Less than two full years after winning the Denver Nuggets their first ever NBA championship, the team has announced they have fired head coach Michael Malone.
Malone, who had been with the Nuggets since 2015, had the team in the position to make the playoffs in the 2025 season.
In a concurrent move, Denver also is set to fire general manager Calvin Booth – who had been with the franchise since 2017 and in the GM role since 2020.
The decision was announced by Josh Kroenke, the Vice Chairman of Kroenke Sports and Entertainment – which owns professional sports teams including Arsenal FC in the Premier League.
‘It is with no pleasure that we announce that we have relieved Michael Malone of his head coaching duties, effectively [sic] immediately,’ Kroenke said in the statement.
The team also announced that lead assistant coach David Adelman will serve as Denver’s interim head coach for the rest of the season.
The Denver Nuggets have shockingly fired head coach Michael Malone before the playoffs
Denver is also moving on from GM Calvin Booth, who had been in charge since 2020
Josh Kroenke, son of team owner Stan Kroenke, announced the move on Tuesday
Kroenke’s statement continued: ‘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 and delivering another title to Denver and our fans everywhere.’
Kroenke called Malone’s firing a ‘necessary step’ for the team to remain competitive and that the Nuggets’ standards of winning a title ‘remain in place for the current season.’
‘There is no amount of gratitude that we can properly convey to his contributions since [Malone] joined our franchise in 2015,’ Kroenke’s statement concluded. ‘It is with our utmost respect that we would like to thank Coach Malone for the most successful decade in Nuggets history, setting the all-time wins record and helping deliver Denver our first championship.’
Even though these firings come amidst a four-game losing streak, the timing of these moves is still bizarre.
At the time of the moves, the Nuggets sit fourth in the tightly contested Western Conference and in an automatic playoff spot with just three games remaining in their season.
Denver is currently 17.5 games back on the conference-leading Oklahoma City Thunder.
The Nuggets are currently half a game behind the third place Los Angeles Lakers, but only half a game ahead of the Memphis Grizzlies – who sit all the way in eighth place.
Malone, the Queens native and son of former NBA coach Brendan Malone, has been coaching basketball since 1993. After beginning in high school and moving to college to work as an assistant at Oakland, Providence, and Manhattan, Malone jumped to the NBA in 2001 as an assistant for the New York Knicks.
Malone is the winningest coach in Nuggets history and won their only NBA title in 2023
The brothers of Nuggets star Nikola Jokic lifting Malone up after winning the title
He worked as an assistant with the Knicks, Cleveland Cavaliers, New Orleans Hornets, and Golden State Warriors before taking his first head coaching gig with the Sacramento Kings.
After a lackluster 2013-14 season, Malone only coached 24 games of the 14-15 season before being fired in mid-December. The following offseason, he was hired by Denver.
He went on to become the franchise’s winningest coach ever – amassing a record of 471-327 over ten seasons.
Malone’s teams missed the playoffs in the first three seasons, but have made the NBA postseason each year since.
That included a trip to the Western Conference Finals in the bubble in 2020 before reaching the pinnacle of the sport in 2023.
Malone coached the Nuggets to their only NBA title, beating the Miami Heat in five games.
This move comes just over a week after a similarly shocking move when the Grizzlies fired head coach Taylor Jenkins. Memphis was, and still is, in position to make the playoffs.
According to NBA reporter Mark Stein, Jenkins and Malone being axed is the first time in NBA history that two teams with winning records fired their head coaches with less than ten games left in the regular season.
Booth joined the Nuggets in 2017 and was promoted to general manager in July of 2020
Kroenke thanked Booth for his time with the team saying he’ll be ‘honored for years to come’
ESPN’s Shams Charania says this is tied for the latest coach firing in NBA history – with Malone joining Hubie Brown, who was axed from the Atlanta Hawks this late in the 1980-81 season.
Booth, a former NBA journeyman, got his first front office job in the 2012-13 season as a scout. He arrived in Denver in 2017 as assistant general manager before taking the reins as GM in July of 2020.
Under his care, the Nuggets swung trades for Aaron Gordon and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and drafted role-players like Bones Hyland and Christian Braun.
In a separate statement, Kroenke said, ‘I want to thank Calvin Booth for leading our front office for the past three years and most importantly for helping put the final pieces in place for the roster that delivered Denver and our fans their first NBA Championship.
‘Calvin’s knowledge of the game, his passion for scouting, and his long history as a player and executive in the NBA helped lift our organization to new heights which we will continue moving forward.
‘We are grateful to Calvin for his eight years with the Nuggets and know his place in Nuggets history as our first championship winning GM will be honored for years to come.’
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .