The late-2000s was one of the best eras in the history of Denver Nuggets basketball, headlined by Carmelo Anthony, Allen Iverson and others, and that squad was consistently one of the best of the West. Despite the regular season success, those Nuggets teams could never put it together in the postseason, as they advanced past the first round just once in seven consecutive postseason appearances with Anthony and company leading the way.

While the Nuggets had one of the best rosters in the league throughout the back half of that decade, the man in charge never changed in George Karl, the one common denominator within all those teams that constantly played well in the regular season and then flamed out in the playoffs. Karl was Denver’s head coach from 2004-2013, and the closest he came to sniffing an NBA Finals berth was in 2009 when the Nuggets were tied with the Los Angeles Lakers at two games apiece in the Western Conference Finals.

Kenyon Martin, the starting power forward on that team, recently appeared on an episode of “The OGs with Mike Miller and Udonis Haslem” to talk about a variety of things, one being his time in Denver. Martin spent seven seasons of his 15-year career in Denver from 2004-2011, averaging 12 points and seven rebounds per game in Karl’s system, but wasn’t quite a fan of the longtime coach, and had an interesting opinion on the longtime coach.

“I’mma keep harping on it. People gonna get tired of hearing me say it, probably … but if we had a different coach, we win a championship, bro. No doubt about it,” Martin said. “If we had a different coach that was well-rounded — knew the game and people — not just the game and not just people, but both? Because it can’t just be one part.”

In Karl’s repeated failures to produce success in the postseason, the series that he lost were not exactly close, for the most part. In the 10 series he and the Nuggets lost, one was a sweep, five ended in five games, three went to a sixth game, and only one series, the 2012 first round bout with the Lakers, went the distance to a seventh game.

For the Carmelo/Martin teams (’04-’10), they only played two Game 6’s in nine tries.

“Did the man know basketball? Yeah, but it wasn’t in its totality,” Martin said. “End of game situations, like, all the s*** you need if you ain’t got no timeouts, or if they take this away, what we gonna do … I played for this man for six and half years, we never worked on it.”

That should be highly alarming to anyone who was rooting for those Denver teams to go the distance. Having a coach that had already been in the league for over 30 years as a head coach that didn’t practice end of game scenarios is almost malpractice, and clearly a reason why they struggled in the postseason. Martin had the evidence to back it up as well, saying that the Nuggets committed two key turnovers in the Western Conference Finals against the Lakers because they ran a play for Anthony two consecutive times and the Lakers knew what was coming.

Karl on the other hand, clearly didn’t know what to expect.

J.R. Smith, another key part of that 2009 squad, spoke about those same mishaps in that series two years ago, showing that Martin wasn’t the only Nugget frustrated with Karl’s leadership.

Martin was very frustrated and emotional just talking about Karl’s mishaps as Denver’s head coach, and wouldn’t even refer to him by his name by the end of the segment.

“We were, as a group, handicapped from the decision management made by keeping dude,” Martin said.

Another interesting part of the conversations is that Haslem mentioned that he could’ve signed with the Nuggets when he was a free agent in 2009 after his second contract expired. It was between Denver, Dallas and Miami, but Haslem opted to stay in South Beach where he ended up spending the rest of his career. Miller and Haslem both also talked about how difficult it was to play in Denver at the time, and how many teams marked it as a scheduled loss on the calendar.

Could that Nuggets team have gotten to the mountaintop if they had a different person calling the shots? They certainly had the talent to do so, but the decision of who to have as a head coach is arguably the hardest one a front office can make in the NBA.