The Nuggets trickled out of the Pepsi Center on Tuesday for the last time. One by one they left, their lockers cleared. Some carried black trash bags. Others lugged gray ones.
No one had a bag big enough to fit the garbage from this season.
How can a campaign that included the team’s first division title in 18 years feel so hollow, so sour?
After the Clippers had mangled them in four of five games, the Nuggets were absorbing their third straight one-series-and-out playoffs. Three straight years of postseason play where their shooting was twisted. This time they helped ensure that the Clippers would claim a playoff series for the first time since the Bicentennial.
That was 1976.
And the Nuggets looked every bit as modern as 1776.
They showed up after the late flight home from Los Angeles ready for the carcass to be picked. They had already done plenty of the picking on their own.
And have been for some time.
This team began the season with high, healthy hopes but soon was wounded and hobbling. So many players missed so much time, the effort was disjointed from the start. Coach George Karl called it a year of “detours” and “survival.”
A year of mutiny would work, too.
Because the Nuggets players showed that faced with adversity, while in a minefield, their savviest responses were big mouths and thin discipline. This grew into a team with too many chiefs and few interested in being silent soldiers.
Kenyon Martin took it to another level.
There was not enough early discipline and effective communication with this team, and it showed on the floor and off it. As the season continued with up and down swings, everybody in the locker room had a pointed opinion. Too many floated them.
Marcus Camby was talking Tuesday about players worrying too much about “whose team it is” and “who takes the most shots.” This is in line with the notion that several Nuggets know Carmelo Anthony is the organization’s franchise player but do not accept it. That Anthony does not believe he is playing with enough talent around him or with the right type of talent.
Camby and Anthony all but called out names of Nuggets who both believe have no fire and do not want to be here. Both insisted that line is clear on this team. What Camby and Anthony should have been talking about was their combined 11-for-34 shooting in the season’s biggest game. An elimination game.
When Anthony is the franchise guy and his 23 points in 40 minutes is matched by Clipper Corey Maggette off the bench in 27 minutes, there is a huge identity problem. When Camby scores six points in such a big game, that is a letdown. When three starters – Camby, Eduardo Najera and Greg Buckner – take a combined 29 floor shots and not one of them earns a free-throw attempt, that is awfully soft basketball.
Or, just awful.
Karl had his hands all over this mess.
I thought clarity was one of his biggest assets last season. This season he worked while dealing with pressing family issues, toyed with his players’ minds, used rotations that made no sense, failed too often to adjust to the Clippers’ tactics and was roundly outfoxed by Clippers coach Mike Dunleavy. Karl’s handling of the Martin outburst and his suspension of Martin for the entire series were irrational. One-game suspension, fine. The series? That was not the time to teach discipline. Karl split his team and hurt his team’s chances to win by dumping Martin.
Ruben Patterson after the Nuggets’ Game 4 loss at home had a similar explosion in the Nuggets’ locker room.
Karl’s response?
Patterson did not play a minute in the Nuggets’ final game. That is silly.
I tried to ask Reggie Evans about it. Since he played only four minutes, he was just as confused.
“Now is not the time to play the blame game,” Karl said Tuesday about the circus and clouds surrounding his team.
Too late. He had already started that game.
He is 2-8 in Nuggets playoff games.
We saw this crash coming when the Nuggets faded so drastically to finish the regular season. We were admonished by the Nuggets that the regular season is one thing, the playoffs another. They would be playoff-ready, they insisted. I never believed it. Now, it appears, many of them did not, either. As one Nugget said, “This team has been done for a long time.”
The relationship between Karl and general manager Kiki Vandeweghe certainly feels more cool than warm. Karl hinted he might not be back. Vandeweghe has known for some time he might not be back. Vandeweghe is saddled with the blame of a Nuggets roster that is not complementary to Anthony, that is void of sharpshooters.
The Nuggets should know there is enough blame and misery to share. This is a time they should collectively heal and begin to look forward. If they were a franchise and team that shared a genuine bond, they could do that.
They are not.
Expect an overhaul.
Staff writer Thomas George can be reached at 303-820-1994 or tgeorge@denverpost.com.
