Denver Nuggets fire both Michael Malone, Calvin Booth

Denver Nuggets fire both Michael Malone, Calvin Booth

The Denver Nuggets are cleaning house.

In what is a stunning development less than a week before the conclusion of the regular season, owner Stan Kroenke woke up Tuesday morning feeling dangerous, firing both head coach Michael Malone and general manager Calvin Booth, ESPN NBA insider Shams Charania first reported Tuesday.

According to Charania, this is tied for the latest coaching change in one season.

Malone, 53, was the winningest coach in Nuggets history, amassing 471 wins over 10 seasons with the team. He’s less than two years removed from helping lead the team to their first-ever NBA Title–also overseeing the growth of three-time MVP Nikola Jokic, in addition to Jamal Murray, Michael Porter Jr. and Aaron Gordon, among others.

Charania noted that if the Nuggets didn’t win the title in 2022-23, Malone would’ve been fired due to the conflict between him and Booth.

The two sides having any sort of conflict isn’t a surprise. After all, it was reported before the season that neither side was seeing “eye-to-eye” regarding the moves not to retain Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Bruce Brown, who signed a two-year deal with the Indiana Pacers ahead of the 2023-24 season.

Malone’s dismissal is the most surprising part of this shocking development. Booth, on the other hand, did not do a good job adding talent outside of Caldwell-Pope and Bruce Brown to supplement Jokic over the last few seasons, despite the championship run.

We still don’t know whether or not he hit on the DaRon Holmes pick yet, but the Reggie Jackson, Zeke Nnaji, Dario Saric and Russell Westbrook deals were all mistakes to a certain extent. They’re not a good defensive team and don’t have enough depth to make a serious run in the West. It’s a flawed team outside of a few players and we can’t expect Jokic, while amazing, to lead a team to the Finals with this roster barring something unforeseen.

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This is a breaking news story. Stay tuned for updates.

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