George Karl: One team owner called coach during games to remind him about tanking

George Karl‘s book, Furious George, is continuing to make a lot of headlines with his controversial remarks and revelations. The latest that has gone public is admitting that that there's one team owner who called his head coach during games and asked to continue losing to improve the franchise's draft position.

“Don’t believe it when teams say they don’t lose on purpose to improve their draft position. It happens every year. I know of a Western Conference owner who called his coach during games to remind him to keep an end-of-season losing streak alive.”

Even if league commissioner Adam Silver has made it clear that tanking is not happening in the NBA and that his good office will be all over it should there be any truth to a team trying to lose on purpose, Karl still dropped a huge bomb to the speculation of many about it.

However, Silver believes there's no reason for an NBA team to do it and that there's no evidence to prove it's ongoing in the league today.

“My understanding of tanking would be losing games on purpose and there’s absolutely no evidence that any team in the NBA has ever lost a single game, or certainly in any time that I’ve been in the league, on purpose. And, to me, what you’re referring to I think is rebuilding. And I’m not sure it’s just a function of the collective bargaining agreement; I think there’s a balance with any team of the need to look out to the future and at the same time put a competitive product on the floor.”

“I think what we’re seeing in the league right now is there’s no question that several teams are building towards the future and I think their fans understand that, as well. If there was any indication whatsoever that players or coaches somehow were not doing their absolute most to win a game, we would be all over that. But I don’t believe for a second that’s what’s going on. I think we have the most competitive players in the world, the most competitive coaches, and I think they’re doing everything they can to win games.”

Karl's book is not scheduled to be released until next week but has already gotten the attention of many especially the ones from the NBA community. It is expected to sell a lot of copies once it becomes available to the public and will be interesting to find out what other controversial remarks the former NBA head coach included in it and how the fans will react to them.