FireGeorgeKarl.com, Denver Stiffs, And Incredibly Difficult News

Andrew Feinstein of SB Nation’s Nuggets blog, Denver Stiffs, once started the website FireGeorgeKarl.com. And just a few years later, he’s become close enough to Karl’s inner circle that the Nuggets asked him to attend last night’s press conference as a show of support. Pretty amazing, no? Here’s an excerpt from a pretty moving account of what sounded like an incredibly emotional night at the Pepsi Center on Tuesday:

Choking up from the start, Karl relayed the series of events that led up to this press conference starting from feeling a lump on his neck before New Year’s to the possibility of missing games and/or practices due to his “fatigue level.” Karl said that he had “an emotional desire to stay with the team” but that he will have to undergo “six weeks of radiation and chemotherapy.” Karl said he believes he has “a championship team” here in Denver and that he “wants to continue coaching,” but that there’s a possibility he’ll miss games and/or practices based on his “fatigue level.” Karl specifically mentioned that he won’t be coaching at Golden State or at Minnesota in the coming weeks, but that the cancer is “curable and treatable” and he hopes to be “100% for the playoffs.” Karl also confidently said that he’s “ready for the competition with cancer.”

[...]

Karl said that he wakes up every morning and says to himself: “Oh, shit. I have cancer.” And finished that thought by saying “there’s no guaranteed contracts in this” while getting choked up some more to the point that he couldn’t really speak anymore.

It’s one of those moments in life that is truly too bizarre to make up. Fresh off coaching in the NBA All-Star Game, coaching one of the best teams in basketball, and signing a lucrative contract extension, suddenly, all of those triumphs are meaningless, and Karl’s left relatively helpless in a fight for his life. “There’s no guaranteed contracts in this...”

It’s a reminder that beyond basketball—with all the outsized egos, millions of dollars, Hall-of-Fame resumes, and fans starting websites like FireGeorgeKarl.com—these are still just humans. People that gather for a dinner with the in-laws at the Cheesecake Factory, just like you or me. Does that mean we stop criticizing them or treat them any differently? No. It comes with the territory of their profession (and mine). But still.

It’s just... bizarre. Earlier this year I wrote a post titled The Nuggets Have George Karl Disease. And now George Karl has an actual disease, and it’s life-threatening, and puts all the rest of this in proper perspective. Every now and then life reminds us that we’re utterly powerless over everything. This is one of those moments. For George Karl, for Nuggets fans, for Andrew Feinstein and the guys at Denver Stiffs... Everyone. You don’t need to have cancer yourself to understand what it can mean, just like you don’t have to get shot to understand the power of a gun. In both cases, there’s a finality involved that make everything else in life look like child’s play.

With that in mind, here’s to hoping Karl and the Nuggets can get back to child’s play real soon.