The Denver Coach clearly seems to think everything important is decided in advance. His lame excuses and his monthly win quotas are just about like something from a comedy movie. According to Karl, the Nuggets could not end up in the top 4 of the West despite being in the top 4 in talent. Why? It was inevitable, because the great tide of history dictated that little old Denver would not be able to reach the top 4. Who knows how many specific reasons in total have been spinning around in his head, but here are some of them we know about: --Melo's game is not well rounded enough, and Melo's personality is not quite mature enough. --Iverson was changed from PG to SG many years ago for mysterious but valid reasons that must have something to do with Iverson's personality, and it would be futile to try to fight the tide of history to officially recognize AI as the PG for Denver this year. So AI can play PG but it can not be admitted in public that he does so, and he can not be designated as the PG, because you can't mess with history and tradition and personality like that. --J.R. Smith is unqualified to start or to be a full scale NBA shooting guard by virtue of a deficient personality/character. --Yakhouba Diawara somehow proved to have a personality too weak to avoid a more or less permanent benching. --The Nuggets as a whole have a soft or wobbly "personality". When your team has that, you are automatically doomed. To Karl, there are massive forces, such as tradition, history, destiny, "team personalities," and personalities of individual players, that determine results, and neither players nor a coaching staff can overcome those forces, so why should he or the assistant coaches get all worked up about trying to win each and every game? Since he decided in advance that the Nuggets were not worthy of reaching the top 4, and since there is no telling how many reasons he has piled up for that, he does not believe he is responsible for the results. Nor would he feel responsible for making lineup, rotation, and other game management mistakes, assuming it could be proven to him that he made mistakes that cost the Nuggets. He would respond, like he always does when challenged, by saying the Nuggets would have ended up in almost exactly the same final result even if those decisions were made differently. In other words, Mr. Karl has built himself a fortress to protect himself from ever accepting even the slightest responsibility for the Nuggets not reaching their true potential, which is final 4 in the West minimum. If he is ever fired he will not accept even a small shred of responsibility. Rather, he will look at his long career and say that he had to be a worthy basketball man simply because of how long his career lasted. The trouble for him is, his reasons are neither logically sound nor truly explanatory in the real world. I'm sorry, but personalities do not decide who among the most talented teams actually reach the very top. And I'm sorry, but nothing is determined in advance unless you say it is. If you think you can't win, then you almost certainly will not win. If you are a coach who thinks that way, and you can't keep that a secret and coach as if you don't believe that, then you have failed as a coach. End of story. It really doesn't matter much whether the Nuggets have become slackers or not, or to what extent Karl's strange beliefs have rubbed off on them. Because first and foremost they did not get what they needed. The Nuggets came to the table with all the raw talent needed to be truly outstanding but with no basketball system and with little real confidence they could actually get to the top. They needed roles defined rationally, they needed a coherent offensive plan, they needed a few specific plays. Individual players needed protection from arbitrary and rhythm killing benchings. A few players just needed a little playing time. They didn't get any of those things. Most of all they needed real confidence. The Nuggets are mostly players who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, more so than on other teams. I used to think that most NBA teams are loaded with players who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. In the last few years I found out that this is simply not true. But it is true in the case of the Nuggets, many of them come from straight from the ghetto. You run short on real confidence your whole life when you grow up that way. How someone thinks is the most crucial part of that person's personality. What someone thinks results from how someone thinks. For a man who thinks personality is so important, Mr. Karl seems strangely ignorant of the power of positive thinking, or real confidence in other words. True, real confidence without the real potential to get the results is lame, but not having real confidence when you do have the real potential to get the results is both lame and idiotic. Why is Melo out all night after the Nuggets squeak into the playoffs, only to be pulled over and suspected of DUI? Because he is so lacking in real confidence that he was worried the Nuggets would miss the playoffs, and it would be partly blamed on him, so when at least the Nuggets made the playoffs, he had to be out all night celebrating that the stress was over. The bigger the gap between where you are and where you are supposed to be, the more you irrationally over celebrate getting to that lower level. The last 24 hours have been another wild ride on the Nuggets roller coaster, happy and sad at the same time. But mostly sad, really.
