George Karl said he thought he might be leading a championship team last year when he felt something strange on his neck.

One year later, surrounded by a desolating 18,000 zombies, the Denver Nuggets huddled around their general in the midst of a fourth quarter playoff battle with the Oklahoma City Thunder Sunday night.

“Commit to running more and keep fighting,” Nuggets head coach George Karl preached to his favorite headache, J.R. Smith. “I’ll waste every timeout to rest you if you keep running and fighting!”

Smith got the message.

The first play out of the timeout Smith flew down the left sideline like a bullet after a Denver rebound and was rewarded by finishing off the play with a thunderous dunk to put Denver back in the lead.

FIGHTING BACK

Zombies are nothing when you’ve already defeated ‘the dragon’ as Karl refers to his battles with prostate and throat cancer.

Nobody in the NBA is more tried and true than George Karl, and compared to his Coach of the Year competitors – San Antonio’s Greg Popovich and Chicago’s Tom Thibodeau – Karl’s job has been superlative.

Karl overcame prostate cancer in 2005. His son Coby had Thyroid cancer in 2006 and 2007.

Five years later, Karl had been diagnosed with two types of cancer: throat cancer in January 2010, and in October a rare breed of locker-room cancer otherwise known as ‘Carmelo.’

Despite the end of last years NBA season coinciding with six torturous weeks of treatment, Karl continued to coach the Nuggets through the playoff push from anywhere he could – the bench, then the hospital and then not at all (Doctor’s orders).

With no direction and no order, the Nuggets collapsed in the first round.

Getting his team to run in the fourth quarter of a playoff game is now just a nuisance to Karl, who spent several months being nourished by a feeding tube because throat cancer made it so difficult to swallow.

He slept with oxygen pumping into his lungs and watched game film while a machine suctioned mucus from his mouth, only to be rewarded with the tune-in-tomorrow Carmelo Anthony soap opera and the last year of his contract.

NEW NUGGETS

Undaunted by his health, the peripatetic NBA lifestyle and his futures uncertainty, this spring smells of a different scent. Not that of doctors offices, hospital beds and chemotherapy, but that of a fresh Rocky Mountain air and a team camaraderie equaling the third best record in the league (18-7) since Carmelo’s departure.

Somehow, someway, Karl turned the midseason loss of his two best players and a completely reconstructed Nuggets roster into a locker room galvanized by disrespect, the highest scoring offense in the league and playoff contender

“You can definitely win with a team, this is the best thing for the Denver Nuggets,” Karl stressed during a radio interview.

“For us, with the market that we’re in that’s what we’re saying. Let’s go out and get good players at every position, have a great bench, great chemistry, great camaraderie and see what we can become, why can’t that work!”

Cancer never does anybody favors on purpose, but his latest triumph with the dragon has added a virtuosic light to Karl’s coaching style.

After being robbed of 40 pounds and his voice’s exclamatory punch, Karl decided to tone back his dominating presence, often remaining quiet and delegating duties to assistants.

This season, less has been more for Denver.

All of which has, in turn, relieved his players of the pressure he has been known to force on them, allowing all of their new personalities to mesh appropriately without the fear of being chastised for their mistakes.

His newly acquired change in lifestyle has led to a change in coaching style, which has the Nuggets sitting in a place nobody thought they’d reach without Carmelo – the playoffs.

Many doubted the Nuggets ability to withstand the fierce competition out west without a “go-to guy.”

“The ‘go-to guy’ is making good defensive stops. The ‘go-to guy’ is getting extra possessions, making free throws and getting offensive rebounds when it counts,” Karl said. “And then, there’s the opportunity to play as a team down the stretch, execute a play and let the game dictate who’s going to make the shot — rather than force the shot.”

Karl has always been the smartest guy in the gym – it’s hard to argue with a 1,000-game winner. But, nowhere to be found in those 1,000 wins are the 16 that matter, which is why a Coach of the Year trophy would be disappointing to Karl without a championship to show for it.

“I’ll sell my soul to the devil if you guarantee me a championship,” Karl said to the Denver-Post.

Doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve it.