The rumors have been confirmed.  Kiki will not be the nuggets GM any longer.   The man credited with single handedly restoring the nuggets to a playoff caliber team has been shown the door.   It's been said that he was fired.  That is absolutely false.  The truth is his contract expires August 1st  and owner Stan Kroenke has chosen not to offer an extension or a new contract.   So the question is why?  Why wouldn't you offer the man who is so respected by other GM's in the league that they've coined the term "Nuggets Plan", when they start re-building?  The answer is two-fold, money and overall performance.

The money issue is a factor in a lot of decisions that are made in professional sports.  Kiki is going to demand a pretty penny in the open market.  He has a reputation and is well respected in the league, and he's transitioned into a saavy deal maker.  Is he in the same category as Geoff Petrie or Rod Thorn, probably not yet, but he's just getting started.  Truth is, he was going to be very expensive to re-sign and Kroenke chose to not waste his money.

The reason I said "waste" his money, is that Kiki's reputation is built off of smoke and mirrors.  He was in the right place at the right time.  Basically he was given the task of building a championship contender out of a lame duck.  So he looked to the future.  He dumped salaries to sign free agents, they bombed out a season (winning 17 games) in order to build for the future.  His plan was perfect, but things don't always go according to plan.  1st, his plan of wasting an entire season didn't work.  The goal was to get Lebron James, it wasn't a coincidence that he chose that season as the "beginning" of his plan.  He didn't win the lottery, but had a great player fall to him anyway, in what was the deepest draft in years.  Then he began to build.  But here is where things went wrong.  He's credited with drafting Nene, a guy nobody had really heard of before.  But it's been 4 years and while Nene has been decent, he's still got that nagging "potential" tag on him.  He also drafted Nikolas Tskidisvili with their earlier pick in the 1st round.  Needless to say, there were plenty of players from that draft that have turned out better.  He drafted Jameer Nelson the year after Carmelo, but traded him to Orlando.  Nelson has turned out to be a decent pro, and a better shooter then anybody on the Nuggets this season.  His final 2 first round picks were Julius Hodge, a guy who couldn't even shoot the college 3 and plays the same position as his superstar, and Linas Kleiza.  Kleiza was a little bit of a surprise, but the fact is, this is a team that was already 4 deep at power forward, why draft another one.  Needless to say his drafts were pretty much horrible if you take out Carmelo, who was a no-brainer.  

Free agency was supposed to be how they re-built the team.  Dump salaries and then sign great players.  The first significant signee was Andre Miller.  He's been pretty good, but they signed him instead of Gilbert Arenas.  As we all saw Arenas is in a different world when you compare him to Andre Miller.  Imagine Arenas running the Doug Moe style offense with Carmelo.  Now, Kiki can't take all the blame on the Arenas thing.  Word has it that Kroenke thought Arenas was too expensive.  Plus, Kroenke wanted Kobe the next summer.  This is where Kiki failed, he's the basketball guy.  He should have convinced Kroenke that Kobe was never ever ever going to leave LA, and that Gilbert Arenas was going to become who he is today.  Andre has been serviceable, a play maker, but he can't shoot from deep and that has slowed Carmelo's progression into a superstar.  The next summer, they made a run at Kobe, but he never was serious, nor would that have been good for Carmelo.  They flirted with a couple of other free agents, but got who they "wanted".  I'm a huge Kenyon Martin fan, but they gave up way too much for a guy who will never be more then a great role player.  First he got a max contract.  In my opinion only guys who can take over a game at any point and will your team to win should get a max deal.  But Kiki had the money to burn.  Then in order to get K-Mart he traded away more of the future.  Now it's not his fault that K-Mart had knee problems.  But if he really believed in Nene, he shouldn't have ever made that move.  Save your money and buy a shooter the next summer.  The final straw for Stan Kroenke was this last summer, Kiki didn't make any moves to get a shooter or another scorer.  He got another point guard, an undersized one who couldn't shoot.  Didn't the nuggets have enough of those?  This doesn't even take into consideration the debacle with choosing a coach.  I mean Michael Cooper, who are we kidding.  

This coming summer is the start of another transitional period.  The Nuggets are handcuffed with a ton of hustle players, role players and one superstar....and no money.  They'll be trying to move Kenyon Martin, trying to sign Carmelo to a max extension, and trying to find a shooter.  Who do you want making those kind of decisions?  For the money, it's not Kiki.