George Karl: LeBron James is one of the NBA’s two best players
Former Denver Nuggets head coach George Karl has spent a lot of time lately taking potshots at the Los Angeles Lakers. Several months ago, he suggested that their 2020 NBA championship doesn’t count because it was won inside the Walt Disney World Resort bubble.
More recently, he implied that Anthony Davis didn’t deserve to be named to the NBA’s 75th-anniversary team and criticized the Lakers for their habit of switching head coaches every couple of years.
But he also gave their most valuable player a huge compliment.
While appearing on Brandon “Scoop B” Robinson’s “Scoop B Radio Podcast,” he said that LeBron James is still the best player in the world, or at least second right behind Nuggets superstar Nikola Jokić (h/t Sports Illustrated).
“I still wanna give LeBron number one,” Karl said of the league’s oldest player. “So I guess LeBron would be number two in my mind [behind Denver Nuggets MVP Nikola Jokić], but it’s really a young/old thing going on and the old guys know how to win, they know how hard it is to win and that’s what’s coming at these young guys that they have to learn in the next couple of weeks.”
On Wednesday, Jokic was officially awarded his third regular season MVP award, which puts him in some rarefied air. James has won four MVPs, and while he may not be the best player in the game anymore, on any given night, he can play as if he is still exactly that.
In the Lakers’ first-round series loss to the Nuggets this year, he averaged 27.8 points, 8.8 assists and 6.8 rebounds a game while shooting 56.6% from the field and 38.5% from 3-point range. While Jokic did outplay him in that series, the gap between both superstars’ production wasn’t exactly that wide.
