Why the Nuggets fired Michael Malone and Calvin Booth after seasons-long rift
A look inside the divided culture that smoldered and stretched into the Nuggets locker room and ultimately cost Michael Malone and Calvin Booth their jobs.
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SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Calvin Booth made a timely entrance. Lugging a massive frame at his side, he crossed the Nuggets’ mostly empty practice gym, passing a gaggle of reporters on his way to present 10th-year coach Michael Malone with a gift.
It was Jan. 6 at Ball Arena. Malone and team president Josh Kroenke were having a chat on the far sideline. When Booth reached them, he revealed what was inside — a custom jersey on a velvet mat, commemorating Malone’s recent milestone.
Malone’s 433rd regular-season win for Denver six weeks earlier had made him the winningest coach in franchise history. The jersey number was 433. Malone admired the new office decor, then dapped up Booth.
“I guess I’ll have to get another one made when I’m done,” he told the reporters, “that says, like, ‘1,273.’”
By then, perhaps the worst-kept secret in Ball Arena and around the NBA was that any such display of togetherness for public consumption between Malone and Booth was merely that — a facade.
The Denver Post spoke to multiple sources connected to the Nuggets for this report to understand the tensions behind a difficult season for one of Denver’s key sports franchises. Almost all of them spoke under the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic and their ongoing relationship with the team.
Behind the scenes, those sources told The Post that the head coach and general manager were rarely communicating outside of occasional meetings with Kroenke, an unwilling intermediary in their frayed relationship who also happened to be their boss. Meanwhile, factions had quietly formed within the organization, with the coaching staff and front office feeling obligated to take sides.
This was the divided culture that smoldered and stretched into the locker room until April 8, when the Kroenke family dropped a bombshell by firing Malone and Booth with three games left in a tumultuous regular season still likely to result in a playoff berth. It was a radical play for a small-market NBA franchise that won its first championship less than two years earlier under the stewardship of Malone and Booth.
“There was an ‘us vs. them’ type of thing,” one team source said. “‘Us vs. them’ is like the worst mentality you can have. And it certainly became that way.”
"We weren't having fun"
On March 14, Nuggets and Avalanche owner Stan Kroenke -- father of Josh — watched his NBA team host the Los Angeles Lakers from an unusual vantage point. Wearing a brown buttoned-up jacket, he ventured out of the owner's suite and downstairs to survey a game from the end of the bench.
There were a few components to the eventual decision to fire Malone. The Kroenkes made a point to closely observe basketball operations in recent weeks, essentially auditing the state of the team. In a results-based business that forgets victory faster than defeat, the Nuggets weren't playing up to standard. In particular, their defensive regression from eighth to 21st this season was indicative of a more troubling theme to Josh Kroenke: They weren't playing with the same joy.
The "fly-around mentality" preached by Malone might show itself for a quarter at a time, but never for a full game. On some nights, Nikola Jokic seemed uncommitted to his role. Close-outs often appeared apathetic or simply nonexistent.
Malone runs hot and doesn't hide it. He publicly and privately took his team to task for poor defensive effort on several occasions throughout the season. But players grew tired of that explosive coaching style, finding his outbursts a stale method of getting through to them, according to multiple sources familiar with their thinking. Malone's intensity had the wrong effect on a large portion of the locker room. Yelling didn't resonate. Jokic was aware of the increasing frustration and harbored some of his own.
The night Stan Kroenke watched from the end of the bench, Denver needed an 8-0 run in the last 50 seconds to beat the Lakers, even with superstars Luka Doncic and LeBron James sitting out. Malone entered his postgame news conference minutes later, crumpled up a copy of the box score and discarded it in the nearest trashcan. The Nuggets lost the next night to the Washington Wizards, who had the worst record in the league.
Malone seemed to realize his players were tuning him out, but his own impatience peaked on March 21 after a loss to the Portland Trail Blazers. “It's not my job to evaluate how they take things; it's my job to be honest and sometimes brutally honest,” he said, calling out players for not studying film. "Tonight, it was a brutally honest message. The guys that are full of (crap) won't hear it. They'll say 'coach is tripping.'"
The Kroenkes were also aware that Jokic was losing patience with the general direction of the season, which has sputtered in contrast to his magnificent individual year. There have been concerning examples of Jokic's angst, such as last Friday at Golden State, when the MVP center was seen on the bench gesturing wildly and vociferating at Denver's poor play.
That was the third loss of a four-game streak that accelerated Josh Kroenke's urge to make a change. He and his father had already decided to move on from Malone and Booth after the season. But by cutting ties with three games left to salvage the vibe, they could also leave time for Nuggets lead assistant David Adelman to show off his coaching chops. Adelman interviewed with the Hornets, Cavaliers and Lakers last offseason, sources told The Post, and he's widely expected to receive interest from teams with openings again this year.
Josh Kroenke notified Jokic of the changes first. Team sources insist that Jokic isn't the type of superstar to make personnel demands and that he wasn't behind the decision to fire Malone and Booth. But ownership is mindful of his perspective nonetheless. Jokic said it best himself on Wednesday night in Sacramento: "I listened, and I accept it."
Then, Kroenke addressed the shocking move in a meeting with the players.
"It's a crazy day. None of us expected it," Michael Porter Jr. said. "None of us really know how to handle something like that. But I think Josh was amazing, as the leader of the organization. ... He said that he saw that we weren't having fun, and he saw that we weren't playing as hard as we could. So he wanted to come in here and reestablish that as the basis of our culture."
Booth, Malone and a lack of trust
The rift between Malone and Booth wasn't necessarily characterized by explosive confrontations. Instead, the two of them often complained behind each other’s backs, according to team and league sources, which established a paranoid environment at Ball Arena.
"It was contentious," one source said. "Things could have been done, things could have been fixed, a lot earlier.”
Philosophical differences between them dated back to Booth's first days as the front office's top decision-maker in 2022, when president of basketball operations Tim Connelly left Denver for the same job in Minnesota. Connelly and Malone got along and worked well together. Booth was more independently minded and reluctant to collaborate with Malone on roster moves. But winning made it easy to manage. The Nuggets made their NBA championship run in Booth's first year at the helm.
After the title, his draft-and-develop ideology took center stage. He gave guaranteed rookie contracts to second-round picks Jalen Pickett and Hunter Tyson. He signed Zeke Nnaji (the No. 22 pick in 2020) to a four-year, $32 million extension, even though Nnaji had started only seven games in his first three seasons.
Whether they wanted to or not, Nnaji and Pickett became key characters in the deteriorating relationship between their coach and GM. Booth preached the importance of positional size and wanted Nnaji playing at the four, sources said. Malone emphasized positional versatility instead, often using Nnaji as a backup center. "I think that's a bunch of malarkey, 'Are you a four or are you a five?'" Malone said this season. "In today's NBA, you're a big; you're a small. ... This is not 1980s where it's three-out, two-in. Zeke's a big."
Nnaji appeared in Malone's rotation as a power forward for a handful of games leading up to the trade deadline this February while Denver was looking to use his salary in a trade. After no such deal materialized, Booth said, "Zeke obviously has shown recently something that I've known for a while, that he probably should just be best at the four."
Pickett was the 32nd overall pick out of Penn State, Booth's alma mater. During his rookie season, starting point guard Jamal Murray missed 23 games, but Malone often played playoff-ineligible Collin Gillespie ahead of Pickett on the depth chart. Other times, he used bench lineups without a point guard.
These are fairly normal disputes for a coach and executive to encounter. What differentiated Denver's situation was a lack of trust. Accusations of malice festered behind the scenes. Booth believed Malone was holding back Pickett and using Nnaji out of position to spite Booth, league sources said. Malone believed Booth made roster moves to force him into playing Booth's unseasoned draft picks.
When Booth hired Mike Penberthy to join the organization as a shooting coach, Malone saw it as an attempt to over-extend into his territory, a league source said. Penberthy operated separately from the coaching staff. Nnaji and Pickett worked out with him in Los Angeles last August instead of training at the team facility in Denver -- another point of contention.
Booth was livid at Malone for not playing second-year wing Peyton Watson in Game 7 against the Timberwolves last season when the Nuggets blew a 20-point lead in a stunning season-ending loss, sources said. Subsequently, Malone wanted Watson to play on Denver's Summer League team going into his third NBA season, accentuating the lack of cohesion in their evaluations of young players.
Malone grew increasingly frustrated with roster construction after the Nuggets forsook their right to match contract offers for veteran guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. He ultimately signed with the Orlando Magic for three years and $66 million. Booth believed the sacrifice of KCP and other, more significant pivots could be necessary to win a second championship. He even brainstormed trades involving Jamal Murray last offseason and Porter during this season, league sources told The Post. But the Nuggets have only made marginal moves since, including a $10.6 million signing of Dario Saric that failed spectacularly.
As this season stalled, the pertinent question started to become who the Kroenkes might choose to keep between Malone and Booth. The general manager's decision-making autonomy started to dwindle after he sought more money on a contract extension and the Kroenkes took their offer off the table, according to sources. Ownership decided well before the deadline that Porter was not to be traded. Meanwhile, Malone had two years left on his contract and would be owed more than $20 million if fired.
In the end, Josh Kroenke preferred not to take a side. Fed up with the lack of alignment, he wiped the slate clean.
"I'm not about to sit here and say it was because Coach Malone that the vibe wasn't right. It was top to bottom," Porter said. "That's all the way down to the new guys. We weren't playing how we were supposed to play. We weren't picking each other up how we were supposed to pick each other up. It wasn't one guy. It wasn't Calvin or coach Malone. It was top to bottom."
Adelman shared a similar sentiment when he addressed the dysfunction before his debut as interim head coach, saying everyone in the building was at fault. He also made a point to credit Malone and Booth for their contributions to a franchise that previously didn't know what it felt like to win a championship.
For Malone in particular, Adelman didn't want the awkward ending to eclipse "a hell of a run." Malone didn't just win in Denver. He endeared himself to the fanbase and city with the same personality that ultimately jeopardized his own job security.
“Best coach in (Nuggets) history,” Adelman said. “Can’t argue it."
True or not, Malone still didn't fulfill his proclamation from January. He raised a family in Denver and always had dreams of coaching the Nuggets as long as he could. Maybe 1,273 was an arbitrary number of wins to throw out half-jokingly, but he couldn't have predicted his run would end just a few months later.
Fair or not, it stopped at 471.
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