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A brief history of NBA stars calling George Karl a snake

There is a pattern developing here.

Late Monday, Yahoo!'s Adrian Wojnarowski broke the news that Kings coach George Karl has been trying hard to get DeMarcus Cousins traded. Cousins is a spectacular presence on Twitter, offering up a sparse feed that bangs every single time. His response to the report about his coach was no exception.

That would be an emoji representation of a snake in the grass. That knocks. Hard. And especially so because it's not the first or second time an NBA star has made this accusation toward Karl.

Back in 2011, the Karl-coached Denver Nuggets finally traded Carmelo Anthony to the New York Knicks, ending a long saga that actually earned its own title (The Melodrama). Almost immediately, Karl got passive-aggressive in the media, calling into question Anthony's defensive effort and wondering if it'd improve in New York.

Melo responded on Twitter.

In 2013, Karl declared that Andre Iguodala, his one-time star, had been a "mole" for the Warriors in the teams' playoff series. Months later and seemingly at random, Iguodala dropped this tweet.

We're not sure why, but Nuggets point guard Ty Lawson once tweeted about snakes.

So did former Karl whipping boy J.R. Smith. This one came months after Melo's initial snake tweet.

And now we have DeMarcus Cousins simplifying it down to a three-character tweet. I'm sensing a pattern.

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