According to Forbes, the money magazine, the Rockies' Dan O'Dowd is not the worst general manager in baseball, and also according to Forbes, Kiki Vandeweghe is the general manager of the Nuggets.

Vandeweghe is no longer the GM of the Nuggets, nor any other team, and there is no such job on the company letterhead. Mark Warkentien comes the nearest as vice president of basketball operations.

Pierre Lacroix is ranked the best general manager among Denver sports teams, ignoring the fact that the Avalanche is about to miss the playoffs for the first time. Lacroix's last act was to buy that expensive wart of a goalie, Jose Theodore, and Francois Giguere is the actual general manager.

Apparently, like the rest of us, Forbes remains suspicious.

Even though Forbes' evaluations were only through 2005, is it difficult to take seriously such a serious examination of, to use Forbes' description, "The most influential and scrutinized position in sports."

Still, it is always instructive to have objective evidence to confirm the familiar, and if an earnest business bible such as Forbes is going to all that trouble to rank and scrutinize, then it is worth a look.

The local GMs are ranked this way: Lacroix 14th, Ted Sundquist 38th, Vandeweghe 49th and O'Dowd 65th, this out of a total of 97.

Lacroix is considered better than Joe Dumars, who built the Pistons into champions; Billy Beane of the Oakland A's, the best baseball GM; Theo Epstein of the Red Sox, the kid who killed the Curse of the Bambino; and better than Jerry West, the most astute basketball mind in history, plus West could hit the open jumper.

The rankings are based on wins and saving money, or how a GM spends his owner's money.

The wins were certainly true for a great while for the Avs, but the saving money part was never a piece of Lacroix's winning formula. In fact, the new and more prudent NHL with its fiscal restrictions may have hastened Lacroix's removal of himself to the president's chair.

If you can't just buy a Stanley Cup, all the fun is gone.

The Avalanche has mismanaged the new salary constraints as badly as any team in hockey, losing value, buying junk and relying on cheap youth.

Of the six baseball general managers who are, according to Forbes, worse than O'Dowd, the most startling is Kenny Williams of the Chicago White Sox. If memory serves, on a budget not much greater than O'Dowd is allowed, Williams won a World Series just a couple of years ago.

Maybe Forbes is impressed with O'Dowd's ability to remain employed in spite of such a consistent lack of success.

Clearly the most successful and least responsible GM is the Broncos' Sundquist, who avoids both credit and blame at the elbow of Mike Shanahan.

To give Sundquist a share of Shanahan's achievements is to concede the filled stadiums, the intense following and the dedication to the ultimate goal, which, unlike that of the Rockies, is still to win the big prize.

According to Forbes, the values of the local franchises are, in order, the Broncos ($975 million) the Nuggets ($309 million) the Rockies ($298 million) and the Avs ($219 million).

Apply any kind of business school prescriptions or marketplace wisdom you like, the reason the Broncos are the most valuable (sixth in the NFL) is because they win, they try and they dare.

Never have the Broncos - the Pat Bowlen, Shanahan/Sundquist connection - tried simply to get by, easier to do in the NFL than any other game because of the built-in profits.

And the Broncos' value is high because, of course, the NFL is the most valuable league in sports, even if the Forbes formula concludes that the Washington Redskins are the most valuable team in all of sports.

Given a choice to own a sports team, any fan would take the New York Yankees or Los Angeles Lakers or Dallas Cowboys, or any of a dozen others before the Redskins.

The Yankees are still the most valuable franchise in baseball, but worth only slightly more overall than the Broncos, another signal that pro football is not only the national pastime but the national bankbook as well.

The worst GMs in sports are Mike Brown of the Cincinnati Bengals and Matt Millen of the Detroit Lions, last and next to last. Hard to argue there.

But the best GM in all of sports is - drum roll and hard swallow, please - Kevin McHale of the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Make of this what you will. Maybe Forbes means by the inch.

lincicomeb@RockyMountainNews.com

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