By Mike Kahn
CBS SportsLine Executive Editor
Nov. 16, 1998

SEATTLE -- His reason for returning to Seattle was honorable enough. There is plenty of honor in the way George Karl goes about his life slinging goodwill, emotions, jibes, and controversy wherever and whenever he raises his head.

Last week, Karl was commiserating

As usual, George Karl couldn't resist an opportunity to open his mouth about the Sonics. (Allsport)

with Sam Perkins -- who like Karl is a former member of the Seattle SuperSonics organization and fellow North Carolina alumnus -- in the non-profit organization Friends of Hoop to sponsor their second Martin Luther King Holiday Hoopfest.

The Hoopfest is a great thing and lots of people are involved to raise money for underprivileged kids. But George Karl going back to Seattle five months after he was fired as coach of the Sonics and subsequently hired by the Milwaukee Bucks to a long-term deal worth a whopping $5 million a year, has the same effect on Seattle as starting a virus in the Microsoft operating systems.

KARL, THE WINNINGEST COACH IN SONICS HISTORY, does not mince words when it comes to the way he was treated by the Sonics. As soon as reporters opened the door, he exploded through it.

To put it mildly, Sonics owner Barry Ackerley and team president Wally Walker are not friends of his.

Ackerley just extended Walker's contract three more years. When asked about the relevance, Karl erupted in his inimitable fashion.

"I thought it was a good commentary that the (media) should have fun with," Karl told local reporters. "I don't know what success Wally Walker has had to deserve a three-year extension. But I think I at least had that much or more success than he's had in his career. Obviously, they didn't want me."

Walker was out of town, so was unable to respond to Karl's tirade. Chances are, Walker would have chosen not to respond anyway. The two are opposite in nature. Walker, a University of Virginia alum and buttoned-down financial wiz, will handle everything in public in a suitable fashion.

Fashion does not fit into Karl's approach to life. In many ways, Karl is an old-fashioned gunslinger ... riding into town, spitting tobacco and accomplishing what needs to be done in whatever manner it requires.

CONSEQUENTLY, THE RIDE WITH KARL and the Sonics was topsy-turvy 6½ seasons which the rest of the country often saw firsthand. His tenure began in January of 1992 with a 27-15 record after he replaced the fired K.C. Jones. They stunned the highly-regarded Golden State Warriors in the first round of the playoffs, then lost to a more mature Utah Jazz team.

But that was just the beginning of the transition. Team president Bob Whitsitt, who hired him, had clauses in the contract Karl signed that included guidelines for weight, public attire and the consumption of alcoholic beverages during the season. Problems had arisen in public during Karl's two-year stints in Cleveland and Golden State (1984-88) that cast him out of the NBA and back to the CBA and twice to Spain until Whitsitt came calling in 1992.

"I had no problem going through that with Whitsitt," Karl said. "He saved me from Europe and resurrected my NBA career. I owed him that much and I trusted him."

Karl and the Sonics averaged 59.5 wins during the next six seasons. That mark was second only to the Chicago Bulls. The Sonics got to the Western Conference Finals twice, won once and lost to the Bulls in six games during the 1996 NBA Finals. But that ride came after two teary-eyed first-round playoff ousters. The first one, an infamous loss to the eighth-seeded Denver Nuggets in 1994, cost Karl his savior, as Whitsitt left in a complicated huff with Ackerley and went to work for Paul Allen and the Portland Trail Blazers. Since then, Whitsitt went from being president of the Seattle Seahawks, to president of the Blazers.

And Walker went from being the Sonics' television analyst to president in one fell swoop.

He and Ackerley killed a Karl-engineered trade that would have sent Shawn Kemp, Ricky Pierce and a draft choice to Chicago for Scottie Pippen, Will Perdue and a draft choice shortly after Whitsitt departed before the 1994 NBA draft. That was the beginning of the end of the relationship between Walker and Karl.

Unfortunately for both, it was just beginning.

IN 1995, THEY LOST TO THE fifth-seeded Los Angeles Lakers in the first round. Most people expected Karl to be fired going into the final year of his contract. Instead, he got a two-year extension, that included a $3.1 million 1997-98 season.

He responded by leading the Sonics to the Western Division crown and to a six-game series before falling in the finals to the Bulls. The Sonics struggled to a second-round loss to Houston in 1997, then were embarrassed in the second round this past season by the Lakers after nearly losing to an inexperienced Minnesota squad.

When asked about Karl's lame-duck season midway through and why Karl hadn't been given an extension when he had fostered such an impressive record, Ackerley was widely quoted as saying, "Where are my rings?"

So Karl was fired in June and Paul Westphal was hired shortly thereafter. Karl stewed and fired missiles at Ackerley and Walker and waited. He appeared headed to Turner Broadcasting when the Bucks and owner Herb Kohl stunned the world with a $5 million a year contract.

Unfortunately, the scheduled Nov. 29 game with the Sonics in Seattle is a casualty of the 139-day lockout. His popularity in Seattle remains solid and his wife and two children still live here. Whether they move full-time to Milwaukee or not is doubtful, considering his daughter is just a sophomore in college and son a sophomore in high school.

But his time will come and he knows it.

"It would be fun," Karl said. "Being an underdog and being fired up. Coaching against Gary (Payton) and Det (Schrempf) and Vin (Baker). I think we know some things about them."

You said it

So we asked our readers their impressions of the lockout and it was hardly overwhelming for a hard-core group of sports fans. The following was the response by 9 p.m. (EDT) on Monday from more than 5,300 readers to the question, "Do you miss the NBA?"

The answers to "No Way" (33.1 percent), "Yes" (29.4 percent), "Not Really" (25.7 percent) and "A Little (11.8 percent).