Here’s the No. 1 problem with the NBA’s most dysfunctional team. The Nuggets dismissed Kiki Vandeweghe from a job only a fool would take now.
The franchise for which Vandeweghe worked five long years as general manager to make respectable? It’s again a league-wide joke.
On his way out the door, Vandeweghe declared: “This should be a real good team for a real long time.”
Behind him, inside the walls of the Pepsi Center, is a basketball mess.
On paper, the Nuggets do have tantalizing talent.
In reality, there is such disharmony that smart fans cover their ears and run away.
“This is not fantasy basketball. It isn’t just about assembling talent,” Nuggets assistant general manager David Fredman said Saturday. “You have to have talent to win. But if that talent cannot play together, it will never win.”
For too long, the Nuggets have assembled too many bad actors, bloated egos and backstabbing masters of mismanagement to do anything except vacillate between crisis and disaster.
Or, as one basketball official with an Eastern Conference team told me last week: “You ever walk in a theater, sit down and think: This is a real good idea for a movie? But then the director keeps adding so many characters until you have no idea what’s going on? It becomes impossible to follow the story. That’s the Nuggets.”
Coach George Karl and forward Kenyon Martin, the team’s highest-paid player, cannot stand being in the same building together.
The most influential voice in the ear of Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke is not a member of the front office, but a crony named Bret Bearup.
Shards of mistrust are scattered across the locker room floor, with center Marcus Camby insisting selfish teammates must go.
If young star Carmelo Anthony is not wondering if this is really the city to spend the rest of his NBA career, he should be.
Anybody in the league who might actually want to propose a draft-day trade for Martin cannot be certain whom to call in Denver. Is it director of player personnel Mark Warkentien? Fredman? Kroenke? Karl?
Or is Bearup calling the shots now? A former college player and financial adviser, Bearup attends games and shadows Kroenke so closely that they could wear the same sport coat.
“No, I’m not calling the shots. Stan Kroenke calls the shots. Make no freakin’ mistake about that,” Bearup said.
The dysfunction that has the league laughing at the Nuggets was evident behind the closed doors where it was decided Martin would be suspended from the playoffs for his emotional, profane outburst during Game 2 of the opening-round series against the Los Angeles Clippers.
There were no fewer than six men deciding Martin’s fate, according to somebody who was in the room. Bearup, who has no official capacity with the team, was present. But Martin, whose career with the Nuggets hung in the balance, was not in attendance.
Instead of settling differences, what resulted was the destruction of whatever trade value Martin, his bad knees and bad attitude had left.
Vandeweghe argued a suspension for the remainder of the playoffs was not merited, if for no other reason than to protect the $90 million investment made in Martin.
But Karl, who has made a nasty habit of feuding with stars in previous NBA stops, showed that your coach is the boss around here.
Which is precisely why any sane basketball man on earth should be extremely reluctant to go to work for Kroenke as GM. The Nuggets must make so many tough decisions, ranging from how much money to spend on free agent Nene after a season-long injury, to determining if point guard Andre Miller’s deliberate style fits a team that wants to run.
But other than a nifty business card and a big leather chair, the general manager of the Nuggets gets none of the power and all of the blame.
On Friday evening, with happy sounds of his home in the background, Vandeweghe sounded relieved and optimistic on the telephone. Only 90 minutes earlier, his dismissal was announced by e-mail from ownership without the decency to stand in front of TV cameras and explain the move.
Vandeweghe repeatedly stressed what a pleasant exit interview he enjoyed with Kroenke.
“If everything was so hunky-dory,” I finally asked Vandeweghe, “then why do you no longer work for the Nuggets?”
There was dead air on the phone line for two seconds.
“Um,” said Vandeweghe, politely refusing to answer, “I promised myself I would take the high road.”
It’s the next general manager who must travel the hard road. This is a dead-end job.
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-820-5438 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
