With John Fox finally succumbing to the intense external pressure to make an already-long-lost Broncos season at least interesting by starting Tim Tebow, the irrational, border-line psychotic, 17-miles past the border-line pathetic love of Tebow has reached unprecedented new heights.

The Denver Post has officially abandoned all pretense of being an objective news gathering organization and has turned its office into an adjunct of the Tebow Foundation – including both literally and figuratively turning their paper into all-Tebow, all the time.

But a newspaper abandoning all journalistic ethics and pathetically pandering to the feelings of their readers in a sad attempt to make some money and stave off irrelevancy is not news. That is just the state of the newspaper business today.

Rather I am more interested in a simple question – why Tebow?

Denver welcomed an athlete with similar pedigree recently, yet the difference between how the two are treated is shocking.

In 2003, the Nuggets owned the 3^rd pick in the NBA draft. With freak of nature LeBron James going to his hometown Cavaliers and the Pistons making the 2^nd worst draft mistake of all–time in reaching for Darko Milicic, Carmelo Anthony fell into the Nuggets laps.

Much like Tebow, Carmelo was a couple months removed from being a college legend – leading perennial bridesmaid Jim Boeheim’s Syracuse Orangemen to a national title as a true freshman.

Much like Tebow, he arrived at a team mired in a decade of mediocrity and irrelevancy.

Much like Tebow, Melo’s game wasn’t built on being the most complete player on the court, but rather it was using unique gifts to come through when it mattered most.  

Unlike Tebow, Carmelo dominated the NBA from the moment he arrived, being named to the NBA All-Rookie team, winning 6 consecutive Western Conference Rookie of the Month awards and leading a mediocre Nuggets team back to the playoffs.

After several years of playoff disappointments and the arrival of Chauncey Billups to provide veteran experience, Melo and the Nuggets advanced to the 2009 Western Conference finals before losing in 6-heart breaking games to the eventual champion L.A. Lakers.

Yet, after playing just 3.5 games and winning just one, Tebow is already more beloved and popular with the general Denver sports public than Melo ever was.

Why?

There are easy answers of course: first and foremost Tebow plays for the Broncos. Denver always was and always will be a football town before anything else.

There is an occasional flirtation with baseball when the Rockies actually harness some of their limitless ‘potential’. There was a crush on hockey when it arrived in 1996 and brought the city its first professional sports title. That Melo-Chauncey team briefly infatuated the city like a cute new barista at your local coffee shop but that was more about the feel-good story of local-boy Billups returning home than any love for Melo.

But those are just infidelities for Denver sports fans. The Broncos are a marriage, and a new quarterback is like new lingerie – bringing some spice back into an already stale relationship. Tebow is that nightie – which is ironic on a lot of levels.

There is also another easy answer for why Tebow is more loved than Melo for those who tend to belittle and stereo-type sports fans but I hope/think Denver sports fans are better than that (at least most of them).

The most interesting answer is that sports fans lie to themselves. We say we want our sports heroes to be human. To demonstrate some chink in the armor that proves that they are ‘just like us’. But that isn’t true. Just ask Tiger Woods.

A successful college career, a quiet, polite public persona and a level of earnestness not seen since Beaver Cleaver left daytime TV have allowed Tebow’s fans and adoring press to build Tebow beyond a football player. He has become a myth.

But in the end, what do we know about him?

I don’t think there is anything Tiger Woods-esque sinister or dark lurking below that flat-top but it sure would be more interesting if there were.

Is Tebow really just a quiet guy who spends all day, every day thinking of football or God and nothing else? Is there really any 24 year old in the country that focused? Does he not like to grab a beer with the boys? Play video games? Does he read espionage books? Does he go to R-rated movies? Does he try to meet women? Meet men? Anything?

We don’t know and there is a large group of folks that don’t want to know.

By remaining passive in his own creation myth, Tebow has allowed his acolytes to paint a story on him like he is blank canvas. And that story is now impossibly bigger than any reality that could ever sit behind it.

Melo on the other hand was always human. He let frustrations show. He spoke his mind. He made mistakes (marijuana possession, DUI, appearing in an apparently anti-police video). He met, got pregnant and married an openly ambitious former MTV VJ. He hung out with celebrities. He bought extravagant houses.

In short, he acted like a young guy suddenly thrust into a world of money and inordinate attention.

You know, like you or I would in the same situation.

Yet, despite all of the standard pleas that we want our athletic heroes to act human, nothing ever endeared him to Denver sports fans. In fact, every mistake alienated him more.

Always held at arm’s-length in Denver, it was only a matter of time until Melo’s attention-hungry wife and a craving for a city more in line with his east-coast sensibilities sent him packing. Now, she has her own VH-1 show and he gets to play on the biggest stage in the NBA.

Can Tebow live up to the expectations that have been piled on him? Probably not. Just because Orton now sits on the bench doesn’t change the fact that the offensive line struggles to stop a cold. It doesn’t make the defense play any better.

Will Tebow’s disciples dismiss every error of a young, raw player as a mistake by someone else? For a time, of course. Such is the bucket of goodwill he has accumulated by winning in college and doing nothing of note away from the field.

No matter his successes, Melo could never win the hearts of the Denver sports fans.

No matter whether he ever has success, Tebow already has.

And that tells you everything you need to know about how much sports fans really want to get to know their heroes; we really only want our heroes to act human when it makes them seem more heroic.

Better to remain a myth than have your humanity actually demonstrate frailty or weakness.

Tonight it’s being widely reported that the Nuggets have completed their (way too) long discussed deal to send Carmelo Anthony to the New York Knicks.

By my count, this is at least the 3^rd time in the last 2 years that the city of Denver has lost a high profile athlete that basically forced his way out of town.

At this point, I am starting to feel like one of those desperate women on The Bachelor who gets sent packing after telling the bachelor about her 4 cats and how she got a tattoo of his name in a giant heart on her lower back while he was out on a date with 3 other women.

Is my problem that I love too easily?

Maybe not quite as extreme as those sad nut-jobs on The Bachelor I at least feel like some high school girl dumped by her boyfriend. What did I do? Could I have done more for him? Why aren’t I good enough to be loved?

I should probably just console myself with the latest Justin Bieber song.

However, there is one major difference between Melo and those that have demanded out of the Mile High City before him.

I am not mad at Melo.

Melo didn’t want out due to some childish over-reaction to the business of pro sports (see: Cutler, Jay). He didn’t want out due to some over-inflated view of his own greatness (see: Marshall, Brandon). Melo wanted out because (1) he wanted to play for his hometown team, (2) his prima donna wife wanted to live in a major market and (3) he didn’t like the direction of the Nuggets franchise.

All of those are justifiable reasons by themselves. Even #2, as lame as it is, is reasonable. Any married guy knows life is easier if the wife is happy and when plastic surgery addicted professional sluts across the US get TV contracts (see: Real Housewives of anywhere), it seems reasonable that a former MTV VJ married to a NBA star could get her own show.  

Together these reasons made it inevitable that Melo’s child would not drive a car with a Colorado ‘Native’ bumper sticker on it.

What separates Melo in my mind from the others is the way in which he went about leaving Denver. He didn’t whine and pout. He didn’t make a nuisance of himself in practice. He went to work and did his job amidst great upheaval and uncertainty. Even just yesterday, when he knew that the Nuggets were close to trading him, he said he planned to play for the Nuggets in their next game against the Grizzlies.

I can’t fault a guy for wanting to work where he wants to work. If my life-long dream were to work for a competitor of my current employer (who has been great to me in time with them), and it was well known they were actively recruiting me, wouldn’t it be my choice to go work with them? And while weighing the offer, would it shock anyone if I wasn’t the perfect employee for my current boss (heck, I should be doing work right now but am not – and I don’t have any other job offers. Though I am listening). Melo, continued to show up to work for the Nuggets. And he may not have played quite as well as his usual self, he was still fully invested in making this Nuggets team a success.

Need an example? A couple weeks ago, the Nuggets beat the Mavs on a last second shot by Aaron Aflallo after Melo fouled out of the most entertaining basketball game I have ever attended. When Aflallo’s basket went in, a player on the bench who no longer cared would have casually walked off the court. Instead, the TNT cameras caught Melo yelling, running across the court and pumping his fists like he had hit the shot himself.

Melo’s heart was in New York long ago but it is a credit to him for not only continuing to show up and play his best for the Nuggets but also making his intentions clear. It may hurt a little now, but isn’t it better to lose Melo and get something in return rather than have him shiv us in the kidneys this summer like LeBron did to Cleveland last summer?

LeBron treated free agency like a selfish child would: thinking only of what makes them immediately happy; unable to think through the impact on others.

Melo approached it like a man. He did what was best for him, what was best for his employer and he continued to show up and do his best in the interim.

The Nuggets took everything in New York north of Wall Street that wasn’t nailed down in this trade. As I tweeted, the optimist in me is trying to convince the pessimist in me that this will go down as the NBA equivalent of the Herschel Walker trade that built the Dallas Cowboys 1990’s dynasty.

The pessimist in me just wants to kick the optimist’s ass.

I am, of course, disappointed that Melo didn’t want to finish the job he started: turning Denver into a real basketball town. Before Melo arrived, Denver’s basketball history consisted of David Thompson redefining ‘mile high’, one playoff series win over the SuperSonics and the movie Amazing Grace and Chuck (starring one of the greatest Nuggets of all time as a professional basketball player…for the Celtics. Sigh).

But, when probably the 2^nd best current player from Colorado is Louis Amundsen, did he ever have a chance? Colorado is a football state, period. Chauncey Billups’ career at George Washington High is just the exception that proves the rule.

When it wasn’t clear how the Nuggets new management planned to get this team into the upper echelon of the Western Conference, Melo decided it was time to head back to the mean streets of his youth. I can’t blame him for looking around the Nuggets roster and seeing a bunch of high-priced players too often injured or lacking motivation to put in the consistent effort required of a NBA champion.

Stuck in a foreign world (he bought a house near my parents in Littleton, quite possibly the exact polar opposite of his hometowns of Brooklyn and Baltimore), and seeing his job as a dead end, he made the quite logical decision to try and go back to the world he knew growing up.

I want to be mad at Melo. I want to imagine next year when the Knicks come back and beat the Nuggets in Denver by 30 points I will boo and scream at Melo. I want to imagine that I will spend the next year writing hate messages at Melo to rival what Scott Raab has directed at LeBron in the last nine months.

I want to be angry. I really do.

But, right now I can’t be.

I am sad.

I am sad it didn’t work out. I am sad that the 2009 Western Conference Finals will be the closest thing the Melo/Chauncey Nuggets got to bringing a championship to Denver. I am sad it came to this. I am sad that Denver’s opportunity to play home to one of the 5 best basketball talents in the world ended in pain for everyone involved.

Good luck Melo. I will probably still cheer you on in the Eastern Conference – I really don’t like a lot of your new ‘rivals’ – but I will always wonder, “what if”.

I know we could have had something special.

Turner and I went to the Lakers/Nuggets game last night, so I am running a little late on the THH this week. Thank goodness I came up with a theme for this week’s games because I am also running a little low on hate after burning so much last night.

Every offseason I forget how much I loathe Lakers fans. They are omni-present, obnoxious and typically idiotic. They are Red Sox, Steeler and Miami Hurricane fans all rolled into one overbearing package. In their bright, shiny brand new Kobe jerseys it is always hard to take any of them seriously as anything but bandwagon jumping losers.

I always get the feeling 98% of them couldn’t pick out Kurt Rambis out of a police line-up. Their endless, ridiculous MVP chants for Kobe every time he touches the ball makes them look uncreative and clueless (especially in a November loss when Kobe throws up a stellar 11 for 32 shooting). I get you love your Lakers (and have since 2007!) but enough already.

Last night’s game was the first time I have had to deal with Lakers fans in the arena, so I couldn’t be more happy that the Nuggets gave the Lakers their first loss and quieted the idiots. But before scurrying out of the stadium with their heads down it also forced the Lakers fans to pull out the last desperate cheer of a losing fan: championship counting.

Yes, your team has historically won a lot of titles but that has nothing to do with the present. So, while your team goes down in flames at the one basketball game you attend each year, don’t try and make the argument about all the rings your team won (95% of which were won before you had even heard of Jerry Buss). Only truly sad fans resort to this trick because what it means is that you are losing in the present, so your only retort is to fade into the past. Yesterday is over. If the Lakers go down in flames this spring, you think any one that actually plays on the team will find solace in championships won in the past?

Lakers fans may idolize Kobe but in their arrogance they are all so clueless they have missed his single greatest attribute.

Yesterday doesn’t matter. It only matters who wins today.

And today, the Nuggets are the winners. So shut up.

Ooh, good I found some more hate.

 College: QB Alumni Pro Career Division

 Southern Miss @ UCF – a Vikings QB went to each of these schools. In their best season with Vikings, which had a better team?

SD: Daunte Culpepper’s best team with the Vikings was the 2000 team that lost to the NY Giants in the NFC title game. Favre’s best team was obviously last year when the Vikings lost to the Saints in the NFC title game. The differences? The 2009 Vikings took the Saints to overtime while the 2000 squad lost 41-0. Also, the Saints went on to win the Super Bowl over a Colts team led by Peyton Manning while the Giants lost to the Ravens led by Trent Dilfer. That is all pretty one-sided. Interestingly, they each suffered a sex scandal while in Minnesota. However Daunte had an entire boat full of women chasing him while Favre sent pictures of his junk to a girl and got nowhere, so Daunte wins the ‘playa’ challenge. But that isn’t the question here, so I will (reluctantly) go with Favre and Southern Miss.  

Michigan @ Purdue – a family connection links these 2 schools. Which family member was a member of the better pro team in his team’s best year?

SD: Of course this question is about the Griese family. Bob’s best pro team was the 1972 undefeated Dolphins team we have to hear about. Every. Single. Year. Son Brian left Michigan after a national title and came to Denver where he joined just in time to ride the Broncos bus to a 14-2 record and the 1999 Super Bowl. Interestingly, neither Griese was the primary starter on these teams (Brian sat behind Elway while Bob started 5 games, broke his ankle and then didn’t return until deep in the playoffs), and both took advantage of all-time great running backs. The easy answer is that the Dolphins went undefeated so they are better. But that is old sportswriter thinking. I am a blatant homer and that Bronco team was better. The greatest QB of all time in Elway (arguably), the best tight end of all time  in Shannon Sharpe (barely arguable), the greatest in-his-prime running back of all time in Terrell Davis (I refuse to argue), and the least likable player of all time in Bill Romanowski (no argument). Who did the Dolphins have? Larry Czonka’s greatest NFL porn stache and Mercury Morris, the most obnoxious player of all time (attention seeking retired player division)? Please.

 NFL: Super Bowl Loser Division:

 Seattle @ Arizona: Each team lost to the Steelers in the Super Bowl. Which of those 2 losing teams would win if they played?

SD: I know it has been a few years, but can anyone outside of King county explain how the Seahawks went to the Super Bowl in 2006? Seriously. OK, they had Shaun Alexander in his short-lived prime but then….who else? That team won the NFC and if they hadn’t been playing the refs as well as the Steelers could have won the Super Bowl? How is that possible? I guess that is one of those things that seemed logical at the time but the further away it gets, the crazier it gets – like the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers or George Bush getting re-elected. On the other hand, the Cardinals had a solid defense, Kurt Warner and Larry Fitzgerald. Unlike the Seahawks, looking back makes us appreciate that Cardinal team even more. Who knew that when Kurt went off to Dance with the Desperate it would reveal just how great he really was? I guess this means I have to cheer for the Cardinals but then that also means cheering for Derek Anderson or Max Hall. Ugh, that is so bad it makes me hope there is a Laker game on at the same time.

Cincinnati @ Indy: Each of these teams lost a Super Bowl to an all-time great QB. Which QB was more important to the NFL?

SD: I know you are probably thinking that labeling Drew Brees an ‘all-time great’ is a little bit of a stretch. I actually agree with you. I am referring to the Baltimore Colts loss in Super Bowl III to Joe Namath. Compare that with the Bengals 2 Super Bowl losses to Joe Montana. The argument for Namath is that his win was the first for the AFC and opened up the true competitive balance between the 2 divisions that lasted all the way through the 1970’s before disappearing for good. Montana and Bill Walsh reinvented offense, using a short passing game to open the game and change the NFL history books more than steroids changed the baseball history books. Both equally fine legacies but I will go with Montana for one reason: off the field behavior. Purposely ignoring his awful Skechers commercials, Montana brought us one of the greatest SNL skits of all time and showed us that seemingly humorless jocks could actually be funny, while Namath got drunk and tried to make out with Suzy Kolber on national TV showing us that drunk jocks don’t change much from high school to the grave.  Big win for Montana and by proxy the Bengals.

Prior to his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame tonight in Canton, Floyd Little was interviewed this morning in the Denver Post. As part of the interview Floyd mentioned the other Broncos he felt should be in the Hall with him. While Floyd might have gotten a little carried away (I mean, I like Karl Mecklenberg and all but…) it did bring up one of my long-held gripes: the lack of recognition for the Broncos at the Hall of Fame.

No team that has been consistently strong has so little representation in Canton. Super Bowls in 3 decades. AFC championship game appearances in 4 decades. Yet there are 2 Bronco busts in Canton. Too bad, the Broncos don’t have the PR machine and nationwide fan base of a team like the Steelers who, at this point probably have players that didn’t even start for them represented by one of those Lionel Richie-Hello-video style busts.  

Yes, Shannon Sharpe will be in the Hall soon (though he should already be) and Terrell Davis deserves to go in but won’t thanks to an injury-shortened career. But it is hard to believe they are the only 2 players from the last 30 years are deserving of recognition. Randy Gradishar? Steven Atwater? If they had played in the NFL’s home city of New York they would have already had to put on a ugly yellow blazer and give a speech to thousands of sweating Ohioans.

All of this though is not so much an issue as much as a symptom of a bigger problem. Something I looked at a little over a year ago when the Nuggets made their run through their NBA playoffs.  

Oh and for the record, I still stay at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront regularly and their HD signal has not improved.

A Mile High Elephant in the Room

If you watched Game #4 of the Nuggets / Mavs series on Monday night, you probably had the same thought that I did.

“Who are these announcers?”

Yes, while the Nuggets had an opportunity to sweep the Mavs and secure their first berth in the Western Conference finals since 1985, TNT was so excited they brought in their 43^rd string announcing team of Steve Smith, Marty Snider and Matt Devlin. Better known as ‘that 3-point shooter from Michigan State’, ‘Who?’ and ‘Wait, seriously?’. This was more insulting to Nuggets fans than getting Pam Ward as your team’s college football announcer.

OK, that is unfair to Pam Ward. She is a good announcer, which she could prove if she were allowed to announce a game that didn’t start at noon and involve two Big Ten teams.

It amazed me at the time that TNT couldn’t shift one of the other, better announcing teams to the Nuggets, given that there were no other games that could have been a series ender. 

NOTE: Thanks to the Seattle Waterfront Marriott’s completely random HD signal, I was not able to watch Game #5, so I am not sure this same crew called that as well, though I suspect they did. For some reason TNT was blacked out. This also happens to ESPN HD, whenever a Monday Night Football game is on. This tells you two things: 1 – They wasted a lot of money upgrading every room to a 42-inch LG flat screen and 2 – I have been staying there wwwaayyy too much.

My complaining about announcers is nothing new around here (oh, Tim Tebow how I miss you), so I am not going to. I am instead going to focus on the bigger picture.

It tells me one thing that TNT gave the Nuggets/Mavs series their worst announcers. When you combine that with the general ambivalence among the NBA announcers and experts toward the Nuggets before and throughout these whole playoffs (except for the Round Mound of Rebound, it was great to hear him say by about the 2^nd game of the Hornets series he thought the Nuggets could seriously contend with the Lakers), there is a pretty obvious pattern here.

The national media doesn’t think much of the Nuggets.

Sure, some of this is the residual stink of an organization that was knocked out of the first round five straight years and was one Joe Dumars draft-day screw-up from drafting both Nicholas Tskitishvili and Darko Milicic. But that is the past. This team is pretty good. In case the national folks didn’t notice, the Nuggets have won 8 of their 10 playoff games by something like 16 points per game.

Yet, expect them to be underdogs to the Lakers or Rockets, next series.

I like to style myself a little Langdon-esque, so I am not content to point out something that seems relatively obvious, I like to look for the broader pattern. In this case, the subtle discrimination lobbed at the Nuggets (or not-so-subtle discrimination if George Karl is to be believed), isn’t an isolated thing to me, it is just the latest example of a pandemic sweeping the country.

Denver sports teams are completely disrespected nationally.

The most obvious example of this is the Broncos. One could argue that the Broncos have been probably the second-most consistently successful franchise in the NFL in the ESPN era (think late 1970’s/early 80’s) – or as I like to call it – my sports following life. If you think un-biased about the NFL teams, only the Steelers have been as consistently strong as the Broncos.

You can have your Cowboys (apparently you jumped on the bandwagon after Jimmy Johnson led them to that 1-15 campaign in 1989), Forty-Niners (two words: Alex Smith), or Patriots (see: anything before 2000). The Giants might be the only other team that could make a claim, yet they had the 4^th overall pick as recently as five years ago.

I can hear you responding  ‘well, Dave that is because they were led for the majority of that time by John Elway’. While that is true, it is also true that the Broncos appeared in a Super Bowl five years before Elway brought his buck-teeth to the Mile High City. The Broncos also appeared in an AFC title game five years after he retired. Ask Forty-Niner fans how they have fared before Joe Montana showed up. Or Packer fans about life in the pre-Favreian era. Names like Lynn Dickey or Don Majkowski, ring a bell? Or ask Dolphin fans about their quarterbacks since the Marino era. You will hear names like Cleo Lemon, Jay Fiedler and his long lost brother A.J. Feeley.

So the logical assumption would be that the Broncos are represented in the Hall of Fame, for this sustained period of excellence, right? Well, the Broncos have exactly 1.5 inductees in the Hall of Fame.

NOTE: I count Gary Zimmerman as only one-half of an inductee as he probably would have gotten in, based on his Vikings days alone. Two Super Bowls and blocking for a 2,000 yard rusher were just the sprinkles on ice cream.

By my count, the Steelers have 10 players in the Hall that played for them after 1980. Even the San Diego Chargers have 2 players from that era in the Hall. And since I have memories of the Broncos playing against the Chargers about 5 times a year (with Charlie Jones announcing every game, who, for the record was NBC’s 3^rd string announcer) throughout the Eighties, I can testify that they weren’t that great. How many Super Bowls did they appear in, again?

For some reason, Bronco players have never been appreciated as they should. Whether it was Randy Gradishar and the Orange Crush defense, or Shannon Sharpe (who will be a Hall of Famer but should have been a first balloter) or Rod Smith (as I have been known to rant radio hosts, though it sadly appears all evidence of Michelle Tafoya’s massive crush on me has been erased by ESPN), Bronco players are overlooked in favor of players with bigger names or from bigger markets.

So, you may ask, why is their systemic discrimination against the teams from the Centennial State? Well, I blame the TV networks.

Not in the ‘Tony Kornheiser’s and John Madden’s hero worship are to blame for the fascination with Brett Favre’ or ‘Old white announcers seeing themselves in the clumsy, hardworking play of Tyler Hansbrough’ way though. To understand what I mean, think back to the last time you saw an ad hyping an upcoming episode of a TV show. If you have been watching the NBA playoffs, it shouldn’t be hard to envision a commercial for The Closer.

Now, think to the end of the commercial. What do they say? ‘NCIS, Tuesday at 9 pm eastern and pacific; 8pm central’.

NOTE: I don’t actually watch NCIS so I have no idea what day or time it comes on.

All of the TV networks purposely ignore when a TV show is appearing in one of the four time zones in this country. There are only four time zones; it isn’t like there are twenty. Yet, they only choose to acknowledge three of them (Central Time Zone, you should thank the stars every night for Chicago and Dallas). If that isn’t elitism, I don’t know what is.

It shines the light on a bigger attitude problem. If you are in New York, the Mountain Time Zone doesn’t matter (until you fly out to spend Christmas in Vail, of course).

Is it too much to believe that this attitude pervades the sports world as well? ESPN is located in Bristol, Connecticut. Is it any coincidence, that for years they forced the Yankees and Red Sox down our throats? Out of sight, out of mind.

So, while all of the folks may swing through Denver on the way to the mountains, they don’t think much of the city itself. Witness people coming for the Democratic National Convention last summer shocked we aren’t walking around in cowboy hats and riding horse to work. Though, in fairness Ken Salazar should probably share some blame for that.

Is it any wonder that the media members who help drive the national sports storylines in this country tend to ignore the Mile High City?

Someday, when California has fallen into the ocean, Texas has become an independent country and the Northeast has collapsed into anarchy thanks to the implosion of the financial system in this country, maybe Denver teams will finally get their due.

I can hardly wait.

Especially about Texas becoming another country.

As you may have noticed, I have remained silent on the early playoff exit of the Nuggets. You could take this as a sign I quit following them, but unfortunately that is not the case. I actually followed them more closely this year than probably any other time. But I also recognize that I have limited use as a basketball analyst so I have learned to keep my mouth shut.

No comments on my football analysis please.

That close inspection however also led me to the realization in the last month of the regular season that this team was not going to match last year’s thrilling run to the Western Conference Finals. They just didn’t have the same drive this year – too many injuries, inconsistent play, etc.

Above that, they also lost their leader when George Karl began cancer treatments. Adrian Dantley seems like a nice guy (or is it seemed? I think he died about February14th) but he just never got the Nuggets to play with the passion they had for Karl.

Dantley’s failure at getting much of anything out of the Nuggets made me respect the job George had done even more while making me chuckle to think back about the below post. As you will see shortly, I wasn’t always a believer in Karl.

Written two years ago after a first round sweep by the Lakers, I decided it was time for Karl to go. Thankfully Nuggets management ignored me on firing Karl (though I must admit my prescription for the on-court savior that Nuggets needed was pretty close to what they got from Chauncey Billups the following November and what I list as the main problems for the Nuggets – lack of defense and playing to the level of the opponent – remain to this day).

However, I am not re-posting to make fun of how big of an idiot I am (that should be pretty self-evident and there are plenty of posts already up that demonstrate that to an abundance) but rather in the wake of the Cavs loss to the hands of the Celtics I thought it would be interesting to throw Mike Brown against my criteria and see if he deserves to keep his job.

My opinion? Under the by-laws of the Schottenheimer factor: Brown should go.

Tapping your Inner-Donald 

I gave myself 72 hours to cool down before putting anything on the record.

So now three nights after watching the Nuggets go down in four straight games to the Lakers, I feel it is the appropriate time to discuss the question on every Nugget fan’s mind:

Should George Karl be fired?

I don’t want to come off like some crazy sportswriter whose first instinct when a team does poorly is to yell ‘fire the coach’ from every rooftop (<cough> Skip Bayless <cough>). But after investing more nights over the last year watching the NBA and the Nuggets than the last decade combined, the odds are high that emotion would override any logical argument I could make. With Avery Johnson going down (and Mike D’Antoni possibly being the next to fall), I took a step back and decided to try and look at this rationally. What should really be the criteria for firing a coach?

Here then, is my attempt at categorizing the offenses that should result in a coach being shown the door. For the record not every example cited has resulted in firing, it is just my opinion of whether firing would be justified.

Category One – The Grady Little

Category One are offenses that are completely made by the coach and have a direct impact on the team winning games: game planning and in-game decisions. Obviously many of these are done in the course of an actual game, but regardless of when the action taken there is a direct and obvious connection to the team’s losing. Examples include:

• Avery Johnson changing the starting line-up of the best regular season team in the NBA when playing the Golden State Warriors in the first round of the 2007 playoffs.
• Grady Little leaving Pedro Martinez in one inning too long in the 2003 AL Championship Series
• Any NFL coach who started Jeff George and/or Vinnie Testaverde at quarterback

Category Two – The Mike Ditka

Category Two covers personnel moves personally led or championed by the coach that result in catastrophic team performance.

• Cam Cameron selecting a wide receiver/punt returner (with a bad foot) at the tenth overall pick in the NFL draft for a team coming off of a 6-10 season with an aging defense, weak offensive line and no quarterback.
• Mike Ditka trading away an entire draft worth of picks to draft Ricky Williams
• Shanahan, Mike: 2004-2007 (sorry, couldn’t resist)

Category Three – The Marvin Lewis

Category Three includes all programs in which the number of off-field incidents is so great and consistent, that it illustrates an obvious lack of control by the head coach.

• Marvin Lewis and the eight, nine, ten…whatever the number is this week…arrests of Bengals players.
• Barry Switzer and his quarterback/coke dealer Charles Thompson at Oklahoma
• What’s that? What did you say? Bobby Bowden?!? How dare you, sir! How dare you!

Category Four – The Marty Schottenheimer

Category Four is reserved for perennially underachieving teams. Teams that never performed as well as their talent level would indicate they should, whether it was due to poorly designed schemes, chemistry problems or teams just plain quitting.

• Marty Schottenheimer – Let’s just say that Norv Turner got more out of the Chargers in the playoffs than Marty did.
• Joe Torre’s consistently had the most (high priced) talent in the majors and yet they haven’t won a World Series since 2000.
• George Karl – how many titles did he win with Gary Payton? How about the number of playoff series he won with Carmelo Anthony and Allen Iverson. Yeah, exactly.

On the opposite side of the coin, are offenses that don’t warrant a pink slip:

• Personnel moves not coach-led. See, D’Antoni, Mike and O’Neal, Shaq
• A short slump in the course of the season – only one person loses their jobs when this happens – Pat Riley but that’s because he quits.
• Obvious chemistry problems – Did Phil Jackson warrant the blame for the Shaq/Kobe feud? Ok, but definitely not all of the blame.

So there you go, definitive proof that under Category Four, it is completely within Stan Kroenke’s right to fire George Karl. I don’t blame Karl completely for the underachieving Nuggets. Despite their immense talent they have never found that on-court leader who can step up in crunch team and guide the team. A.I. was brought in to play that role (presumably) but it is clear after all those years of having to be a one-man show in Philly that is his always going to be his fall-back position. He can’t lead a team; he can only try to take over.

However, after 4 years, Karl was never able to get this team to buy into his program, they never played defense consistently and probably the least discussed aspect of their game was their penchant for playing to the level of their opponent. They could beat anyone in the league (except the Lakers, apparently) but then had the tendency to lose games a 50-win team shouldn’t (see late season losses to the Kings at home and then at the Sonics or the mid-season road trip that saw them lose at the Bulls and Bucks on consecutive nights).

Sorry George, I have been a big supporter since you came to Denver, but it is time.

It is only fitting that at the dawn of the month of my 34^th birthday I am feeling old.

NOTE: I know that some portion of you just said something along the lines of ‘oh, bite me. You aren’t old’. Well, sorry. Get over it. I can’t do anything about you being older than me. Think of all the cool stuff you got to live through that I didn’t –  the Vietnam War, Watergate, Super Bowls I – IX, Deep Throat, the UCLA dynasty and…well, that other Deep Throat.

NOTE #2: To the other portion of you that just said ‘wow, he is old’. Bite me.

Anyway, it isn’t just my completion of another trip around the Sun making me feel old, it is the world of sports. When I hear about the latest sports news, I inevitably end up sounding like Statler and Waldorf when responding. Damn kids these days.

It wasn’t always this way. It used to be I would cheer for teams based almost solely on them being the new, young up-and-comers. I adopted the New York Mets back in the mid-eighties in part because I was fascinating by this young phenom pitcher named Dwight Gooden. I even went out and put a Gooden poster on my wall and bought all the rookie baseball cards I could find. Until, of course, my mom threatened to ring the nose on my poster with White-Out.

Later, as the Lakers, Celtics and Bad Boys of Detroit ruled the NBA, I had a soft spot for this young kid playing in Chicago who seemed to have a little talent.

Now, when I hear about LeBron James, not shaking hands with the Magic after losing Eastern Conference Finals and then skipping the press conference, I think he sees himself above the every day requirements of being a professional. Do you think anyone that lost a playoff series wants to go in and face the press? No, but when you get millions of dollars to play a game, there a few obligations you have. You have to practice, you have to show up at charitable events for long enough to be photographed for those NBA Cares commericals, you have to do whatever your shoe company tells you to do and you have to talk to the press after games. These are especially true when you are the greatest player on the planet. An excuse that ‘you are a winner’ and you aren’t happy about losing doesn’t fly. You think anyone in the NBA is ok with losing? Other than Shawn Marion of course. You don’t become a pro athlete unless you are a fierce competitor who wants to win at any cost. But being a professional (or even being a man) means sucking it up and facing the music when things don’t go your way.

Of course, if you were given a Hummer in high school and were never held to account for it, why would I expect you to understand what responsibility and accountability means?

And it’s not like David Stern is going to call out his meal ticket of the future. Sure, Phil Jackson gets fined $50,000 for correctly pointing out publicly what we all know (that the NBA refs are slightly less incompetent than Sling Blade), but LeBron can act like the biggest baby this side of the Cutler family ranch and never get a slap on the wrist.

LeBron isn’t alone in making we worry about this entire generation of athletes. In the same week that LeBron took his ball and went home, Brandon Marshall appeared on Outside The Lines to explain why (yet again) he has been accused of domestic battery. While I don’t know the details of this charge, I have had enough. Less than a year after being suspended for three games (reduced to one) for a multitude of offenses to the extra-touchy NFL, Marshall found a new woman and more trouble. Is it so hard for a guy to find a stable woman and not get in massive fights with them? B-Marsh (as I call him) is entering his fourth year in the league and he has seen a team mate get shot and killed, shouldn’t it be about time he realizes that professional athletes are always targets? Whether by women or thugs, athletes are always going to be in the sights of those seeking money and fame. Understanding that and learning who you can trust should be the first thing that pro athletes learn.

Actually make that the second thing. The first thing is that no player is above being traded. No player. Especially not players that haven’t had a winning season since high school. Get it, Jay?

I won’t go into my feelings about B-Marsh’s contemporary, Mr. Cutler. I think I have sufficiently beat that story into the ground. What can I say, I am to Jay Cutler as Skip Baylees is to T.O. 

I don’t mean to say it is just the off-the-field antics by the players these days that I don’t understand. I know that athletes have gotten in trouble for as long as there have been sports (or at least as long as newspapers have been willing to report it) but the growth of the me-first sports celebration drives me nuts.

When I was young…I can’t believe I just used that phrase, just shoot me now…the best known celebration in the game was the group high-five by the Smurfs on the Redskins. Now, we have the celebration dance of the week by a ridiculously overrated wide receiver on an awful team who legally changed his name to the incorrect translation of his jersey number. Maybe if his team had, you know a winning record and wasn’t just the punch-line of every joke about football teams with legal problems, his self-serving attitude might not have worn thin about 4 years ago.

Even on my teams, there are players who I don’t understand. Look at J.R. Smith. We get it J.R., you are a great athlete and made a great play. You know if you consistently did that rather than once every other game maybe you wouldn’t need to celebrate when you make a great play. It would happen so frequently it wouldn’t be worth going nuts every time.

Wow, just look at all that ranting about the players above. I am not sure what makes me sicker, how these guys act or my old man, holier-than-thou, things-were-better-in-my-day attitude.

It’s funny because my least favorite TV Sports opinionater is Skip Bayless and this is the exact reason why. He hates everyone and everything in sports and is so sure about what he thinks, he makes Bill O’Reilly’s opinions seem balanced and considered. Now I am starting to sound like him. When did this happen? What happened to the happy-go-lucky kid I used to know?

Getting old sucks. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go have some warm milk and go to bed.