The Nuggets Fired Michael Malone: The Facts and My Conspiracy
After the Luka Doncic trade, I didn’t think it would be possible for NBA news to make my jaw drop ever again. I was wrong. When I received a text that the Denver Nuggets had fired Mike Malone, I stopped in my tracks to look up the news and was befuddled when I saw that it was true.
If Taylor Jenkins’ firing from Memphis was a 10 out of 10 on the shock scale, then Malone’s is a 15 out of 10. He is the franchise record-holder for most head coaching wins, coached the team to its only championship in 2023, and was the fourth-longest tenured coach in the league behind Gregg Popovich, Erik Spoelstra, and Steve Kerr.
A good explanation is needed for such a curious, oddly-timed, and potentially costly decision. The Nuggets have an explanation, but is it a good one?
The Facts
It’s frankly a miracle that Denver won the championship in 2023 given that Malone and Nuggets GM Calvin Booth hate each other. It’s virtually impossible to win when a coach and a general manager aren’t on the same page. Tension tends to build which impacts everybody in the organization including the players, and the work environment becomes toxic which plagues the team. But Denver was able to rise to the mountaintop while the two were in constant disagreement.
Since then, the feud has only intensified. Booth and Malone hardly speak and when they do, it’s a surprise to all. Malone reportedly doesn’t trust any of the front office members and they don’t trust him. The Nuggets were supposed to be going head-to-head with the best teams in the league and competing for a championship, and instead, their own head coach and general manager were competing with each other.
“Booth and Malone never liked each other, rarely spoke, and talked behind each other’s backs. —Kevin O’Connor (Yahoo)
So, what’s the reason for the beef?
Booth is a good talent evaluator. He snagged Christian Braun at the end of the first round in 2022 and acquired Julian Strawther, Peyton Watson, and Jalen Pickett—all rotation players for Denver—by means of the draft. Rather than defer to players he had no significant transactional history with, Booth preferred for his young guys to play.
Malone wanted the opposite. He’s been a constant proponent of playing the Nuggets’ best players—their veterans—as opposed to developing his young players. I have to agree with him because the Nuggets have no business wasting the prime of Nikola Jokic who is proving to be one the best offensive weapons of the century.
When the Nuggets let go of Bruce Brown and didn’t re-tool their roster to replace him, there was concern that they weren’t going all-in to build around Jokic and contend for championships. After they let Kentavious Caldwell-Pope walk in free agency last year, the concern level rose. The Nuggets’ ownership was clearly scared of crossing the second apron but failed to understand that when you have a player of Jokic’s caliber, you should break the 100th apron to provide him with the best possible roster.
Malone saw Jokic every day and realized that he is no ordinary superstar talent. He’s one of the greatest players to ever touch a basketball. Thus, wanting to maximize his prime, he put who he feels are the best players on the court—not the young players.
What that has led to has been a lot more minutes for players like Russell Westbrook and De’Andre Jordan. Westbrook plays more minutes than Strawther, Watson, and Pickett despite shooting far worse from three-point range than all of them. Jordan, who is 36 years old and hasn’t averaged more than 5.1 points per game since 2020, gets more minutes than 24-year-old center Zeke Nnaji who the Nuggets just signed to a $32M contract.
The disagreement between Booth and Malone was simmering and the Nuggets' recent four-game losing streak was the boiling point. In a must-win game against the Timberwolves in which Jokic put up 61 points, 10 rebounds, and 10 assists, Malone opted to play Westbrook down the stretch of the game. In the final 20 seconds, Westbrook missed a wide-open layup that would have put the Nuggets up three and then fouled Nickeil Alexander-Walker’s game-winning three-pointer with 0.1 seconds left. As a result of Westbrook’s blunders, the Nuggets lost the game 140-139 in double overtime.
The Nuggets followed up that choke job with a loss to the Spurs, and subsequent losses to the Warriors and Pacers, putting them just 0.5 games clear of 8th place in the West and 11-13 in their last 24 games.
With a fear that Malone had lost the locker room and the Nuggets’ season was going to be flushed down the drain as a result of the toxic environment Booth and Malone had generated, Nuggets owner Josh Kroenke decided to pull the trigger by firing both of them. In a game of last man standing, both men had fallen.
My Conspiracy
Much like the Grizzlies’ firing of Taylor Jenkins, it wouldn’t have been a surprise if the Nuggets had fired Mike Malone after the season ended given what we know now. After all, several Nuggets players including Nikola Jokic have come out and said that they aren’t surprised by the decision given the “cold war” between Malone and Booth.
But why would they do this with three games to go in the regular season? Kroenke has an answer.
"We wanted to try to figure out a way to potentially squeeze as much juice out of the rest of the season as possible." —Josh Kroenke
ESPN’s Ohm Youngmisuk reported that Nuggets ownership believed the team needed a jolt in hopes of still making a run and that the team’s vibes were not good. NBA insider Shams Charania also weighed in on the situation.
“They’ve lost four games in a row, they’re now in the bottom half of the league in defensive rating, so they felt like the signs were there that this season was not going to end well…They’re getting out ahead of what they were going to do come the offseason.” —Shams Charania (ESPN)
The Nuggets have made their message clear. They think that firing Malone now rather than after the season gives them a chance to repair their vibes and their defense with interim head coach David Adelman at the helm. I believe it goes further than that.
Jamal Murray used to be as reliable as they come. In his first three years, he missed a total of eight games. In the next two seasons, he began to miss games a tad more frequently, but nothing was overly concerning. Then, he tore his ACL late in the 2020-21 season.
Murray was out for the remainder of that season and the entire following season. When he came back in 2022, he missed 17 games during the Nuggets’ championship season and 23 games last season which doesn’t include a nagging ankle injury he was playing through for the whole postseason and a calf strain that he suffered in the first round. Over the summer, Murray represented Canada in the Olympics and was ridiculously bad.
Doubt began to circulate about Murray’s future after five straight months of watching him be hindered by various injuries. However, after Denver signed him to a 4-year/$209M contract, hope was rein-stored that Murray’s troubling injury history was finally behind him.
That was not the case. The 28-year-old came out incredibly flat to start the season, contributing to the Nuggets near .500 record in October and November. He eventually got back into a groove as the season progressed, lifting Denver to second in the West, but is now missing his longest stretch of the season.
Before he was fired, Malone gave an update on Murray’s injury status.
"Jamal’s hurt. It’s not careful. He’s hurt. So there’s a big difference. Careful is if a guy can play and you want to be smart. We’re not in a situation to do that. There are six teams vying for four spots. So if Jamal Murray is not out there, it’s not careful. It’s because he literally just is not able to play at the moment."
Malone’s quote details that Murray’s injury might be worse than we thought which likely means he could miss time in the playoffs.
In summary, the Nuggets strangely fired Malone with a few games to go in the season and Murray is expected to miss playoff games. I think these storylines tie together. Josh Kroenke is lying when he says he believes the Nuggets had a chance this year. He knows Murray is a health concern and knows that the Nuggets have no chance in the playoffs without him given how poorly they play when he’s not on the court.
I believe Kroenke has zero hope for the rest of this season and knowing that not even Malone could coach the Nuggets to a title without Murray, he wanted to clean house sooner rather than later.
If my conspiracy is correct, Murray’s future may be up in the air. To be paying an average of $52.3M per year to a player with major health concerns is the last thing a front office wants to do. Don’t be surprised if Murray is brought up in trade conversations in the near future.
Sometimes in the NBA, things are as they appear. Perhaps this is the case with the Mike Malone firing and I’m just spinning an unrealistic story for nothing, but something about this firing doesn’t feel right. I don’t care how much your coach hates your GM—you don’t fire him after he won a championship two years ago with three games left in the season.
Let’s put it this way: I don’t expect this to be the last article I write about the future of the Nuggets.
Who doesn’t love a good conspiracy theory. Looking forward to the next installment.