It has been almost a year since the Denver Nuggets fired Michael Malone as the team’s head coach. The decision blindsided fans and experts alike, since Malone had coached the Nuggets to a championship in 2023. Firing a longtime head coach is one thing, but the timing the Nuggets chose to do it was what truly made the decision shocking.
Advertisement
Malone and general manager Calvin Booth were both relieved of their duties on April 8 last year, with only three games left before the playoffs. Assistant coach David Adelman was promoted as the team’s head coach.
A move of this magnitude couldn’t have happened without the face of the franchise, Nikola Jokic’s knowledge. At least that’s what the consensus was at the time. The Serbian superstar has remained quiet about all of it until now.
Malone was by far the most successful head coach in franchise history. Although the move seemed abrupt, owner Josh Kroenke had been planning it for months. The final dominio was a special conversation with the best player on the team, Jokic.
“He [Kroenke] comes up to me and says: ‘What do you think, should we fire the coach?’ The decision had basically already been made. This was about five games before the playoffs,” Jokic revealed on the X&O’s Chat podcast.
Jokic has done his best to stay out of the inner workings of team management. However, firing the head coach will certainly have a direct impact on him, especially since he was close to Malone. Jokic, however, understood the business of the game even though he was also wary of the timing. And so he issued a level-headed response to Kroenke.
‘Maybe you should wait?’ And he asked me: ‘What do you want to see happen? Do you want the team to wake up? Do you want to see if the coach can handle it? What’s your idea?’ I said: ‘I think you’ve already answered your own question,” Jokic added.
At that point, Jokic understood that things were beyond salvage for the coach. Malone had reportedly lost hold of the locker room before his eventual firing. In the initial report from ESPN’s Tim McMahon and Ramona Shelburne, a team source had shared details regarding the unpleasant team environment.
“Everybody in the organization was miserable,” the team source had revealed. “That’s what Josh felt. It’s a bad vibe. You can’t operate like that. He felt that if he removed those two people, everybody could just focus on doing their job. Change needed to happen.”
The Nuggets haven’t missed Malone’s presence much since moving on. They went toe-to-toe with the eventual champions, the Oklahoma City Thunder, in the second round. The series went on for seven games. It didn’t work out in the end, but that unfortunate end to the 2025 season has fueled a rejuvenated group this campaign.
Denver currently sits at the sixth seed with a 39-25 record. Although they aren’t as high in the standings as they would like, they still have a legitimate chance to make it out of the Western Conference. Injuries have created major setbacks throughout the season, but they are becoming fully healthy at the perfect time.
