Former Denver Nuggets head coach George Karl has spent a great deal of time lately taking potshots at the Los Angeles Lakers. Several months ago, he suggested their 2020 NBA championship doesn’t count because it was won inside the Walt Disney World Resort bubble.
More recently, he implied 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 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 No. 1,” Karl said of the league’s oldest player. “So I guess LeBron would be No. 2 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 awarded his third regular-season MVP award, which puts him in 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.
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 outplayed him in that series, the gap between both superstars’ production wasn’t that wide.