How and Why the Denver Nuggets are on the Brink of Disaster, Part One
This is an unscheduled Report. I originally intended it to be a fast break (less than 1,000 words) but that was completely hopeless when I realized how many comments I have to make about the Nuggets at this point in time. In fact, this Report became so long that it became the opposite of a fast break and has been divided into three parts. Part Two will be posted the day after Part One is and Part Three will soon follow. Here are links to all the parts: How and Why the Denver Nuggets are on the Brink of Disaster, Part One How and Why the Denver Nuggets are on the Brink of Disaster, Part Two
Some of the themes and points here have appeared in previous Reports where you can find more proof than you will find here. For more information about anything, you can consult any of the title indexes or else you can use any of the four Google custom searches scattered throughout the home page. I use to do it to some extent, but the current production plan and the sheer volume of prior writing no longer permits a lot of rehashing of points made previously. Therefore, I will now often be urging you to check the title lists and/or to use custom search if you want more information and/or more proof about anything that is stated but not proved on the spot.
The Denver Nuggets are at least on the brink of disaster and arguably they are already beyond the brink and so they are facing the likelihood of a 20 or 30 wins type of season sometime between next year (2011-12) and in 2013-14 at the latest.
Many Nuggets fans are hostile to me because I have been so relentlessly negative about Nuggets head coach George Karl. Actually I have been both positive and negative but it is true that the volume of the negative has much exceeded the volume of the positive. Very few are totally favorable about Karl; most Nuggets fans have mixed feelings about Karl. But they accuse me of being unrelentingly and overly hostile. I plead guilty to being negative but I am not guilty of being hostile and nor am I guilty of being negative without justification.
Also, I have been occasionally negative regarding the owner of the Nuggets, Stanley Kroenke, but he is considered to be a saint by most Nuggets fans including the minority of them who mostly agree with me that Karl is not a good NBA playoffs coach (and therefore not so good overall). In summary and in general, the party line among the most dedicated Nuggets fans is that my complaints about the organization have often been off the mark, repetitive, and overly hostile.
Now as the Nuggets come apart at the seams and seem headed for a 20 or 30 wins, lottery type of season within the next few years, do you see why I have been relentlessly critical yet? If you can’t see that I have been fully justified yet then we will have to wait a year or two or three, until the Nuggets drop down to 20 or 30 wins. Then the last die hard critics of Quest for the Ring (among Nuggets fans) will have to change their tunes, although some of them will hold a grudge and/or live in a fantasy world forever.
The Nuggets have had a very large payroll for many years and they have had a lot of good fortune picking up much better than expected players on the cheap. They have had very good or outstanding general managers. These things alone should have indefinitely protected them from plummeting down to 20 or 30 wins. Teams that pay luxury tax rarely end up with just 20 or 30 wins a very few years after or even while still paying the tax, yet this is the fate the Nuggets seem to have.
If the Nuggets do indeed drop to that level it will be due to bad management and bad coaching, to put it bluntly but accurately. But ironically it wasn't the general managers themselves (the now fired Mark Warkentien and Rex Chapman) who were the bad managers, but rather the bad managers will be found lower and higher than the general manager level. The bad managers will be found in the coaching ranks and at the ownership level, among "advisors" to the owner and including the owner himself.
When I first started covering basketball I was as innocent as new snow on the ground. I was not at all negative regarding any part of the Nuggets’ organization including Karl. In fact I was hoping big time that I had stumbled upon an outstanding franchise. I had a completely open mind and in fact I intended to be Mr. Positive just like other writers are mostly Mr. Positives. And I was Mr. Positive in the very early months. But one negative discovery after another eventually forced me to realize that there was something very, very wrong about the way Coach Karl views basketball. And then more recently I have finally come to the conclusion that the owner is not managing things well either and I understand the specifics behind that now.
Notice I said that the owner of the Nuggets, Stanley Kroenke, “manages” the team. It is not a mistake to put it this way. All owners manage their teams to one extent or another. Some owners, definitely including Mr. Kroenke, take a much more hands on approach than others. Hands on owners such as Mr. Kroenke reserve decision making powers to themselves that are given to the (general) managers in other franchises.
On about the first of August the two main managers of the Nuggets, Mark Warkentien and Rex Chapman were fired. As is customary when people are fired in the US, especially when they are fired for irrational reasons, no reason was given by the Nuggets for these firings. Ironically, I commended these managers from time to time and I was seldom negative regarding them. (I can’t win with the Nuggets, can I; the ones I commend are the ones that get fired, benched, given away, traded away, trashed by fans, etc.). I knew these two managers were responsible for a lot of good for the Nuggets and I told readers exactly what good they achieved.
In general the greatest achievement of Warkentien and Chapman was that they acquired shockingly good players other teams were underrating, irrationally trying to avoid, or ignoring completely. To name three examples, the now fired Nuggets managers acquired JR Smith, Chris Anderson, and Renaldo Balkman. None of these have started but all of them are starter-grade players. Smith and Anderson turned out to be so much better than expected that both of them in their second Nuggets years had to get much higher pay than what had been expected.
It should also be noted that Warkentien was “NBA Executive of the Year” in 2008-09. But now Warkentien and Chapman are gone. What in the hell is going on here? Well, the Nuggets organization has apparently become some kind of black hole where good and great accomplishments are punished with benchings and firings. And meanwhile George Karl makes mistake after mistake after mistake and yet he is renewed beyond his originally scheduled departure date. So the whole mess is like an alternate universe where bad is good and good is bad.
Can we find out specifically why Warkentien and Chapman were fired? No we can not. I checked around and there was essentially nothing as to why. There was an article complaining about the timing which because it was so late in the summer made it much more difficult than it should have been for them to get another gig for 2010-11. We don’t really know for sure but a very good guess is that at least one of the reasons was that Nuggets owner Stanley Kroenke wanted to slash payroll.
Now consider power forward Renaldo Balkman. He was in the solid starter category in 2008-09 and in fact was very close to the star category. He helped achieve the miracle of the Nuggets being in the 2009 West Conference final against the Lakers during which in fact the Nuggets won two games. Balkmans’ reward was to be benched for the entire 2009-10 season (except for garbage time). For more detail about this subject see any of numerous Reports or you could put “Renaldo Balkman” in the custom search box. I openly admit I have been obsessed with this subject since when Balkman was trashed for the year it proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that Mr. Karl’s benching of good players is a chronic tendency.
Coach Karl somehow avoided benching any of his good players in 2008-09 and the result was that the Nuggets were in that West Conference Final. It was amazing for me to see that and I was worried at the time that I might possibly have gone a little overboard regarding Karl's benchings. But then when Balkman was benched for 2009-10, which cost the Nuggets the ability to win a playoff series, I was vindicated and proved correct. 2008-09 was the exception; most years Karl does indeed bench one of his decent or good players. See other Reports for more.
So just as Balkmans’ reward for being almost a star power forward was a full year benching, Warkentien and Chapmans’ rewards for being “star managers” were to be fired. J.R. Smith’s reward for being one of the most promising young shooting guards in 2007 and 2008 was to have his style repeatedly trashed and beaten out of him. Carmelo Anthony’s reward for being the premier scoring leader in the NBA was to have that style attacked by the Coach and by many of the fans. Marcus Camby’s reward for being one of the best defenders in the NBA was to be given away for nothing and to be thoroughly trashed by fans wanting a completely different style. Allen Iverson's reward for being the second best player on the team and for playing massive minutes was to be traded away before he reached two years on the team and it was to be criticized for being a poor point guard even though he was not used as a point guard.
You see the pattern here? If you are really, really good at something, there is a likelihood you will be attacked for it rather than rewarded for it by one or more elements of the Nuggets organization. This pattern has repeated itself over and over. You probably don’t need me to tell you that sooner or later this pattern will lead to the Nuggets becoming one of the worst teams (in terms of win-loss record) in the NBA. The Nuggets have been putting off this day of reckoning but it seems to be inevitable that it will come. You better believe I use wins and losses as the ultimate measure of management success and failure.
To me, after everything that has gone down in the last few years the Denver Nuggets truly deserve to once again become one of the worst teams. I’m not saying that the Lakers and the Celtics are almost perfect or that there is nothing negative to be found about them. But I am saying that the number of mistakes and the amount of negativity is far less for the Lakers and the Celtics than it is for the Nuggets. When all is said and done this is what separates the contenders from the pretenders. The contenders minimize mistakes and negativity while the pretenders do not.
In Part Two I will state and explain the top ten reasons why there is a very good chance that the Nuggets will become a 20 or 30 win team within the next few years.
