The last time your local NBA franchise got off to such a disappointing start, the Nuggets got their coach fired.
Lucky for George Karl, his name isn’t Jeff Bzdelik.
If a team is its record, then how exactly are these Nuggets who have won eight and lost seven any better than those same underachievers who won Bzdelik a pink slip a year ago?
“It’s totally different,” Denver guard Earl Boykins said Tuesday. “Last year at this time, you guys were killing us. You guys were saying we stunk last year. I think, this year, we’re feeling a lot better about ourselves.”
Dress ’em up any way you like. Let the team uniforms be the old baby blue. Or the new navy blue.
The Nuggets are singing the blues. Same excuses. Different tune.
“It could be worse,” Denver veteran Andre Miller said.
It could be worse. Put some music to those words, and you’ve got the Nuggets’ theme song, harder to get out of your head than “Who Let the Dogs Out?” by Baha Men, and more annoying than “It’s a Small World” by Disney.
I’ll hum a few bars, and tell me if you can name this tune:
A promising Nuggets team, fresh off a gritty first-round playoff loss, creates a buzz for a new NBA season.
Key player goes down with ugly injury opening night. Shots clank. Half-court offense is so stagnant pond scum could grow from the 3-point line. Team muddles its way from the start, with an 8-7 record. Forward Carmelo Anthony, the lone reliable scorer, sprains an ankle.
Buzz fizzles.
Bzdelik is fired.
Oh, sorry. That was last year.
The déjà vu is so thick around here you could cut it with a knife, to say nothing of the baloney now being served by those who foolishly believed the Nuggets didn’t really need a shooting guard who could actually shoot so long as they had a genius diagramming plays on the team bench.
Somebody want to remind me again why Karl is such a vastly superior coach to Bzdelik?
The irreverent question is not intended as a slap at Karl, whose swagger did lead the Nuggets from the darkest nights of last season to the bright lights of the playoffs.
But swagger can only take a team so far, especially when the only time Karl has put on a uniform for Denver, it landed him in trouble with the league’s dress code committee.
The NBA is a game in which the players rule, with far greater impact than you find in the NFL, in which a brilliant coach has more moving parts to manipulate. Phil Jackson is the zenmaster of hoops. But I don’t care how much incense Jackson burns, he isn’t going to snap his fingers and – Shazam! – turn Chris Mihm into Shaquille O’Neal.
Karl has mastered the technology to make rookie Linas Kleiza a high-energy, generic forward indistinguishable from the higher-priced Eduardo Najera.
Unless Karl is making all these side trips to Idaho between Nuggets games to bring back some magic water, however, there’s no way he can cause Boykins to grow 12 inches and blossom into the shooting guard trapped inside that little body.
What I’m trying to say is: You think Karl got, and took, a little too much credit for the team’s amazing turnaround last season? The NBA is a player’s game.
Karl lives in his own universe. He’s the sun. You are lucky to be in his orbit, catching his brightness.
And you can bet some important folks in the Nuggets organization already have felt burnt by the arrogance.
There are at least 748 reasons Karl has won so often in the NBA, but is now working for his fifth team.
Nuggets godfather Doug Moe, who has known Karl since the current Denver coach had hair in his eyes, once affectionately said nobody in the NBA is cockier in victory or more miserable in defeat than his old buddy.
When the swagger failed Karl in years and teams past, he has demonstrated a tendency to make the very people who can help him the most extremely miserable.
At age 54, Karl has stared down cancer and worked hard at being a good father, reminding us that life itself can be the best teacher.
The Nuggets might find it tough to be much more than unhappily mediocre through the end of this season. Same as last season. How will Karl deal with the tough times ahead?
I’m hoping to be pleasantly surprised.
Watch Mark Kiszla during “Classic Now” on ESPN Classic. He can be reached at 303-820-5438 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
