Karl runs business 'The Carolina Way'.

• Author: Taylor, Mike
• Position: George Karl

STARTING OUT YOUNG AND COCKY AS THE SECOND-YOUNGEST coach in NBA history more than two decades ago, George Karl recalls taking over the Cleveland Cavaliers at 32, intending to make his mark as "THE genius" of the coaching world.

He then proceeded to lose 19 of his first 21 games and came to understand why the team he inherited was nick-named the "Cadavers."

Now 54, the Denver Nuggets coach has put together 14 straight seasons of .500 or better. He has turned the Nuggets into winners, leading them to their first division title since 1988. But he no longer believes there's a "best" when it comes to coaching.

"It's the guy who does it well every day, and the guy who every once in a while gets that special edge and can get a special team and a special group of guys together and make it happen," Karl said back on March 29 at an expo hosted by Benefits Selling magazine, a trade publication of Wiesner Publishing. "I don't think there is one 'best' coach in the world. If there was, it was a guy named Dean Smith who coached me at the University of North Carolina."

Karl's reverence for Dean Smith is not surprising. It's an affection shared by fellow North Carolina alums Larry Brown and Doug Moe, both of them former Nuggets coaches. Moe is on Karl's staff now, and Karl talks to Brown, the New York Knicks coach, as often as twice a week. Carolina basketball is one tight, proud fraternity.

It follows that Karl told the audience of salespeople he addressed in March that the best business book he's ever read is one co-written by Smith and University of North Carolina business professor Gerald Bell titled "The Carolina Way."

"When he wrote his autobiography and wrote books on basketball, he was way too protective," Karl says of his college coach. "He didn't want to tell the secrets. But the 'Carolina Way' really shows his passion for human beings and his leadership abilities and his ability to energize and run a program."

Creating positive energy is what Karl views his job to be, more than drawing up X's and O's. He figures he's made hundreds of hires over the years, and he has based just about every hire on one quality over any others: positive energy.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"Every coaching hire I've made over the last 10 to 15 years has been based upon his ability to energize situations, handle negativity and somehow turn a negative into a positive," Karl says. "Push it to the future, and get the heck out...