George Karl Defends Displaying 'N-gger' Book After J.R. Smith Critique

J.R. Smith and former Denver Nuggets coach George Karl have a beef going back some years. Smith played with Denver from 2006 to 2011, when Karl was the head coach. In 2017, Karl published his memoir, Furious George.

In it, he criticized Smith and his then teammates, Carmelo Anthony and Kenyon Martin, calling them “AAU babies” and dissecting their strengths and weaknesses.

Of Smith, he wrote, “J.R…. went straight from high school in New Jersey to AAU success to the NBA. His father was on the scene and in his life, which is obviously good. But Earl Smith Jr. urged his son to shoot the ball and keep shooting it from the very moment I put him in a game, which is obviously bad.

He continued, “In his defense, sometimes J.R. can make it from anywhere and score in bunches. But I wanted defense and commitment to the team. What I got was a player with a huge sense of entitlement, a distracting posse, his eye always on his next contract, and some really unbelievable shot selection.”

At the time, Smith tweeted, “Still trying to be relevant. Sad.”

On Anthony’s podcast, 7 PM In Brooklyn, he and Smith revealed that Karl kept a book in his office called N-gger. It’s a legitimate book, written by Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy and released in 2002, that explains the origins of the word. Though the interview happened a year ago, it gained traction recently through social media reposts.

“This man had a book in his office called N-gga,” Smith said, which Anthony remembered.

“Predominately your team is Black,” Anthony added. “Like all your teams and successful teams was at the head of those teams was Black men. “

“It’s a big-time book. I know the book…I know my history,” Anthony continued. “But you walk into the office of a particular person, a white man, right, young, 20, 21, 22… That book don’t sit right in this room right here… “Reading the book years later, I want to know the mentality behind that because it’s two different mentalities and two different perspectives you can have on that book. It’s going to make you madder and go left, or it can give you a new understanding on how to deal with n—s.”

The clip recently recirculated on social media, leading to Karl confirming that he owned the book and kept it in his office, saying that it was “a good and important book by Professor Randall Kennedy that everyone should read, including JR Smith.”

N—r: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word was an attempt to put the word in context. Among other things, it questioned whether the right to use the N-word should be exclusive to Black people and whether or not its usage should be punished when it’s used by others. In 2022, Kennedy released an updated 20th anniversary edition.

Karl’s issues with both men and Martin seemed to stem from the fact that he saw them as entitled kids, and in Martin and Anthony’s case, that they didn’t learn maturity or discipline from fathers they never knew. Smith, he just found immature, as Smith’s parents are still married.

Yet Karl bonded with Chris “Birdman” Anderson, aka White Chocolate, who was once banned from the NBA for two years for violating its substance abuse policy. In Karl’s book, he extended more grace to the troubled athlete than he did to the Black players he coached. Karl maintains it was Anderson’s play that made the difference, but openly displaying a book with a title like N-gger does make you wonder what his real motivation was.

See social media’s reaction to the Karl and Smith interaction below.