The downfall of the Denver Nuggets

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There's plenty of precedent in recent seasons for NBA teams to usher in a new era with first-time, often very young executives and coaches. Yet there's a material difference between the blueprint in Orlando, Philadelphia and Phoenix and the strategy in Denver. The Sixers are flirting with the salary floor, while Orlando and Phoenix have committed well short of $60 million this season. In contrast, the Nuggets' payroll ranks squarely in the top 10, and the team has a corporate imperative to win basketball games. The Suns have managed to straddle the line between frugality and success, but they've simply been far more resourceful, more faithful to an organizational vision and have better taste in basketball players. What we call an embarrassment of riches in Phoenix's backcourt we call a logjam in Denver's frontcourt. The difference is method versus madness.

Kroenke conveys an awareness of all this but dismisses any suggestion that the Nuggets would be better off holding a fire sale. Quite the contrary, the Nuggets have pledged to their fans they're in it to win. And if they circle the drain this season, the NBA draft is always there as salvation for wreckage. In the meantime, he remains devoted to the notion that in the process of anybody mastering anything, there's a point at the beginning when that person is merely proficient. He says that learning the ropes is a natural part of professional maturation, whether that job is the president and governor of the team, its neophyte general manager or its embattled head coach.

But the cruel truth is that patience is a virtue in the NBA, until the day it isn't.