Coby Karl following in his father's footsteps

PHOTOGRAPHER: Mike MacAdam

Coby Karl (seated), an assistant coach with the Westchester Knicks and son of Sacramento Kings (and former Albany Patroons) coach George Karl, chats with Jimmer Fredette before a game at the Westchester County Center.

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I had one of those blast-from-the-past moments while working on a Jimmer Fredette column on Wednesday morning.

A Westchester Knicks assistant coach in an orange long-sleeved T and dark sweatpants was warming up the team, firing passes and playing some shadow defense.

Wait a minute. I recognize that guy.

The face was the same, the snappy chest passes looked familiar.

I covered the Albany Patroons when George Karl was the head coach in 1990-91, one of the most fun and interesting assignments I’ve ever had, and suddenly here was a brush with déjà vu taking me back to that year as I stumbled across his son, Coby. I remember him as a ballboy for his dad’s teams; now, he’s 32 years old and has an 11-month-old daughter of his own.

Like George, Coby is satisfying an abiding passion for coaching.

Like George, he is also a cancer survivor.

Coby said his father’s bout with prostate cancer in 2005, followed by treatable neck and throat cancer in 2010, has changed his perspective on his profession.

George Karl, who signed a four-year deal with the Sacramento Kings this year, had always been a fiery, even combative, competitor.

After two brushes with cancer, it’s a mellower George now, Coby said.

“It’s night and day. Like, 180 degrees,” he said. “And it’s

really a credit to him as a person. He went from being frantic, high-energy, very passionate on the sideline, to now he’s kind of like Phil [Jackson] was — calm. He lets players make mistakes and learn from them. So I’ve learned a lot from that, as his son and a future coach. Just being able to trust people and kind of letting go a little bit. It’s fun to watch.”

The Kings haven’t been much fun to watch, unless you like stories about feuds and locker room dissension.

They’re 7-13 after losing to the Celtics on Thursday, and stories have trickled out that Karl isn’t getting along with some of his players, who include Rajon Rondo and the immensely talented but volatile Demarcus Cousins. The latest, via Yahoo Sports on Wednesday, is that those two and Karl had a productive meeting to clear the air.

When I jokingly asked Coby if George was on the verge of strangling Cousins, he laughed and said, “No, I don’t think it’ll be a Latrell Sprewell.

“He’s learned a lot. Maybe a younger him would’ve been a little more upset by the situation, but it’s a process of learning each other. He understands that now more than ever, and he’s just working with it. He’s just happy to have an opportunity to coach.”

Coby Karl is happy for his own opportunity.

He was an all-WAC second-team player at Boise State, then bounced around with 10 different NBA and D-League teams for eight years before being hired by the Westchester Knicks in October and joining the family business in the coaching ranks.

During the January of his senior year at Boise, he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, which he didn’t reveal to the team until the season was over.

“I was fortunate enough to have one that was curable. Well, I don’t think it’s curable, but I got rid of it, it’s not in my body and doesn’t bother me anymore,” he said. “It was scary, but my family was there for me. They helped me through it.

“With the difficulties in life, there’s pain and there’s joy. That’s kind of what happened with us. It’s obviously a terrible situation and very scary to deal with where there’s the possibility, for me, at the age of 22, 21, to hear, ‘You have cancer.’ Once you get educated on it, you realize that it’s not a death sentence. It’s a process.”