“You’re Making $30 Million a Year!”: Shaquille O’Neal Backs Paul Pierce, Says “Soft” Players Got Mike Malone Fired

If your favorite thing as a basketball fan is getting shocking NBA news via a tweet from Shams Charania, then this has been the season for you. This year has been wild, from the Karl-Anthony Towns-Julius Randle trade before the season to the Luka Doncic-Anthony Davis deal at the deadline. With just a short time left until the playoffs, most fans weren’t expecting any more big news to hit, but then two experienced head coaches got fired just over a week apart as the Grizzlies relieved Taylor Jenkins of his duties and even more surprisingly, the Nuggets let Mike Malone go yesterday.

Even though the Grizzlies haven’t beaten a real team in about two months, the Jenkins firing was still astonishing due to how late in the season it came. The Malone firing, though, was truly jolting. This is a guy who helped bring Denver its first ring in franchise history, and he did it just two years ago!

The Nuggets are in the thick of the playoff race and have the best player on the planet in Nikola Jokic. Whatever shortcomings team ownership wants to blame on Malone, such as a team defensive rating near the bottom of the league, it’s difficult to believe that firing him with just a handful of games left in the season will do anything to turn things around.

On yesterday’s episode of Speak on FS1, Paul Pierce went off on the Nuggets players for getting their coach fired. “Players get their feeling hurt in this generation,” he said. “‘Oh, I don’t like him, he talking bad to me.’ Man, get on the line. You’re making $30 million a year!”

Shaquille O’Neal backed Pierce’s stance

Paul Pierce was briefly teammates with Shaquille O’Neal on the Celtics before Pierce was traded to the Nets during the 2010-11 season. Despite their short time together, Shaq had his back on this one. On Inside the NBA, he also blasted the players for not wanting to be held accountable by a tough coach, saying, “Phil Jackson got on my ass all the time. Pat Riley got on my ass all the time.”

 

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It’s unclear whether the players actually had anything to do with Malone being fired or if this was simply an ownership decision to move in a different direction. Regardless, the move is proof that no coach is safe these days, even those who win a championship.

Malone joins Mike Budenholzer, Frank Vogel and Nick Nurse as coaches who have won a championship in the last six years, only to be fired shortly thereafter. Only Steve Kerr and Joe Mazzulla have won a ring in that time and still have their jobs.

David Adelman has taken over as the Nuggets interim coach, and in an interesting plot development, his first game will be against his dad Rick’s old team when the Nuggets travel to Sacramento to take on the Kings tonight. We’ll see if he can help end Denver’s four-game losing streak and get them on the right track before the playoffs.