For a moment, I forgot. George Karl and I were lost in conversation, talking basketball, when he began to discuss his own team — and suddenly he’s rattling off the likes of “Rudy and Cuz and Darren Collison.”
Karl is gone, now the coach of the Sacramento Kings. But he will make his return Sunday to the Pepsi Center to coach against the Nuggets, which will be weird. Karl coached the Nuggets for 8½ seasons, and now, for the first time since he was fired, he will be on the opposing team’s bench.
His legacy here is complicated. He won a bunch, yes. As explained by interim Nuggets coach Melvin Hunt, a former Karl assistant: “Coach gave the organization and all of us a special confidence and expectation regarding winning.”
But the Nuggets weren’t winning in April, often losing in the first round of the playoffs, which led to Karl being fired two years ago, infamously, after he won the league’s coach of the year award.
“There will be a lot of sad moments on Sunday, and I’m sure happy moments, and then there will be some competitive moments,” Karl said in a phone interview. “I’m sure those guys will want to beat me, and I think they know I want to beat them. …
“The game has been on my mind a couple times. You always spend a little more time watching the guys you coached, to see how they’re playing. And there’s no question that when I check scores, I still go to the Nuggets scorer faster than any other scores. I have a lot of love for the players and a lot of love for the city.”
His legacy is so knotty that even today, two years later, some fans wish they could have a do-over. The overriding question, of course, was — when would things have changed under George? When it came to the regular season, Karl was like Rain Man in Vegas — he beat the system. He maximized his creative strategy and style playing at altitude to, in his vernacular, “put up a big number.” But only once under Karl did his Nuggets win a first-round playoff series (the same season he won in the second round, advancing to the 2009 Western Conference finals). To be fair, Denver was second in the West the next season when Karl left the team to battle cancer (the Nuggets lost that first-round series, to Utah, under interim coach Adrian Dantley).
But whether it was George Karl or Brian Shaw or Red Auerbach coaching them, the reality was that the Nuggets, as constructed, weren’t a team that would annually crack the top four in the powerful Western Conference. Teams that make the NBA Finals have top-five picks. They have all-stars, plural. You need stars to play in June.
Complicating Karl’s legacy in Denver is the Brian Shaw debacle. But, as dismal as the past two seasons have been, Denver might actually land a star in the draft. They will probably nab the sixth or seventh pick — Justise Winslow, maybe? — and perhaps be able to break things down to build back up.
Funny enough, Karl could affect the Nuggets’ pick. His Kings are jostling with Denver in the standings, and a Sacramento win Sunday could actually be a “win” for Denver in regards to draft slotting.
Karl, too, is part of a rebuilding process. Just like the previous two gigs he got, he took the Kings job at midseason, something he said he wouldn’t recommend, but it gives him a head start into the summer.
His team has struggled because of youth and injuries and the inability to play 48 good minutes away from home. But Karl does have a star: DeMarcus Cousins. Karl’s legacy in Sacramento will be linked to this emotional, loose cannon who is “one of the most-talented big guys I’ve ever coached,” Karl said.
“There’s not an aspect of the game he doesn’t do well. He can pass, shoot, finish under the basket. He can defend the basket. And he probably will someday be a 3-point shooter. The kid is really, really talented. I kid him all the time. I say, ‘What don’t you do as good or better than Tim Duncan?’ The thing is, he needs to learn to do it all the time, every night. That’s the challenge for us. And getting pieces around him that fit his personality.
“I look forward to building a playoff team in Sacramento. … And I love being back in the gym, experiencing the excitement.”
So what about his legacy in Denver, the city he adores, the city he probably will live in when he retires? The legacy of being the first fired coach of the year?
“That’s a legacy they have to live with, and for me, it’s a situation where I go back and think I had some of my best years in coaching, I have a home and many friends,” he said. “I’m in love with what happened in the 8½ years. How it ended, and why it ended, it’s in my past. I hope Sacramento can be twice as good as the Nuggets, but I don’t wish the Nuggets poorly. I wish they would find their direction quickly.”
Benjamin Hochman: bhochman@denverpost.com or
