Should a Genie appear before me on New Year’s Day with proper ID and a Genie-land driver’s license (so I won’t have to direct an otherwise Halloween stay-behind to a local booby hatch), here’s the list I’ll attach to his rubbing lamp for 2009--
 
1. That the Denver Nuggets win 60 games by mid-May and sweep their way past the first playoff round.
2. That the Colorado Rockies maintain a bring-them-home super-hitting middle of the line-up.
3. That the Rockies attain a remarkably consistent RHP/starter and a great LHP/closer.
4. That sports fans crying for more Rockies, Nuggets and Av “teamwork” no longer show up at games with T-shirts applauding only one player.
5. That the NBA commissioner finds ways to keep L.A. Laker Kobe Bryant, Cleveland Cav Lebron James and other game-changing players from ever thinking about quitting U.S. basketball to play for European teams.
6. That the U.S. wins the World Baseball Classic being held in March, and that the WBC sells more tickets and attains more TV ads than two years ago, guaranteeing WBC continuance.
7. That the Colorado Rockies sweep the Boston Red Sox in the 2009 World Series (Genies like high-end imagination and no-limit wish-lists).
8. That the Avalanche retake the glory road.
9. That the Denver Broncos finish 16-0 and head for the SB, and that in college football Army Beats Navy (both perhaps as impossible as, say, any football team finishing 0-16, Ooops!).
10. That a guardian angel demotes the current four world boxing championship associations into four divisions within a greater and single world title federation, each weight class considered.
11. That there be less player personality-trivia published in sports magazines and a lot more information about the quality and characteristics of games played.
12. That U.S. President Barack Obama witnesses fulfillment of his dream of a national college basketball final.  
A final note, that readers of this column have a great 2009 no matter what happens in sports.

IT was more than a loss, it was a massacre, San Diego 52, Broncos 21, with proof that when the Broncos won a game during the 2008 NFL season it was as they never had before, and when they lost it was always for the same reason. On Sunday, as repeated often in this column, the Broncos lacked an impenetrable defense against their opponent’s offense, and they were without sufficient blocking during their own drives, forcing QB Jay Cutler to have to improvise on the run way too often while also unable to correct his timing.
 
The third weakness was, as seen in almost every 2008 Broncos game, Cutler’s hard passes fumbled or intercepted; and, the longer passes were not timely enough for receivers to break away from opposition.
 
As for the rest of the story, other than that the Chargers were really that good on Sunday, it’s more of the same---the Broncos defense and passing protection need a makeover, which ought to be priority one during preparations for next season.
 
My take is that QB Jay Cutler, potentially one of the best NFL QB’s and selected for the pro-bowl, needs to study and adopt what could aptly be called “the Elway Consistencey Factor,” which former QB Jake Plummer had much of. Cutler has to be the 16 game whiz that he's capable of being.
 
One could argue safely that without the injuries suffered and top players benched, and the unusual influx of rookies in 2008, the Broncos might have held on to their division title and headed for playoff competition by beating San Diego. But when it’s a score like Sunday’s finish, ending the season so darkly for the Broncos, it is hard not to write defensively, “No Mas!”

My first thought as Sunday’s evening sun descended was of baseball player Yogi Berra’s famous comment, “It was déjà vu all over again.”  Quite recently, and in this space, I published columns about the Nuggets losing to the San Antonio Spurs, the Broncos to the Carolina Panthers, and boxing legend Oscar De La Hoya to Manny Pacquiao. Now, starting with Friday, December 19, through December 21, I had another trio of losses to think about, the Nuggets being defeated by the Cleveland Cavaliers 105-88, the Broncos by the Buffalo Bills 30-23, and American boxer Evander Holyfield losing to Russian fighter, Nikolai Valuev, after a 12 round bout for the WBA heavyweight title held at Zurich, Switzerland.
 
Throughout most of the Nuggets vs. Cavaliers game, Denver was behind by double digits, roughly half of Cleveland’s points scored by LeBron James and Lithuanian-born Zydrunas llgauskas, 33 points and 23 points respectively. Thirteen of LeBron’s points were from the floor. The number of Denver blocks and rebounds were much less than that produced by Cleveland by end of the fourth quarter, Cav's 41, Nuggets 32, indicating that the improved Nuggets ability to recover the basketball and initiate fast break tactics and unguarded shooting was not enough to foil the Cav's, or should I say, LeBron, who held Denver’s Nene to only one scored point and just three rebounds (Nene’s vengeance showed two days later against the Phoenix Suns, when he managed 15 rebounds).  
 
While most of the Denver/Cleveland competition remained typical of how the Nuggets manage to slide back from their new potential via inappropriate defense, the initial minutes of the first quarter against Cleveland seemed unusual, far from the Nuggets offense that we have seen in most games that they have won this season, in that there appeared “absence of playbook,” thus little passing and a lot of wide field shooting. This caused some fans to wonder if Nuggets Head Coach George Karl ordered his athletes to do their thing solo. Whatever the motif in those moments, it did not work for Nuggets Forward Carmelo Anthony---he managed only three points in first quarter play. By the time the Nuggets got back to teamwork and their effective mixed-shot basketball offense + tighter defense, it was too late to close the gap in points, for the Cav's had scored 20 points from their first 24 shooting attempts, an initiative that carried forward until endgame.
 
But in spite of the double-digit loss, there were fine on-court moments provided by the Nuggets. Chauncey Billups finished with 16 points, and his defense motions in the fourth quarter were nearly text-book perfect. In the second quarter, Kenyon Martin, who led the Nuggets with six points in the first quarter, was a lion in motion toward and under the basket, in spite of that invisible trickster keeping the ball off-basket. J.R. Smith and Chris Andersen delivered well as all-around players, blocking and shooting in their scarce minutes of play, though not enough for turning the proverbial tide. A few seconds before half-time, Anthony Carter sunk a three pointer, narrowing the Nuggets loss to 64-53. Also, by half time Melo's game elevated quickly to 11 points vs. LeBron’s 18.
 
Losing this game meant a Cav sweep, the Nuggets having lost to them last month in Cleveland, 110-99. Even so, Friday’s loss was the sixth of 22 games won by the Nuggets. They are still in a good place with regard to the 60 games they have vowed to win in order to reach end-of-season playoffs smoothly. Coach Karl reminded reporters after the Cav game that it’s now early in a long season and a lot of good can happen for the Nuggets. If anything is certain, it's that the future always appears sooner than soon. Unfortunately, Denver lost to Phoenix Sunday night, 108-101.               
 
BRONCOS.   Well, it could be worse. Imagine being Detroit, 0-15, the first team in NFL history to have such a poor season showing. The Broncos are still alive after their loss to the Buffalo Bills on Sunday, which means they are a contender for a playoff slot, but with their chances dimmed after also losing to the Carolina Panthers on December 14. Next Sunday’s game against the San Diego Chargers will make the difference---if the Broncos lose that game, it’s home and see you at training camp come August '09.
 
It probably requires a team of scientists and computer programmers to figure out the measure of inconsistency among good, even great athletes and that of professional football teams, but whatever the causes and length of its existence happens to be before a player and a team can recover and start winning again, it is obvious that the best of the Broncos and the team itself suffer from “inconsistency-itus,” and that includes Jay Cutler, one of the best QB’s in the game.
 
The loss to Buffalo need not have happened if the Broncos were playing at the higher level that we have seen them at during more than a few games this season. Against Buffalo and in between some superb short rushes, an end-run TD, perfectly delivered passes, deep drives and spectacularly-gained first downs, there were missed hand-off opportunities, disconnects between the QB and his team-mates, that is, throw and catch distances for the long pass calculated poorly by both QB and receivers, one of these passes almost a perfect and long TD launch that a receiver with a second’s advantage could have caught, also fumbles, interceptions---the same litany of mishaps that cost the Broncos games that they should have won in recent weeks. Can the Broncos beat the Chargers in game sixteen? Yes, if what could already have justified the Broncos wearing the label “consistency” returns and overcomes.
 
BOXING.  Former world heavyweight boxer Evander Holyfield went the 12-round distance against Nikolai Valuev and lost to a majority decision, enabling Valuev to keep his WBA title. Had Holyfield won, he would have been the oldest fighter in boxing history to hold a world heavyweight championship belt. He is 46, and he did not announce that he would retire after the match against Valuev, likely from having lasted the 12 rounds and one of the judges having listed the fight a draw.
 
Without question, Holyfield remained the more energetic and animated fighter nearly every round. Were footwork and speed worth more than landed punches, Holyfield might have won the bout. But he faced a seven foot opponent, the tallest and heaviest professional fighter ever, a Goliath with a long reach and a powerful jab. Valuev was, as reported on site, “the underwhelming winner.” That the two judges preferring the Russian giant scored the bout 116-112 and 115-114 must have encouraged Holyfield to keep up as a pro, for he signaled his desire for a rematch with Valuev, who has a manager favoring such next summer.
 
Athletes are always proving that there are second and third acts in American life, but in boxing it's an invitation to permanent eye, brain and body impairment. Holyfield beat Mike Tyson twice and he has taken down George Foreman and Buster Douglas and Riddick Bowe. He’s been a quiet professional in later years of his career, with all sorts of kudos to place on a wall. We have seen numerous comeback attempts by great boxers---Muhammad Ali, Tyson, Foreman, Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, and a short while ago, De La Hoya, moves that most have regretted. If these fighters are seeking a comeback in order to escape ordinary life and the lack of fame and glory that they experienced in the past, one wonders if they realize that it’s only a few short months after a comeback try when, win or lose, they will be back into the cool of normality and anonymity anyway. If it is a significant challenge that they are seeking, it may have been Joe Louis or Ali who said, “If you are yearning for a tough challenge, a real battle of the century, face getting older.”    

An unexpected NFL seven-days-later switchback to defeat-mode stings and confuses. Rare is the NFL team that has not had the experience sooner than later and known the resulting pain.
 
If you ask Denver Broncos Head Coach Mike Shanahan about being over-powered, made mincemeat of and then toasted, and any Broncos player that contributed unwillingly to a Carolina Panthers 34-10 crunch over Denver on Sunday, they might respond with that thousand-yard stare and walk away in utter disenchantment, especially since the week before they earned R&A (Respect & Applause) trouncing the Kansas City Chiefs, a team that had humiliated Denver in game four on September 28, signaling that the Broncos had a firm chance for an end-of-season Playoff-berth and would maintain number one standing in the AFC’s Western Division.
 
Heading into the Carolina game, the Broncos were a healthy 8-5; and early in the first quarter it looked as if the team could rack up an additional win. The drive that resulted in Denver’s first points on the board and its only TD against Carolina was classic, a series of well-executed assaults comprising QB Jay Cutler’s lower risk passes and the team’s more forceful rushes.
 
But Carolina returned the procedure, forcing a drive combining standard passing, angled rushes and that 65-yard run by Running Back DeAngelo Williams. No dream but a nightmare, the score favored Carolina faster than Cutler could spike a football into soft earth. Then, and only seconds before the end of the first half, a Broncos fumble and turnover yielded a Panthers field goal, the score Carolina 20, Denver 10.
 
The third and fourth quarters were disheartening for the Broncos---zero followed by Nada!
 
Before attempting to list what went wrong for Denver, one should remind that the Broncos have played much worse this season, and that the Panthers entered the competition 10-3, second place in the NFC behind the N.Y. Giants. In no way were the Panthers "a gathering of clowns" that the Broncos could have scraped a field with. And, the QB Jake Delhomme/Wide Receiver Steve Smith combo was, for whatever reason, “on game and primed,” their connectivity as QB and receiver pure textbook and delivering the Panther’s widening lead.
 
The term “force protection” means “shielding one’s assets,” which appeared inconsistent within the Denver offense throughout most drives against the Panthers. Surely “force protection” was absent when the Broncos needed it the most. In the first half of the Carolina game, the number of rushing yards gained by Denver was more than 50 percent greater than those produced by Carolina, yet too many of Denver’s short-distance first down + TD attempts failed because Cutler and ball-carriers were unprotected. Too many of Cutler’s passes and hand-offs were forced to be off-playbook, thus improvisational and “on the run.” During the last half of the game, Cutler was sacked twice.
 
Dominant was Carolina’s defense, fast and punishing when needed most. Equally skillful and tough was Carolina's “force protection,” always where it needed to be during moments when Denver was about to grab the initiative and turn the ball over. Denver’s defense and “force protection” were weak opposites.
 
NUGGETS.  The Denver Nuggets delivered an upbeat performance at the Pepsi Center on Saturday, December 13, beating the Golden State Warriors 123-105, and not because the Warriors have been on the slide, 7-17 in the Western Conference’s Pacific Division, third place and 12 games behind first place L.A. Lakers. Against the Warriors, the Nuggets were, to state it conservatively and compared with an almost farcical Nuggets loss to San Antonio on December 4, “Playoff-ready,” a team goal since the start of the current NBA season, a value that can exist with sustainability by, if not before the February 15, 2009 All-Star game.
 
I suggested in last week’s column that the Nuggets loss to San Antonio was a fluke and that the Nuggets would resume playing at higher skill levels. The game against the Warriors justifies that comment. Presently, the Nuggets are leading the WC’s Northwest Division 16-7, its best early season record ever.
 
And, the Nuggets new dynamism is not singular, not the makings of one player. To date, it’s been a fusion of multiple assets: Guard Chauncey Billups’ on-court leadership, Forward Carmelo Anthony not only a consistent scorer but also a sudden worker of the assist and a rebound laborer, in effect, Melo as “Team-mate.” Add Forward Nene’s matured confidence, stretched skills and blocks, and Forward Kenyon Martin’s faster and craftier drive + crafty shots, Guard J.R. Smith’s advanced shooting from any angle, Guard Anthony Carter’s more steady passing and successful shooting from the field, also Forward/Center Chris Andersen’s ability to rack up rebounds and blocks in few minutes of play. No longer does Head Coach George Karl have to consider being a super-strict puppet master (not his style).
 
Against the Warriors, Billups provided 16 points and 11 assists, Melo 27 points and six assists, Nene 11 points and two rebounds, Martin 15 points and four assists, Smith 16 points and three assists, Andersen five rebounds and four blocks in less than 10 minutes of game time. Nuggets shooting stretched to 53.2 percent from the field, and total number of Nuggets assists was 36---it was a prideful game for any season.
 
Next Sunday, the Broncos will be challenged by Buffalo, a team that is last in its AFC division, 6-7. Though Buffalo is but two games behind Denver in the win column and two in the loss ledger, it is desperate to be a .500 team and desperation can go a long way.
 
On Friday, December 19, the Nuggets will face the Cleveland Cavaliers, a team that has a commanding lead in the Eastern Conference’s Central Division, 20-4, only two games behind EC and Atlantic Division leader, the Boston Celtics.
 
For the Broncos and the Nuggets, there are still no safe odds, only decisions to be “Playoff-caliber” and “to the hilt.”

IT was a trio of unexpected upsets, first the Nuggets humiliated by San Antonio on Thursday, December 4, then two days later Army losing to Navy embarrassingly, next and that evening boxing legend Oscar De La Hoya drawn into a TKO by the world’s leading pound-for-pound boxer, Manny Pacquiao, a.k.a., “Pac-man.”
 
The Nuggets, Army and De La Hoya gave their opponents the openings to treasure, allowing the Spurs, Navy and Pacquiao to achieve big wins surprisingly from shopworn strategies and skills.   
 
As the Nuggets went slipping and sliding, I wondered if their recovery in recent games from last season’s L. A. Lakers first-round playoff sweep was an illusion, if being a defense-deficient team was a Nuggets returning curse. I have since chosen to believe that the loss to San Antonio was a fluke, that it could not happen again to an on-court squad captained by Chauncey Billups, who against the Spurs seemed to have his mind elsewhere, appearing sluggish, passive, not the guard of a starting five that had rebounded well and woven strong blockage in recent games, building a 13/6 record. The Nuggets spiraled toward empty in the second quarter vs. San Antonio, giving the Spurs a quick 14 point lead, the fourth quarter finish Spurs 108, Nuggets (ugh!) 91. At the half, it was Spurs 61, Nuggets 41.
 
And, what caused Army to be down and out for the count so thoroughly? This was its seventh annual loss to Navy. Was this the lock-in game of a yearly tradition for cadets, sergeants, captains and generals to weep over while sailors and admirals sip victory champagne? More accurately, West Point’s cadets were decimated by Annapolis midshipmen 34-zip (ouch!), the latter finishing with more than twice the yards gained by men in gray likely to be facing terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq a year or two from now.
 
Soon it was “winner’s purse” for Manny Pacquiao, a fighter accurately labeled “Tasmanian Devil,” a little guy who seems to land flurries of punches as fast as propellers ready for takeoff. Though De La Hoya was a punching bag for Pacquiao for eight straight rounds and suffered a bad eye cut, he deserved credit for keeping his balance and staying “on style,” that is, moving forward relentlessly while under fire and delivering jabs and hooks that unfortunately his opponent could dodge quicker than a mongoose sidesteps a threat.
 
The Nuggets loss evolved from defense evaporation and Billups unable to force the dynamics, therefore Denver taken off its game, and Andersen when hot and sinking baskets taken from playing time way too soon. Nene was where he needed to be and had delivered difficult shots, but too few had netted. Carmelo Anthony seemed to seek opportunities for assists and rebounding early-on but then seemed forced to be a Melo that existed in 2007, lone-ranger racking up two-pointers under the glass, least regard for team efforts. Still, he led the Nuggets with 16 points, so it cannot be said he faulted much during the game. Bottom line: these negatives allowed three Spurs to control and dominate most minutes of play: Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili. Together, Duncan and Parker accumulated 43 points, nearly half the total that won the game.
 
Army was rigid, trapped in its own game plan. There was very little connectivity between the Army QB and receivers, plus a defense that lacked enough speed and strength to overtake Navy, which dominated from kickoff, the Army offense unable to innovate---Army's rushing plays were easily determined and halted. The Army defense could not break into play fast enough and deliver controlled rage and power, ironic for players taught that Army and Warrior-spirit are the same dynamic. Also, it appeared that Army hadn't realized that outplaying an opposing team’s superior defense demands top-notch pass-and-receive startegies, which failed to show against Navy.
 
Promoted as “the Dream Match,” the planned 12-round welterweight bout was pure nightmare for De La Hoya. Some analysts have already put the blame on age, La Hoya being 35, Pac-man 29. Yet Pac-man has won 23 of his last 24 fights and has been a true haymaker, 35 knockouts out of 47 matches. My take is that La Hoya lacked experience fighting a southpaw and fighters of such unusual speed, in spite of his long and successful boxing career. As a well-known boxing promoter/commentator repeated on HBO-TV, “Speed kills.” Too, I would bet that La Hoya put too much confidence in his height over the smaller fighter, thinking he could jab quick and forceful enough to keep his opponent at bay. He’s 5’10,” Pac-man is 5’ 6.” However, La Hoya’s 24” arm length is but a single inch longer than Pac-man’s
 
Pac-man landed 224 punches in the eight rounds that were fought, La Hoya 83. Clear from La Hoya’s performance was a belief (either his or that of a trainer) that Pac-man was more of a street fighter than an artful boxer, and that La Hoya would therefore be able to find openings for firm and accurate jabs, straight punches and a right or left hook, but it turned out that Pac-man was as much an artful boxer as he is a thrower of demonically fast and multiple punches to various body parts, with a  defense that an exceptionally thin body allows, the turning sideways and becoming less of a target to an opposing boxer bent on pursuit, who keeps coming forward seeking an opening.
 
So, what is the common thread that runs through these three events? Surely it is the primary lesson from each loss, which begs attention and application in everyday life as well as in sports, explained clearly hundreds of years ago by a philosopher-athlete, “Victory emerges where and when preparation meets opportunity.” 

WAS it redemption?  How about retribution?  Or, were the Denver Broncos being all they could be without being stuck in the past or thinking about the following week? Whatever the motivation was, the Broncos were in the here-and-now against the New York Jets on Sunday, November 30, ahead during each quarter without the fumbles and interceptions that characterized Denver during too many games this season.
 
It was a high point crush, too: Broncos 34, Jets 17, Denver’s third straight on-the-road win.
 
From a current 7/5 record and being three games ahead of the San Diego Chargers (number two in the AFC-West), the Denver Broncos could, with four games to go in the NFL season, reach playoff status. With Sunday’s win against the Jets, the Broncos re-entered “real” season respectability, primarily from players that have emerged top-tier since game one of the season: QB Jay Cutler, Wide Receiver Brandon Marshall, WR Eddie Royal, Fullback Peyton Hillis, Tight End Tony Scheffler, and WR Brandon Stokley. Here’s the proof---Cutler completed 27 of 43 passes for 357 yards and was credited with two TD’s; Marshall gained 55 yards toward crucial first downs; Royal went 59 yards for a TD and accrued 84 yards total; Hillis scored a TD and rushed for 129 yards; Stokley gained 44 yards and provided a TD.
 
Without question, the Broncos played game 13 honoring the joy of it, meanwhile showing never-too-late respect for highly focused teamwork, unlike the week before when the marginal Oakland Raiders trampled them as if the Denver team had been out boozing the night before and wasn’t sure which end-zone was theirs.
 
Not that the Broncos escaped from having negative attributes on Sunday: the Jets scoring was stoppable. In each case, the team’s defense hung in “delay mode,” it could have stopped the Jets rushes and broken Brett Favre’s passes. In the early part of the third quarter, the Broncos defense unraveled and the offense softened. Though not for long, the lapse in defense and offense included enough moments for the Jets to try to exploit it---lucky for Denver, they failed to do better than a field goal, but to Denver’s zip for the period.
 
An exception to the dullness of the Broncos third quarter defense was, of course, Elvis Dumervil’s 25th career sack when down went the Jets QB.
 
And what could have been a downside for the Broncos against the Jets did not materialize yet could in future games, this: they are a young football team with regard to rookies fielded (youngest in the NFL), thus vulnerable to an opposing team’s long-tested maneuvers. Moreover, good as Jay Cutler could be most weeks, he is the less experienced QB when facing the likes of a QB like Favre. A third factor on November 30 was the Jets standing, leading their division 8/3 after winning five games straight. That at the half Cutler had passed effectively for 106 yards and Favre only 67 seemed unreal, as if the two had swapped capabilities. These factors had high rollers betting on the Jets up until game time.
 
What were the dominating and positive attributes displayed by the Broncos against the Jets? They formed a surprising batch, for instance, against the Jets there was mostly synchronicity between Cutler and his receivers in spite of the fact that regarding dropped passes the Broncos are third worst in the NFL this season. No matter the harsh speed of Cutler’s long as well as short passes on Sunday, enough were caught, held and acted on. Also noteworthy were many of Cutler’s choices out of the Mike Shanahan playbook, and Cutler’s improvisations, too, that is, his throwing short or long when appropriate and zigging when supposed to instead of zagging. And, perhaps no QB today can match Cutler’s deep-distance passing-on-the-run, many passes of which unfortunately have been for naught from receivers unable to be at the right place at the right time.
 
But if redemption or retribution is to have meaning for the Broncos, the flag of defeat flying over Kansas City come Monday, December 8, would reflect such; the Chiefs whipped the Broncos embarrassingly in September (game four), signaling a less than solid Denver team at the brink of season disaster. KC is now a lowly 2/10, well below the record that the Jets put on board throughout November, which alone implies possibility of a Broncos win against the Chiefs, but think again: Denver lost game 12 to mediocre Oakland pathetically, which means that this Sunday the Broncos should envision themselves in a playoff game, as if the Chiefs were the Jets cloned.

For most Coloradans, building a list of what to be grateful for during Thanksgiving week starts with family, friends, the house or apartment, job and income, the car or truck, and surely the dog and beer in the fridge. Follow the priority line, sports eventually appears in block letters, and probably no two Coloradans produce the same sports turnouts they’d express gratitude over.
 
Of course, nothing in sports could equal the joy and importance in one’s life of having a great family. In fact, no sport comes close. Yet for many Coloradans, sports merits a high position on Thanksgiving gratitude lists.
 
Aside from the many games watched and their superb highlights, even if one’s team put up another loss, here are some 2008 Thanksgiving picks deemed worthy by Colorado residents participating in an informal survey conducted by this writer (Working peers, some readers, family members and willing friends):

* The Allen Iverson/Chauncey Billups exchange being a trade-up for the Denver Nuggets.

* The bleeding of a Rockies power-structure ending with Matt Holliday off to Oakland.

* George Karl still the Nuggets Head Coach.

* Jamaica’s Usain Bolt becoming the new fastest man alive during the Beijing Olympics, if only because Track and Field is nothing if it isn’t evolutionary.

* The announcement that there will be a World Baseball Classic in 2009.

* President-elect Barack Obama pitching the idea that there ought to be final college football playoffs nationwide until selection of a national championship team.

* Kobe Bryant, the 2008 NBA MVP, in spite of Colorado not feeling great love for the guy.

* Todd Helton off of the injury list.

* Carmelo Anthony’s Team USA experience being “transformational.”

* You-know-who juicing the Jets (listed by a former New Yorker and an ex-Jets fan, to be withdrawn from the list depending on the Broncos/Jets game Sunday Nov. 30).

* Roger Federer winning the U.S. Open.

* Nene being capable of filling Marcus Camby’s shoes and that he is cancer-free.

* The Celtics NBA championship-win over the Lakers as a key lesson to the Nuggets about “defense, defense, defense.”

* K-Mart during the last seven minutes of the Nov. 23 Nuggets vs. Bulls game.

* Rockies pitcher Aaron Cook’s remarkable “and unexpected” home run.

* Jay Cutler’s passing arm (great to watch, in spite of the interceptions and the fumbles, and the dumb comment made about a Cutler/Elway comparison in Sporting News Magazine).

* (This writer’s pick---) Sportswriter George Kimball’s book, “Four Kings,” about boxers Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler, Tommy Hearns and Roberto Duran, each having fought the other in what experts have called the best non-heavyweight battles of the latter 20th Century. “Four Kings” may also be the best book ever about the bent and brutal aspects of pre-fight promotional and business set-ups.
 
Has it been a dull, unproductive and “thankless” 2008 for Denver and also world sports? Heck, no!

I first met with Nuggets Head Coach George Karl during the 2007/08 season to discuss basketball’s nuances as they related to his coaching style. It was the day before a Nuggets win against the Phoenix Suns that made Karl the 10th top game-winning coach in NBA history.
 
When I asked Coach Karl to describe the evolution of the Nuggets progress since he arrived in Denver, there was no sign that he’d cherry-pick, lay down the good and ignore the bad. Karl said, “Compared with the Nuggets of the past, and with other NBA franchises, team progress has moved forward but with setbacks. In my first day here, the Nuggets were about more losses than wins. In each following season, we put that in reverse, high enough in the Western Conference to reach the playoffs.”
 
Moreover, with seasoned guard Chauncey Billups joining Carmelo Anthony, Anthony Carter, Kenyon Martin and Nene as starters, and the Nuggets bench delivering quality play from J.R. Smith, Linas Kleiza, Chris Andersen and Chucky Atkins, there’s been definite improvement within the context of defense as well as offense and, to a significant degree, in the trust that each Nuggets player has for the other. Billups is more of a playmaker than was Allen Iverson, which has provided the steadier teamwork that the Nuggets have needed; yet it’s hard to say if that’s enough to gather the 60 games-won finish the Nuggets are aiming for this season, especially now that the NBA is packed with more aggressive-defenders and cagier attackers than in the past, thus an NBA tougher to excel in than in 2007/08.   
 
Noticeable from the way the Nuggets play today is Karl’s attempt to maintain a proper balance between players having (a) independence of thought on the court, and (b) each player still respecting and employing playbook-thinking and teamwork as means that serve not only the team but each individual player. Of this, Karl told me, “There has to be time and space on the court for player innovation. Good player spontaneity is important for a game that is as unpredictable as basketball can be. At the same time, you have to stress the importance of coordination and ball-control through intense player-to-player cooperation.”
 
“On the bright side,” Karl told me, “we’re a team with an explosive offense. We have good shooters in our offense almost all the time, for instance, Billups and Melo, and this season an improved A.C. and K-Mart. Then there’s J.R. Smith, Andersen, Kleiza. Our recent record of assists and of our passing reflects new and greater team awareness of what has to be done quickly during most court situations.”
 
The coach still singles out the Nuggets defense, which he believes is finally above the margin, more of an asset than a liability but still needing progress. Yes, Nuggets defense has reached a level where the tactics applied have become more flexible than last season.  It’s a defense of better timing, capable now of changing swiftly from double-teaming to one-on-one and zone coverage, a lot of this depending on which team the Nuggets are up against, for example, it’s harder to pull off best possible defense tactics during games against the super-aggressive Utah Jazz
 
Here’s the coach’s final word to me on defense--- “In spite of our improvements, we need to bring consistency to it, so that it never relaxes, doesn’t go flat, won’t evolve into the wrong tactics and a late player decision.”
 
I asked Karl, “Which NBA teams do you believe will always be the tougher challenges for the Nuggets, and why?” Karl’s response---“Well, I suppose some coaches look at the NBA as having teams that demand more struggle and attention than do others. I look at the issue a lot differently. As far as I’m concerned, all of the NBA teams are challenging. Any one of them will do their best to beat their competition. You have to realize that in any season the best NBA teams have lost to opponents that have had poor records and that have had weak starters and a limp bench. Bottom line, you have to try to win every game, no matter which team you’re playing against.”      
 
On the subject of those out-of-town losses, Karl said, “Here’s where there have been misperceptions. Our on-the-road losses can look like an enormously big hole in an overall season record, but it can look like that when you have a good winning percentage at home, and when a single road trip among many is a disaster, like losing two or three games straight. This is when the immediate reaction in some media and among a number of fans is that we can’t win on the road. Fact is, the 07/08 Nuggets had a better than marginal out-of-town record than in previous years.” By mid-season in 2008, the Nuggets on-the-road record was 53 over 49 for a .520 winning percentage. Last season, the Nuggets achieved a franchise record of 22 out-of-town wins.  
 
ML/MHS:   Coach Karl, if you were suddenly the NBA’s imperial leader, a king of the NBA Hill, what would you change?
 
COACH KARL:   Right off, I’d put an end to formal division playoffs. At the end of a season, I’d have each NBA conference bring me its leading team for an NBA championship series. Also, the NBA season is too long, so I’d shorten it some or have fewer games. Overall, the NBA is mostly in a good place today, there’s lots of young talent that will be around for many years and there are enough players with a lot of NBA experience, and there are good coaches to guide them along.
 
ML/MHS:      What’s your best advice to the new professional basketball coach?
 
KARL:   Assuming that the new coach understands the game of basketball and its many facets and most basics regarding coaching, I’d say this: Find your own style by really knowing yourself and the goals and strategies that you believe will reflect who you are as a leader and a person, and that also reflect what you want your team to accomplish season-after-season. And, I’d say to the new coach that all roles and missions of the job are important. You have to be an informed leader, a producer as well as a director, and an effective communicator to the team and to the public, and sometimes a shoulder to cry on, other times the guy with the stern voice and the whip. Important is that you move away from only emulating others or just following the standard way of doing things. Bring your true self and your prioritized needs and wants into all of these roles and missions, it’s the best way to give and get back.
 
Less than half an hour after the L.A. sweep of the Denver Nuggets last June, I asked Lakers Coach Phil Jackson what he told his players during a time-out that he called with four minutes left to play in the fourth period of what could be a final series game. Jackson’s response reflected his belief that the Nuggets were still able to prevent a fourth-game loss, they could be tough. He admitted seeing the Nuggets as an unpredictable comeback team that could put up a strong defense against L.A. shooters for the short term (read: four minutes) in addition to an explosive attack for enough accurate shooting to turn the tide. Well, George Karl knew this as much as any professional observer, and so creating an “endurable defense” became a priority concern during the 2008 summer months. That this framing of a Nuggets defense can exist has been evident during the current season, “with setbacks that in themselves show great degree of improvement.”

GEORGE Karl is arguably the best coach that the Denver Nuggets have ever had. He’s won more than 175 games with the Nuggets since his arrival in Denver four years ago and he’s taken the team to successive post-season NBA first round attempts, in 2008 to a 50/32 record.
 
And just who and what George Karl is as a person is readily apparent during his season and post-season interviews. Far north of bizarre, there’s none of the slickness of Coach Pat Riley and you won’t find Karl preaching Zen like the Lakers Head Coach, Phil Jackson. Nor will you find Karl always shouting and jumping about maniacally at dumb calls, or hurling anything at players every game. If ever there was a Bobby Knight inside George Karl, such is not there now.
 
Karl comes off usually as Mr. Serene, only now and then off the bench with arms flailing and words sailing toward a referee at Mach 5. His receiving penalties for angrily flinging beverage cans toward rows of chairs are indeed rare. He appears thoughtful most of the time, and not as a guy who has trained himself to hide fire behind ice only to look good, or to hold back blistering anger beneath a thick coating of smooth. He seems to have a firm handle on his capabilities and limitations, on where he belongs in the basketball universe.
 
My guess is that Karl has either always been naturally centered and calm, or some hard times that he survived in a private Hell took him from anguish to repose, to a behavior-zone that he’s very comfortable with. I see it as admirable middle-age guy cool, something quiet yet strong, stable.
 
And if there were some Hellish times for George Karl, whatever they were really isn’t our business.
 
For the Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke and his front-office in 2004, the business at hand was decoding what was in Karl’s background that could lift an NBA team’s performance-levels swiftly. Not all 18 coaches before Karl were men without distinction in the NBA, yet almost all failed to bring the Nuggets to end-of-season greatness. Karl was aware that he’d be inheriting a team that was 17 wins and 25 losses, and 11th place in the Western Conference (In 2008, the Nuggets rose to eighth place in the Western Conference, two back from the previous season’s sixth place finish).  
 
When it came to standard accomplishments several years back, the Nuggets front office was impressed: During Karl’s 19 years as Head Coach with the Cleveland Cavaliers, Golden State Warriors, Seattle Sonics and the Milwaukee Bucks, he navigated his teams into numerous division and conference semi-finals + finals. During his tenure at Seattle, the Sonics were Division champions four times, averaging 59 points per season over a six year period. When Karl was with Milwaukee, the Bucks won a division championship, making playoffs for the first time in seven years, increasing the team’s winning percentage from .439 to .560.
 
Also noteworthy, 19 NBA players under Karl had been selected to play in NBA All-Star games, and Karl had won nine Coach-of-the Month awards, tying Phil Jackson for the lead in this category. Add to this, Karl’s 62 career playoff victories, and that for a coach taking over a team in the middle of a season with 20 or more games to go his game-winning percentage is the highest in NBA history.
 
But what seemed to match Denver’s key requirements and seal Denver’s decision to hire Karl was the coach’s reputation not only for taking teams out of the lower rankings quickly but also for keeping them from going back to those hard-to-endure basement statistics. When Karl arrived at Seattle, the Sonics were a 20-20 team. Seattle ended its first full season under Karl with 27 wins and 15 losses. Before he left Seattle to go to Milwaukee, Karl’s three 60 games-won seasons with the Sonics became a record behind higher scorings belonging to only three other coaches, Phil Jackson, Pat Riley and Utah’s Jerry Sloan. When Karl left Milwaukee, his five-season games-won total was 205 over 173 losses.
 
There are Denver sports critics agreeing that Karl has been a highly positive Denver asset, though many argue that this is an incomplete assessment in that the Nuggets under Karl have not won a Western Conference title and subsequently the NBA championship. Nevertheless, there is continuing evidence of a Nuggets team striving under Karl for better days.
 
In his first season with the Nuggets, Karl delivered a team of 44 wins, reaching a title opportunity, which made Karl the fifth NBA coach to have led three separate NBA teams toward victories. In Karl’s second full season, the Nuggets achieved 45 wins over 37 losses, qualifying for the playoffs, in spite of power-forward Kenyon Martin out of the NBA for 15 games.
 
Part Two, “The KARL INTERVIEW,” will appear on this blog-page inside of a week.

No sport approximates real war more than NFL football. As happens to combat units, if an NFL team attacks, defends or retreats without effective timing, coordination and precision it loses its battles. Given this truth, as a combat unit the 2008 Denver Broncos would be POW’s by now. The several losses experienced by the Broncos this year included intercepted passes, fumbles and turnovers that led quickly to high opposition points. These were tactical mishaps expected of amateur teams. Taking those faults away, the Broncos would have finished its 2008 games to date as respectable combatants.
 
So, what’s behind the Bronco’s below-the-margin performance? Is it over-hyped players, therefore lack of talent and skills? Is it Head Coach Mike Shanahan, therefore poor leadership and a playbook that fails to equal the strategies and tactics of opposing NFL teams?
 
Fact: The Broncos have real talent, and exceptional skills, and Mike Shanahan has not scaled down for honchoing D-list high school. Shanahan is as knowledgeable about football and team leadership as any active NFL Head Coach. My take on the matter is that the Bronco’s could be lacking an imperative for winning at war: “Proper synchronization of all assets, so that there can be effective timing, coordination and precision of a team’s movements for the 60 minutes of football,” hardly an unusual void for teams with several new players, thus teams without enough experience regarding all the options available for essential QB-receiver set-ups, teams that are in transition, still searching for their mojo.
 
But the Broncos are not entirely a bunch of newbies---the gap between what this team could do now and is not doing is way to wide.       
 
As mentioned in an earlier column of mine, it's no advantage if a QB delivers the hardest, fastest long or short pass in the game and receivers fail to be where they should be to catch it, or if a throw’s trajectory and speed contribute to a receiver’s fumble and a fast turnover. A QB is the important back end "and driver" of a frontal attack, but as good as he may be if there’s no catch, there’s no progress. The difference between a very good QB and a best-among-the-best QB’s is that the latter, like Elway, see their passes and ordered rushes mostly as means toward desired ends, be they first downs or TD's, not primarily as solo feats that teammates must learn to adjust to relative to what it looks like at the moment.      
 
Doing the right thing at the right time demands "synchronization among players," which requires practice, practice and more practice. It’s already week 10 of the NFL season, so establishing what the Broncos need for the win column will remain difficult. If the capacity for good timing, coordination and precision on the football field is already there for the Broncos but behind a hard-to-see veil of sorts, then Mike Shanahan has to find the veil and remove it---the test of coming from behind reveals a leader’s true place between getting-by competency and greatness.

A Nuggets season-opening loss to the Utah Jazz and a subsequent defeat inflicted by the Los Angeles Lakers revealed characteristics about the Denver team’s chances for a championship year. For instance, the Utah offense can appear to be mixed martial arts more than basketball, requiring a defense that has the tenacity of bull-riders hanging on for that needed eight seconds, a power and endurance that the Nuggets did not demonstrate sufficiently against the Jazz. While the Nuggets showed that they have made progress as a team searching for the right defense orientation, such was not enough to prevent Utah from breaking through Denver’s mobile walls.
 
Also, Carmelo Anthony’s absence during the Utah game reflected a confidence that his teammates hold, that Melo will continue to get in position to shoot well, which can direct the Nuggets game into passes for his prowess, thus any competetion can become Melo’s night only, which is not a problem when the young forward is truly on his game. The same assurance existed last season regarding guard Allen Iverson, who often seems as if he invented the notion of a scoring binge. Iverson is about to be the 19th highest scorer in NBA history from a 27 points per game career average. But---Melo’s absence during the loss to Utah underscored that the Nuggets need to be as effective offensively whenever he and now new guard Chauncey Billups cannot play, which could leave space for a deliberate offense formation that forward Kenyon Martin would lead by teaming with J.R. Smith and Anthony Carter for playbook tactics, instead of there being what seemed, against Utah, to be hasty improvisations.    
 
But the Nuggets home game against the Lakers on November 1 was a lot more revealing as a glimpse into the Nuggets upcoming performances.
 
The Lakers are formidable, and it isn’t just MVP Kobe Bryant and super coach Phil Jackson pulling the oars---Andrew Bynum, Lamar Odum, Pau Gasol and Derek Fisher add significantly to Laker success. But we know that the Lakers (last season's western conference leaders) are not invincible, evidence: the thrashing imposed on them by the Boston Celtics during the 2007/08 NBA championship series. And, during the November 1 Nuggets/Lakers game, the Nuggets were ahead of L.A. at the end of the half 52/46 and at the end of the third quarter they were tied with L.A., 76/76. When the first quarter ended, Denver was behind by only two points—23/21.  
 
The Denver loss to the Lakers was far from embarrassing: it wasn’t a thrashing. The Lakers were not the undoubted winner until a surge in points occurred midway during the final quarter, which a Nuggets defense as good as that of earlier play might have avoided. Until that L.A. scoring advance, the difference in number of blocks was Denver’s advantage, 6/3 before the fourth quarter. At halftime, Denver had more steals, 7/4.
 
But L.A. stayed far ahead in number of rebounds, finishing with 53 over Denver’s 38, a strong contributor to the Lakers scoring success, and an indication of the defense work that the Nuggets still need to accomplish. However, there is a bright side to this for Nuggets fans, in that the number of Nuggets blocks and steals against the Lakers could mean that the Denver team is in the NBA slipstream with a better and more coordinated defense orientation than was exhibited this time last year, except for the necessary growth in rebounding, which is within the team’s capabilities. Before the L.A. game, Nene was only 130 rebounds short of a career 2,000, and Carter needed 67 to reach 1,000.
 
As for the Nuggets offense, the importance of Carmelo Anthony showed through at halftime during the Lakers game---he led both teams in points accrued, 16, along with four assists. And during the first half, Anthony Carter drove the Nuggets ahead of the Lakers twice, and J.R. Smith’s points helped to pull the Nuggets ahead of the Lakers with 63/56 during the third quarter. Before the Nuggets/Lakers game, four of the Nuggets starters were already averaging double-digit points per game---Iverson, 21; Nene, 16; Martin, 15; Carter, 12, with bench player Smith averaging 17 ppg. These are good early season growth figures, as are the figures achieved by newcomers from a trade to the Detroit Pistons. Guard Chauncey Billups has averaged 12.5 ppg, Antonio McDyess 18 ppg, and 6’9”center Cheikh Samb has had 1.8 rebounds per game. Billups has maintained an 18 ppg average throughout his career. If the three from Detroit can surpass expectations in the manner that Iverson had in his years with Denver, they will surely contribute to Nuggets respectability.     
 
The humiliating crunch that the Nuggets suffered at L.A.’s hands last June portrayed a Denver team that can go no further than the first round of playoffs. The recent loss to the Lakers on November I showed a Nuggets team that could go beyond that as long as its defense skills can improve without a series of setbacks.

SURELY how a team and fans rate an end-of-season outcome is relative to expectations. Each year for five years under George Karl, the Nuggets have gone hunting for a championship and have not passed the first round of playoffs. The goal set for this year is no different than the last, and so starting October 29 we will be seeing hot and heavy attempts to overcome the obstacles that kept the Nuggets from going to that second round of playoff games. Fans hope that evidence of success will show during the November 1 first home game, Nuggets vs. the L.A. Lakers. What are the expectations? A defense not only timely but capable of swift transition from zone-defense to one-on-one coverage, to double-teaming, which means Carmelo Anthony playing the way he did in Beijing during the Olympics and Nene jumping and blocking at the glass as fast, hard and as accurate as Marcus Camby when Camby was at his best.
 
Add Iverson free to improvise and shoot when confident but sacrificing a shot when an assist has the greater guarantee of points on the board. And think Carter and K-Mart as starters fusing their talents without either seeking floor dominance. Anthony and K-Mart want to be leaders, Anthony being one already. One hopes that both demonstrate knowledge that good leadership has a lot to do with helping others to do good things willingly and correctly---it’s allowing J.R. Smith and other bench players to reach for the sky, of course within game situation limits.

IF there is anything obvious about the 2008 World Series it lies with a quote by Rockies Manager Clint Hurdle, repeated in an earlier MHS On-Line column---“There is no cookie-cutter model for winning in baseball.” However, Hurdle and just about every other MLB manager would agree that there are certain advantages a team must have if it intends to be competitive and finish a season high in the rankings.
 
Team advantages are easily guessed at by persons observing more than a few MLB games, top of the list that which cannot be offset for long by good hitting and sound fielding, “a deep pitching staff.” Not just rotation of one or two amazing starters, but two or three game-changing/game-saving relievers and super-dependable closers. Unfortunately, Jeff Francis, Morales and company were unable in 2008 to repeat the pitching they delivered for a Rockies 2007 pennant win. That 10 of the 18 WS MVP’s selected in the past 20 years were pitchers underscores the position’s key role in post-season games, and the Rockies barely marginal pitching during the 2007 WS was definitely a reverse indicator of the importance of pitching dominance remaining for nine innings.     
 
The three games won by the Phillies before game five of the 2008 WS were won primarily by hard-to-track pitching that kept the Rays from producing enough base hits for RBI’s. Though game four was 10-2, the Phillies could have maintained a score of 3-2 and won, solely from their effective pitching control. The same could be said of the Rays pitching in game two of the WS. Observing the WS games, I could not help but wish that the Rockies had starters in the 2008 season as good as those playing for the Phillies, especially Jamie Moyer and Joe Blanton, providing five and seven strikeouts respectively in games three and four.
 
I probably wasn’t the only WS observer imagining Rockies GM O’Dowd throwing coins in a fountain, wishing for trade opportunities delivering superior starters, mighty relievers and incredibly cool and precise closers, though rumors of Matt Holliday and Garrett Atkins being the price for that seems sheer lunacy, for it invades another major category for a team’s post-season arrival---“consistent and powerful hitting.”
 
Holliday and Atkins are among the game’s better hitters, and Holliday delivers well as a base runner, holding one of the better base stealing records among active players in the NL. Atkins is a remarkable infielder, at first base as well as at third. That Phillies Ryan Howard and the Rays B.J. Upton proved to be versatile as post-season hitters, pushing base hits as well as home runs for numerous RBI’s, was testimony to what Holliday and Atkins are needed to do, and can do, for the Rockies. If not always providing enough runs for a winning game, they have put respectable numbers on the board, especially this year when Rockies pitching went sour.
 
For wrapping arms around a 2009 post-season team, the Rockies ownership has two options: Have O’Dowd trade Rockies players (but not Holliday or Atkins) for the best pitchers available at high-end cost because that is what it will require, or they can trust Clint Hurdle to rebuild the current pitching staff and design better strategies for its employment. For the long term, O’Dowd can be ordered to rely on scouting to bring in good talent for homegrown output, in effect, sending developed pitchers to Coors Field from the Rockies lower terrain, e.g., up from the Skysox.
 
It is already known that the owners are not happy with the status quo, but they’ve never been unhappy enough to pay highest dollar when it comes to recreating a team segment. It’s likely that Clint Hurdle and his new pitching coach will be wearing their professor caps quite soon, teaching curveball-deception and advanced slider elegance (semesters one and two) long into next spring.

ANY baseball fan who hates surprises courts misery, for teams expected to claim victory can go upside down in end-of season blowouts. For instance, the Boston Red Sox were beaten on Sunday by a team that pundits were saying in April 2008 had nearly a zero percent chance of winning the ALC and making it to the World Series. Last year, the Colorado Rockies had the role of “unexpected victor.” Now the Rockies are touted as a team that finishes a season beneath expectations.
 
All of which means that the best of seven of the World Series that begins this week between the AL’s Tampa Bay Rays and. the NL’s Philadelphia Phillies will surely contain surprises. Forget about the pre-game odds delivering any more effectively for truth of an outcome than that offered by a TV weatherman after a three-martini lunch. In 2007, not too many experts predicted that the Sox would humiliate the Rockies the way they did, or that the Rockies would fail to be a wild card team this year; and very few analysts thought the New York Yankees would be distant from ALC competition in 2008.
 
Let’s travel back---- Though baseball has been a sport in America since 1876, the first World Series did not take place until 1903, the winner being (yeah, ugh!) the Boston Red Sox, and the loser, Pittsburgh. Considered one of the best teams in baseball, the Sox did not win another World Series until 1912, when they beat the New York Giants. They reached the World Series again in 1915 and 1916, beating Philadelphia and the Brooklyn Dodgers respectively, which was the only time that Boston won two series in a row, and also the last series that the Sox would win until 2004, when they out-performed the St. Louis Cardinals. The three other times that Boston got to the World Series before 2004, they were beaten twice by the Cardinals (1946 and 1967) and by the Cincinnati Reds (1975).
 
Yet statistics, scouting reports, comments from baseball analysts and sportswriters have indicated that Boston often had what was needed to win almost as many World Series as the New York Yankees, a team that has played in 39 World Series since 1923 and lost 13, eight in upsets, the more recent to Arizona in 2001 and to Florida, 2003. For a team hyped as an almost invincible dynasty, the Yankees lost four of the last 10 World Series that they competed in, expected to take all 10 not overwhelmingly but winning nevertheless.
 
Prior to Boston’s two World Series wins in a row, the Chicago Cubs won in 1907 and 1908, each time against Detroit, and the Philadelphia A’s won consecutively in 1910 against the Chicago Cubs and in 1911 vs. the N.Y. Giants. Other teams that have won the World Series consecutively are, of course, the Yankees, topping an A-list with five wins from 1949 through 1953, before that from 1936 through 1939, and afterward in 1978 and 1979, then 1998 through 2000. Could the Yankees lose two World Series in a row? They lost twice to the N.Y. Giants in 1921 and 1922.
 
Other teams that have won two or more World Series games consecutively, and unexpectedly, are the Oakland A’s, the Reds and the Toronto Blue Jays. Other teams that have lost World Series competitions consecutively are the N.Y. Giants, the Atlanta Braves, and the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers, the latter holding the record as second best behind the Yankees for most World Series appearances, 18. However, the Dodgers have lost 12 of these competitions, giving L.A. a .333 percentage, leaving them behind the ninth place team with most WS wins, the Reds, which holds a .556 winning percentage. The N.Y./S.F. Giants and the Cardinals are tied for third most WS appearances, 17 apiece, but the Cardinals won 10 of their shows and the Giants but six.
 
And of the 30 teams in Major League Baseball, 27 have reached the WS one or more times (includes the Rays), less than half arriving as teams predicted to win by wide margins. Also, though the difference between the AL and NL is, to date, the AL 60 WS wins versus 43 NL wins, the NL teams have advanced their winning percentage closer to what could reach a near-draw in the number of series won.
 
But given all the teams that have gotten to the WS and lost unexpectedly, anything can happen when it’s best of seven in baseball.      

It was not a 10-ton truck sinking in quicksand, or the Titanic going down, though it seemed that way from the Denver Broncos losing to the New England Patriots 41-7 out of 157 rushing yards (NE) vs. 106 (DBr),  five turnovers, two interceptions, 63 yards lost from penalties, and two and a half fumbles. This was a miserable showing for a team leading the AFC-West 4-3, which speaks poorly for the division. On the 600th offering of TV’s Monday night football, the Broncos were surely the worst NFL team of the year. Even so, like the heroes of  Ernest Hemingway's novels they were defeated but not destroyed, and against the Patriots still 5-2 of games played over recent years.
 
Once again, the Broncos defense was wanting, but the offense seemed to have gone south, too. Defense in sports has to be powerful, mobile and accurate. If it is not strong and fast enough with well-aimed bulleting, it might as well be as soft, static and soggy as lifeless trees chewable by baby bears and termites. As taught in high schools, good offense is always protected in ways preventing potential sackers and pass-blockers from doing their job.
 
That there have been 12 Bronco turnovers in three of four games played is evidence of serious disconnects, team-wide. Example: In the first quarter of Monday night’s game, the Broncos forced Patriot drives for TD’s to convert to field goals, preventing a score that might have been 14-0 instead of 6-0, and they led the Patriots in rushing yards 51-26 and passing yards, 32-30; but the Broncos unraveled like children with guns to their heads in the next three quarters of play, surely from a Patriots “defense-within-offense” that freed the unexpected: Sammy Morris going 138 yards into a TD, and Randy Moss completing 69 yards for two TD’s, pushing NE far ahead. The likely problem cited here? Denver’s defense was not strong, dynamic or mobile enough to deal with consequences of a faster “and slyer” NE offense. And as in previous Bronco losses of this year, too many of Jay Cutler’s passes to chosen receivers were either out of synch with the receivers, fumbled by the receivers or blocked, or Cutler was not protected well enough and had to rush the ball.
 
It was said last week and in weeks before and can never be said enough---a defense that is forced to be more reactive than pro-active leaves a team with little leverage for winning. If the same team’s defense is also without overmatching power and striking-precision, it has even less chance of winning. Add an offense that fails too often to coordinate QB-to-receiver synergy inside an envelope of protection, well, do the math, the upshot is a losing enterprise.
 
Next up for the Broncos & after the bye week, NFL-East’s Miami Dolphins, a 2-4 team. Nov 2.

OCTOBER is always a turning month for sports fans. Baseball is retreating---if your team isn’t in the LC playoffs and headed for a World Series, the sadness could look like the bareness of trees stripped by autumn’s chill. Even so, there’s distraction if you also love pro football, which in October reaches a phase indicating which NFL teams could be on their way to a title and which could be city-wide embarrassments. Enter hockey and basketball, brightly lit showboats suddenly dockside, promising sights of grand maneuvers and town victories. October is the December-January of American sports, out with the Old and in with the New.
 
Right now it’s an unusual October, mostly from a nationwide financial meltdown. No-one’s sure what the economic mess means for sports teams. A lot could be at stake, shown presently in the form of questions and no solid answers, just a lot of “Maybe this will happen” and then, “Maybe it won’t.” For instance, will fans living in a depression-hit town decide that it’s better to watch games on TV instead of being at a stadium, or will they go to a stadium instead of spending more money going to the movies and/or out to dinner? If fans stay home more, will TV execs up the ante on advertising, which could increase the prices of goods being advertised? And, how will stadium owners offset the cost of empty seats? Will they up-market and raise prices for those fans who can afford to pay any amount, turning attendance at sports games into an elitist enterprise, like putting fancy ribbons on moderate cigars and advertising them as the BMW”s of smokes?
 
Or, will stadium owners lower ticket prices, at least to levels that will keep the TV moguls from controlling the potential take? Also, what about food vendors at stadiums? Will they be forced by a recession to go to almost prohibitive prices? Mom, start making those egg salad sandwiches, and fill the thermos with Pop’s apple cider.
 
And, will team owners agree among themselves to put new caps on player and staff salaries, league-wide? Will free agent players have to stick around, and will general managers of teams now have to keep players they don’t really want because tight money can’t buy the desired replacements? Might certain events tank suddenly, e.g., the planned 2009 World Baseball Classic?
 
In this writer’s thinking, two options require avoidance. One, holding on to a wait-and-see outlook could put sports teams into reactive instead of pro-active positions. There is no grand sports commissioner in the U.S. to regulate ways and means for profit margins to be true and steady relative to economic ups and downs, so it would do well for the leaders of American baseball, football, basketball and hockey to analyze the effects of the current economic downturn and do what’s needed to keep an economic Katrina from striking pro sports across all boards. Two, while money and profits have to matter, the notion that money must rule in every situation could be just as ruinous as hanging in neutral for too long. Fandom, and what fandom wants, especially in hard times, has got to remain a factor as teams plan ways to avoid the impact of financial downswings.
 
Broncos.  WE can’t always trade in a dream for something better. Sometimes we have to settle for what’s directly in front of us, for the reality of a situation. Whether we like the idea or not, the serving of pie that’s there, that’s the slice on our plate---accept, or leave the table. Yes, the 2008 Denver Broncos are flawed, they have lost two in a row; they are not the perfect team it seemed they could be in September. Nor is Jay Cutler a Superman/Batman/Spiderman mixture or, better yet, a next-generation QB superior to John Elway for 60 minutes per game any game of the year. Instead, the Broncos are a better team than many other NFL clubs, yet a team that makes mistakes and needs to reduce them substantially in order to end the NFL season with more wins than losses, and Cutler is one of the NFL’s best QB’s and potentially as good as Elway but also a QB who, like many, commits a number of errors in six straight games. In other words, the Broncos can have a helluva good season if they pick away at the flaws week after week.
 
The work that is needed was obvious on Sunday last, when Jacksonville cleaned Denver's clock. And not solely from the Broncos defense pushed into bad timing and slow responses by a fast and rugged Jacksonville offense. The Broncos offense was trapped inside the net of what could seem to an observer to be minor infractions, something in the micro-, small details. In sports, however, “the fumble” can cost you your game. In sports, “the fumble” that becomes another team’s points can be a long echo in a player’s mind, which no player can get away from easily. How could the QB known to have the hardest throwing arm in football allow a ball to slip away from him, and then not be bothered by it? And, maybe it was too hard a throw that caused a receiver to drop an otherwise officially caught ball.
 
Head Coach Mike Shanahan has been in the game long enough to know that “fumbles” belong to that paradoxical category in sports known as, “It’s not supposed to happen but it does happen,” sort of like actor Tom Hanks shouting, “There’s no crying in baseball,” and we know that there is. Still, Shanahan can’t allow it, it’s letting a team lose its own game, not lose because the other side was much better play after play.
 
The good news is that there is time for the Broncos offense to correct its weaknesses. The talent and speed is surely there for plays that can actualize far past the powers of an opposing team’s defense. Cutler and his attackers have not been zero-at-the-bone in any game this season; they have scored TD’s, and they have left the field with double digits. Fixing the defense is crucial, and it’s not that there’s lack of blocking power or speed. Many battles in war are won from surprise. Football 101: Eliminate the other team’s ability to surprise your defense and you already have significant leverage. The Broncos defense is being outfoxed, resulting in delays preventing opposing team yardage. There’s grace in simplicity, and Mike Shanahan’s experience advises that he knows that football-grace exists in understanding what to do next and in the execution of it.
 
ROCKIES--- Looks like it will be another year of “Hurdle’s Rockies,” but with a revised coaching staff. Gone as of this week are three important coaches. The only coach that Rockies Manager Clint Hurdle hasn’t fired is the Rockies pitching coach, which seems odd in that pitching has been a weak component of the Denver ball club. What is this telling us?
 
Three coaches dumped is "a massacre," and indicative of desire for drastic changes in how a team will train and operate. That Hurdle spurred the firings could mean that the three coaches had not done their jobs well enough in 2008, or they were disloyal, or that Hurdle has new ideas about how he wants his hitting, fielding and bench coaches to perform and he intends to handpick different personnel to make it happen. It's been reported that Hurdle has been blaming the Rockies disappointing 2008 season on the three coaches that he fired, instead of placing the blame elsewhere, which is unlikely in that the Rockies General Manager and the team’s owners are not so stupid they couldn’t identify a real perpetrator of mishaps if such an individual actually existed. Also, the firing of the three coaches could be the beginning, not the end of an overhaul policy. And, keeping the pitching coach could mean that the guy is totally committed to that which Hurdle may now have in mind for pitching enhancement.
 
The big concern here, and for the Rockies 2009 season, is not solely the sudden firings of the three coaches, or if more cuts are on the way. While such actions matter, more important is Hurdle’s outlook on all four major coaching positions---hitting, fielding, bench and pitching. Given the demands on today’s baseball managers, delegating responsibility is key to team proficiency. Depending on coaches as much as possible without straining their skills, and having high expectations of them, is “an imperative.” A good manager works through his coaches 24/7 and he trusts them until they show cause not to be trusted. It’s been said that Hurdle has not asked enough of his coaches, and that could be at the root of why they may have been a disappointment in 2008.
 
A good manager also knows when to be one-on-one with his players. At the several practice sessions that I observed in 2008, I hardly ever saw Hurdle talk directly with his players. It seemed often that he deliberately set himself apart from them. So here we have the possibility of two issues: a manager’s lack of high expectations of his coaches, and too much distance between a manager and his players, the kind of distance that prevents a manager from knowing enough about a player’s “mental game.” Both outlooks tend to keep a team from reaching the zenith of its capabilities. These approaches to leadership can maintain lackluster play. They fail to inspire players to perform at their best “for the boss.” I may be dead wrong about this, for which I would apologize, and I am certain that Hurdle knows baseball strategy and tactics as well as any manager in the game today. But, does Hurdle know the subtle and important differences between leadership and during-the-game management? The best leaders hardly ever need to fire any of their people---they get them to do their jobs as best they can, and willingly day after day, game by game.

DURING any NBA season, the distance between what a team yearns for and that which can be achieved is hard to span and close. For some, the distance reaches deeper than for others, for example, the Denver Nuggets saying they will begin the 2008-09 season as a team playing post-season basketball “from the get-go,” believing heart, mind and soul that a final playoff round and a championship is truly in their grasp, “with our winning 60 or more games,” according to leading player Allen Iverson. But while the Nuggets got to the playoffs in recent NBA seasons, they could not make their way to a championship, in 2007-08 swept embarrassingly in the first round by the Los Angeles Lakers.
 
Surely the big nuance cited here by the Nuggets is “attitude,” a mind-set addressing those wins that come from fire-in-the-belly. It’s that Hollywood Rocky-in-the-ring thing, and it can work providing that there’s lots of talent available, along with honed skill-sets and good old basketball smarts. Nuggets Head Coach George Karl, Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony want you to know that they have the fire, that 2008-09 could be their best season ever.
 
"Attitude" is good---Even so, the difference between desire and reality can be more miles apart than the circumference of Planet Earth. For the Nuggets to win those 60 or more games in the season that begins October 29, 2008, there’s much work to be done. On the bright side, there’s this: Coach Karl and his key players know what has to be accomplished, when and how. A Karl take on the matter is that the Nuggets defense needs greater speed along with the blocking and team coordination that prevents or spoils an opposing team’s shots, which includes getting the Nuggets players to always transition quickly and sensibly from the offense into defense. Is there a preferred model for this? Ask Melo and he’ll cite the Boston Celtics against the L.A. Lakers for the 2007-08 NBA championship title, which not even NBA MVP Kobe Bryant could evade except two, possibly three times in 20 minutes of play.  
 
Karl points out that during 2007-08, the Nuggets took improper shots that were exploited by the opposing team’s offense into easy lay-ups and three pointers against them, usually because the Nuggets transition from offense to defense was rarely fast or clever enough. “Fast and Clever” in the transition cited here means quickly positioning two players back or to the side so they could react to an opposing team’s acquisition of the ball and prevent a fast break, and it means knowing when double teaming or zone defense makes more sense than going one-on-one in order to activate smothering coverage in time for that end-to-end/top-to-bottom wall of blockages that the Celtics employed against the Lakers last season.
 
Question: will Karl’s reconstituted emphasis on defense tactics make the Nuggets a more disciplined and rigid team, playbook-oriented minute-by-minute? Guessing from Karl’s leadership style to date, he’ll allow his starters and the bench to stray from a strategy when obvious targets of opportunity appear. Karl knows that Iverson and Anthony are in the NBA to be more than good soldiers. Their records demonstrate that they know when to trust an impulse and go for the shot, although at risk is the best possible transition into defense.
 
And, when I talked to Forward Kenyon Martin recently he told me that among his higher on-court goals this season will be “execution of leadership,” swiftly captaining a play when the ball is in his hands and he can see several passes and shots ahead. Reflected here is individuality that can be a plus, though a minus if judgment falters. It’s likely that Karl will promote more playbook obedience this season with regard to defense but not to that edge where initiative among players is lost. Any great basketball player will admit that when the ball is in his hands it’s mostly about teamwork, but it’s also very personal. Reconciling the team’s needs and one’s judgment for a shot is what the masters accomplish almost perfectly, a lesson that Melo confirmed for himself as a major player for Team USA’s wins at the Beijing Olympiad, an outlook that Melo has stated publicly will be noted about him this season.
 
If you ask Karl about what held the Nuggets back from 60 or more games won in 2007-08, he’ll admit to flaws in the Nuggets defense under the glass, one of which was NOT Center Marcus Camby throughout the season. Which leaves the question, “Can Nene substitute for the value that Camby had provided when at his best?” Six foot-eleven Nene thinks so, commenting to me that his style as a Center may be different than that of Camby’s but he intends to be under the glass as swiftly as Camby could get there and with the jumps, high reaches and accurate blocking feats that are such a large percentage of any good team’s defense. Nene also told me that he’s in super good health now, no pains in the groin no matter which direction he lifts, torques and lands.
 
Another player gone is Eddie Najera, whom Karl said had inspired and led the bench numerous times last year. However, that role goes easily to Anthony Carter, J.R. Smith and Chucky Atkins. And, when Linus Kleiza served as a starter in the last NBA season 13 times, his points per game average for those events was 17.1
 
Yet in 2007-08, the performance values seemed more that of individual players, and less that of the Nuggets as a team. Iverson ranked third in scoring in the NBA during the season, his ppg average 26.4. He was named Western Conference player of the week three times in the 2007-08 season. Melo was fourth in scoring last season with 25.7 ppg, also posting his single season career-high 22 double-doubles. In his career, he’s been selected as Western Conference player of the week eight times, and has been an All-Star twice. In 2007-08, Kenyon Martin listed 11th in the NBA in FG percentage, and 29th regarding blocks, 30th in steals. He has led the Nuggets players in rebounding five times, his ppg record for last year being 12.4 for the fewer minutes played per game than Iverson or Melo accrued.
 
Crucial for the improved defense without loss of offense capacity is that during the 2006-07 season, Nene led the Nuggets in rebounds 15 times and scored in double-digits in 11 straight games. He has the ability to be as good a Center as Camby when it comes to physical prowess and instinct, and if he cannot always show the mettle of experience at that position there’s depth available with the back-to-Denver 6-11 Chris Andersen, plus support from K-Mart. Also, with Denver now and recently from the Dallas Mavericks is 6-9 F. Juwan Howard, who could contribute aggressively should he continue his 15.3 ppg average for the past season. Howard brings 14 years of NBA experience to the Nuggets, during which he played in 1,001 games.  
 
Okay, the Nuggets have top players who perform high above the margin. However, going from 50 to 60+ games in the upcoming season will require more than individual capabilities. It will take the teamwork that enabled the Nuggets to win 22 games on the road last season, which was a franchise record under George Karl. Demanded, then, will be full integration of the team’s individual player skills into a consistently fused and sharpened wolfpack for high-end competition, and that is what a Head Coach is paid to help make happen.

I wasn’t going to do it. After all, it would be written to ad nauseum in every U.S. newspaper and sports magazine. It didn’t seem appropriate for a Colorado on-line sports columnist to be writing about Yankee Stadium disappearing, especially since I prefer Denver over New York.
 
But the notion kept gnawing at me, and not because I’ve experienced some sentimental occasions regarding that old gray elephant of a venue, but because Yankee Stadium is probably what a torn-down Coors Field would be for many Denverites passionate about baseball and the game’s multiple meanings, fans who are possessive about their ROX remembrances, for instance, October 2007.
 
So, to get rid of the gnawing and recreate the harmony that existed in my home before I got cranky about whether I should or should not join the year’s sentimentalists, here’s my Yankee Stadium song, which requires that I tell Colorado readers that the first six years of my life were spent little more than a city block from Yankee Stadium. I have vague memories of my father and his pals watching Yankee games from the roof or windows of an apartment building, which is how I knew that there was a Yankee Stadium and that it must have been an important place, maybe as important as a King’s Castle in a Disney movie.
 
Growing up, I developed a personal list of Yankee heroes, sustaining my then need of sports-models---outfielder and super-hitter Joe DiMaggio, second baseman Jerry Coleman, catcher Yogi Berra, shortstop Phil Rizzuto, hitter Mickey Mantle---all played at the Bronx ‘s Taj Mahal, baseball’s Notre Dame Cathedral, America’s version of ancient Greece’s amphitheater.  
 
My Dad and I were at Yankee Stadium when during WW-2 (I forget which inning and the opposing team) an announcement was made that Joe DiMaggio was to leave the ball field and report for military duty, more than likely a publicity stunt. Thousands of fans stood and cheered. I was touched and figured that Joltin’ Joe was going to kill as many Nazis as Superman or Batman could. I remember thinking that Yankee Stadium was where big decisions were announced; it had to be “the center of the universe.” My psychologist-daughter would probably agree that this uniqueness of “place” doesn’t leave one’s consciousness completely, not even as we grow older.
 
Yankee Stadium was where I wanted to be with my Dad on Father’s Day and my birthday, which is where we went on those days for many years, and it mattered always to see the Yankees play more than if they won or lost, because my Dad drilled into me that being at Yankee Stadium for a baseball game was “the main story,” the truer happening than numbers on the board.
 
If you were a New York kid in the late Forties and early Fifties and a Yankee fan, it mattered that your team was better than the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants, even if those teams were of a different league; and you already knew that your stadium was the number one New York event-palace. When those teams left New York, and the Dodgers’ Ebbets Field and the Giants’ Polo Grounds no longer housed major league teams, I, like many other Yankee fans, experienced “enemy deprivation,” which the newly situated New York Mets could never rid me of. During those early years, Shea Stadium hadn’t the history it has now, which increased the importance of Yankee Stadium, a venue that from its past seemed to be the capitol of baseball nation.
 
Though I left New York for good in my early adult years, I managed to get to Yankee Stadium often afterward, each visit a reconnection with friends and Yankee fans of my youth. Of particular interest was that after every game that I observed at Yankee Stadium, fans could walk across the field to parking lots or to subway entrances where, depending on the Yankee game’s outcome, hundreds of fans either mingled sharing their joy with raucous voices, or they moved slowly in a sad silence that felt arm-in-arm, somehow comforting. It was genuine evidence of an American pastime, of the fact that baseball reflects our longings to overcome life’s obstacles with the grace and timing of the best outfielders and infielders, of a truth that the game represents our shared quests to be base-runners and home-run hitters within all of our endeavors, surely a mirror of our wish to be winners yet congenial. At Yankee Stadium, I learned that baseball runs through our culture like a great river.
 
I would see games at stadiums around the country, many at Baltimore’s Camden Yards and at Washington, D.C.’s RFK, and eventually many games at Coors Field, experiencing the same recognitions that I received at Yankee Stadium, including that my father’s appreciation of the talents and skills of others was at the core of his leadership. I knew from watching him applaud the good team plays that this aspect of his being deserved emulation and respect. I realized that sports and the fields where they occur can be an extension of family and home, guiding one through life with their challenging demands and sweet remembrances.
 
Yankee Stadium down and gone? Not really, for it has been a venue visible within other s