Karl saw it coming but still might have hastened his own exit
“even in the wake of General Manager Masai Ujiri’s departure, Karl did not handle his tenuous position with kid gloves. In fact, he played fast and loose with the Kroenkes“
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“Have you seen what happens to guys who win coach of the year?”
This quote was given to Mark Kiszla back in April for a Denver Post column for which the headline read “Nuggets’ George Karl has no use for cursed NBA coaching award”. Karl had never been the recipient of the NBA’s Coach of the Year Award and he was happy that way. The honor, Karl knew, had been a death knell for many a coaching gig.
For whatever reason, those named NBA Coach of the Year are frequently relieved of their duties within a season or two. So, in a sense Karl saw what happened this morning – his demise as Nuggets’ coach – coming.
Still, even in the wake of General Manager Masai Ujiri’s departure, Karl did not handle his tenuous position with kid gloves. In fact, he played fast and loose with the Kroenkes, somehow floating the notion that the LA Clippers were interesting in hiring him through the media in hope of being offered an extension to the one season he had left on his contract.
He was fired this morning in the most rapid demonstration of the “Coach of the Year Curse” on record largely because he got cute. That’s my read, anyway. “Silent” Stan Kroenke and his handsome son, Josh (who’s presumably in charge of the Nuggets’ operation) don’t take kindly to being pushed around and aren’t the types to offer contract extensions. They’re notoriously tight-fisted in their management of not only the Pepsi Center-based franchises but in their NFL and English Premier League ones as well.
Karl’s failures in the NBA playoffs contributed to his firing to be sure. His bravado in light of those failures was the final nail in his coffin.
Where do the Nuggets go from here? Not up. You can pretty well take it to the bank that the franchise will slide before gets better. The Nuggets will take it on the chin in free agency and see their win total fall off dramatically next season. A team simply cannot go through wholesale changes in leadership, ruffle the feathers of its best players (Ty Lawson was fond of Ujiri and Karl) and expect to come back better.
The Colorado Avalanche got Sakic and Roy – and probably “ice girls” – while the Nuggets got torn apart at the seams.
