What stunned people around the NBA most about the firing of coach Michael Malone and GM Calvin Booth in Denver was not the act itself: Malone was thought to be in trouble if the Nuggets didn't make a deep playoff run, and Booth had tried to negotiate a new contract all season long and not gotten one, a bad sign.
It was the timing that confused everyone — who fires a coach with three games and less than a week left in the regular season?
It turns out that team president Josh Kroenke wanted to make this move around the All-Star break, but the team won eight in a row, leading into it, reports Tim MacMahon and Ramona Shelburne at ESPN.
Kroenke made the decision to fire Malone and Booth late Sunday night, sources told ESPN. It wasn't the first time this season that Kroenke seriously pondered parting ways with the winningest coach in franchise history and the executive who had put together the final pieces of the Nuggets' championship puzzle. Kroenke wanted to clean house at the All-Star break, sources said, but an eight-game winning streak spared Malone and Booth.
Tension between a GM and coach is natural — every coach wants players who can help win now, and every GM has to think about the future, not just the present. In Denver, that tension had spiraled, grown toxic, and divided the entire organization into two camps. Kroenke felt he had to make a move — and he probably did at some point — and he couldn't let one side "win." Everyone had to go.
Still, with less than a week to go in the season, the timing seems likely to undercut a hoped-for playoff run.
A couple of other notes from ESPN:
• The players were caught in the middle of the Malone vs. Booth tug of war and were not happy, and that showed on the court with inconsistent play. One source put it this way:
"The players were freakin' miserable, man. You could see it. The effort would come and go. I just wish it happened sooner. We wouldn't be in this mess."
• Maybe the least surprising news: Malone did not take the news well, ESPN's Brian Windhorst said on his The Hoop Collective podcast:
"It got out pretty quickly in the NBA that Michael Malone's reaction to being fired was not calm, which is not a surprise. I don't blame him."
