Name me 12 basketball players in America who are more talented than Nuggets forward Carmelo Anthony.
You cannot do it.
And neither can Mike Krzyzewski, the coach of Team USA.
If Melo is good enough to wear the red, white and blue for his country, can we please stop this crazy talk about how the Nuggets might be a better team without him?
When citing the most brilliant basketball minds in the business, there is only one Coach K.
And it’s not George Karl.
Karl has vowed the Nuggets are going to do it his way next season.
But Karl seems not to have a clue how to make Melo play his way.
If the Nuggets become a stubborn battle of wills between Anthony and Karl, who will lose?
The coach in Denver. Every time.
So let’s start with one inspired idea for how to make Anthony a better teammate that Karl should steal from Coach K.
On Team USA, Anthony’s job is to do what he does better than almost anybody on the planet.
He finishes, scoring equally well with a feathery jumper or by going hard to the rim. That’s why the U.S. Olympic team often employs Anthony at power forward, which he can play with an inside-out combination of thunder and lightning that makes Dirk Nowitzki and the rest of the world drool.
Coach K does not ask Anthony to initiate the offense, because a natural-born scorer is naturally reluctant to surrender the rock to less capable hands.
Denver wastes way too much time with Anthony holding the ball way too far from the basket, searching for his shot.
If Karl does his homework, the Nuggets can design a plan to run an offense that flows to Anthony in a position where all he has to do is apply the dramatic, finishing touches on at least 25 points per night.
Karl has won more than 800 NBA games for good reason. He understands the game as well as Phil Jackson or Larry Brown, and he can match them X for O.
Karl believes with every fiber in his heart in playing the right way. For nearly a generation, he has bullied millionaires in Seattle and Milwaukee to play winning basketball, until those players decided they weren’t being paid enough to listen to him.
But here’s a major reason why Karl has never won a championship: He has never quite figured out how to teach his own passion for the game, because Karl tends to focus too much on the flaws he inevitably detects in players, whether it’s Ray Allen or J.R. Smith.
In moments of frustration with Anthony, whether he is getting pulled over by the cops before dawn or being swept away by the Lakers in the playoffs, we tend to obsess with Melo’s shortcomings.
We learned this from Karl.
Anthony is never going to play defense with the tenacity of Boston guardian Kevin Garnett.
So get over it.
We can blah, blah, blah until we’re all Celtics green in the face about how defense wins championships.
But this is also the truth: Had Paul Pierce not outdueled LeBron James shot for shot and scored 41 points in an elimination game against Cleveland during the playoffs, the Celtics never could have won their 17th league championship.
And, at age 24, Pierce could not even dream of being the world-class scorer Anthony is now.
What Karl needs to figure out is how he can win Melo’s trust, and the loyalty will follow.
The NBA logo features a player for a reason.
Nobody pays 75 bucks to watch a coach scream for a timeout.
So when looking for the one man in the Denver locker room who really needs this team to win big next season, let’s keep it real.
The last coach that Melo has in the NBA will definitely not be Karl.
But, unless the Nuggets reach their potential, Anthony could well be the last NBA star Karl ever coaches.
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
