Denver Nuggets preview: prepare for the inevitable
“The Blue and Yellow are busily preparing to hit the floor for a new head coach and a new front office. Change is in the air. It’s too bad fans can only expect more of the same – or worse – from the franchise.”
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It’s time to blow the dust off the flat-brim, hit Sports Authority for a jersey to replace your Iguodala, shell out for the ten-game “fan plan” and get ready for a brand new season of Nuggets basketball. The Blue and Yellow are busily preparing to hit the floor for a new head coach and a new front office. Change is in the air. It’s too bad fans can only expect more of the same – or worse – from the franchise.
George Karl will have his feet kicked up on his ESPN desk watching while Brian Shaw gets a dose of what the old ball coach was working with here in Denver. But, instead of coaxing regular season wins out of his roster as Karl did, Shaw will be wisely preparing for a future that does not include such hucksters as Wilson Chandler, Andre Miller and JaVale McGee.
If Shaw is smart his objective will be to take the Nuggets to the bottom, not to the top of the Western Conference. It’s tough to call a 57-win team a “rebuilding project”, and Shaw might not see it as one at the opening tip of his first season in Denver. He will probably catch on pretty quickly, though. While the Nuggets do a have a promising young core and some impressive role players, it’s going to take talent that can only be drafted to make them a true “player” in the NBA, where the inmates run the asylum.
JaVale McGee is presumably the player who prompted Karl’s downfall. Shaw is going to find out that McGee, while being a tremendously talented “born” basketball player, doesn’t have his head in the game. As soon as things start to go south for Denver Shaw will also discover that a few guys don’t want to be here. Wilson Chandler will start Tweeting about being traded, Miller will grumble. Despite the changes at the top of the Nuggets, the relative sameness of the squad will produce familiar results in the coming season.
The Nuggets will win about a dozen fewer games than they did last year, making the 82 game regular-season seem to drag on forever. When they reach the final quarter-stretch the Nuggets will have forty-something wins and will be competing for a low playoff seeding with the Portlands of the world. They will have virtually no hope of advancing to the second round if they do manage to coax a post-season berth. Basically, we are all about to invest ourselves in a long, drawn-out exercise in futility.
Are you getting excited?
There is no parity in the NBA. Guaranteed contracts mean that teams are hamstrung by poor players and that the good ones get to decide where to go – and Denver is not a destination. The Miami Heat are going to win the title and everybody knows it. It’s anybody’s guess why they bother even to play the games.
There could be a new favorite by 2014 since just about half the league in entering free agency. It could be New York, Los Angeles, Boston…who knows, maybe for or five guys will all decide to head to Philadelphia to win four, five, six, seven, eight titles. The only forgone conclusion is that nobody with the gravity of a Lebron James will ever, ever come to the Mile High City.
The Nuggets may not ever win a title. They certainly won’t win one this year. Or next year. Or the year after that. Or the year after that. Professional basketball in Colorado is winter entertainment and nothing more. The only “sport” in it is creating enough enthusiasm to keep people coming to Pepsi Center to down shots in the Tuaca Chill Zone.
So, dig in Nuggets fans. And prepare for the inevitable. I can’t fucking wait.
