Grading The Week: Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic shouldn’t have to answer Michael Malone questions Josh Kroenke wouldn’t take

Josh Kroenke might’ve woken up the beast. But when it came to accountability, the Nuggets’ governor/interim president of basketball operations this week looked largely asleep at the wheel.

And hey, the muckrakers up in the Grading The Week offices get it. You blow up the spine of your organization in one fell swoop, the calendar tends to get booked. Meetings. Flights. More meetings. More flights. Clandestine staff discussions. The usual.

But you dismiss the winningest coach in Nuggets history (Michael Malone) and then not-so-quiet quit your general manager (Calvin Booth) on the same Tuesday, and there’s no news conference? No franchise leaders to face questions from the local press? No erudition added to five paragraphs of very carefully worded, almost mollifying, explanation?

Oh, the legal eagles up at the GTW offices get that, too. Lawyers. Contracts. More lawyers. More contracts. Clandestine separation agreements.

And to be clear, Josh and his father Stan don’t “owe” GTW, The Denver Post, or any local reporters anything. It’s their team. Their toy.

But you know who they do owe? Nuggets fans.

The Front Range faithful who two summers ago lined the streets of downtown Denver, giddy to the last. The diehards whose dedication made all those decades of passion and pain worth it.

Josh Kroenke dodging non-KSE media — D.

Curious, though, isn’t it?

Words on Malone: 207, all from a statement released to the media.

Words on Malone to anybody but Vic Lombardi: Zero.

Words on Booth: 105, also via a statement.

Words on Booth to anybody by Vic: Still zero.

And take it from us: Local reporters have tried. Now, none of this is a knock on Lombardi, a local media icon and still a favorite GTW listen.

But would it kill Josh to offer up a little juice outside of Kroenke Sports & Entertainment platforms? It wasn’t as if the Nuggets were out making national headlines or anything.

And speaking of headlines, is it right that Nuggets fans heard more from Nikola Jokic, Best Dang Player On The Planet, on Malone than they did from the guy who, you know, actually made the decision to can The Joker’s coach?

Sure enough, in the days following Black Tuesday, unnamed sources abounded. But as of early Saturday morning? Still no Josh. Still no Stan. Just the same 207 and 105 words on Malone and Booth, respectively.

So many questions, too. Including one of the biggest, still unanswered: Why … now? Other than “(allowing) us to compete at the highest level right now,” as the statement read? What moment finally broke the camel’s back?

The “Cold War” stuff allegedly going on behind the scenes between Malone and Booth was among the Front Range’s worst-kept secrets for more than a year. So how come those disagreements were waved away by Josh, Malone and Booth during an end-of-season news conference last May? And side-stepped by Malone and Booth during the team’s annual preseason media day this past fall?

Everybody who heard Nuggets pressers could tell, in hindsight, just how starkly the tone had changed compared to, say, 2019-2024. For years, the Nuggets were the anti-NBA team, a locker room’s tone set by an unselfish star in Jokic who never cared about the credit — or the spotlight. Players who didn’t fit the team-first/family-first mantra — Bones Hyland comes to mind — were phased out. Finger-pointing and drama were kept largely in-house. Whenever neutrals or reporters levied criticism in public forums, Malone defended the guys in his locker room as if they were loved ones.

This season, the blast shields didn’t just come down — Malone sometimes found himself turning the lasers on his own guys, usually in exasperation after a run of inexplicable defeats. Something was broken. Everyone knew it. But until Josh clears the air on the Nuggets’ three-sided power triangle more anonymous beans will be spilled to fill gaps in the narrative. And we’ll promise you this: None of it’s going to have any side smelling like roses.

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