George Karl: These are the 3 best leaders I coached in the NBA

This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak’s newsletter here.

George Karl was the head coach for six teams across 27 seasons in the NBA. He is seventh all-time with 1,175 career wins. He says these are the three best leaders he coached in the NBA. He is speaking about his personal experiences with these players while he coached them.

Nate McMillan, Seattle Sonics guard

When I went to Seattle, I was blessed to have two very talented young players in Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton. But I was also blessed to have probably the most selfless basketball player I’ve ever coached in Nate McMillan.

I loved giving responsibility to my point guards. When I got there, I thought Gary and Nate were both starting-caliber point guards in the NBA. Gary was, at times, difficult to handle. And Nate was so generous in how he let me handle Gary.

Nate could have made it a competitive thing. Instead he made it a team thing. How do I make this work? What can I do? Can I play forward?

Gary and Shawn and Detlef Schrempf got a lot of love and a lot of spotlight in Seattle. But the guy who kept that team together, and the guy who led that team when we got in trouble, was Nate.

It was just the way he looked at the game of basketball. It wasn’t about individuals; it was about us. The team. The mentality of team-first, win-first, sacrifice-first. He was always present in the locker room and with the team.

I had to make Nate shoot the ball. Nate never had a lot of faith in shooting the three. I made him. I said: “Nate, if you’re open, you’ve got to shoot it.” For at least a month or two, I had to yell at him to shoot the ball.

But the other thing I found out with Nate and Gary: Gary was a great individual defender, and Nate might have been the best team defender I ever coached. Not only did he know what to do as an individual in team concepts, he knew how to tell everybody else what to do in those concepts.

To this day, both Gary and Nate are two of my best friends I’ve had in coaching. And they are both really different. Nate is a gentle, strong, quiet man. Gary is the exact opposite. But they’re both dynamic in their ways. Gary had leadership skills, too. He just didn’t do it every day. Nate did it every day.

Chauncey Billups, Denver Nuggets guard

In 2008, we traded an iconic, talented athlete in Allen Iverson, who was getting up in his years, for Chauncey Billups, who was also getting a little older.

We had a really talented team in Denver, but the team just hadn’t jelled like we thought it would. When we traded for Chauncey, I would say it took less than a month before Chauncey was our leader. The trade was made in early November, and by the end of that month, my team thought we could win the championship. That was 99 percent Chauncey Billups changing the attitude of a negative locker room into a committed, positive locker room.

I want you to know: He saved our team. I was fired before that trade. I don’t know if I would have made it to the first of the year.

When we made that trade, we were much closer to falling apart than we were to winning an NBA championship. That year we went to the conference finals.

He unified the locker room. He took the guys that were mad at me or mad at someone or mad at the world, and all of a sudden everyone had a dedicated commitment to the job at hand, which was to win basketball games.

Chauncey didn’t speak a lot, but when he spoke, everybody listened. And then he was on the court, he led by example. He was very fundamental and focused. He got the most out of his talent almost every time he played basketball.

I don’t know enough about what exactly is going on with Chauncey legally right now; I don’t want to judge anybody. As my dad once told me: “We’ve all got to eat humble pie. Just make sure it’s not too big of a piece.” That’s what I’m hoping for for Chauncey.

Andre Miller, Denver Nuggets guard 

As a leader, he wanted nothing to do with me and him. He wanted to lead the team kind of without my alliance.

Andre was a really quiet guy. But how he led by example might have been the best I ever had. He listened, went into practice and executed almost every day what I wanted him to do. But he wanted to be the leader of the group and we were the bosses; and he didn’t want to talk to the boss. He just wanted to lead his group.

There were times I wanted him to do more. There were times I maybe wanted him to support me more. But in the end, it worked the way he did it, and it made him more powerful to do it his way.

I think he’s one of the best point guards. If you wanted a player who was a point guard, Andre Miller was a point guard.

We played the Lakers in 2012 in a game seven in Los Angeles. Andre came into my locker room before the game and said, “Coach, I want to give the talk before the game.” I’d never had a player ask me to lead the team like that before a game seven.

It gives me goosebumps to this day. At that time, I don’t know if Andre had won a playoff series yet. Andre spoke to the team on how important winning that game was to him. It was an amazing speech. Probably five or six minutes long. Andre was just so emotional about how games like this were what you played for, games like this were the meaning of basketball. It was really just unbelievable.

I talked for a minute or two before he talked, and I wish I never would have talked. I just wish I had given the whole meeting to him.

— As told to Jayson Jenks