Last Tuesday, the Denver Nuggets informed their championship coach Mike Malone and general manager Calvin Booth that they were both fired. Let me repeat that again, the Nuggets gutted the two most important decision-makers in their organization — the week before the playoffs.
What is going on in Denver?
For years, away from the public eye, a deep factional fissure in Denver has been built between Malone and Booth, referred to as a “cold war” by ESPN’s Tim MacMahon and Ramona Shelbourne. Nuggets governor Josh Kreonke made the case that this tension added to the Nuggets’ struggles throughout the last season and forced his hand to make a draconian change. Kroenke ultimately decided that enough was enough and fired Malone and Booth. Given what we know, the Nuggets were right to fire Booth, but under no circumstance should they have fired Malone so abruptly. They should have saved this shameful ordeal for the coming offseason.
The tension in Denver stemmed from the fact that Booth never felt like a true part of that championship run in 2023. The roster was built painstakingly by Tim Connely, who currently serves as general manager for the Minnesota Timberwolves. This firing was never about Malone’s coaching — or “defensive scheming” as some people want to argue — but rather a symbolic decision made by an insecure ownership group desperate to clear a corrupted house.
Some decisions are so stupid they should have never been made to begin with. A team has never fired a championship coach this close to the playoffs. Malone’s firing has made me realize it is too late for the Nuggets to salvage the success they once had. Their ownership’s decisions will one day cannibalize the rest of their championship core.
Clouds of incompetence and vitriol have formed for many years in Denver, and without Malone there to steady the ship, it is my hunch that more weight will fall on the burdened shoulders of Nuggets star, Nikola Jokic.
If things continue to sour, Jokic could choose to decline his player option upon the 2028 offseason and enter free agency. He has an opportunity to sign a premature extension this coming summer, and Denver is certainly concerned about it.
This may feel unlikely right now, but we should not underestimate the burden of carrying this team. Though Jokic is incredible, the potential stress of years of failed seasons with no light in sight will affect him. As the pieces of that 2023 team slowly decline, the Nuggets youngsters — Christian Braun, Julian Strawther and Peyton Watson — will be asked to fill an ever-widening gap between the level of the past and that of the present. They may be solid and, in Braun’s case, great, yet they are still not good enough to form a special team around Jokic.
The clock starts now on the second half of Jokic’s storied career. Though Jokic is the prototype of a player who will stick with the Nuggets through thick and thin, his patience, like everybody’s, must have its limit. More bad decisions regarding management will lead to more pressure on his shoulders, and given this one, it only follows that more bad decisions are coming.
Malone’s firing is cataclysmic for the Nuggets and is indicative of deep rot in their organization. Jokic’s morale will certainly be something to monitor over the next few years, especially if he doesn’t choose to sign that extension.
