Karl likely casualty if Nuggets falter

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George Karl knows how these things work. He can hear the hounds baying.The Denver Nuggets headman is coaching an $80 million basketball team and sweating to make the playoffs. Three days after a stirring home victory over the Celtics, it surrendered to the Bulls and Bucks, a pair of Eastern also-rans. Sometimes his team shows up and sometimes it doesn't. When you pull up the usual suspects for that, the coach is at the top of the list."There's no question that our team's up and down performance frustrates a coach," he said the other day."The frustration of the same problems over a two-year period or a three-year period bothers people. When you're losing for doing the same things, sometimes 'stupid' comes to be the word that you evaluate yourself as. But I think if you're going to label us stupid, you'd better label us better, too."He is comparing the record to last season at this point, which is fair enough. On the other hand, when Karl first showed up a little more than three years ago, he took over a 17-25 team and coached it up to 32-8 the rest of the way, finishing with 49 wins. The Nuggets haven't reached that total since, even after acquiring Allen Iverson to play with Carmelo Anthony.For most of his coaching career, Karl has been criticized for being too explosive, getting on his players too much and too publicly. Suddenly, at 56, the question is whether he puts up with too much."The only thing I want my team to realize is what they can be and who they can be," he said. "If I go negative, they're never going to realize who they can be. If I go negative, we're just going to fight each other and beat each other up. Now, am I as tough? There's a change in me, but I don't go crazy in front of the camera because I don't want to. That's not who I want to be."In the locker room, though, I think I've been pretty crazy a couple of times. Now, how many times can you go crazy? This team pushes the limit. I shouldn't have to go in the locker room as many times as I go in the locker room to go crazy. They should have more maturity, to understand that they've got to do this on their own. I can't do it for them."The late Jack McMahon once told Karl a coach can go off on his team no more than six times a year. More than that is counterproductive, he said.By his own count, Karl has exceeded that number already this season. "And most of the time, it has worked," he said. "But beating up your team doesn't work all the time. And sometimes there's a negative flow to the players of today. There's a reaction. Ten years ago, 15 years ago, I don't think there was as much reaction to a coach being angry. Now, sometimes you've got to evaluate what you're going to get."In part, the focus of the Nuggets' failures falls on Karl because you can't fire the players, and in part because it's difficult to assign responsibility in the organization's three-headed front office. Who decided they couldn't afford to bring back point guard Steve Blake? Was it vice president of basketball operations Mark Warkentien? Was it vice president of player personnel Rex Chapman? Was it adviser Bret Bearup? Or was it owner Silent Stanley Kroenke himself, putting his foot down on a payroll already well into luxury tax territory?Who decided all the money should be at the front of the roster, leaving such a short bench?"I don't know of any other coach who could get through to these guys as much as I'm getting through to them," Karl insisted. "They're not the easiest bunch of guys to motivate or coach and fit together. You're playing with two scorers without a point guard a lot of the time. You're playing with big guys that are really talented and really good, but sometimes we don't fit them into the puzzle well."There's just a kind of dichotomy of talent. But when it works it's really fun and really powerful. And I think it's more powerful than it's ever been. Now, it's also ugly at times. There's also points where, wow, what the hell's going on out there?"The Nuggets still have a chance to get it right in time for the postseason, but time is growing short. If they continue playing only when they feel like it, their coach will take much of the blame.At the executive level, that's how the game is played, even if your coach has more than 800 career wins and his last losing season was 20 years ago. It's in the players' hands now. If they want to threaten Karl's job, all they have to do is keep doing what they're doing.(Contact Dave Krieger at kriegerd@rockymountainnews.com.)(Dave Krieger writes for the Rocky Mountain News at www.rockymountainnews.com.)