With one eye still visibly swollen and discolored, and much of his upper body obscured by a Minerva cast, Denver Post sports columnist Mark Kizla sat at his writing desk, composing the second of two columns about the Denver Nuggets’ free agency moves on his 1994 Gateway desktop computer.
Kizla, who was recently struck by a 16th-Street MallRide trolley as he reached into the street for a donut that he saw lying on the ground, has been experiencing various symptoms of mental instability ever since the accident, but has had trouble getting his insurance provider to cover the costs associated with treating his head trauma and managing his home care in the meantime. In order to provide evidence of his own mental incapacity, Kizla decided to write two columns on the Denver Nuggets, the aspect of Denver sports that, historically, has been his best bet for appearing as though he has a head injury.
The most recent column, which begins with four vaguely-connected single-clause sentences, veers into Kizla’s own embarrassing memories of his high school prom, and refers to the Nuggets "insecurity complex" in a way that can’t help but sound like naked projection, certainly provides plenty of evidence of a malfunctioning intelligence. It shows a scant understanding of Nugget signee Paul Millsap's value beyond his basic stat line, and also refers to the Nuggets as being "the butt of jokes" throughout the NBA, demonstrating an ignorance of entire NBA franchises that is so vast as to be a fireable offense for any professional sports columnist whose brain is not swollen and malfunctioning as the result of a horrific trolley accident.
That column, however, is nothing to the one Kizla composed shortly after his accident, in which he advocated that the Nuggets should forego signing Millsap or Blake Griffin, and instead use its $40 million in cap space to acquire Memphis Grizzlies forward JaMychal Green instead. Neurologists studying Kizla’s condition say that the difference between that column and yesterday’s, which seemed to contain some grudging acceptance of the deal, shows how quickly the brain can begin to recover core functions after a traumatic event. "However, even this most recent column, which ends with a bizarre Yoda quote with tangential relevance to the situation described, shows how far Mike—or is it Mork? I can’t ever seem to remember—how far he has to go," said Kizla’s attending physician.
Stuck in a dehumanizing healthcare system that prioritizes profit over patient care, Kizla is simply doing what needs to be done in order to get the treatment he requires. However, his case suffered an unfortunate setback when he accidentally e-mailed both columns not to his insurance company, but to the editorial staff at the Denver Post, where they were subsequently printed.
Kizla blamed the issues on his AOL e-mail account, which he says has been "acting up." The Denver Post editors, meanwhile, claim that the columns matched all the normal features of Mark Kizla’s Nuggets coverage, being written, as usual, in 16-point Comic Sans and saved to a Microsoft Word ’95 file.
Eventually, the columns were forwarded to the insurance company, which has announced its intention to dispute Kizla’s claim. As part of the evidence-gathering process, the company’s lawyers have issued subpoenas for every other Nuggets column Kizla has written during his time in Denver.
