The Self Destruction of the Denver Nuggets: Written July 18, 2008

SEE EDITORIAL NOTES AT THE END IF YOU ARE A REGULAR READER

What the Nuggets owner and front office have done was malpractice on all of the players, but especially on AI, on Camby, and on the Denver fan base. At this point, everyone is arguing about what exactly their mistakes were, and which mistakes were the worst ones. As someone who always takes in and considers all facts and all arguments, my head is spinning with respect to how I would best describe how the Nuggets have now most likely screwed up their team for the foreseeable future. There is so much to say on that topic that it is difficult to figure out how to organize the discussion!

But this experience of covering the Nuggets has been good for me, because now I will be much better equipped to spot mistakes that another team might be making. The Nuggets may have succeeded at making half of or more than half of all of the possible mistakes a basketball team can make in about 4 years flat. So although I am royally angry at those who in the end made my head spin trying to keep track of all of the mistakes and trying to rank the mistakes in order of importance, I am actually very glad I did this, because I am now more or less an expert on the dark side of basketball, so to speak, lol.

So was I punked? No way. But I suspect it is time for me to move to the brighter lights of the basketball world.

George Karl, and as we now know, the Denver management as well, are men of many mistakes, but there is a common denominator to many of them: they value style over substance. They value personality over performance. They value things like practice and good citizenship over things like intensity of effort and application of basketball skills in games. They value hope and the expenditure of money itself over the hard and tricky work of managing an investment all the way to its logical conclusion.

They act as if managing a basketball franchise is like cooking up some instant rice. The Nuggets way of thinking is old school to put it nicely, hopelessly out of date to put it realistically. Their way of thinking fails in Real World 2008, as we have seen. The ultimate irony for the Nuggets management is that they live in that place that their selected Coach, George Karl, accused JR Smith of living in: Fantasyland.

Allen Iverson was fooled into believing that the Nuggets were truly capable of contending, but they never were. But he was not by a long shot the only one fooled. People everywhere looked at Denver and saw a team that had shelled out mega bucks and had a mega talented lineup as a result. Not very long ago, it didn't occur to a lot of folks that the Nuggets might not know how to manage that investment through its logical course, or that they might not use all of the resources that their investment made available to them.

Iverson, and many others besides him, could not have imagined that the Nuggets would have proved to be as lame an organization as they finally revealed themselves to be. Because lame organizations normally don't spend money like its water, so the Nuggets committed fraud on an unsuspecting public, so to speak, when they spent the huge bucks.

And there have been, to my surprise and consternation, a larger number of basketball watchers who have agreed with the Nuggets way of thinking. They look at Marcus Camby’s style and they say to themselves: “I definitely do not want to see his style at the center position, or any other position, for that matter. They look at Allen Iverson's style and say to themselves: "I definitely do not want to see his style at the PG position. I’m just going to continue to enjoy having a field day criticizing his style while he plays as the shortest 2-guard in history. Because I love criticizing players, and especially their styles, while ignoring the contexts.” Such is their twisted thinking.

They are silent on what really matters, which is whether if you add the benefits and subtract the costs of Camby at the center position, or of Iverson at the point guard position, the Nuggets are better off or not. Either they don't know how to calculate that, or they do and refuse to calculate it or consider it. For them, it is style over substance, nothing more and nothing less.

The answer to whether the Nuggets blew it by not running the Iverson/JR Smith backcourt is of course yes, which in my opinion should be obvious. But anyone wanting proof can get overwhelming proof from, for example, reviewing +/- statistics for various on court combinations. Or they can simply "watch the games" as they say, and watch Iverson doing what a point guard does, although with a style that many do not like in the least.

These people are now in effect agreeing that it would be alright for a man, suspecting his life was ruined despite his still having untried options, and so not knowing his life was ruined for certain, to drive to a funeral home, jump in a coffin, and tell the funeral director to bury him right away.

It is one thing to put style over substance. But now at this point, with the Nuggets in self--destruct mode, those who are persisting with this claim have in effect gone off the extreme deep end. Some of the folks who are so adamant about putting style over substance are now excusing the Nuggets for not even attempting to see their huge investment through to its true conclusion, and for not trying every relevant strategy that their expensive roster allowed them to try. Specifically, it is so important to them that Allen Iverson never plays PG for the Nuggets, that by saying the Nuggets should immediately cut and run, they are in effect willing to do any or all of the following:

1. Condemn the Nuggets to being a losing team for the foreseeable future, by saying the Nuggets had no business putting Iverson on the team in the first place, and didn't know what they were doing when they spent the big roster bucks. As if they are qualified to determine and judge those things...
2. Condemn the owner of the Nuggets, Stan Kroenke, to having wasted 20-200 million dollars (depending on what you want to count as part of the loss) on the 2004-08 Nuggets, without even running the experiment to see if Iverson could have played PG for the Nuggets. Kroenke is just supposed to declare his money lost and to cut and run, without seeing his investment through to its logical conclusion. In other words, he is supposed to admit he is a failure as an owner and move on. (Trouble is, even if he admits he is a failure, he is still the owner and is not moving on.)
3. Condemn the Nuggets front office as in over its head in managing an NBA franchise.
4. Condemn the fans of the Nuggets to being punked by the owner and the management of the Nuggets, who are as we speak committing a fraud on them by not admitting that they have given up on being a contender.
5. Condemn Allen Iverson himself to having been punked by the Nuggets organization. Iverson was treated more or less like a circus side show, if the truth were told in full, which it will be by yours truly in the months ahead.
6. Condemn Marcus Camby, an historical defensive player whether you like his style or not, to being, as he himself put it, disrespected. Marcus Camby was in fact disrespected by the Nuggets, pure and simple. Is it any surprise that a lame organization that does not value substance much is guilty of disrespecting him? (How many blocks and rebounds did that man make, again?)
7. Condemn Carmelo Anthony to being stuck in an NBA backwater if he never wakes up and realizes he must come down from the Rockies if he is ever going to be truly respected in the USA, as he already is outside of the USA.

That is way, way too much condemning for me. So sorry, but I condemn those who are doing the condemning. To me, anyone who thinks that style is more important than substance in basketball, and who thinks that you need not bother exhausting all of the main possibilities before declaring your investment lost and your chances for success gone, by cutting and running, is not a true, or at least not a complete basketball fan. I think those who are saying that there is nothing more for the Nuggets to do at this juncture are as wrong as wrong can be.

In summary, although it is apparently true that the Nuggets franchise is a joke, it is even more outrageous in my estimation that there are those who say that the Nuggets must simply declare themselves to be failures, declare their mistakes and failures, and cut and run from what they did over the last several years. In the opinion of the condemners, the Nuggets are so incompetent that they are not even entitled to wait until the prime time for getting a return on their investment is over. They are supposed to, or at least be excused for, immediately giving up and moving on to the losing seasons to come that they so richly deserve. In other words, this fake end of the road is good enough for the imposter basketball fans.

This raise the white flag thinking is totally wrong. People learn, they change, and they get better over time. And there are things that happen by sheer chance that change things dramatically.

Had the Nuggets not self destructed, they could have convinced a key free agent or two or three to come to play for them at a discounted salary. They could have profited from Iverson on his own deciding to score less and pass more, which he hinted he might do recently. They could have, even if by accident, developed a new younger player or two. Carmelo Anthony, JR Smith, and Allen Iverson might have gotten together and worked out a new scheme without needing any coaching to do that. Hell, Anthony Carter could have been injured, and Atkins unable to play due to age and prolonged injury recovery, making it mandatory that Iverson be the point guard by default.

Although I discovered Nuggets errors just about everywhere I looked, I never condemned their efforts, I never assumed they could never get some things right. And I sure as hell never called for them to give up early and to declare themselves to be failures. I knew that the secrets of the quest for the ring are sometimes discovered by chance, or because it was meant to be. And that what is needed in the quest for the ring often appears out of nowhere, when you least suspect it. The Boston Celtics know what I am talking about.

So the only ones I condemn are the condemners, and I blame them in part for the Nuggets' self-destruction.
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EDITORIAL INFORMATION
This is more forum commentary I did during July 2008, when I didn't have time to do the detailed and extensive reports that I like to do, All commentary until just before the Camby giveaway in July 2008 was already posted in October. The remaining forum commentary not yet here is being posted now.

The posting of my original content on a forum before it is posted on this site will never happen again. Even if my time temporarily becomes limited so that I can't do full reports for a few weeks, I now do Fast Break postings on this site, and these are going to be the same thing as any forum postings I do. I will combine extremely short forum comments into a single Fast Break, which will be from now on immediately be posted here.

In turn, Full Reports will include all fast breaks, which will be reedited and substantially added to.

Editorial Note: Please be aware that a "Fast Break" is a short and quick preview of some of the topics that will be explored and proved in more detail in upcoming regular reports. Fast Breaks will often reappear in full reports with only minor reediting, but there will be more important details, more evidence, and more implications and explanations in the full reports. Moreover, there will be topics that never appear in any Fast Break in a full Report.

Fast Breaks are especially useful for the first few days after major news breaks. They are also very useful for people who will seldom or never have enough time to read a full Game/Team/League Report. Fast Breaks are the type of article that more typical web logs feature almost all or all of the time.