The scornful smile curling at the corner of Byron Scott's mouth gave him away even as he said he had "no comment whatsoever" regarding George Karl's commentary on head coaching hiring practices, soon to be published in a national magazine but already burning up the pro basketball grapevine.

This turned out to mean that Scott had no intellectualized response because, in his opinion, Karl didn't deserve one.

"It's just George talking," Scott, the Nets' coach, said on Tuesday, considering the source, playing it cool. "I hear what he says and most of the time I laugh at it."

Karl's contention in the April issue of Esquire - that the hiring of players, and especially African-American players, with no coaching credentials amounts to discrimination against others - would be laughable if it weren't so shortsighted, self-serving and insensitive.

Long in love with the sound of his own voice, Karl, who coaches the Milwaukee Bucks, said he intended nothing racially inflammatory when he called Doc Rivers, with whom he has feuded, an "anointed" coach and said Rivers' secure standing in Orlando would result in "four or five more anointments of the young Afro-American coach."

We'll take him at his word on that, but whomever his target, whatever he meant, Karl made the mistake of linking the emerging black pro coach with the concept of entitlement, with the misguided notion that Rivers and others of the same credentials and color are and will continue to be the beneficiaries of political correctness or, worse, NBA welfare.

Hence, the understandable scorn in Scott's smile.