Nuggets General manager Kiki Vandeweghe and coach Jeff Bzdelik should be sharing a smile and a bottle of champagne.  Instead, Bzdelik and Vandeweghe are stuck toasting a relationship on the rocks.

This was a basketball partnership born of convenience. It created a little miracle. It could still end in divorce.

And here's the weird part: Whether Vandeweghe and Bzdelik can continue to work together has absolutely nothing to do with wins and losses.

There is often friction between an innovative general manager and a headstrong coach. That's called creative tension.  But Vandeweghe and Bzdelik now rub each other the wrong way, stubbornly harboring philosophical differences on offense and defense, with rookie star Carmelo Anthony unfortunately caught in the middle.

What's most amazing about how the Nuggets became one of the league's feel-good stories of 2004 is they did so in spite of a rift between the coach and general manager.

Vandeweghe richly deserves to be named the NBA's executive of the year. No coach in the league has done a better job than Bzdelik. But they have a severe personality conflict. Which is the No. 1 reason, far and away, why it might be impossible for them to remain on the same team.