Saturday night's loss to the Spurs was a lesson in how bad coaching can doom an otherwise winning team. San Antonio set the pace early. And the pace was painfully slow. The Nuggets have long tried to establish a repuation as a running team. And in the regular season the Nuggets do run. But when the playoffs arrive and coaches get down to the real business of strategy and execution, George Karl seems to go on mental cruise control.

The Nuggets simply do not thrive when they have to run their offense in the half-court. The Nuggets have few set plays, and in the sets they do have three guys usually end up standing around watching Iverson or Carmelo try to break their man down one-on-one. The Nuggets are lousy at ball movement in the half-court. Carmelo has no idea how to pass out of a double team, and none of the shooters know how to find an open spot. Even if JR Smith, Steve Blake, and Linus Kleiza could find an open spot, no one seems to be able to get them the ball. Somebody should get the Nuggets a Robert Horry highlight tape. Horry's a guy who has made a career out of finding an open spot on the perimeter. He always gets open, and his teams win championships. Pretty damn simple.

Yet somehow, in the glamour and magic of the playoffs, George Karl seems to have forgotten that San Antonio repeatedly slams the Nuggets by slowing the game down. Apparently he did absolutely zero preparation for the playoffs. And it's not like this is a new phenomenon, something he couldn't have seen coming. The Spurs have beaten the Nuggets in the playoffs in the past by doing exactly what they did Saturday night. They slowed down the game, they executed on offense, and they played 20 seconds of defense every time Denver had the ball. Yet, coach Karl does absolutely nothing to challenge San Antonio's game plan. His options are pretty simple: force the game to be up-tempo, or coach your team on the fundamentals of a half-court motion offense. He had a whole season to get ready for this point and didn't do squat. If Don Nelson was coaching the Nuggets, we'd win 55 games a year and be lock for the conference finals every postseason. But instead we have George Karl, possibly the worst game coach in the league. The Nuggets will probably get knocked out in the first round. . . again.

Maybe this offseason, Karl can take a coaching class at Red Rocks. Or maybe he can just hang out at the YMCA for some high school summer league games. Who knows? He just might learn something.