The 53-year-old Malone won 471 regular-season games in Denver, 39 more than Doug Moe, for the franchise’s all-time coaching lead, and also won the Nuggets their first-ever NBA Championship in 2023.
Jamal Murray’s delicate health. Michael Porter Jr.’s dizzying slumps. Aaron Gordon’s balky right calf. Russell Westbrook’s boneheaded plays. An indifferent defense. A paper-thin bench. An ever-changing starting lineup.
The Denver Nuggets’ headaches are so many that Nikola Jokic, in the midst of an historic season, couldn’t pinpoint his biggest concern following their latest loss Sunday to the short-handed Indiana Pacers.
“I don’t know. Maybe we just, maybe we just … I don’t know, actually,” Jokic said.
The Nuggets are hoping a stunning shakeup will provide a solution to all that ails them.
In a shocking move with less than a week left in the regular season, the Nuggets fired coach Michael Malone on Tuesday with the team in fourth place in the Western Conference, in the midst of his eighth consecutive winning season in Denver and less than two years removed from leading the franchise to its first NBA championship.
The team also announced that general manager Calvin Booth’s contract won’t be renewed.
“Play hard and have fun,” Josh Kroenke, the vice chairman of Kroenke Sports and Entertainment, replied when asked by Vic Lombardi of the team’s flagship Altitude network for his immediate expectations for the team.
Kroenke added that he and his father, owner Stan Kroenke, decided in recent days that both Malone and Booth would be out after the season, so “then your mind then turns to what is the best decision for this group right now?”
“And from that point forward, I became comfortable with the thinking of you know let’s try to shake this tree and squeeze as much out of this as we can.
The Nuggets tabbed David Adelman as coach for the remainder of the season, which includes road games against Sacramento and Houston sandwiched around a home game Friday night against Memphis, which fired head coach Taylor Jenkins on March 28 despite being playoff-bound, like the Nuggets.
The 53-year-old Malone won 471 regular-season games in Denver, 39 more than Doug Moe, for the franchise’s all-time coaching lead. Starting with the first playoff appearance under Malone in 2019, the Nuggets advanced past the first round six times in seven chances. They made the Western Conference finals in the Walt Disney World bubble in 2020 and then rolled to the championship by winning 16 of 20 playoff games in 2023.
