3. The Nuggets Have George Karl Disease

The Nuggets, after winning their first five games, have dropped three of four games on the road, and now stand at 6-3 going into tonight’s showdown with the Lakers. As someone who picked the Nuggets to win the NBA title this year, this news is distressing. They should be better than this, and shouldn’t be losing to teams like the Milwaukee Bucks. Looking at the last few box scores, it didn’t make sense to me. And then I saw this, from our Nuggets blog:

On Monday, Karl and I actually debated his quote about how if the Nuggets won half their road games on this six-game trip, it would be deemed “a great success.”  His argument was that if you win half your road games, that’s a great success in the NBA.  And over 41 road games, I agree with him.  My counter, however, was that when you’re playing the Nets (an injury-riddled bad team), the Pacers (an injury-riddled bad team), the Heat (a mediocre team), the Hawks (a tough match up, no question about it), the Bulls (another mediocre team) and the Bucks (an up-and-coming but young team with no bench), anything short of 4-2 can’t be considered “a great success.”

100% agree. The Nuggets are too good of a team to lose games to a team like the Heat or Milwaukee, and even though they escaped in Chicago, they probably should have lost that game too. Who’s to blame when a supremely talented group of players can’t seem to find the motivation to beat up on lesser teams? Hmm….