Nuggets Fire Head Coach in Stunner Right Before Playoffs

With 10 days before the NBA playoffs begin, the Denver Nuggets pulled a stunner: The organization fired head coach Michael Malone and did not extend general manager Calvin Booth’s contract, the team announced Tuesday. There are three games left in the regular season and the team is currently fourth in the Western Conference standings. The news was first reported by ESPN.

Booth and Malone led the Nuggets to win the NBA title in 2023. Their departures come just a week after the Grizzlies fired coach Taylor Jenkins despite the team clinching a postseason berth.

“This decision was not made lightly and was evaluated very carefully, and we do it only with the intention of giving our group the best chance at competing for the 2025 NBA Championship,” team governor Josh Kroenke said in a statement announcing both moves. David Adelman will assume the head coach role for the remainder of the 2024-25 season.

“While the timing of this decision is unfortunate, as Coach Malone helped build the foundation of our now championship level program, it is a necessary step to allow us to compete at the highest level right now,” Kroenke added.

Malone’s firing comes during Denver’s first four-game losing streak since March 2023, which has impacted the team’s playoff seeding and has the Nuggets just a game from falling into the Play-In Tournament. 

Booth took over the front office in 2022 after general manager Tim Connelly left for the Minnesota Timberwolves, and signed a multi-year extension with the organization the same year. But Booth’s contract was reportedly up at the end of the season and the team decided not to renew it. Malone signed a new contract in November 2023 that extended him through 2027. The Nuggets hired Malone in 2015 and he was one of the longest-tenured coaches in the NBA before being fired. 

Booth and Malone sparred for years behind the scenes over roster construction; Malone preferred veterans while Booth liked the young players he drafted. Before the start of the current season, Malone addressed reports of tension between them. 

“Calvin and I shouldn’t always agree,” Malone said. “If we’re always agreeing, then we’re not really accomplishing what we need to accomplish. But through those decisions and through those conversations, you come to a greater good. And this is a reality. You look across the NBA landscape, teams are letting great players walk because they don’t want to approach that really dirty word of ‘second apron.’ 

“And as a coach, I have to educate myself because I put blinders on [and think,] ‘How do we win the game tonight,’” Malone continued. “But I have to give respect to Calvin, I have to give respect to Josh [Kroenke] and understand that it’s more than just tonight. It’s also a much bigger perspective on how we’re going to be set up for success, not just tonight and this season but for down the road.”

While Booth and Malone didn’t always work together harmoniously, one didn’t outlast the other, which wasn’t the case in Memphis. Jenkins was fired by general manager Zach Kleiman, who replaced multiple assistant coaches on his staff this past offseason and changed the team’s style of play. But Jenkins appeared to be struggling to reach players in the weeks leading up to his dismissal. 

“Urgency is a core principle of ours,” Kleiman said to reporters after firing Jenkins. “My expectations are clarity of direction.”

The Nuggets have a champion core led by center Nikola Jokic, 30, who is going for his fourth MVP award in five seasons this year. Additionally, the team has a talented supporting cast which includes Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon, and Michael Porter Jr., giving Denver a chance at a deep playoff run this season. 

The Nuggets won the 2023 title over the Miami Heat and currently boast the league’s seventh-largest payroll at roughly $182.5 million, which has them in the luxury tax, but beneath the second apron. But contract extensions to Porter and Gordon will owe them a combined $200 million over the next three seasons, which will limit the team’s roster flexibility and impact its championship window. 

“If we don’t win it this year,” Porter said to ESPN in November, “we all know they might have to break it up.” 

For the Nuggets, Tuesday might just be the beginning.