How and Why the Denver Nuggets are on the Brink of Disaster, Part Three
This series has three parts which are linked to below. This part is number three. Four parts were planned, but this part was inadvertantly published before it could be chopped into two parts. In total here there are about 4,000 words, which I understand is too long for many people to read in one sitting. From now on I am going to try my best to only rarely post anything longer than 3,000 words. If something is longer than that it will have to be broken up. Because even the longest articles on other sports and basketball sites are 2,000 words absolute maximum (with most articles being fewer than 1,000 words and most of the little news or rumor flashes being less than 400 words). I know many people simply don't have the time to read 4,000 words but many will have the time to read 1,500 or 2,000. In other words, for those who won't read QFTR because some of the articles are just too long: I hear you and change is starting to happen.
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
How and Why the Denver Nuggets are on the Brink of Disaster, Part ThreeIn Part One we started the explanation of how and why the Denver Nuggets are on the brink of falling back to being a 20-30 wins team. In Parts Two and Three we go over in detail the top ten specific reasons why the Nuggets are likely to become a 20-30 wins team sometime between 2011-12 and 2012-13. Part Two has reasons one through five and part three has reasons six through ten. The reasons are sort of in random order; I intended to made sure the word breakdown between the parts was roughly equal but Part Three became really long because of the urgent need to in detail discuss Stanley Kroenke (who has until now been mostly left out of Reports here). I also made sure that the anticipated salary cap rules changes reason was put last because previous reasons explain why this reason could be a big one. Other than that the order is basically random and so the reasons are NOT in the order of importance.
Although some of the reasons are obviously more important than others, all of the reasons are very important and there is little to be gained by exactly ranking the reasons. I’ll tell you that reasons 4,5,6 and 7 (in the list below) are most likely the most important.
The titles of the reasons are:
1. General management
2. J.R. Smith
3. The power forwards and centers
4. Carmelo Anthony
5. George Karl
6. The owner, Stanley Kroenke
7. Opinions of NBA free agents
8. Lack of draft picks and in house talent
9. Point guard situation
10. Anticipated new salary cap rules
REASON SIX: THE OWNER, STANLEY KROENKE
Denver Nuggets owner Stanley Kroenke and his wife are billionaires and with the assistance of numerous supervisors, professionals, executives, managers, employees and relatives they run several very large companies among which is a very large sports and media corporation whose objective is to own and operate many sports and media properties in various sports and in various locations around North America and Europe. This man is an extraordinarily rich world-scale businessman; there are only a few hundred business people at this level of wealth in the entire world. He is the kind of businessman and he has the kind of individual wealth that did not really exist in the world at all until in about the last 25 years. Little if anything is known about whether organizations owned by hyper-wealthy individuals perform more poorly than ones owned by many shareholders, but if I had to bet I’d say that those owned by single, hyper-wealthy individuals may be better off financially but are most likely worse off in terms of performance.
Broadly speaking, Kroenke owns real estate, broadcasting, sports teams, and certain other sports related companies. Kroenke has in the past and continues to own commercial real estate development companies. Those companies have been involved in developing shopping centers containing Wal-Marts and ones close to Wal-Mart stores.
So unlike any of the other NBA owners, Kroenke owns several other pro teams. Aside from the Nuggets he owns five other pro teams in four other sports and he also owns about 30% of “Arsenal”, which is a UK football team. (Football in the rest of the world is called soccer in the US.)
Kroenke owns:
--Colorado Rapids pro soccer team (Major League Soccer League)
--Colorado Avalanche pro hockey team
--St. Louis Rams pro football team
--Arsenal UK Association football (soccer) team (he is a major shareholder)
--Colorado Mammoth National Lacrosse League Team
--Denver Nuggets pro basketball team
As recently as 2009 Kroenke was part owner of the Colorado Crush Arena Football League Team which went out of business that year.
Even this list may not be complete. Kroenke may own or partly own semi-pro and amateur teams whose ownership is very hard to reference even with the full power of the Internet.
As you can see, Kroenke seems to be obsessed with owning at least one pro team in every team sport that is popular.
STANLEY KROENKE IS NOW THE SOLE OWNER OF THE ST. LOUIS RAMS
Just a few weeks ago, in August, Kroenke became full owner of the St. Louis Rams by unanimous consent of the NFL. To gain approval from NFL owners, Kroenke agreed to turn over control of the Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche to his son Josh Kroenke by the end of 2010, and he must give up his majority stake in both the Nuggets and the Avalanche by December 2014.
So now Josh Kroenke who is just 30 years old is going to become the owner of the Denver Nuggets as of January 1, 2011.
Even before he became full owner of the Rams Kroenke was a 40% shareholder in many years during which the Rams were literally the worst team in the NFL. In the most recent three seasons the St. Louis Rams have a win-loss record of 6-42, which I would have to think is the worst 3-year record in the League. Although Kroenke was just a 40% shareholder owner during this period it certainly doesn’t give you much confidence about the long term prospects of the Nuggets, does it? The Rams ownership during those three years was not like an ordinary Corporation where there are hundreds or thousands of shareholders and individual shareholders have little say in what goes down. Kroenke was THE shareholder in the Rams while the Rams were 6-42 and, well, they were 6-42, and that speaks for itself as to whether Kroenke insisted on and obtained real improvements for the Rams. He did not.
But who knows, maybe his view was that he should not insist on anything but being able to buy the team outright, and that the worse the Rams were, the faster he would get his chance to buy the rest of the team.
Now that Kroenke owns the Rams lock, stock, and barrel, it will be interesting to see whether like the Nuggets the St. Louis Rams underachieve and fail to ever become real contenders to win the NFL Super Bowl.
Kroenke is now the one and only owner of both a NBA franchise and a NFL franchise. Kroenke had to bend NFL rules in order to buy the St. Louis Rams because the NFL has a rule which supposedly forbids owners of other pro sports teams that are located in a metro area that also has a NFL team from at the same time owning (another) NFL team. In other words, the rule forbids Stan Kroenke from owning the St. Louis Rams and the Denver Nuggets at the same time because the Nuggets are located in a NFL city.
But now Stan Kroenke does own both the Denver Nuggets and the St. Louis Rams so obviously rules have been broken or at least they have been weaseled. You may already be aware that multi-millionaires and billionaires are always bending, breaking, and making up new rules and this was no exception. A billionaire is not going to be stopped by what to him is a trivial little League rule.
One of the ludicrous results of all these manipulations is that legally, Stanley Kroenke's son Josh, who is about 30 years old, is now going to be the official, legal owner of the Nuggets.
The family dog will be the official, legal general manager of the Nuggets. (Just kidding about the dog.)
THE NUGGETS ARE HANDICAPPED BY NOT HAVING AN OWNER COMPLETELY DEDICATED TO BASKETBALL
Unlike many other NBA owners, Kroenke obviously can not be and is never going to be 100% focused on basketball. I have not proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt yet, but there is a good chance that I will eventually prove that in order to have a reasonable chance to win the NBA Championship the owner of the team has to either be completely hands off except that he hires absolutely the best managers and coaches, or else if the owner is more hands on he or she has to devote most or all of his or time to basketball. I Think I will eventually be able to prove that beyond any shadow of a doubt.
Kroenke is relatively hands on yet obviously he can not devote more than a very small fraction of his time to managing the Denver Nuggets. Therefore, he is the opposite of what I think is needed for an NBA team to have a real chance of winning a Championship.
The problem with the Nuggets owner is that when all is said and done the Nuggets are just a small part of the very large Kroenke business empire. Even if you just look at his sports holdings (and ignore his other businesses) the Nuggets are a very small piece of Kroenke’s long list of teams and other sports enterprises. This means that inevitably the Nuggets will not get as much attention from Kroenke as most other NBA teams get from their owners. Kroenke may have billions of dollars but like anyone else he has only 24 hours a day to work with.
It also means that the Nuggets are likely to get the wrong kind of attention. Kroenke may be so business oriented that he makes decisions in favor of filling seats and selling merchandise as opposed to making decisions in favor of winning playoff games and Championships.
If the Nuggets become a 20 or 30 wins (out of 82 games) team Stanley Kroenke is not going to get that upset about it since for one thing he will generally at that time (and at all times) have some other team in some other sport in some other city winning more than they are losing. Since he owns many other teams, he will never like the other NBA owners get disturbed when the one and only pro team he owns is a losing team.
Kroenke owns part or all of teams in five sports: basketball, hockey, football, lacrosse, and soccer. We don’t even know whether basketball is Kroenke’s favorite sport, but let’s face it, it probably isn’t. The odds that basketball is Kroenke’s favorite sport can’t be higher than one in five based on what we know, whereas you have to think that most or all of the other NBA owners have basketball as their favorite sport.
Mr. Kroenke does not even live in the Denver area; he lives primarily in Columbia, Missouri.
I’m not saying that a NBA owner has to be obsessed about basketball and about his or her team the way for example that Marc Cuban is. But I am saying that an owner whose NBA team is just a little piece of his sports (or sports/business) empire is no good, especially if that owner for some unknown reason insists in making decisions often made by the general manager. If Kroenke just owned and left most decisions to the managers it might possibly work out. But to the contrary, not only does Kroenke insist on participating in decisions often made by managers, he recently fired the two primary Nuggets managers as if to emphasize the point that he is the real general manager of the Nuggets. Moreover, as discussed in the point about the managers (and in one or two other spots in this series) there is a mysterious layer of management in the Nuggets organization in between the owner and the general manager, which of course makes the management of the Nuggets confusing and dubious.
Kroenke’s management system in general and his insistence on directly and day to day managing the managers is never going to work out in favor of the Nuggets being a contender because for one thing, managing a NBA team is a full time job and can not possibly be done well by a very part time owner and/or by a layer of management in between the owner and the general manager. Since Kroenke owns at least five other teams and several other businesses besides, there is no possible way he has enough time to serve as the general manager of the Nuggets or the general manager’s overlord or whatever you want to call it. Since he is spread very thin and since he is spread way beyond basketball, he is the last NBA owner who should be actively “helping” the general manager manage the team.
As for the mysterious layer of management, it is unnecessary, counterproductive, and can easily lead to major lost opportunities for trades and so forth. If as appears to be the case nepotism is involved in that layer, this would likely make it even more dysfunctional.
Why Mr. Kroenke is doing what he is doing is unknown; only he could tell you and the why is probably not all that important actually. The important point is that this way of doing business can not possibly work out in the Nuggets favor. The bottom line is that if the Nuggets are to have a good shot at winning the Quest, they need a new owner. There is a very high probability, certainly in access of 90% that the Denver Nuggets are never going to win the Quest for the Ring unless they get a new owner.
REASON SEVEN: OPINIONS OF NBA FREE AGENTS
The Nuggets, thanks to George Karl, Stanley Kroenke, and now also thanks to Carmelo Anthony’s decision to quit, are for at least the next three or four years going to be one of the least favored destinations of quality free agents. Even when the Nuggets have a lot of cap space, they will find that many of the better and especially the best free agents are trying to avoid ending up on the Nuggets. Remember Antonio McDyess and his refusal to play for the Nuggets upon coming over in the Iverson trade? There are a lot of other players around with the same low opinion of the Nuggets that McDyess has, and many of them would (and some will) refuse to play for the Nuggets just like McDyess did.
REASON EIGHT: THE LACK OF DRAFT PICS AND IN HOUSE TALENT
Due to being too willing to trade them away, the Nuggets have been relatively starved of draft picks for years and years. The fact that George Karl is one of the worst coaches with respect to believing in and developing in house young talent (especially young forwards and centers) makes this situation worse. The Nuggets have partially offset this by picking up on the cheap veteran players who turn out to be much better than expected. But sooner or later being starved of good draft picks and hardly at all developing quality rookies and second and third year players in house is going to catch up with you.
The Utah Jazz and the San Antonio Spurs are probably the two best examples of teams that develop rookies and near rookies in house and these are perennial playoff teams.
REASON NINE: THE POINT GUARD SITUATION
Nuggets Point Guard Chauncey Billups just turned 34 and he will be 36 for the 2012-13 season, which is the one that seems very likely to be a 20-30 win season for the Nuggets. In most cases point guards go downhill fast after about age 35, although there are exceptions such as right now we have Steve Nash at 36 and Jason Kidd at 37 and since they were among the very best point guards in 2009-10 it is quite possible that they will once again be superstars in 2010-11.
The Nuggets’ second point guard Ty Lawson is young, inexperienced and unproven. At this time it doesn’t look like he is going to be a superstar point guard although it is too early to conclude that. He may or may not end up being the starting point guard for the Nuggets when Billups retires (in a few short years). And he may or may not become a true point guard which is what you need if you want to use offense to win the Quest. Certainly if Lawson wants to become a true point guard (which means he makes a lot more assists than the typical, run of the mill point guard) he’ll have to do it on his own because Nuggets coaches do not agree that a true point guard is a lot better than an ordinary or “average” point guard who does not go all out to increase his assists total.
The main point is that the Nuggets, like any other true contender, are going to need at least one superstar point guard (or superstar shooting guard who in effect plays the point at the same time) if they ever want to contend to win a Championship. Important note: All superstar point guards are also true point guards; being a true point guard is a prerequisite for being a superstar point guard.
So add “superstar or at least true and star point guard to the Nuggets’ already too long list of needed acquisitions (to the list of the forwards and centers they need).
The Nuggets’ list is simply too long. When the list is too long, you can easily end up with one or more 20-30 wins seasons as you go down the list and can never get it all done in one off season.
That’s another nickname for a lottery team: it’s a “the list is too long” team.
REASON TEN: THE ANTICIPATED NEW SALARY CAP RULES
There is a fairly good chance that there will be a lock-out a year from now (meaning part of the 2011-12 season will be cancelled) and that the end result of the confrontation between owners and players over a new collective bargaining agreement to replace the expiring one will be a harder salary cap than the very soft one in effect now. If the harder salary cap becomes a reality, as many of the owners and as League Commissioner David Stern want, the most rich and most aggressive owners will no longer be able to try to spend their way to playoff and Championship wins if they are willing to pay a hefty luxury tax. In fact, the luxury tax will no longer have to exist if David Stern and his allies among the owners fully get their way.
Among the twelve Nuggets players scheduled to be paid in 2010-11, five of them have no contract for 2011-12: Shelden Williams, Anthony Carter, J.R. Smith, Kenyon Martin, and Carmelo Anthony. Since teams generally try to lock in their better than average players they intend to keep before the end of the off season of the last contract year, many are thinking that the Nuggets are going to part ways with Kenyon Martin and J.R. Smith after the end of this season.
For the following year, 2012-13, Aaron Afflalo, Chauncey Billups, and Nene have no contract yet. In total, 8 out of the 12 Nuggets on the payroll for 2010-11 have no contract as of yet for 2012-13. The only four Nuggets with a contract lasting through at least 2012-13 are Al Harrington, Ty Lawson, Renaldo Balkman, and Chris Andersen. The point (besides the specific breakdown which is interesting in itself) is that the Nuggets have a large percentage of their roster to replace over the next two years and this is going to be made more difficult and probably much more difficult by new salary cap rules that will come into being after a lockout. Managers and owners who thought that making good trades were difficult under the expiring CBA and salary cap rules are going to find that they are even more difficult to arrange under the new one.
More basically of course, the fact that teams may not be able to spend as much as they want anymore means that particularly wealthy owners such as Stan Kroenke will lose that advantage. This means that the Nuggets will lose most of the advantage they have enjoyed from having a very wealthy owner. This in turn means that the Nuggets have to have one of the best general managers or they are not going to be able to effectively compete for players when the new CBA and the new salary cap rules come into being. And finally, this means that owners who don’t let their general managers do their jobs with very little interference will be hurting their teams even more than they do now. So if Kroenke continues his micromanaging activities after the new salary cap rules come into being, the Nuggets will be even worse off than they are now.
THE NUGGETS NEED MIRACLES IN THE SUMMER OF 2012 AND IN THE SUMMER OF 2013
Of course, not one of the Nuggets’ big money players (Carmelo Anthony, Kenyon Martin, Chauncey Billups, and Nene) have contracts beyond 2011-12 and it seems that none of them are going to still be on the Nuggets by 2012-13. Billups might get a new contract for that year but he will be old in basketball terms by then. There is going to be a lot of “cap space”. But there usually is whenever a team is heading for the basement in a hurry. Having a lot of cap space is way overrated and doesn’t guarantee anything.
IF THE NUGGETS HIT ROCK BOTTOM THEY DESERVE IT
My bottom line is that the owner of the Nuggets and many of their misguided fans deserve a 20-win type of season or two after all of the mistakes they and the people that work for them have made. Quite honestly on the day Marcus Camby was given away in July 2008 I expected that the Nuggets were going to win roughly 45 games in 2008-09 and then drop to about 30 or 35 wins in 2009-10. Whereas they actually won 54 games in 2008-09 and then 53 in 2009-10. So I was wrong.
But it is seriously starting to look like it will eventually be the case that I was wrong about the timing but right about the reality.
When the Lakers demolished the Nuggets by 27 points in Denver to end the 2009 miracle Nuggets appearance in the West final I was partially vindicated from being wrong about predicting in January 2009 that the Nuggets would not win a playoff series in 2009 (and they won two to get to play the Lakers in the West final). Now it increasingly appears that I will be largely vindicated about “being wrong” about the Nuggets heading toward one or more 20 or 30 win seasons due all of the reasons discussed in this four-part Report.
Right now it looks like I will be right about the Nuggets soon dropping back to 20 or 30 wins as a consequence of the coaching and the ownership. It looks like this will happen about three years after I thought it would on that day that Marcus Camby was given away and it was as plain as day that the Nuggets were making a monumental mistake on a level that no franchise that is truly in the running to win The Quest for the Ring can make. It’s actual typical of me that I predict the future correctly but my timing is off.
Here is the bottom line of the bottom line:
If and when the Nuggets drop back to 20-30 wins (in 2013-14 or earlier) the two men most responsible for that are clear: Stanley Kroenke and George Karl. They may “mean well” but they have made two many incorrect decisions and set up too many processes that don’t work out. Right now they can’t agree to a Carmelo Anthony trade even though there have been numerous managers and owners from other teams trying hard to get a trade together. The Nuggets can only afford to be so picky when their best player wants to quit. If they get nothing for Carmelo, it will be malpractice. Then barring a miracle they are looking at a 20 wins type of season.
Of course if they get something for Carmelo Anthony they will be better off, but even then I think they are looking at roughly 30 wins a year for at least a few years. Whether or not they get nothing, the day of reckoning for coaching and management errors seems to be just around the corner. The Nuggets are right up on the edge of the cliff and in fact it may very well be inevitable right now that they are going to go over that cliff. It’s a long, long drop to the bottom.
