Denver Nuggets front office says team not a contender, yet George Karl keeps job
Did George Karl deserve another vote of confidence and the chance to coach the Nuggets for one more year?
The Denver Nuggets front office have been trailblazers in their first few years, but they’re playing it safe once again when it comes to their head coach.
Masai Ujiri and Josh Kroenke have been bold when it comes to personnel decisions, and the team is unarguably better due to the men in charge.
They traded away Carmelo Anthony before he could walk to New York for nothing, and they got back a king’s ransom for the superstar. For Melo, Ujiri was given Wilson Chandler, Timofey Mozgov, Kosta Koufos, Danilo Gallinari, Anthony Randolph and Raymond Felton – many of whom have helped the team improve over the last two years. During the 2011 NBA Draft, Ujiri wheeled and dealt Felton and got back Andre Miller and Corey Brewer while drafting Jordan Hamilton and Kenneth Faried.
Last year, they traded away lifelong Nugget Nene for JaVale McGee and found a way to land Olympian Andre Iguodala in exchange for Aaron Afflalo as part of the massive Dwight Howard deal.
Simply, the only player that remains from before the Ujiri/Kroenke regime is Ty Lawson, who looks more and more like a blossoming star each season.
They’ve completely revamped the roster in the Mile High City, building a squad of young, athletic, hard-working players. No, the Nuggets still don’t have a superstar post-Melo, but they’re a true team when at their best. They share the rock, run in transition and score in the paint, setting up one another for easy buckets. At least, it works in the regular season.
As we’ve seen over the last nine years, the run-and-gun philosophies that head coach George Karl preaches don’t work in the postseason.
When teams focus on getting back on defense, Karl’s Nuggs can’t run the court and earn layups at the rim. After they’re slowed down, Denver hasn’t shown efficiency in the half-court game because Karl doesn’t teach many offensive sets, opting for his players to figure out the game on the fly.
Karl’s a very good regular season coach, and has proven to be very poor at coaching in the playoffs.
Each and every postseason – save one run to the Western Conference Finals five years ago – the Nuggets are one-and-done. The one constant has been Karl, and the reasons for retaining him keep coming. This year, second-leading scorer Gallinari injured a knee and sat out the playoffs. Last year, the Nuggs had no “go-to guy” in the clutch and they lost to the Lakers in Game Seven in LA. And there’s no doubt he was re-signed after his second bout with cancer before that, an admirable move by the front office.
But is Karl the man to lead the team to the next level?
While Ujiri told the local media this week that his Nuggets are not a contending team, Kroenke said Karl will stay as Denver’s head coach through the end of his contract, which wraps up following next season.
Why have the men in charge of the Nuggets been so courageous when it comes to player moves, and so cowardly when it comes to taking a chance on a new coach?
Just getting to the playoffs is not good enough – at least it should be acceptable in Denver, where we take our professional sports seriously – and the front office should have decided to move on without Karl.
If the Nuggets fail to advance past the first round of the playoffs in 2014, Denver must divorce Karl.
