholzer, few head coaches in the history of the Milwaukee Bucks have arrived quite like George Karl.
When Karl came to Milwaukee in the summer of 1998, the Bucks were starved for any kind of success. The Bucks were seven seasons removed from their last playoff appearance entering Karl’s first year in charge and were planted in the NBA’s basement over that span.
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Karl, meanwhile, was two years removed from reaching the 1996 NBA Finals as the head coach of the Seattle SuperSonics.
His stint, as always in Karl’s fashion, eroded amid conflict with the team’s front office and failing to get out of the second round in subsequent seasons, paving the way for his bitter exit from the Emerald City.
The Bucks, specifically owner Herb Kohl, made sure that Karl didn’t go without a job for long. After firing then-head coach Chris Ford in late August, Karl was hired on August 30, 1998 after signing a four-year, $20 million pact, and it was later evident that money and power would be no issue for the veteran head coach.
Eventually, Karl went on to become the highest paid coach in all major sports in North America when he earned a two-year contract extension during the 2000-01 season. It was a deal that also included a one-percent ownership stake and came not long after Karl had wanted to explore taking the coaching job of his alma mater, the University of North Carolina. As Kohl told Sports Illustrated’s Frank Deford in November 2001:
"“It’s simply in keeping with my belief that the best person for a job should beworth the most,” the senator says.”"
Karl quickly learned that his wishes to turn the Bucks into the defensive-minded powerhouse that he built the Sonics into with the likes of Hall of Famer, Gary Payton, and Shawn Kemp would not be conceivable with the scoring trio of Ray Allen, Sam Cassell and Glenn Robinson.
While Karl eventually acclimated to the offensive firepower that the ‘Big 3′ possessed, Karl’s penchant for constantly wanting to light a fire under his three best players, and his Bucks teams in general, was a constant throughout his five years in Milwaukee.
That especially helped during the Bucks’ high point of the that era where they finished with a 52-30 record and came within one game of the 2001 NBA Finals. That was a season in which the Bucks started 3-9 nearly a month into their campaign. But the more Karl pressed that button and stood as a figure that the team could play and deliver results in spite of, the Bucks grew more distant in terms of reaching those same heights they did during the 00-01 season.
Along with that, Karl held his sway over personnel decisions, most notably pushing for the addition of veteran forward Anthony Mason before the 2001-02 season in a move that was designed to vault the Bucks over the top after falling short months earlier. Of course, we all know the story from there.
When the Bucks endured their disastrous late season collapse in 01-02, Karl’s authority within all levels of the organization influenced the coming breakup of the ‘Big 3’ starting that offseason. And it eventually influenced the biggest stain on Karl’s stint in Milwaukee, the trading of Ray Allen, and prompted Karl to say the following to ESPN’s Charley Rosen in April of 2003:
"“For Karl, however, the trade was a no-brainer. “Ray Allen was nothing but trouble,” Karl says. “We had no choice but to get rid of him.”"
In hindsight, there was always going to be only one way Karl’s time in Milwaukee was going to end and that was going to be a fiery explosion bigger than something seen in a Michael Bay movie.
It was in Milwaukee where Karl was arguably at the most unfiltered, unchecked and uncompromising as he was at any other stop in his NBA coaching career, and was simply enabled to do so under Kohl, in part because of the lack of success Milwaukee experienced before Karl’s arrival.
Those are all characteristics that made Karl the ruthless figure that he was during his time on the sidelines. He named his autobiography Furious George, after all.
While you can’t deny the success Karl enjoyed, which led him to compiling the sixth-most coaching wins in NBA history, Karl’s particular brand of coaching was naturally going to make any situation he went to untenable. Karl’s quote to Deford in that aforementioned piece is essentially core to who he is as an NBA coach:
"“Basketball allows me to have the big family that we’d all love to have,” he says. “See, you have all the great wins, and still you remember the friends and family. If you’re on a basketball team, you have more powerful relationships than most men have in their lives. You also have more angry breakups, more confrontations than most men ever will.”"
In the end, despite all of the money and control that he had in Milwaukee, it all still wasn’t enough for Karl to oversee an extended fruitful era of Bucks basketball. And eventually, Furious George raged on elsewhere.