Can the Nuggets ever win an NBA championship that superstar Carmelo Anthony abandoned Denver to pursue?
“We can win a championship,” Nuggets general manager Masai Ujiri assured me.
Really?
Championship banners hang like laundry in the rafters of basketball arenas from Boston to Los Angeles, but not Denver.
For all the happy talk about how the NBA Finals proved teamwork beats ego, the No. 1 reason Dallas won the league title is that hefty $85 million that Mavericks owner Mark Cuban splurged on player payroll.
Isn’t Denver among those pro franchises that exist mainly to give LeBron James or Kobe Bryant a warm building in which to shoot jump shots on a wintry night in February, before the playoff race heats up for true contenders? Come on. Despite trying since the 1960s, the Nuggets aren’t meant to hold a victory parade.
“I don’t buy that,” Ujiri said Thursday.
So I asked him if I should put a period or an exclamation point behind his belief that the Nuggets can win a championship.
“Exclamation point,” Ujiri insisted.
Gotta like the way this man thinks. It’s bold talk.
“Who doesn’t want to win?” Ujiri said.
Now for the tough questions: Does NBA commissioner David Stern have the nerve, and will franchise owners maintain the unity required to bring significant change to the sport, even if it means shutting down the league for months on end? If there is to be any real hope for the Thunder or Nuggets to win a championship, the looming labor strife must be more about improving competitive balance than dividing billions of dollars.
The NBA is the ultimate star vehicle in pro sports.
Since 1990, if you weren’t named Kobe, M.J., K.G., Shaq, Hakeem, Duncan or Dirk, you could basically forget about winning a championship. Teams in flyover cities such as Denver or Milwaukee were nothing more than props, furniture for the real stars to chew on and spit out.
But we have seen the backlash. The spite from fans poured like acid rain that stung James, as detractors rejoiced in LeBron’s suffering when Miami messed up a championship supposedly rigged in the Heat’s favor.
Close the loopholes in the salary cap, so Cuban doesn’t feel the need to prove his wallet is bigger. While it was cool to watch 38-year-old point guard Jason Kidd make the extra pass, casting the embarrassment-of-riches Mavericks as gritty underdogs should qualify as absurd mythology.
Give us a franchise tag, so Orlando center Dwight Howard is less tempted to follow the same path that took Melo to the Big Apple and James to South Beach.
Restructure the league’s economic rules, so Bill Walton can bring a championship to a midmarket NBA city as worthy as Portland more than once in a lifetime.
It was heartwarming when Saints quarterback Drew Brees lifted the spirits of his city by winning the Super Bowl. Anything’s possible in the NFL. But do any of us, including guard Chris Paul, truly believe he can do the same for New Orleans on the basketball court?
“If you want to be philosophical . . . you start every year dreaming of winning a championship. We’ve fortunately had a good enough team that it’s somewhat legit,” Nuggets coach George Karl said. “But most of the time, if you can have playoff success every other year, you’ve done a heck of a job.”
In his heart, Karl knows if Denver can somehow return to the final four of the NBA postseason tournament at any point during the next decade, it would be considered a phenomenal achievement.
Predicting eight championships by a single team? That’s bravado reserved for James and the chosen ones in a league that has long worshipped brand names and television ratings far more than a notion as quaint as a level playing field.
“Can there be a Green Bay Packers in pro basketball?” Karl asked. “Can there be a parity mentality in pro basketball that overcomes the elite teams?”
Turn out the lights. Lock the arena doors.
Until the NBA finds a good answer to the toughest question, the league has no business playing basketball.
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
