DENVER – 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.
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“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.
Kroenke said “it is with no pleasure” that the Nuggets made the coaching change, but insisted the timing had everything to do with salvaging Denver's hopes for a championship despite season-long hiccups that have rendered them a longshot.
The Nuggets (47-32) have lost a season-high four straight games and are in a logjam of teams fighting for home-court advantage in Round 1 of the playoffs. Their 11-13 record since the All-Star break has sent them tumbling from second place in the West into a possible play-in scenario, an unthinkable possibility when they entered All-Star weekend on an eight-game winning streak.
Malone pointed the finger at himself after the most recent loss, saying: “I’ll start with me: We’ve lost four games in a row and I’m never going to this-guy, that-guy. How about me, as a head coach, not doing my job to the best of my ability? We haven’t lost four in a row in a long time. It’s really easy to be together and say ‘family’ when you win, but when you’re losing games, can you stay together?”
Over the weekend, Malone lamented Denver's defensive struggles and Murray's latest injury, which has proven costly late in games as the Nuggets have been unable to execute their efficient Jokic-Murray two-man game.
“The defense has been the most disappointing part of this year,” Malone said. "The huge drop-off."
Denver lost a Game 7 at home in the Western Conference semifinals a year ago to Minnesota when the Nuggets blew a 20-point second-half lead. They lost all four of their games this season to the Timberwolves, whose president of basketball operations is Tim Connelly, Denver’s former general manager.
Overall, they’ve lost six straight to the Wolves.
Their latest skid began when the Timberwolves stole a 140-139 win in double-overtime despite Jokic’s career-best 61-point triple-double when Westbrook missed an uncontested layup and then fouled Nickeil Alexander-Walker on a 3-pointer with a tenth of a second left and Denver clinging to a one-point lead.
Malone sat all his starters the next night and the Nuggets were beaten by a San Antonio team playing out the string without Victor Wembanyama when Westbrook again had a crucial late blunder.
Malone defended his choice of sticking with Westbrook, suggesting his body of work was more important than his poor plays down the stretch, and besides, Murray's been out.
The four-game slide comes despite Jokic — a winner of three of the last four NBA MVP awards — averaging 30 points, 12.8 rebounds and 10.2 assists per game. He’s on the verge of becoming the first player in league history to finish top-three in all three categories.
Even that wasn’t good enough for Denver to enter the final week of the season certain of even having home court in Round 1.
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.
At the team’s championship parade, Malone spoke about becoming a dynasty and as things soured on them a year ago, he pointed to Tim Duncan's Spurs teams which never won back-to-back titles but won three championships in five years, suggesting these Nuggets had more titles in them.
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AP Sports Writer Pat Graham contributed to this report.
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