As Usual, Nuggets Rocky

Talk about your benevolent, if comatose, management: What do you have to do to get fired in this league anymore?

It’s not hard to see why Denver, an incredible hotbed where the Rockies average 74 wins, 88 losses and 3.6 million admissions, Bronco tickets go in wills and the NHL Avalanche sells out regularly, is trying to forget it has an NBA team, the ... uh ...

Oh yeah, the Nuggets.

It has been six farce-filled seasons since they made the playoffs, with Coach Dan Issel quitting, saying he couldn’t take it.... Issel returning as coach and president.... Nick Van Exel pledging his loyalty after Issel gave him a $77-million deal.... Players boycotting practice to let Issel know they’d had it with his screaming.... Van Exel demanding a trade.... Antonio McDyess saying if Nick went, he’d go too.

Last week, as everyone ran around trying to placate Van Exel, Issel ranted at a fan, tossed in an ethnic characterization, was suspended and apologized for his “uncaring and un-Christianlike comment” in a tearful news conference at which he took no questions, having no positives to assert.

As a coach, Issel has a problem: He isn’t very good.

As president, he was actually OK, having rebuilt in a small market with the team up for sale.

However, by the time the new owner, Missouri-based Wal-Mart son-in-law Stan Kroenke, took over, the Nuggets were stalled in the standings and about to stage their mutiny, with team leaders patrolling the parking lot to make sure no one broke ranks and went to practice.

Issel’s problems were only beginning ... or coming home to roost.

He had been obliged to bet the house on a deal with Van Exel, McDyess and their agent, Tony Dutt, in the summer of 1998 when Van Exel had just been exiled to Denver after trying the Lakers’ patience once too often and McDyess was a Phoenix free agent.

Van Exel was volatile, McDyess malleable. Dutt didn’t know it, but he was only along for the ride, as was Issel.

Van Exel and McDyess had become friends on the summer circuit in Houston, where many players go to establish residency and avoid state taxes. There they hung out with John Lucas, then Issel’s assistant.

The next thing you knew, McDyess had fired his agent, hired Dutt and agreed to join Van Exel with the Nuggets, whom McDyess had, only months before, forced to trade him. There he and Van Exel would receive maximum contracts.

Issel further agreed to trade for rookie Keon Clark and to try out one of McDyess’ old Quitman (Miss.) high school teammates, two more of Dutt’s clients.

They still had problems, like the news conference McDyess postponed for a day after another pal, LaPhonso Ellis, told him the Nuggets were treating him badly.

Then there was the raiding party from Phoenix--Jason Kidd, Rex Chapman and George McCloud sitting in a limo outside McNichols Arena--that tried to get McDyess to take a ride before the Nuggets discovered them.

This would have been some dramatic story line, except that having taken over the asylum, the young Nuggets couldn’t figure out how to run it and never rose above 10th in the West.

Van Exel’s good mood went where his moods always go.

As in his Laker days, Van Exel isn’t a bad guy, he just comes off as one. A fiery competitor, he tries to do the right thing but has an awful background, is leery of authority and impossible to coach.

This season, in an ominous sign, he and McDyess fired Dutt, who had put the deal together for them.

Dutt said he was “crushed” to lose McDyess, anyway, noting, “There is no better person that I’ve met than Antonio.”

The season ended before it started when McDyess blew out a knee.

Then Van Exel, averaging 25 points as he tried to carry the load, went off.

Not that anyone begrudged him a little blowup after the trades that sent away players like Clark and Danny Fortson, and draft decisions like Raef LaFrentz over Vince Carter and Dirk Nowitzki.

Of course, Van Exel is signed through 2005, so the Nuggets could have told him to go sit on his hat. Instead, new General Manager Kiki Vandeweghe said he would “take it as a challenge to make him happy.”

That’s some challenge.

Vandeweghe met with Van Exel and said it had been “very positive.”

Said Issel, “If Nick says the same thing today ... then that will surprise me. You have to understand that he had just played four very difficult games in five nights.”

Surprise!

“I’m not nobody’s ‘Yes sir’ boy,” said Van Exel, unrepentant as usual. “If I’m unhappy, I’m unhappy.”

Then they lost to the Hornets, Issel lost it and a local TV crew, following Van Exel off the floor, caught the diatribe, word for word.

In his do-nothing style, Kroenke only suspended Issel, whose departure awaits another day, not far off.

“Here’s what I have to say about political correctness,” said Kroenke’s spokesman, Don Elliman. “Let thee who have never sinned cast the first stone.”

Gee, that has a ring to it.

That takes care of the ethnic slur. The franchise remains lost.

The Nuggets you feel for are the ones who won’t get $4 million in severance, like Issel, or who make $120,000 a game, like Van Exel, but still have to stay.

Faces and Figures

Another weekend, another coach disappears: Dave Cowens was fired by the Warriors after a season plus six weeks of getting nothing out of them. Of course, overwhelmed upper management, owner Chris Cohan and General Manager Garry St. Jean, gave him a roster full of pieces that don’t fit, such as the Larry Hughes-Jason Richardson two-shooting guard backcourt and the tweener forward Danny Fortson-Antawn Jamison tandem. Jamison’s average is down to 16 from last season’s 25 and last week he admitted, “I’m lost.” He has company, so is his franchise.

Oops: Milwaukee’s George Karl did his usual number as the Bucks lost five in a row: “You have three stubborn stars.... The thing that bothers me, it’s the same lecture for four years. To be honest with you, I’m kind of tired of giving the lecture.” Karl’s players usually ignore him, but this time, Glenn Robinson fired back: “I’m sick and tired of when things aren’t going right, the finger is pointed at Glenn Robinson. I wasn’t selfish when we were 9-1, was I?” Then Karl left for a funeral and the Bucks beat Toronto and New Jersey, as players praised easygoing assistant Terry Stotts.

New Knick Coach Don Chaney, insisting he isn’t too nice, says that when he was a Clipper assistant, he tried to strangle Benoit Benjamin. “I couldn’t quite get my hands around his neck,” Chaney said. “I was reaching, but Cedric Maxwell grabbed me and I couldn’t get to him. I liked Benoit, but he was one of those players, he just didn’t want to play hard. It wasn’t a mature thing. When I see Benoit now, he gives me a hug every time.” What’s that prove? All Benjamin’s coaches wanted to strangle him.... Chaney on Boston coaching anti-model Tom Heinsohn: “I learned what not to do.... Back then you could smoke in the locker room and I could hardly see him through the smoke.”

Now starting Alonzo Mourning, Brian Grant, Jim Jackson, Rod Strickland and Eddie Jones, Miami’s Pat Riley fields what looks like a playoff team, even if it started the weekend tied with the Bulls. Blasted by Anthony Mason--again--as the Bucks visited, Riley dropped the gracious pose: “I don’t really give whatever. People who know the league know what they [Mason and Tim Hardaway] are all about. Why weren’t they on top of everybody’s list when they went out there looking for someplace to play?”

Remembering where he came from, Charlotte’s Baron Davis took 30 kids from South Central to the Hornets’ shoot-around, the hotel and the game against the Clippers here.

“The Forum was 10 minutes from my house and we never saw a Lakers’ or a Clippers’ game,” Davis said. “We couldn’t afford it. These are the kids who are always coming around my grandmother’s house during the summer. I play ball with them. I try to make sure their grades are good, that they’re doing the right things. I always tell them I’m going to look out for them.”

Rocket Coach Rudy Tomjanovich on burnout: “I’ve been so physically and mentally drained I checked myself into a hospital to sleep. It’s a tough deal.”