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In 2011, the Denver Nuggets showed the league how to extract maximum value when a superstar ransoms a franchise. Though stars have come and gone, the Nuggets maintained stability with a Hall of Fame head coach who presided over the team for nearly nine seasons, during every one of which the team qualified for the postseason. With George Karl's brand of organized chaos -- referred to inside the Nuggets proudly as "random basketball" -- Denver established itself as one of the league's toughest road dates, a high-altitude fire drill for teams traversing the West.

Eighteen months later, Denver is getting smoked nightly. It's a 2-7 team with no discernible identity, redundancies all over its roster and a morose, first-time coach who has expressed frustration with the fortitude of his team. Several sources around the league, a few close to the Nuggets, say the organization is "rudderless" under the controls of a young front office, led by general manager Tim Connelly, that has neither the experience nor the savvy to survive in a league whose executive ranks are teeming with predators.

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/11865 ... ppointment

Kickin us when we're down...

It's hard to disagree with anything the guy says in that piece. Ownership botched things with Karl-Ujiri and it all rolled downhill from there.

Interesting points include other exec's views of TC and the negative sentiment towards Faried. Sure we can fire Shaw but that won't fix the mess Stan and Josh made.

frankly, one of the criticisms that our payroll is too high doesn't bother me. our advantage should always be the ability to play at a fast pace and to run teams out of our altitude, however inflated that advantage may be to the other teams in the league. the production of our players will also be inflated to 70% of the other teams in the league who prefer to play at that slower pace. we've seen how fast the value of a player rises here in denver, i.e. kleiza, dahntay jones, mozgov, koufos, and afflalo to name a few. not all have been terrible, but the point remains that their value rises playing in denver, that moving them shouldn't be an issue even to an inexperienced gm like connelly.

I cannot say that I disagree with any of the article.

I really enjoyed that the day ESPN posted the article, Denver knocked off the Cavs pretty soundly. Well done.

The problem with the article is that it doesn't go into any detail on the issue of team's talent versus the way it is being used under Shaw's coaching philosophy

Good read, a bit tough to swallow from a fan's point. Didn't really bring the impact Shaw has had on this. I know he needs time when changing over to a totally new philosophy, especially when the players are custom fit for the running game. I would have like to see us use the running style WHILE slowing implementing Shaw's defensive style.

We should never have let Masai go. I really hope not, but it looks like we are falling into a dark age of Nuggets basketball again...

GuyJones wrote:We should never have let Masai go. I really hope not, but it looks like we are falling into a dark age of Nuggets basketball again...

I think that was where it went wrong. Letting Karl go was the right move at the time.

I think that was where it went wrong. Letting Karl go was the right move at the time

I am not an unabashed fan of Karl but on his worst day he is a better coach than Shaw and probably just as importantly, had a better and more experienced staff.

That said, he most definitely would have won more games for them last year which would surely have meant that they wouldn't have ended up getting Harris and Nurkic in the draft trade with the Bulls.

JerrySloan wrote:

I think that was where it went wrong. Letting Karl go was the right move at the time

I am not an unabashed fan of Karl but on his worst day he is a better coach than Shaw and probably just as importantly, had a better and more experienced staff.

That said, he most definitely would have won more games for them last year which would surely have meant that they wouldn't have ended up getting Harris and Nurkic in the draft trade with the Bulls.

I agree that he is easily a better coach. I just think it was a turning point for the franchise and it was a time to move on. The Warriors embarrassed the best team Karl had ever had (wins wise anyway) and they were pretty much all his guys. There was pretty much no doubt Iguodala was leaving...so after a decade I think it was the right move to change coaches.

Unfortunately, Brian Shaw does not look to be the answer. And the FO made two bad moves in signing JJ Hickson (who sucks) and trading for Darrel Arthur at a position we were stacked at (wtf).

Saying that the Warriors embarrassed the Nuggets is stretching it a bit don't you think? The Warriors were a bad matchup to start with, and than losing Gallo and having Faried hobbled was a huge blow.

I said for years that I was not a huge Karl fan, but did not support the idea of firing him unless the brought in a good coach, Shaw is not that guy.

JerrySloan wrote:

I think that was where it went wrong. Letting Karl go was the right move at the time

I am not an unabashed fan of Karl but on his worst day he is a better coach than Shaw and probably just as importantly, had a better and more experienced staff.

That said, he most definitely would have won more games for them last year which would surely have meant that they wouldn't have ended up getting Harris and Nurkic in the draft trade with the Bulls.

Well, actually, that was NY's pick. We could have won 50+ and still drafted those two. The Magic traded up to #10 for Elfrid Payton using the #12 pick from Denver.