KRIEGER: It's time for Silent Stanley to speak up

By Dave Krieger, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Give Silent Stanley Kroenke credit: By staying out of the public conversation about his basketball team's problems, he has also kept himself out of the line of fire.

And yet, when you examine them, he's right there in the middle of those problems.

As the Nuggets were being broomed from the first round of the playoffs, Kroenke briefly broke his vow of silence to a paper that never calls him Silent Stanley. I'm paraphrasing here:

Everything is great. Great coach, great players, great 50-win season. Next stop, even greater greatness. Now, please excuse me while I go buy a team in the new World Waterquet Association, the sport that combines water polo and croquet. We have a few open dates in the natatorium we're building midway between our soccer stadium and our arena-football building.

OK, I made that last part up. It's just an idea, but if it works out - which, let's face it, it might - I want a piece of the pie.

Sports owners in general tend to be blissfully optimistic about their teams but often with somewhat different timing. Broncos owner Pat Bowlen and Rockies CEO Charlie Monfort are blissfully optimistic before each season.

Afterward, they will generally acknowledge what happened, if not deal with it as forcefully as some fans would like.

To view the Nuggets' season as a success, not winning a single playoff game with the third-highest payroll in the NBA, would suggest Silent Stanley does not have very high standards as a businessman. Because, whatever you think of the Nuggets as a basketball team, as a business, they currently stink.

In December, when Forbes published its business rankings of NBA teams, it rated the Nuggets one of just 10 teams with negative operating income. And that was based on the 2006-07 season, when their payroll was $65 million.

Add another $16 million or $17 million of payroll, slather on $15 million or so of luxury tax, and you've got a loss even a billionaire might notice.

Before last season, Silent Stanley had done a pretty good job of keeping the Nuggets payroll just below the luxury-tax threshold. Once you hit that threshold, every dollar you spend on payroll adds a dollar of tax. Generally speaking, as a businessman, you're going to avoid a 100 percent tax whenever you can.

Silent Stanley accepted this rather dramatic increase in expenses because his front office sold him on the idea that Allen Iverson would constitute the final piece in a championship puzzle. Iverson and the Nuggets as a contender would fill the arena and add a bunch of home playoff games. Maybe not enough to cover a $30 million loss, but, hey, the Larry O'Brien trophy is priceless.

From a basketball point of view, you might be able to make an argument that the Nuggets' first 50-win season in a generation, even with an o-fer postseason, represents progress. From a business point of view, you cannot. Attendance this season increased by 134 fans per game, or 0.7 percent, over last season. The Nuggets hosted two playoff games, just like last year.

Worse, from a business point of view, there's not a lot to be done about it. Firing your coach just costs you more money. When you trade salary in the NBA, you have to take salary back. If the Nuggets let Iverson play out his contract, which has one year remaining, that means another year of eight-figure losses. If they sign him to an extension, it means more than one.

Whether this is enough to make Silent Stanley reconsider the Byzantine structure of the front office that gave him this mess is anybody's guess. But the closest parallel might be the court of Henry VIII, with Bret Bearup as Cromwell, the man with the king's ear, and George Karl, Mark Warkentien and Rex Chapman as the various noblemen at court competing for the king's favor, if not his actual attention.

Silent Stanley set up this convoluted structure as a reaction to the regime of his first general manager, Kiki Vandeweghe. He thought Vandeweghe took too much credit for group decisions. By putting a group in charge, he ensured a group would get credit.

He also ensured no one person would be in charge, and no one person responsible if things went south. It is reminiscent of the final days of the Vandeweghe administration, when other teams had no idea who spoke for the organization - and neither did members of the organization.

The dysfunction on the court is a reflection of the dysfunction in the front office. And only Silent Stanley can fix it. The Nuggets need a general manager who doesn't have to go through a middleman to communicate with the owner.

As a businessman, this much must be clear to Kroenke: What he's doing now isn't working.

• May 14, 2008

  10:28 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  JasonM writes:

  I'm not sure if the writer noticed, but that Nuggets team was 1 and done in the playoffs before Iversons arrival. And they had a pure PG then. Which would suggest that unless the Nuggets change their style of play (actually having offensive and defensive structure) they will have the same results regardless of what players they add or subtract. Its been the same story for five years now.

  It seems as if that organization made a trade for Iverson with no plan in place. You don't make a major trade for a player like that without a plan. They traded away their PG for a SG/combo gaurd and didn't fully address what needed to be done to that team in order for them to be complete. Its sort of ridiculous watching it play out..i'm surprised they were able to win 50 games in that flawed system. Iverson should opt out and leave before they ruin the rest of his career because its more then obvious that organization is not ready to win now, they are just wasting everyones time.

• May 14, 2008

  10:33 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  JasonM writes:

  By the way, a team actually needs players that play the game hard and come to win everynight and a REAL Coach in order to reach the "Larry Obrien trophy". Not a team where half its players show up when they feel like it and a Coach that hardly Coaches. The more I read Denver media, the more I come to realize that half of them know nothing about basketball, Iverson is the least of that teams problems right now, so quit using scapegoats instead of confronting ALL its issues.

• May 15, 2008

  12:37 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  flybys writes:

  Does Denver want to take the next step and become a playoff winner or is it content playing a reality show form of fantasy basketball?

  With all due respect to the front office, it's a jambalaya that's lacking in satisfaction.

  Admit the mistake, even after 50 wins, and get smart fast by hiring an experienced, successful winner for the position. While it would be wonderful to discover the next Joe Dumars, why not ring Jerry West up or look at the front offices of San Antonio, Utah or Toronto (Bryan Colangelo) or go sniff out some retired executives with sparkling resumes.

  Guessing Stan Kroenke can take the pain of the financial hits better if he's winning playoff games. To spend so much and have a product not live up to the hype, not so easy to smile about.

  Give George Steinbrenner and Mark Cuban credit. When playoff success doesn't occur, there's accountability.

• May 15, 2008

  9:32 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  TONE writes:

  Come on people, Stan know exactly what he is doing. He did not make all that money by not knowing what he is doing. If he was to do what every one is telling him to do then he would be making the same kind of money most of you are making, (not millions).

• May 18, 2008

  4:51 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  ravenclaw writes:

  A basketball team is a little like the army - someone has to be in charge. The Nuggets need a GM. I would be embarrassed being one of "the group" not knowing what the others are thinking and/or doing. This is actually an opportune time given the age of some of the players to make trades including AI and/or Melo to get younger players and integrate them with the veterans - but it takes continuity to do this. Get a GM!