Monthly Archives: November 2013

November 28, 2013

Breakfast with George Karl

By Dave Krieger

Had breakfast with George Karl a week ago, just before he and the family left for Italy to see Coby play and enjoy a family holiday.

The girls of DJ’s Berkeley Cafe — this is what they called themselves — had to have their picture taken with him. The woman who entered when he did had to tell him she was a fan. About half the people he runs into think he’s still the Nuggets’ coach and wish him luck in the next game.

Between the public battle with cancer, the generally entertaining and successful basketball team and the continuing work through his foundation on cancer, George is very popular when he’s out and about. I invited him to north Denver for breakfast thinking he might go unnoticed. I was completely wrong about this.

Excerpts of our conversation:

Q: So how have you been?

A: Well, you know, the summer was normal. My son plays summer league and we do family things in the summer time. Everything was normal. I think the emptiness, the shallowness of ‘What the hell’s going on?’ probably didn’t start until mid-September, when the guys are back in town. You know they’re working out and everybody’s in the gym. September’s a fun time because you’re starting to get excited but you don’t have any pressure. The pressure doesn’t start until you actually start practicing.

ESPN has been fun. I mean, it’s incredible what ESPN has done. I was there 8 1/2 years ago and it’s an amazing transformation. The town of Bristol now is the capitol of sports TV. And why I have no idea. But it is. And it’s growing and growing. When I used to be there, it was so much slower and smaller. It was a small town when I was there 8 1/2 years ago. Now it’s a big city. It just blows my mind.

Q: Do you think you have a future there?

A: It’s not something that I necessarily want to do the rest of my life. I would probably rather stay in the gym.

Q: Have any coaching opportunities come up yet?

A: No. I’m hoping they don’t come this quickly.

Taking a team in the middle of the year is not the most advantageous situation. We had a helluva ride here [32-8 following Jeff Bzdelik (13-15) and Michael Cooper (4-10) in 2005]. It’s the only time I’ve really ever done it. I’m sorry — when I went back to Seattle in ’92, I guess [27-15 following K.C. Jones (18-18) and Bob Kloppenburg (2-2)]. Seattle was desperate to get back in.

There are parts of how my life is now that I’m enjoying. I’m enjoying scheduling time to see my family, hanging out at my kid’s school and being involved in the neighborhood and all that good stuff. As you get older, you probably like that more.

Having more time being at home, being with Kim and Kaci and some more time to socialize, and then I have my time to go to ESPN, which connects you. And I have some other endeavors, doing some videos and talking about maybe doing a book. I’m not a big book writer because I don’t think I want to tell all the truth right now. I think that’s the next chapter.

Q: When you’re done?

A: There are some things, like cancer and the empathy and the consciousness I would like to bring to my story, a lot of people say it would be a good story. There are some other possibilities. Teaching. Maybe talking about what I think about my career and my life, not a biography but more what I’ve learned. What I’ve learned from people. What I’ve learned from Phil Jackson, what I’ve learned from Dean Smith, what I’ve learned from Larry Brown, what I’ve learned from Doug Moe. And then also maybe have a writer go talk to them about me, because I’m not afraid of somebody saying, ‘Well, I think George is a jackass.’ That’s been written before.

Q: Have your views changed at all about what happened to you here?

A: I still don’t have a tremendous understanding of it. It’s funny, when I walk around Denver, people still think I’m the coach. They’re like, ‘Hey, good luck tomorrow!’

Q: Do you watch the games?

A: When I have a relaxed moment, I do. I don’t ever say, ‘I can’t do that because I have to watch the Nuggets game.’ It’s really strange but in my discussions with ESPN and amongst other situations in TV and radio, Denver doesn’t come up. It just seems like the rest of the nation doesn’t think they’re relevant. So I think they’ve got to re-prove themselves.

Q: They’re playing better lately.

A: (Nods). JaVale [McGee] getting hurt, one, opened up the lane, and two, I think it makes it easier to coach the team. You can find minutes for four guys and you have one big guy, which you probably need. Against 30 or 40 percent of the teams, you need a big guy. But about 60 percent of the teams, the spirit of the team is to play fast.

Even in the first 10 games, I think it’s shown that they play better when they play fast. They’re actually playing at a faster pace than we did last year. I mean, it’s close.

Q: The original plan seemed to be to feed JaVale in the post. Can that work?

A: The thing we went to three or four or five years ago, of attacking, attacking, attacking, the first couple years we had Melo and we tried to balance it. We tried to attack and get Melo his isos and then he had some post-ups. What we found after the Melo trade was it’s better to say, ‘This is the way we play.’

What the whole thing comes down to is you can’t lose the strength of the team, and I think the last three or four games the game’s been tilting back to playing very aggressive. So it’ll be interesting where it ends up.

I love Ty (Lawson) having a great year. I’m happy for him. I’m happy for Timo (Mozgov) because in a lot of ways, I thought, what happened the last three or four years, the two guys that got screwed by me, by my decisions, were Birdman [Chris Andersen] and Timo. Both of them now seem to have found a place and that makes me happy.

Q: What’s your take on JaVale?

A: He came here as a player that played 30 minutes [in Washington] without earning that responsibility, was given that responsibility because they were a bad team. My year with him last year, I was trying to figure out what he was. I thought at the end of last year he earned the right to get more minutes this year but I don’t think he earned the right to be given 30 minutes.

Q: Did you ever have a sit-down within the organization about JaVale’s role?

A: I don’t remember that conversation directly, one-on-one, either with [owner] Josh [Kroenke] or even [former general manager] Masai [Ujiri]. I think they tried to lobby through my assistants quite frequently, especially Masai. But we were having such a fun year last year that the opportunity probably didn’t come up until we lost to Golden State.

Q: Have you relived that series much, or replayed it in your head?

A: Gallo’s injury took our defense. Say we were above average defensively, and I think that probably would be a good way of phrasing it. And we went from above average to ordinary. We had no versatility in our defensive schemes. Wilson [Chandler] was the only guy that we could maneuver around. And we run into an offensive team that was the best at what we did the worst — cover the three ball.

And then you take your versatility out and you’re playing two small guards that their guards can shoot over even with good defensive position. They took the momentum from us in Game 2, shooting the hell out of it, and Games 3 and 4, that building was, it had a karma to it. We took it to Game 6. It wasn’t my favorite series I’ve coached. I wish I would have done a better job trying to figure out how to give confidence to our offense and/or our defense. Even in our two wins, I thought they were on guts and grit more than they were on good basketball cohesiveness. I think we were trying to find answers quite often in that series and didn’t find answers. And that falls on the coach.

Q: Do you think Andre Iguodala was Mark Jackson’s “mole”?

A: No question.

Q: Does that bug you?

A: I just think that’s media hype. I mean, that series was not a physical series. Everybody wants to be more aggressive with the guy kicking your ass, so . . . .

Q: The media didn’t say it. Jackson said it.

A: I thought Mark had a lot of tricks in that series that were bush- . . . I don’t know. I don’t know what they were. Almost high-schoolish. They were beneath the NBA level. And they might have worked. They might have motivated his young team in a good way. You know, he’d announce a starting lineup and start another guy. C’mon, man. You think we’re not ready for that?

Q: Is your goal still to coach in the NBA again?

A: One more time.

Q: I’ve thought the best chance would be a situation like the one when you came here, a team that’s underperforming with nothing to lose.

A: It bothers me a little bit that no one realizes that coach Grg [Tim Grgurich] and I were two of the guys that started player development, and our history of developing ordinary players into better players is off the charts. It bothers me that our practice habits and how we prepare before the game and work our guys out is being copied by 10-15 teams in the NBA. It bothers me that not only did you have a winning program, you had a culture that was admired by other NBA people.

And I’m not saying it can’t be duplicated or done better. I know it can. But in the same sense, there’s a chance it can’t. I just thought it was a year too early, maybe two years too early to not try one year more to see if it would go a little further. Because it was pretty impressive. Statistically, it’s extremely impressive.

It might have a little Moneyball to it. It works in the regular season, doesn’t work in the playoffs. We’re aware of that. We’ll listen to that criticism and see how we’ll change it. I think Oakland [baseball’s Athletics, the Moneyball model] has tried to change some of its philosophies with the Moneyball system.

Q: Are you still frustrated about the ending?

A: I’m not frustrated with eight and a half great years, fun years. The window of frustration is small compared to, I found a home and an unbelievable eight and a half years. To take not winning in the first round of the playoffs as your scapegoat, I don’t think you evaluated it fairly. That’s just my opinion. Obviously, there was a bigger opinion somewhere else.

Q: When did you decide that Denver would be your permanent home? Seemed like you really liked Milwaukee, too. Any other stops in the running?

A: My hope was to coach another two or three or four years, ride out this chapter of development and, you know, fade into the sunset. I would never live in Cleveland. I don’t think I’m a California guy. Seattle, it just rains too much. So I think you’re right, Milwaukee, when you get older I think you look for a home a little bit more, probably. But you know Boise has always had a good proximity to my first family. We hang out in McCall, Idaho in the summer time. My idea before Denver was I’d probably move to Boise and have a winter home in Phoenix or Tucson or someplace.

But now, Denver’s weather, its beauty . . . The street has always been nice to me. It still is. I get a lot of, ‘I’m a Nuggets fan but I’m more a George Karl fan because of what you’ve gone through.’ A lot of cancer patients, survivors, feel friendly enough to come talk to me about their story.

Q: What’s your foundation up to?

A: We do lots of work locally, including with the Boulder Community Hospital. We raise $100,000 a year and donate it to other charitable organizations that I think are really good for cancer in Denver. I have no desire to be in a national program. I want, whatever my foundation does, I think it’s all going to be in Colorado.

Q: Why is that?

A: In my history of advocacy, I think I’ve always thought about the national, federal side of it, and I think it’s too big to be successful. So over the last five or 10 years, I think you should work harder taking care of your community, being involved in your city, maybe even in your region, your town, because you can maybe have more of an impact. I used to write checks for presidential candidates and think whoever wins the presidency is important. Now I’ve come to the conclusion that the national government is basically a bank that’s kind of messed up. I don’t know that that’s the case with national cancer societies. I think the American Cancer Society of Colorado does a great job. But Colorado has an ability to be one of the top cancer care centers in the country. I think all of cancer care can be done better. I think we need to rethink how to do this better.

I’m a big advocate of integrative care. I think holistic and integrative care, bringing in meditation and acupuncture and massage and relaxation, I think we need to open our minds.

The society of cancer advocates reminds me of an NBA locker room. It has a lot of ego and a lot of money. Insurance companies — lot of ego, lot of money. Pharmaceutical companies — a lot of ego and a lot of money. Doctors — a lot of ego and a lot of money. Hospitals, non-profit, profit — ego, money.

I’m sure cancer is not the only situation like this. I’m sure diabetes might have the same nightmares.

Q: Do you address it the same way you address it in an NBA locker room?

A: I’ve never had the chance, but I would. I really think if we all would kind of work as a team, that we’ll all come out of it better off.

Q: How do you overcome ego and money?

A: (laughs). I’m better at ego than money, probably. I mean, millions of dollars have messed up a lot of parts of the game of basketball. If you’re playing for the money, I don’t know if you can be really good.

Q: Percentage-wise in the NBA, how many players in your experience are basically in it for the money?

A: More. It’s growing. Every year it’s gotten more.

Q: Less than half?

A: That would be interesting, to ask that question. I think almost all players now, in the summertime, are businessmen and are worrying about whatever, their brand and these words I keep hearing. But the great players still, when it comes October first or November first, they understand what 82 games is.

That’s why I admire LeBron a lot. I think he’s the best guy in basketball and he is possessed to win championships. I’m sure he understands that’s going to make him more money, but that’s not why he’s that way. He has a goal to catch Michael. He thinks he can. And he is driven.

If Julyan Stone would have that same passion, of just, ‘I want to get on the court, I want to play 15 minutes a game and I can do that,’ if that’s what his drive is, he’ll get there better than, you know, ‘If I get on the court I might make a couple million dollars a year.’ The drive’s got to be the passion for the game and I think the game has gotten so business-oriented, so agent-player relationship centered, that it’s hard to not say that money’s always going to be a part of the decision of where [a player] goes.

But I still think the great player is driven by the passion for the game and not by the check that he gets every two weeks.

Q: So what’s the plan? Wait for the phone to ring?

A: There are days I wish it would ring and there are days I don’t want it to ring. I mean, I watch the Knicks play and I wouldn’t want to be in that hell for a million dollars. It’s just New York City and the Garden and the immensity of the pressure. I think Mike Woodson is standing up to it with tremendous integrity.

Q: Best team in the West?

A: San Antonio, probably. I’m a Golden State fan. I’ve never seen a team with that many offensive weapons. David Lee and Bogut, you could run an offense through them and they could win games. If the Denver Nuggets had Bogut and David Lee, they’d be good. And they’re not among the top offensive options. Curry, Thompson, Barnes, Iguodala. They have so many weapons offensively that can blow up, and they’re doing a pretty good job with the defense. I think Houston and the Clippers are still in that stage of development that I think they could be very good by the end of the year, but they have their moments now when they struggle.

The team I like a lot and it bothers me is New Orleans. That Davis kid is coming and their three guys out front, Holiday and Gordon and Evans, can get to the rim, and they can score. Gordon can be a great shooter. And then they’ve got the Ryan Anderson kid who’s the best shooting four in basketball.

Q: So why does it bother you to like them?

A: I think they should be playing better. But I’m still on record that I like ’em a lot. I like them because Anthony Davis is a basketball player. He’s not a big man. He’s a basketball player that’s seven feet tall. And I just think the game is about basketball players, not necessarily position players.

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November 25, 2013

Rockies will listen to offers for Dexter Fowler

By Dave Krieger

Dan O’Dowd and I had lunch at Zi South by the ballpark today. We had the place almost to ourselves, which gave us a chance to talk a lot of baseball.

Perhaps the biggest news out of our conversation was his acknowledgement that the Rockies will listen to offers for center fielder Dexter Fowler, who regressed last season from a productive 2012 and appeared in only 119 games. That may not come as a surprise, but in light of owner Dick Monfort taking Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez off the market before it opened, at least it indicates the Rocks aren’t disconnecting the phones.

Whether Fowler spends the 2014 season in Colorado or elsewhere, O’Dowd said it will be an important one for his reputation in the industry. He also said the Rocks won’t trade him without getting appropriate value back.

O’Dowd acknowledged pursuing catchers Carlos Ruiz and Brian McCann in free agency and being outbid for both. Ruiz signed a three-year, $26 million deal with the Phillies, which works out to more than $8.5 million a year for a catcher who will be 35 when spring training opens. McCann reportedly got $85 million over five years from the Yankees, an average of $17 million per.

The Rockies made a substantial offer to McCann not merely for the obvious reasons — he’s a seven-time All-Star with power — but because the team could use a double dose of his attitude and competitiveness. But what’s reasonable financially for the Yankees is unreasonable for most other teams, and this again was the case.

Here are excerpts from our conversation:

Q: What was your game plan going into this off-season?

A: I think as an organization we feel like we’ve got a window of competitiveness with two of our best players and we were trying to figure out a way to impact those guys within our means as much as we possibly could in the positions where we felt like we could impact them.

The free agent market was not flush with impact players. We earmarked a few and up ’til now haven’t been able to get any of those done, but I think that was our overall game plan, was to try to create some versatility in our lineup but also try to create a window here to take another step.

Q: It’s been widely reported you pursued Carlos Ruiz and Brian McCann. What does that say about your view of Wilin Rosario as a catcher?

A: I think that had as much to do with what we thought his gifts were, rather than his liabilities. An average catcher here since we’ve been in existence has caught somewhere between 100 and 110 games. And this kid’s bat is pretty special, and the power is pretty special. I think he caught 102 last year — he started 102. Then you’ve got to factor in how many of those 102 did he feel really good physically hitting because of the wear and tear?

I think you’ve got to catch an average of 130 pitches here a night, and that’s not just physically but mentally, calling 130 pitches. So I think it was just a function of we could make one move and affect two different positions on the field. And notwithstanding, maybe get a defensive catcher that would be a little bit further along in his career, because it takes a long time to get good in that particular role. So we thought we might be able to help our pitching staff in that way, too, but I think it was more a function of giving him an opportunity to get more at-bats.

Q: Where else could Wilin play?

A: We think Wilin’s a really good athlete. We felt pretty comfortable that giving him enough time he could play right field. He’s got a plus arm, he’s a good enough athlete, he runs pretty well. Sure, it would have been a risk, but we’re going to have to take some risks at times to get where we want to go, and that was one risk I think everybody was willing to take if we could find the right guy.

Q: The Cardinals are reportedly signing Jhonny Peralta to play shortstop. There’s been a lot of speculation since the World Series that they would make a run at Tulo . . . 

A: There was never . . . no, I mean, Bill (Geivett) and I are always listening to clubs. That’s what we’re responsible for. The Cardinals have a pretty good model in place right now.

Q: They were not interested or they did not make a pitch?

A: How could there not be interest in that type of player? But I think their model right now is their interest is only to the extent that they could make a deal based upon their parameters to make a deal, which weren’t even close to anything that we would ever entertain to trade that type of player.

Q: So let’s talk about the starting rotation. What are you looking to do there?

A: As we sit here today, we have four starters, knock on wood health, which are (Jhoulys) Chacin, (Jorge) De La Rosa, (Tyler) Chatwood and (Juan) Nicasio. We still would love to add more depth to that.

Q: You still see Nicasio as a starter?

A: We do. He hadn’t pitched for two years. Got physically tired the second half of the year, especially his knee that he had surgery on. Didn’t get a chance to train much last winter because of the knee surgery. He throws a lot of innings for us. No doubt he has to get better, but going out on the market, we’re understanding the value of what he brings to our club.

Some of these are hope things, but (Christian) Friedrich is having a great winter. Two years ago, we were really encouraged about him being a part of our rotation for last year, and then he had an injury-riddled season. We’re really pleased by his progress physically right now.

Q: His back is OK?

A: You know, he’s totally redone his delivery, which is what we helped him with. But until he gets into the live competition with a hitter in front of him and the adrenaline flowing, if he can maintain what he’s doing within the course of the game, he’s going to be OK.

And we still haven’t given up on (Drew) Pomeranz, although I know he showed really well out of the ‘pen when we put him in there. I think we’ll keep an open mind on that.

Q: What’s your diagnosis there?

A: Well, one, he’s got to get over the hump at the major league level. He’s got to show some more toughness and competitiveness and some better secondary pitches. He started to flash that out of the ‘pen when we used him for that last three weeks of the season. It was pretty special stuff in that role. Whether he translates that into the starting rotation . . .

I think it’s another example of a kid getting rushed, never really getting the time to fully develop at the minor league level and making sure that he had stuff to go to at the big league level when things didn’t go right. That’s where we want to make sure with (Eddie) Butler and (Jonathan) Gray. We know we have two big leaguers here. We just want to make sure that they get enough minor league innings to be able to react appropriately when things don’t go right at the big league level, which is inevitable.

Q: How many is that?

A: I think they’ll determine that. Butler is obviously closer, not necessarily ability-wise, but because he’s had a full year pitching in the minor leagues. If Eddie can pick up where he left off at Double-A last year [six starts, 27.2 innings pitched, 13 hits, two earned runs, six walks, 25 strikeouts, 0.65 ERA], he should come pretty quickly, but we’ll have to see if he picks up where he left off last year. A lot of that will be dependent upon the amount of work we challenged him to do this winter and what he does with it.

Q: And where does Gray start?

A: Probably in Tulsa, too. He dominated the Cal League. [5 starts for Modesto, 24 innings pitched, 10 hits, two earned runs, six walks, 36 strikeouts, 0.75 ERA] If we didn’t shut him down, they probably would have won the Cal League there. He was unhittable. No reason to send him back to the Cal League. So he’ll be in Tulsa, too, to start the year.

Q: In retrospect, what’s your self-evaluation of the Ubaldo deal?

A: I think under the conditions we were in, knowing all the players that were involved, I don’t think Ubaldo would have pitched any better here under the circumstances, so I think we did the best that we could. Doing an autopsy on it, I think we know a little bit more about what we got that didn’t work, but I think we were being offered very similar players from every other club that was involved in the process as you look at those names unfold now throughout their careers.

But I don’t think it would have changed the fact that Ubaldo had to be moved from our situation simply because of where it had gotten to. I feel bad that it had gotten to that point. I’m not sure why, to this day, that it did. But that’s a choice he made.

Q: Alex White, what happened there, before he got hurt last year?

A: I think one of the things that we’re really beginning to bear down and understand is that a quality major league starter has tremendous balance, rhythm and timing in their delivery. I think in Alex’s case, he never really had that. He did a lot of things on effort and competitiveness, but it was very difficult for him to duplicate his delivery. I think he would have ended up being a bullpen guy for us, probably a halfway-decent one, too, depending upon how he adapted to the role. But I think in that case as a kid that came with a lot of accolades, that was rushed to the big leagues, that never really figured out his delivery and how to pitch, I think he got overwhelmed at the big league level and then, predictably with that kind of delivery, he blew out.

Q: I know you admired his competitiveness when you first got to know him. As much as the game has turned to statistical analytics, how much do intangibles like his matter?

A: It’s called the human analytics. I think human analytics are just as important as statistical analytics. Hard to measure it because there’s no statistical formula for that, but really understanding what’s inside a guy is actually more important than what comes out of a guy because that’s the only way you know if you’ve got a winning player on your hands.

Like Michael Cuddyer’s case. He’s a perfect example of a guy that gets every little bit out of whatever ability he has and does it solely related to winning that game that night. It’s problematic in the whole industry right now, trying to find those kind of guys because it starts at a very early age with the entitlement factor. So when kids get put into the game based upon what the game owes them rather than the understanding of how appreciative they are of the opportunity, it creates an uphill battle right away. So I think it’s really important in our development system that we address a lot of the issues that we are now addressing as it relates to creating that tougher player that understands how to play for his team rather than play for himself.

Q: And how do you do that?

A: It’s a grind every single night.

Q: Would you agree with my characterization that your team is, overall, certain exceptions notwithstanding, soft? Mentally soft?

A: I would agree with you that our team could be a lot tougher.

Q: So how do you go about doing that?

A: Trying to create as much as you can within the mix of players you bring in as many guys as you possibly can who emulate that, who show up every single day with that being their mindset. That’s part of the reason for bringing (LaTroy) Hawkins back here.

Q: Do you not think that your stars have to, at least one of them, have to reflect that?

A: I think these are better questions for Walt (Weiss) and Bill rather than me, but I saw, personally, tremendous growth from Tulo in that area last year. I thought he started taking on that persona a little bit more. But there’s no doubt our best players have to be the best players in every way, shape or form, both in their production and how they make other players better.

Q: Let me ask you about Dexter Fowler. What’s his status?

A: Well, I think Dexter right now has got a big year in front of him. Whether that’s with us or whether that’s with somebody else at this point in time is too hard to say. I think it’s fair to say we are more willing to listen to calls about Dexter than we might have been in the past. He has a lot to prove this year within the industry. He’s got to show up and he’s got to do that.

Q: What are the considerations in your mind as to whether he will be here?

A: Like everything else we look at with our players, is there value out there that makes us a better team in the aggregate? So the same process that would go with any player would go with Dexter.

Q: You moved CarGo to left field in part because you didn’t want the stress and space of center field affecting his offense. If Dexter were gone, would you be comfortable moving CarGo back or would you go look for another center fielder?

A: Center fielders are really hard to find. I don’t think we’d find anybody that’s got better than CarGo’s skill set anywhere. Everything comes with risks, so I think you have to measure what you’re getting back against that risk that you just mentioned before you actually did anything. As far as CarGo’s skill set, he can play any position in the outfield, and he’s had trouble staying healthy in left, too.

Q: Has anything about Dexter disappointed you?

A: Dexter’s a great kid and he knows that we all feel that way about him. But I think he’s got to get tougher. No doubt. He’s got to show up and play with an edge every day, not just when he thinks he has to. It’s got to be that edge that he brings every day. He’s got to be a passionate competitor in the game. He has to love the game. He’s got to compete because he loves the game and he loves his teammates and he wants to win. It can’t be for anything the game provides. It’s got to be for those reasons.

Q: You’ve had three disappointing seasons in a row. What would you like to say to fans that are not hurling things at you?

A: I don’t think anybody in this organization is more disappointed in the way we’ve performed than me. I’m as big a competitor as anybody. But I think there are reasons why the years happened the way that they did. I think windows open and close. It took us really a long time in ’03, ’04, ’05 and ’06 to create a window for ’07, ’08, ’09 and ’10, with ’08 being a bad year in there, but the other three being good years. And we’re working real hard to create that window again right now and hopefully have it stay open a little bit longer than the last one. There are windows in market sizes across all sports — specifically baseball more than anything, but I think hockey is a little bit similar — that open and close. I think we could have been a lot better last year if Tulo didn’t go down for that long a stretch of time, but I don’t think we still would have been good enough to win.

I think we sit here today with a team that has the chance to win more games than we lose, but I think we’ve still got a ways to go before we can say we’re going to win a World Series. A lot of things would have to go right for us, in our development of certain players and the maturation and improvement of players that we currently have at the big league level.

Q: Any sense of how active you’ll be over the next several months?

A: Well, we’ve tried to be active. We’ve been aggressive on a ton of different fronts. It’s really hard to make trades and, in this market, it’s really hard to sign free agents. So we’re going to continue to be aggressive and we’ll try to build the team in aggregate, not just necessarily add individual stars. We’re trying to add the right kind of players into the mix.

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November 25, 2013

Peyton Manning’s kryptonite

By Dave Krieger

Call it some kind of weird, backwards karma. Rahim Moore was the apparent goat the last time the Broncos played in a freezer, at home in the playoffs last season, even though Tony Carter was at least as responsible for the catastrophic play.

Almost a year later, Carter was the apparent goat in another blisteringly cold game, even though Wes Welker was probably more responsible for the catastrophic play.

“I’ve got to get to him earlier and tell him and get those guys out of the way if I’m not going to make the catch,” Welker acknowledged, referring to the Marx Bros. routine that handed the game to the New England Patriots. “I was a little bit in between and you can’t be that way.”

Welker was back there to receive the final punt in overtime at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, where the Patriots play, because Trindon Holliday, the Broncos’ usual punt returner, had already muffed one at the end of the first half. That became the first of the Broncos’ four turnovers, but only five seconds remained before intermission, so it didn’t seem to matter.

After all, the Broncos had turned three New England turnovers into scores and led 24-0 at halftime. As if satisfying a cosmic need for symmetry, the Patriots did the same to the Broncos after halftime, catching up and taking the lead with 31 consecutive points, then giving up a late touchdown to set up overtime.

With a little more than three minutes remaining in the extra period, the Broncos forced the Patriots to punt for the sixth time in the game and the second in overtime. Because of the wind, Welker decided at the last minute not to risk trying to catch the ball. He tried to wave his teammates off, but it was too late for Carter to find the ball in the air. As the backup defensive back tried to flee the scene, the ball landed right next to him and bounced off his leg. The Patriots recovered at the Broncos’ 13-yard line. Two plays later, Stephen Gostkowski kicked the winning field goal in a 34-31 victory.

“It’s just one of those freakish things that happens in football,” Carter said. “The ball took a bad bounce and obviously, you know, we were all trying to get out of the way. It just so happened to hit me and they recovered and it set them up for a field goal, so it was a big play in the game and just one of those things you wish you could take back.”

The ball gets hard and slick in frigid conditions. Both teams had trouble holding on. The Broncos fumbled five times, losing three. The Patriots fumbled six times, also losing three. All New England’s giveaways came in the first half. Except for the Holliday muff, all of Denver’s — two more lost fumbles and a Peyton Manning interception deep in his own territory — came after intermission.

“Really good first half for us, really good second half for them, and back and forth in the overtime,” said Broncos interim coach Jack Del Rio, offering the CliffsNotes. “I thought we had a shot, really felt confident we were going to pull it out. They ended up making a play there at the end and getting a field goal up and won the game, so it was really a tale of two halves for us.”

Patriots coach Bill Belichick told a similar story with a different ending:

“I thought we were moving the ball pretty well in the first half, but we turned it over. We couldn’t finish the drives. And they ended up not only with the ball, but one time they ended up with a touchdown. You can’t move the ball when you’re losing it. We’ve got to hang on to it. So, once we started doing that and converting a few third downs, we had some plays in the red area.”

This makes the Broncos 0-for-2 in spectacularly cold games during the Peyton Manning Era. The veteran quarterback has been sub-par in both.

Well, you might say, that’s only natural. It’s harder to play quarterback in conditions more commonly found on Jupiter. Just one problem with this narrative: They didn’t affect Manning’s counterpart nearly as much in either case. Baltimore’s Joe Flacco had a passer rating of 116.2 in that playoff game last season; Manning’s was 88.3.

Sunday, Tom Brady threw for 344 yards, three touchdowns and a passer rating of 107.4. Manning threw for 150 yards, by far his lowest total of the season, two touchdowns, that interception, and a rating of 70.4, also his lowest of the season.

Manning has long had a reputation for struggling in adverse weather conditions, in part because he was stereotyped as an “indoor” quarterback during the 14 seasons he played all his home games inside a dome in Indianapolis. I didn’t cover him back then, so I don’t really know if that reputation was justified.

I do know the Ravens were convinced Manning couldn’t throw the ball down the field in the frigid playoff game last January because former Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo told us so on the radio not long ago. At the time, Manning explained that the Ravens’ two-deep zone defense forced him to throw shorter routes to his backs and tight ends, even though the stat sheet showed he threw to his wideouts more often than to his backs and tight ends combined.

Sunday, his explanation for the first pedestrian stat line of his season was that the running game was going so well. Certainly, that was true. Knowshon Moreno carried 37 times for 224 yards, the third-highest total in Broncos history (behind Mike Anderson, who had 251 at New Orleans in 2000, and Clinton Portis, who posted 228 against Arizona in 2002).

When Manning was asked Sunday night about the effect of the conditions on his passing, this was his reply:

“Like I said, our running game was working, so that’s what we were going with. When you’re running the ball well, that’s a good thing for the offense. Just, when you turn it over and give them two short fields, that’s disappointing. That’s not good execution. So that’s kind of the way that worked out.”

It’s not altogether clear which short fields he was talking about because the Broncos gave the Patriots two in the second half — on a Montee Ball fumble and the Manning interception — and a third at the end of overtime. What he didn’t mention were the five Broncos possessions after intermission that ended in punts. There must have been a few moments in there where a nicely-thrown pass could have kept a drive alive, no matter how well the running game was working.

Manning won’t go there. He just frowns and deflects questions about the conditions. Everybody else acknowledged the effects, particularly that of the wind, which caused Belichick to give the Broncos the ball to begin overtime so that the Patriots might have the wind at their backs.

“It was a strong wind,” Belichick explained. “I just felt like the wind would be an advantage if we could keep them out of the end zone on that first drive. So, we were able to do that. The wind was significant in the game.”

Manning’s performance in these cold-weather games increases speculation that in the two years since he underwent spinal fusion surgery, the nerve regeneration in his arm and hand is adequate for routine conditions but still inadequate for extremely cold weather. This may or may not be true, but the speculation will continue until he dominates a cold-weather game the way he has dominated so many warm-weather games over the past two seasons.

For all the drama of Sunday night’s clash — Brady is now 10-4 against Manning all time, for those keeping score, which is pretty much everybody — it didn’t change the Broncos’ landscape much at all. Obligingly, the Chiefs also lost, to San Diego, so the Broncos remain in a nominal tie with their AFC West rivals going into their rematch this Sunday in Kansas City. They are still one game better than New England — 9-2 versus 8-3 — and this loss will come into play in postseason seeding only if they end up with the same record.

It is true, of course, as Manning pointed out, that even after all the mistakes by both teams, if the Broncos don’t screw up that final Patriots punt, they have the ball with about three minutes left and an opportunity to win the game or, at least, prevent Brady from doing so by running out the clock.

“Still felt like we had a chance, getting the ball there at the very end,” Manning said. “I thought we were going to have the ball last and we were going to score and win the game or I guess it could have ended in a tie. So I hated the way that ended and not getting a chance there to get our hands on the ball.”

The Broncos had two decent drives in overtime. One was undermined by an offensive pass interference call against Eric Decker that Manning called “very disappointing,” and the other ended in a decision to punt with the ball at the New England 37-yard line and not quite five minutes remaining.

“We just were probably five yards short of where we needed to get to to have a realistic shot of making a field goal,” Del Rio said. Had the wind been at the Broncos’ backs, Del Rio said he might have sent Matt Prater out to attempt a game-winning field goal. Against the wind, he said special teams coordinator Jeff Rodgers told him a 53-yard attempt was too far.

The game had enough subplots for a Russian novel, including a first-half cameo by a brilliant Broncos defense that left for intermission and never came back. In the end, all anyone is likely to remember is that the Broncos could not hold a 24-point lead and that Manning, the four-time most valuable player and certain Hall-of-Famer, was reduced to an ordinary quarterback in the blustery conditions.

More than ever, the Broncos’ Super Bowl hopes seem to hinge not only on all the things that must normally go right to be the last team standing, but also on environmental conditions that don’t rob their superstar of his powers.

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November 18, 2013

Behind a determined, hobbled quarterback, Broncos hold serve

By Dave Krieger

For the entire 21st century — all thirteen years of it — many folks in Denver with a sense of history have decried the replacement of venerable Mile High Stadium with its thoroughly modern, multi-revenue-streamed, marble-clad successor.

Sure, it allowed the Broncos to remain economically competitive with their peers, all of which were doing the same thing, but the thunder was gone, the shake, rattle and roll, the whole erector set bouncing thing that freaked out novice national broadcasters every time.

Sunday night, it was back. Well, maybe not the erector set bounce, but everything else. The 77,076 who packed the place, many of whom came early and spent the cool, sunny afternoon in sweet anticipation, gave the visiting Kansas City Chiefs a preview of the fourth quarter in the first, roaring and stomping from their very first snap, which, not coincidentally, turned into a penalty for a false start.

In a battle for first place between a highly-admired 8-1 team and a somewhat less admired 9-0 team, the 8-1 team not only won, it also kept its quarterback upright throughout, no small feat against a defense that had sacked opposing quarterbacks more often than any other.

For the Broncos, keeping Peyton Manning upright is the overarching goal because if the 37-year-old quarterback is lost, so is the season. This is the PFM window, and the Broncos have no chance to crawl through it without PFM.

Wearing a brace on the right ankle he re-injured last week in San Diego, Manning and offensive coordinator Adam Gase hobbled a fine line between risking Manning’s health on the one hand and playing it too close to the vest on the other. They ran the ball more than usual and Manning threw fewer touchdown passes than usual. But the Broncos won, 27-17, pulling them into a tie with the Chiefs for now.

“I worked hard all week to get ready to play physically, and certainly, our protection was excellent the entire game,” Manning told KOA afterward.

The Chiefs’ capable duo of edge pass rushers, Tamba Hali and Justin Houston, came into the game with 20 quarterback sacks between them and left with the same number.

“I thought Peyton did a good job getting the ball out fast, and I thought he worked the pocket pretty well,” said Chiefs coach Andy Reid. “There were times where we had pressure and you saw him slide and throw opposite (side), which isn’t an easy thing to do. He’s a pretty good quarterback. He did that and got away with a couple that most guys wouldn’t be able to get away with. But listen, we can do a better job there. We can get more pressure on him, and we’ll work on that.”

For the second consecutive week, the Broncos forced an AFC West opponent to settle for a field goal at a key moment, in this case after a first-and-goal at the Broncos’ 2-yard line. Meanwhile, the Broncos were doing what they’ve done all year — scoring touchdowns.

“I thought our red zone was outstanding,” Manning said after completing 24 of 40 passes for 323 yards and a touchdown. “This team (Kansas City) has been excellent in the red zone. They’ve held a lot of teams to field goals. That has been a big reason why they’ve been winning games. Teams have driven the ball, and they get down there and get three points (or) a turnover down there. The fact we were able to get three touchdowns down in the red zone and the two field goals by Matt (Prater), that was enough to win. That’s something we work on a lot. I thought that was critical. Two weeks in a row, our red zone has been critical.”

One intriguing aspect of the game was the Chiefs’ defensive game plan. In March, they announced they had signed Sean Smith, a big, physical cornerback, to join the accomplished Brandon Flowers in their defensive backfield. This was widely explained as a chess move to defend the Broncos’ Demaryius Thomas, a wide receiver too big and strong and fast to cover with a traditional, small defensive back.

So if it surprised no one else, it surprised me to look up early in the game and see the Chiefs allowing the Broncos to dictate the matchups in their defensive backfield. Rather than have Smith shadow Thomas wherever he went, they had Smith stick to his right cornerback position and cover whoever the Broncos split wide left.

Unsurprisingly, the Broncos sent Eric Decker over there early and deployed Thomas to the opposite side. With Flowers inside covering Wes Welker, rookie Marcus Cooper repeatedly found himself in man-to-man coverage against the most dangerous receiver on the field.

It didn’t take long for Manning to take advantage, hitting DT with a pass down the right sideline that flew almost 50 yards in the air and went for 70 before safety Quintin Demps finally pushed Thomas out of bounds. Two plays later, tight end Julius Thomas caught a short slant for a touchdown and the Broncos had a 10-0 lead.

This was exactly the scenario the low-scoring Chiefs could not abide. Playing catch-up is not their strength.

With the two teams scheduled to meet again in Kansas City in just two weeks, no one was going to disclose anything of even remote strategic significance. But you have to try, so I asked Manning if he expected Smith to shadow Thomas or stick to the right defensive side.

“They’ve done both,” he said. “Certainly, they’ve rotated different guys in the secondary. They’ve had some different guys playing than were playing earlier in the season. Every game you’re never quite sure how their rotation is going to be.”

Cooper, a seventh-round draft choice waived by the 49ers and picked up by the Chiefs just before the season began, has been surprisingly good considering how often he’s been targeted when the Chiefs play man-to-man defense in the secondary. Still, DT made both of his long catches against him and it will be interesting to see if the Chiefs change their strategy for the rematch in K.C.

Besides quarterback sacks, turnovers were the Chiefs’ other strength in building that 9-0 record. They got one early on a fumbled exchange between Manning and rookie running back Montee Ball deep in the Broncos’ territory. But the Denver defense got the ball back on the very next play when linebacker Danny Trevathan separated it from Chiefs fullback Anthony Sherman. So the turnovers canceled out. With neither sacks nor turnovers, the Chiefs couldn’t keep up.

They did manage an 80-yard touchdown drive spanning the end of the first and beginning of the second quarter, and then a 79-yard march on their next possession. That one-yard difference turned out to be pretty important. The Broncos’ much-maligned defense kept the visitors out of the end zone the second time, forcing them to kick a field goal.

“The defense came up big in spurts, and in the end it was enough,” interim head coach Jack Del Rio told KOA.

Turned out, the experts were pretty much on it. Even though the Chiefs came in with a better record, oddsmakers made the Broncos an 8-point favorite, mostly because the Chiefs hadn’t beaten anybody good. The Broncos had the league’s best offense, the Chiefs its best defense.

The Broncos’ 27 points were their lowest output of the season, although just barely, so the Chiefs defense did about as much as it could be expected to do. The offense, managed ably but soporifically by Alex Smith, did the same.

For all the excitement at the replica of the old barn off Federal Boulevard, this thing was little more than a foreword. The next two weekends will offer the Broncos their greatest challenge of the season — consecutive road games against New England and these same Chiefs.

“From a scheduling standpoint, I’m not sure I’ve ever done that before,” Manning told KOA. “There’ll be great familiarity between both teams. Unfortunately, we’ve got a really good team we’ve got to play in between.”

Finishing ahead of the Chiefs is necessary to win the division, a route that offers a slightly smoother road in the postseason, at least in theory. But if the Broncos were to lose these next two, the advantage bestowed by Sunday night’s win would likely disappear.

So this was a necessary but insufficient condition to get where the Broncos want to go.

“We knew when the schedule came out that these were going to be three critical games,” Manning said. “We hoped they were going to be critical. We hoped they were going to matter, because that meant we had taken care of business early in the season. So this was an excellent win. We’ll enjoy it tonight. We’ll be in there tomorrow studying this one and getting a head start on New England.”

As the players and coaches left the field Sunday night, Del Rio circled back to find Gase and congratulate him. Normally, when head coach John Fox is about, these two are peers, coordinating the offensive and defensive game plans. When you consider that they’ve managed these last two division victories in the absence of their head coach, you can understand the joy they felt at keeping the team rolling while Fox recovers from open heart surgery.

“Great, great night of football,” said an enthused Del Rio. “Two very good football teams going at each other. I thought our fans were tremendous. I was told on the way in we only had 74 no-shows, which means that place was full and rocking. It was awesome.”

Imagine how happy he’ll be if they’re still in first place the next time they get to play there.

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November 3, 2013

Sunshine, lollipops and one black cloud

By Dave Krieger

Hang around the Avalanche long enough, especially on a Saturday night when franchise royalty is on hand, and you’re tempted to ignore the one dark cloud and hope it goes away.

That’s what the Avs are doing, and they’re doing it exceptionally well. Barely 48 hours after starting goaltender Semyon Varlamov surrendered to police and spent a night in jail on domestic violence charges, the Avs won both ends of their first set of back-to-back games of the season, with Varlamov in net for the first.

The Avs are now riding their second six-game winning streak of the year and they’ve played just 13 times. The turnaround in the team’s performance since Patrick Roy took over as head coach is something pretty close to miraculous. After surrendering 152 goals in 48 games last season with the same goaltending tandem — Varlamov and veteran J.S. Giguere — the Avs have surrendered just 19 in 13 so far.

Giguere, who got the win Saturday night and has given up three goals in four games, said all three stars of the game could have been Avalanche defensemen, quite an endorsement of a group much maligned just a year ago. Roy always makes sure to credit the back-checking and tracking work of his forwards, a key part of his strategic approach.

Hockey is a game prone at times to mythic themes, and Saturday night was one of those times. When Roy’s first game as an NHL coach against his original team, the Canadiens, is a secondary story, there’s a lot going on.

The Avs are very fond of tribute ceremonies and enormous paintings. The decision to raise defenseman Adam Foote’s jersey to the rafters gave them an opportunity to conduct one of the former and commission two of the latter. It also served as a reminder of the vision Roy and executive vice president Joe Sakic are trying to translate into trophies for a second time. With Peter Forsberg, Ray Bourque and Alexei Gusarov in the house, there were plenty of role models around.

This year’s entire squad was out early for the ceremony. They were reminded that they aren’t the only young team to suffer through trying times before finding their stride. Foote caught the end of the lean years in Quebec before moving with the organization to Denver in 1995 and winning Stanley Cup championships in 1996 and 2001. He’s now working as a defensive consultant with the Avs, so I asked if he saw parallels.

“Yeah, for sure there are,” he said. “I think the leadership with Roy and Joe is huge, very calming for them, just like they were as leaders for us. They believe in what they’re going to do and this confidence just floats out into the room. The players, I think, can sense it.

“When Roy came to our team, traded from Montreal, he brought accountability to the locker room. It doesn’t matter what the professional sport is. You can’t win, the coach, the GM, the owner, they can’t hold you accountable. It’s got to come within the locker room, and he taught us that. That was probably one thing we were missing. Him and Mike Keane. Mike Keane was an unreal leader.

“But I do see this young group, they went through some tough times like we did in Quebec. I know Joe wouldn’t do it, or Patrick, if they didn’t have a goal in mind, and that’s to bring a Cup back.”

They’re a long way from that, of course, but they’re playing sensational hockey right now. “For us, we haven’t done anything yet,” said Gabriel Landeskog, the talented Swedish power forward who scored one goal Saturday night, set up another and is still three weeks from his 21st birthday. “We’re just getting going.”

At the other end of the spectrum is the 36-year-old Giguere, a Conn Smythe trophy winner and Stanley Cup champion himself in his younger days. When your starting goaltender spends a night in jail, attention naturally turns to his backup. Giguere is the best interview in the room, a smart, thoughtful player willing to speak his mind, as he did last spring when he ripped unnamed teammates for thinking more about summer vacation than finishing the season strong.

But questions about Varlamov make him uncomfortable, as they do his teammates and club officials. What are they going to say? They support their teammate. These are only allegations at this point. Let the process play out.

We won’t even know how serious that process is likely to be until the Denver district attorney decides what if any formal charges to file. The charges on the arrest warrant were pretty serious — a felony kidnapping count and a misdemeanor assault charge — but there’s no way to know if the DA’s charges will follow suit.

If charges are filed, it’s hard to imagine the legal process working quickly enough to endanger Varlamov’s availability to the Avalanche this season, so long as the club continues to stand by him. And so far, there doesn’t appear to be much public relations risk of standing by him. So when a national reporter asked Giguere if he could understand some fans being happy he was in goal Saturday night rather than Varlamov, he declined comment.

Still, there’s a legitimate hockey question about Giguere’s playing time simply because he’s been nearly perfect so far. As good as Varlamov has been, Giguere has been even better. The lone goal he gave up in Saturday’s 4-1 victory over Montreal was just the third he’s surrendered this season in four starts.

The year Roy turned 36, he started 63 games for the Avs and put up a goals-against average of 1.94, the only time in his career he was below 2. He also had a career-best nine shutouts. I’d been meaning to ask Giguere if he thought he was in good enough shape to play more, but asking him Saturday gave the question Varlamov overtones and he handled it like a live grenade.

“I’m satisfied with my role right now,” he said. “It’s a role that fits my body well right now, at my age. I’m 100 percent behind Varly and 100 percent happy with the ice time I have. If need be, if I need to play more, I’ll be ready for that, but I told Patrick, ‘I’ll be happy with whatever you give me.’ This is what it is to be a backup and you’ve just got to take it a day at a time.”

The team has generally taken the approach of not commenting on the Varlamov legal matter, but Roy did answer one question after Saturday’s game. He was asked whether his response to the Varlamov allegations — to put him back in net immediately, about 36 hours after he got out of jail — was informed by his own experience, back in 2000, when he was arrested for domestic violence after police responded to a 911 hangup call from his wife at the time. They found physical damage to the house and took Roy into custody. There was never any evidence of injury to his wife, just to a door in the house, so charges were dismissed.

“I was hoping never to have to answer that question again, but the answer is yes,” Roy said. “And I guess Varly is like me, I mean, appreciates that nobody is making a judgment. The best article I think was written by Terry Frei and he said let’s not make a judgment before the process is done and I thought that was something I appreciated at the time. And I’m sure Varly appreciates seeing that support from our fans and a lot of people around him.”

In this case, the police report confirmed bruises on Varlamov’s girlfriend, Evgenia Vavinyuk, consistent with a physical encounter. So this might be more complicated than Roy’s case, but we’ll know soon enough how Denver DA Mitch Morrissey sees it.

Until then, the goaltending rotation will remain what it has been. Varlamov, 25, has started nine games and has a record of 8-1 with a goals-against average of 1.78. Giguere is 4-0 with a GAA of 0.75.

“He looks like a 25-year-old,” Roy said of Giguere. “I saw him this summer and he was working so hard. Honestly, when you work that hard, eventually it’s going to pay off. That’s what our team does. Our team works hard night after night and we’ve been consistent in our effort which is, I think, one of the reasons why we have the results that we have. And our goaltenders are a big part of it as well. But Jiggy’s been working so hard. He certainly deserves a lot of credit for what’s going on for him right now. It’s fun to see it.”

The renaissance of the Avalanche under Roy is the NHL’s best early-season story. Except for that black cloud, the Sakic-Roy management era couldn’t be off to a better start.

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November 2, 2013

A rough start for Brian Shaw

By Dave Krieger

I first met Brian Shaw 24 years ago, in October 1989, at a banquet in Rome honoring the Nuggets, that year’s NBA entry in the McDonald’s Open, a four-team bracket during the preseason that passed for international competition at the time.

Longtime Nuggets fans may remember that international road trip — coach Doug Moe stood for most of the trans-Atlantic flight because he hadn’t yet discovered Valium for his flying anxiety — as coinciding with former owner Sidney Shlenker’s increasingly desperate attempts to sell the franchise.

A couple of young American players had taken Italy by storm, choosing the Italian pro league over the NBA. Danny Ferry, the second overall pick in the NBA draft that year, and Shaw, a first-round pick the previous year who spurned the Boston Celtics’ qualifying offer, were instant celebrities. They were validating European basketball.

I got an opportunity to speak with them for only a few minutes at that banquet. Like John Elway six years earlier, Ferry didn’t want to play for the flaky owner who had drafted him, in this case Donald Sterling of the Los Angeles Clippers. Shaw, then 23, had a more complicated tale. Only one quote from our conversation made the Rocky Mountain News on Oct. 22, 1989:

“The chance for security for me and my family was really important. I want to eventually go back.”

Nearly a quarter-century later, Shaw offered more detail on the radio show last summer, just after being hired to replace George Karl as the Nuggets’ head coach:

“When I got drafted by the Celtics the year before that, in ’88, they were over the salary cap and I was only able to make the minimum for a first-round pick. So what I did was I only signed a one-year deal, which everybody kind of said was crazy, but I felt confident in my ability that I’d have a good showing my rookie year and so it made me immediately a restricted free agent my second year.

“So basically the Celtics came back and they just gave me a qualifying offer and they was playing hardball. Fortunately for me, Danny Ferry had just gotten drafted by the Clippers. He didn’t want to go play for them. Our owner over in Italy, a very wealthy man, offered Danny $2 million to come over there and play for a season, which was unheard of over there. I think at the time Bob McAdoo was the highest-paid player in Europe and he was making about $400,000.

“So I was making $150,000, that’s what I made my rookie season. So this owner, he said he wanted to make a splash. At that time, most NBA players only went over there at the end of their NBA careers. He wanted to get some young, first-round picks to come over and kind of change things up. So he offered Danny Ferry $2 million and he offered me a million dollars to come over, which took me over all the guys who were drafted in front of me.” Shaw was the 24th overall pick in ’88, out of UC-Santa Barbara.

“So, 35-game season, as opposed to 82 here, and Boston still was playing hardball with me, so I said, hey, basketball is basketball, and I went over and played a year there as a teammate with Danny Ferry and had a great, great experience. No regrets, learned a lot, and it made Boston, in my mind, come to their senses, and they came back with a fair offer. So I came back the next season.”

Shaw returned to a four-year, $5.5 million contract and played in the association until he was 36.

The point of the story is that Shaw has always been a bright and independent sort, which are excellent qualities in a head coach. It’s beginning to look like he will need all of that and more. His hiring was only one part of owner Josh Kroenke’s deconstruction of a 57-win team.

“I think I called it stupid,” Karl told me after the June meeting with Kroenke at which he was fired. He concluded that the young Kroenke, Stan’s son and the man in charge, thought winning was easy and had come to take for granted the Nuggets’ regular-season excellence. After all, Karl had been the coach throughout the younger Kroenke’s tenure as an executive with the team.

The fact that I disagreed with the decision to fire Karl doesn’t mean I want Shaw to fail. Quite the opposite. There are few people on Earth more willing to engage in conversation about basketball, besides Moe and Karl, of course, especially Moe when trapped on an airplane back in the days before they made you evacuate the galley and sit down.

But the decision to fire Karl was paired with a misread of free agent Andre Iguodala, who Kroenke thought would accept an offer to stay until the day he signed with Golden State. General manager Masai Ujiri’s departure for Toronto just before Karl’s firing left the Nuggets scrambling to adjust to Iguodala’s defection with a front office in flux.

New GM Tim Connelly collected a random sample of the available journeymen free agents, from Nate Robinson and Randy Foye in the backcourt to J.J. Hickson and Darrell Arthur up front, the latter in trade for Kosta Koufos, the center dispatched to make room in the starting lineup for JaVale McGee, who had averaged 18 minutes off the bench for Karl.

It’s been only two games. Last year’s team was not only 0-2 but also 0-3. With a road-loaded front end of the schedule, Karl’s last Nuggets team was 11-12 in mid December before taking off. So, yeah, it’s very early.

Still, a year ago’s 0-2 was a little different. Except for LeBron James and the Heat, the Nuggets won all their early home games. They just didn’t have many of them.

When they lost to Portland 113-98 Friday night, it was their first loss of a home opener in five years and broke a 23-game home regular-season winning streak. It was their first regular-season loss at the Pepsi Center since last January. At 38-3, they were the NBA’s best home team last season.

Like Moe before him, Karl took advantage of the environmental advantage provided by the mile-high elevation, not to mention the time change for visiting teams on back-to-backs from the west coast. So it was strange to see the Nuggets looking exhausted and the visiting Trail Blazers looking invigorated Friday night.

“Our team looked very tired, just to be honest with you, from the jump, especially our bigs,” Shaw said. “They just looked winded. (The Blazers) looked like they’re the team that play in the altitude and we were the team that was coming in on the second night of a back-to-back, the way we came out tonight.”

The rationale for firing the coach of a 57-win team was the history of first-round playoff exits. So Shaw came in with a mandate to coach a style more conducive to postseason success, meaning slower and more half-court oriented, to better suit the style characteristic of the postseason.

The irony is that Karl’s final first-round exit, the one that broke the camel’s back, was to a team that didn’t attempt to slow down the Nuggets at all. The Warriors beat the Nuggets at their own game, mainly because they shot the ball better — .494 from the floor, .404 from three and .785 from the line, compared to the Nuggets’ .438, .311 and .730.

This defeat might have been interpreted as reflecting an overemphasis on athleticism and underemphasis on skills in assembling the roster. Or it might have been interpreted as the consequence of an unfortunate late-season knee injury to forward Danilo Gallinari, one of the Nuggets’ best shooters and a big forward whose ability to shoot from long distance spreads the defense and creates lanes for athletes who want to get to the rim. Or it might have been interpreted as bad luck, running into a hot team.

It wasn’t. It was interpreted as further proof that Karl was not a coach for the postseason. But the question remained: Did the Nuggets overachieve in the regular season or underachieve in the postseason?

When Shaw arrived, he talked about playing inside-out — a more traditional half-court game in which the point guard’s first and preferred option is to toss the ball inside to a big man in or around the low post. He can shoot it or pass to an open man, depending on how the defense reacts. Shaw also talked about making defense the team’s signature.

After leading the association in scoring a year ago at 106 points per game, the Nuggets under Shaw are 22nd through two games at 93 per, consistent with their scoring average during the preseason. They have lost to a pair of teams in Sacramento and Portland that are not expected to make the playoffs this year. And they seem to have lost the high-flying athleticism that made them so entertaining under Karl.

More to the point, a large part of the basis both for firing Karl and Shaw’s new offense — the talented, enigmatic McGee — has so far been pretty much the guy Karl thought he was — not ready for prime time.

Starting at center, he played 10 minutes in the opener, getting in early foul trouble, and 13 on Friday night, finishing with six points, three rebounds and one blocked shot. All six players who came off the bench, in addition to the other four starters, played more minutes than he did.

Why?

“His physicality,” Shaw said. “And part of that is his wind as well. He was one of the guys that at the beginning of the game just looked gassed out there on the floor. We talked about, when the shots go up, he can’t just turn around and go follow the flight of the ball. He’s got to put a body on somebody. The guys that he plays at the center position usually outweigh him. He thinks that with his length he can just go and get the ball, but they just kind of wedge him underneath the basket. We’ll look at film and show him and just keep working with him on it, but his stamina has to get better and his physicality has to raise up a few notches.”

As Karl often pointed out, deploying McGee and power forward Kenneth Faried at the same time is a prescription for defensive chaos, and not necessarily in a good way. So Shaw began the season with Faried coming off the bench as he recovered from a strained hamstring.

“He played with the kind of energy that people around here are accustomed to him playing with,” Shaw said after Faried collected 11 rebounds in 24 minutes off the bench against the Blazers. “He always plays with a lot of heart. That’s what I wanted to see out of him. I talked about before the game, if it looked like he was getting that bounce back into game shape that I would take a look at putting him back in the starting lineup.”

The Nuggets abandoned the inside-out thing early Friday night, in part because McGee was seldom available — although he did hit a sweet left-handed baseline hook shot in one of those flashes that make you yearn for more — and in part because they were behind early. In the fourth quarter, as part of a spirited but futile comeback attempt, Shaw did what Karl did so often: He went small. With guards Ty Lawson, Nate Robinson and Randy Foye on the floor together, his team made a run. Suffice it to say that’s not a lineup that’s going to make defense your team signature.

“You can’t even blame the system, because he’s stepping away from it,” Lawson said afterward. “We’re not going into the post as much as he’s talking about or doing the elbow catch. So it’s all on us. Today we played like we did last year — pick-and-rolls, drags, into the basket. We weren’t hitting shots. It was a tough night for us.”

“We knew this was going to be a process,” Shaw said. “The way we’re playing isn’t the problem, I don’t think. Tonight, defense was the problem. Sixty-four points in the first half. They finished 14 for 22 from the three-point line and I would say probably 16 or 18 of those three-point shots were uncontested. So it’s more a problem of that than I think the style of play that we’re trying to play.”

In fairness, Iguodala, Gallinari and Wilson Chandler were important pieces of last year’s success. Iguodala is gone and neither Gallo nor Chandler has played yet.

“I’m searching for answers,” Shaw said. “I’m trying to patch, mix and match and patch lineups together to try to see who’s going to bring it for us. . . . But together as a team we’ve just got to find a way. We’ve just got to keep plugging away at it. It’s not the way we wanted to start out the season at 0-2, but it’s where we are right now. We’ve just got to continue to work.”

Implementing a new system with four new players would take some time under the best of circumstances. But the impression the Nuggets have left through their first two games is their talent level isn’t particularly high and their style isn’t particularly interesting — at least until they fall way behind.

This is pretty much the worst of both worlds — becoming less competitive and less entertaining at the same time. Fans don’t seem thrilled with the off-season changes. Although the opener was announced as a sellout, there were plenty of empty seats.

The returns of Gallo and Chandler should help, but it will take all of Shaw’s considerable resourcefulness to get this bunch into the playoffs.

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