I’ve been watching George Karl coach basketball for close to a decade now. During this time it’s never occurred to me that Karl is a great basketball coach. I’ve been frustrated with his decisions more often than I’ve been pleased. There have been times that I’ve appreciated his work — this past season certainly stands out — but not once during Karl’s tenure have I come to the realization that he’s a great basketball coach.

The problem: Many people disagree with me. Lots of people, much more knowledgeable about the game of basketball than I, think of Karl as one of the best coaches to have ever walked the Earth.

This, I cannot understand. I’ve come to appreciate Karl over the years — or perhaps, tolerate some of his methods. I recognize his accomplishments and by no means consider him a bad coach. I know he’s a good coach. But that’s the difference between the divide of fans that currently occupies Nuggets Nation: one side sees him as good, but replaceable; the other side as great, and irreplaceable.

No matter how hard I try, I simply cannot not understand the other side of the argument. Every postseason I’ve watched for the last nine years the Nuggets have collapsed at some level. They never give it all they can. From the early years when Kenyon Martin and Carmelo Anthony got in feuds with Karl on the sidelines, to the fourth quarter of Game 5 in the 2009 Western Conference Finals when the Nuggets flat-lined and never recovered. Even last year when the Nuggets pushed the Lakers to Game 7 in the first round, there was a decisive point around the early part of the fourth quarter where you just knew the Nuggets were going to lose. This feeling — knowing the Nuggets are going to lose — is something I’ve felt throughout Karl’s tenure and often when it matters most. In the world I’ve come to know, great coaches don’t give you this type of feeling. Great coaches win when it matters most. Great coaches spit in the face of adversity and thrive when the chips are down. Karl has never been that type of coach. Yet these are things only I know, because I’ve experienced them. There is no way to quantify the disgust in the pit at the bottom of your stomach; and there is no way to truly quantify how good of a coach George Karl really is.

As long as the Nuggets and the national media endorse George Karl, I feel I’m waging a losing battle. Though I will never concede my position on Karl — after all, it’s taken me nearly a decade to form it — I’m still interested in the other side of the argument and what they see that I don’t. I know that while with the Nuggets Karl has not been a great coach, yet many point to his overall career accomplishments as the reason for his high standing in their eyes. So, in order to put myself in their shoes and see their side of the argument I had to look at Karl’s career prior to arriving in Denver, as that’s supposedly the genesis for much of his “greatness.” Unfortunately for the other side of the argument, I didn’t find too much greatness.

Prior to his stint with the Nuggets, George Karl had a successful career in the NBA but by no means was he on the brink of achieving the incredibly esteemed status he sees today. He had made a trip to the NBA Finals and won 708 games but he’d also been fired four times, lost in the first round of the playoffs as a 1 seed and had numerous feuds with his star players. Today, Karl apologists rave over the number of games he’s won. In fact, that’s their go-to argument when defending him against virutally any criticism thrown his way. However, prior to joining the Nuggets his 708 wins placed him 16th all time between Gene Shue and John MacLeod. Yes, the Gene Shue and MacLeod you’ve likely never heard of if you were born after 1990. In no way was Karl seen as the type of coach he is today, which suggests something monumental must have occurred over his near decade-long tenure with the Nuggets.

The problem?

It hasn’t.

Nearly 40 percent of all the games Karl has won in his career have come while with the Nuggets. Yet in that time he’s advanced past the first round of the playoffs only once. One could argue the only reason Karl’s stuck around Denver as long as he has is because Denver is not Boston, nor Philly, nor New York, god forbid. In Denver, the only expectations Karl’s had have been not guiding his team to complete and utter collapse in the regular season. Yet somehow, someway, over this time the perception of Karl has changed from “Good NBA Coach with 708 Wins, Sandwiched Between Gene Shue and John MacLeod,” to “Great NBA Coach with Over 1,000 Wins and 22 Playoff Appearances.” However, do a little work, read between the lines a bit, and it becomes quite clear that “1,000 wins” is an awful argument for Karl’s greatness — if you hadn’t noticed already.

Here are the reasons:

• At the rate Karl is going he could coach the Nuggets until the year 2022 and have advanced past the playoffs only twice.
• Of the top 10 coaches in NBA history, Karl has the lowest playoff winning percentage of them all.
• Karl has never won Coach of the Year or an NBA championship.
• Karl has lost in the first round of the playoffs 14 of the 22 years (or roughly 64 percent of the time) he’s qualified.
• Karl is one of five NBA coaches to have lost in the first round of the playoffs as a 1 seed.
• Karl was fired twice in his first four seasons as an NBA head coach.
• Karl is repeatedly left off the NBA GM survey of the best coaches in the league (however his offense remains ever so popular!).
• The Nuggets have won only one of their last 14 playoff games on the road.
• 62 teams over the last 40 years have won at least 30 of their final 40 regular season games. Nine of them lost in the first round. Karl coached three of those teams.
• Karl has failed to get out of the first round with home-court advantage four of the 10 times he’s had it.
• Karl has reached  the Conference Finals only four of the nine times he’s had a top three seed in his conference.
• Karl has reached the NBA Finals only one of the six times he’s been a top two seed in his conference.
• No coach in NBA history has lost in the first round more than Karl. The second most first-round loses behind Karl belong to Jerry Sloan and Lenny Wilkens who each have nine.

The above bullet points are not opinion. They are facts. George Karl owns no NBA championship; instead he owns some of the most undesirable postseason records in NBA history. Karl has many regular season wins, yes, but what does he have to show for it? Regular season wins mean nothing if you collapse every year and turn into a different team in the postseason. If regular season wins were the measure of a great coach, then Don Nelson would be the greatest of them all. Don Nelson, however, has no NBA championship. What he does have, is three more Coach of the Year awards and 11 less first-round losses than George Karl — which must be good for something.

All these years Nuggets fans have been in love with someone who does not exist. George Karl is not the knight in shining armor who has saved the Nuggets from the depths of franchise misery. He’s done a fantastic job pulling the Nuggets from obscurity to relevancy (along with other figures, namely Carmelo Anthony), but he has been unable to take them any further. George Karl is a regular season win master and postseason wreck. At some point the Denver Nuggets organization will have to take the next step forward if they desire to be successful in other aspects of basketball besides just winning in the regular season. Of course, because Karl has presided over the most successful era in franchise history many fans erroneously attribute the Nuggets success solely with him. These uniformed types often argue perhaps the most ignorant of all the baseless claims for retaining Karl: that he is THE best option on the market. Oddly enough they’ve been arguing this same recycled point for the last five years or so, during which time the following coaches have become available:

• Larry Brown: Has lost only seven times in the first round. Has lost only twice in the first round as a higher seed in his near 30-year NBA career. Has made it to the NBA Finals three times and won once — without a “superstar.”
• Rick Carlisle: Has made the playoffs nine of the 11 years he’s coached. Has lost in the first round only three times and on his current pace would lose in the first round six times in 22 years, as apposed to Karl’s 14. Has made one less trip to the Conference Finals than Karl in half the time and has already won an NBA championship. Has lost as a higher seed in the playoffs only once.
• Stan Van Gundy: Has made the playoffs every year he’s coached a full season. Has lost in the first round only twice. Has already made three Conference Finals appearances and one NBA Finals appearance in seven full years as an NBA head coach.
• Rick Adelman: Had made the playoffs 16 of his 20 season coaching prior to taking the Minnesota Timberwolves head coaching position. Has lost in the first round eight times. Has lost as a higher seed in the first round only once. Has made the Conference Finals four times and NBA Finals twice.
• Tom Thibodeau: Won Coach of the Year and made the Conference Finals in his first season as an NBA head coach. Tied the record for most wins by a rookie head coach. Became the fastest coach in NBA history to 100 wins.

The above list doesn’t even include bright, young coaches like Monty Williams, Frank Vogel or Erik Spoelstra. It also omits more seasoned but successful coaches like Lionel Hollins, Jeff Van Gundy and Nate McMillan. To think any one of these coaches would have anything but success with the types of rosters Karl has had over the years is ill informed to the highest degree. Other up-and-coming coaches who seem destined for stardom include Golden State assistant Mike Malone — whom Mark Jackson insisted upon having by his side before accepting his current position — and my favorite, Memphis Grizzlies assistant Dave Joerger, whom many feel is responsible for the Grizzlies’ dominance on the defensive side of the basketball in recent years.

After setting out to do my research I was excited — and interested. I thought I was finally, truly going to discover something great hidden in Karl’s past, the reason why people praise him the way they do. I thought I was going to find the logic behind why Karl put a 6-foot journeyman point guard on Kobe Bryant in the Western Conference Finals (which resulted in Bryant shooting 55 percent from the field throughout the series as opposed to 47 percent with A.C. off the floor) and why he would later put perhaps the worst defender in all of basketball on the Warriors’ best player in the first round of the playoffs this year when he already had one of the best wing defenders in the game. But, I found no such evidence. Instead, all I found was more information to corroborate my already less-than-stellar idea of who Karl is as a coach. I had my gut instincts, which I had obtained from nine years of first-hand viewing, and now I had history on my side as well. Gut instincts you can argue with; history you cannot.

The Nuggets loyalty to George Karl is something I will never understand. When most coaches get three strikes, Karl gets nine lives. Had he not had a prior record coming into Denver, had he not had a name to run on and had you simply judged his performance based on his on-court decisions and record, there’s no way on God’s green Earth that the coach who has resided over this franchise for the last 10 years makes it this far. More than anything, Karl is an addiction the Nuggets cannot quit. He’s a security blanket for a franchise too afraid to take the next step in their development as a real-deal franchise and force to be reckoned with. Again, Karl is a good coach. There’s no doubt about that. But he has limitations and succeeding in the postseason is one of them. If the Nuggets want to take that next step, it starts with finding someone who has a proven track record of winning when it matters most. Karl is simply not that man.

But, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the Nuggets over the last decade it’s that Karl’s going nowhere until Karl decides he wants to go. So, I’ll see you next year at almost this exact same time: same article, different words.

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Prior to the 2012 Draft Masai Ujiri’s track record was essentially flawless. That wasn’t an opinion, but more a consensus. Every move he had executed, every signing he had coaxed — it was all masterful. If you wanted, you could probably make an argument that his most recent test (the 2012 NBA Draft) was on par with everything he’s done up to this point. Truth is, nobody who covers the Nuggets knows the draft on a scale evenly remotely close to what he does, so until his most recent additions take the court for everyone to see, Ujiri is still untouchable.

But here’s the difference between the threshold that was his track record prior to the Draft and following it: Ujiri admitted himself that there was more at work with the Nuggets first-round selection than just going for the best player available. For those who follow the draft closely, you know, this is a cardinal sin.

The theory sort of goes that the first round contains the most amount of talent (shocking, I know). No matter what type of dire financial situation you’re encompassed by, no matter how many duplicates you have at one position, no matter what type of team needs you possess — selecting the best player available should never ever appear anywhere but No.1 on your priority list.

When the Nuggets selected Fournier with the 20th pick in the first round, questions regarding whether the team followed this time-honored principle were immediately raised. At the time, Perry Jones and Jared Sullinger were still on the board. Both were considered top 10 picks as recently as three months ago by many of the best draft analysts in the world. Both ended up going to first-class organizations (with highly regarded general managers) who have appeared in the NBA Finals at least once over the last three years: Sullinger to the Celtics and Jones to the Thunder.

Not long after, Ujiri and team president Josh Kroenke corroborated their fans’ unsettling sentiments by holding a dubious press conference with a palpable narrative: that they were happy with the team as is. The duo repeatedly touched on this theme throughout the night even though it should have had nothing to do with the way they approached the Draft.

In his opening statement Kroenke introduced the thesis, saying “our team was in a pretty good position across the board… our existing roster we felt deserved to move forward and compete together.”

Ujiri then followed closely behind revealing that “as George [Karl] has said, Jordan Hamilton is our rookie for next year… You have to give [your players] more of a chance, maybe… our players need to develop as much as we can… we’re happy with our team and we’ll keep plugging away… We wanted that option [of Fournier playing overseas]… our roster is pretty full and pretty full with young guys.”

It’s as if they felt the need to justify the Fournier selection. Instead of saying “we got the guy we wanted,” they continuously fell back on the alibi “we’re happy with our team; we needed no improvements.” If they had landed Royce White or Andrew Nicholson, both of whom they publicly expressed interest in (who RMC also had ranked as Top 3 selections throughout our Big Board series leading up to the Draft), would they have said the same thing? It’s like assembling a team of superheroes to fight a villain-driven apocalypse, knocking on the last guys’ door and saying “Look, we kind of already have a full squad here. If you want to come you can, but we’d really prefer if you just stayed home and sat this one out, you know, so you don’t get in the way. Hope you understand!”

But the worst part of this supposed overseas “flexibility,” that factored so highly into the decision to draft Fourier given how many times Ujiri mentioned it in the press conference, is that one side (the side that actually has to go overseas and play the basketball) doesn’t even want it in the first place. That’s right, Fournier doesn’t want to play in Europe any longer. He’s done. He wants to come over to the NBA. The very next day after he was drafted, when meeting with the Denver media Fournier proclaimed, “I want to play (for the Nuggets) next season. I don’t want to come back to Europe. I need to be the best player I can, score and play defense.”

That’s about as clear, cut and dry as it gets.

This, of course, raises all sorts of questions, starting with, did Ujiri even cover this potential roadblock prior to drafting Fournier? You’d think, logically, that if Fournier was so high on the Nuggets wish list that prior to the Draft during any number of their interviews with him, at some point in time, they would have gone over this situation. If not, then Ujiri essentially structured his draft around a “flexibility” that never existed in the first place. That valuable last roster spot they so desperately (and erroneously) desired, which they did not want to give to a rookie, might very well end up going to a rookie when it’s all said and done anyways, especially when you throw Quincy Miller in the mix.

(Side Note: How awkward is the conversation between the general manager and the guy drafted to be stashed that doesn’t actually want to be stashed?

Ujiri: So Evan. I’m sure you’ve heard by now that we like you, a lot. You’re our guy! At the same, time we kind of had the intention of stashing you away.

Evan: But I don’t want to be stashed.

Ujiri: I understand, you’re eager to play in the NBA. I like that. That’s good. But–

Evan: –I don’t want to be stashed.

Ujiri: You have no choice but to be stashed.

Evan: No. I came here to play. I’m not going back to Europe.

Ujiri: Look man, you gotta understand where I’m coming from. I have a coach who hates rookies — hates em. When I ordered him to play Faried last year, I thought he was going to drop dead on the spot. You should have seen the expression on his face. It was like I backed up one of those giant boulder-hauling dump trucks filled with baby kittens and just unloaded it off a cliff into shark-infested waters. We have an extremely young roster, and as you can imagine, limiting these confrontations is No. 1 on my priority list at this point in time. So, you either get stashed or you end up fetching cough drops for the guy during every waking minute of your life over the next year.

Evan: Wow. That’s extremely graphic, Masai. I’m sorry. But I just can’t budge. I’m coming Denver.

Ujiri: We’re stashing you.

Evan: Cough drops it is then!)

Coaches and NBA general managers have very different agendas. This is well documented. When given the choice, general managers will always prefer to build for the future and avoid ephemeral fixes; coaches, on the other hand, have only one goal in mind and that’s to win as many games as possible regardless of how crippled the team may be in the long run because of it.

No matter how much Ujiri likes and appreciates Karl as coach, it’s absolutely imperative he maintains a fine line between front office dealings and coaching. Even going so far as to re-sign Karl’s favorite player — the 36-year-old Andre Miller — to a reasonable contract is a questionable decision given Miller’s age, shoddy defense and Karl’s affinity towards playing a two-point guard lineup. Karl recently praised Jordan Hamilton as a likely top 10 selection in this year’s draft but with Harrington and Chandler ahead of him on the depth chart and Miller taking all the backup shooting guard minutes how is he ever supposed to see playing time?

Nobody will ever know what Nuggets strategy was heading into the 2012 Draft. If Ujiri really did have Fournier as the best player available when the Nuggets selected at 20, then this point (and entire article, for the most part) is moot, thankfully; however, the actions displayed after the fact would suggest otherwise. From the surface (and according to Ujiri himself) it appears as though drafting a player who could be stashed overseas for several years played a key role in selecting the lone foreign pick in the first round of the 2012 NBA Draft. If true, this will go down as the first real blemish on Masai Ujiri’s otherwise spotless record, as letting a coach who once vetoed a David Lee for Linas Kleiza trade dictate your draft strategy therefore preventing you from selecting the best player available, is some straight up Elgin Baylor-Donald Sterling type of stuff the Nuggets just don’t need to be on… ever.

For now, Ujiri is still untouchable.

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