During Denver Nuggets governor and team president Josh Kroenke’s press conference on Monday, a reporter prefaced a question by describing last week’s firing of Michael Malone as “one of the latest” such decisions that a playoff-bound team has ever made. Kroenke immediately corrected him.
“I think it’s the latest,” Kroenke, the son of team owner Stan Kroenke, said. “Trust me, I went through all that. I’m like, ‘Am I crazy?’ So I fully understand what you guys were probably thinking in the moment.”
The Nuggets didn’t just fire Malone, the winningest coach in franchise history, last Tuesday. They announced simultaneously that general manager Calvin Booth was out, too. Kroenke had considered firing them both . On Monday, Kroenke confirmed that he had considered firing both men at the All-Star break before they went on an eight-game winning streak, as well as once even earlier in the season as well.
“Over the course of the season, to be completely transparent with the group, there were two moments in time that I identified where I hesitated,” Kroenke told reporters. “And it was either out of personal feelings or belief for the group. One was last fall. I couldn’t tell you an exact date, it was around Thanksgiving at some point when I was really feeling like things were not headed in a direction or up to my standards as an organization.”
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Kroenke said that his respect for both Malone and Booth “probably led a little bit to that hesitation,” and that there were “a lot of other factors that it’s my job to understand.” He noted that, at the time, Denver was trying to establish a new rotation after deciding last summer to let wing Kentavious Caldwell-Pope walk in free agency. He noted that “a few players” were “playing their way into shape, to be frank.” This was “understandable,” he said, because “a few of us” went from a “heartbreaking loss” in Game 7 of the Nuggets’ second-round series against the Minnesota Timberwolves to the Olympic Games and then needed to take time off to recover. (Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray both played in the Olympics. Murray did not appear to be healthy at the time, and he had a slow start this season.)
Kroenke also confirmed that he had meetings with Malone and Booth early in the season in an effort to make the relationship between the two of them work.
“We had great conversations in those meetings, but I need more when I’m not around,” Kroenke told reporters. “My role is not to necessarily be there on a daily basis; I need people that are policing the culture and pushing it forward for me on a daily basis.”
Kroenke said that the eight consecutive games the Nuggets won before the All-Star break “masked a trend that was going on behind closed doors, that ultimately started to really affect the end of our season.” The behind-the-scenes issues between Malone and Booth were “worrisome,” he said, but he wasn’t quite ready to clean house back then.
“I saw out there that I was contemplating something around then,” Kroenke said. “That is true. But when you have a roster like we do, you have the best player on the planet, it can mask a lot of things. And so what would be crazier: me doing what I did last week or doing it on an eight-game win streak?”
In retrospect, the streak isn’t particularly impressive: Denver beat the Philadelphia 76ers, Charlotte Hornets, New Orleans Pelicans (twice), Orlando Magic, Phoenix Suns and Portland Trail Blazers (twice). Each of these teams finished the regular season with 36 wins or fewer.
Kroenke said he knew he had to do something after going into the Nuggets’ locker room following their 125-120 loss against the Indiana Pacers on April 6. “I could feel how flat the room was,” he said. After that, he made the decision that big changes were necessary.
“On a four-game losing streak heading into the playoffs with a flat locker room, that was when I understood and I internalized how much I had let this room slip,” Kroenke said. “And it was not up to the standards of what Denver Nuggets basketball really is.”
Kroenke said that he is “very protective” of the culture that Denver has built, and that he’d “failed both [Booth] and [Malone] as a leader” by letting “certain things slip to a place that they never should have been.” In retrospect, he “needed to be better for the group, checking some personal feelings, my respect for both of them, to be a better person for the overall group,” he said.
“[Booth and Malone] brought us our first championship, helped establish a new culture and new standards that will continue to move on into the future,” Kroenke said. “And to be frank, neither of them deserved it, and so for that I apologize. From my position, as a leader of the organization, I needed to be better at different points in time.”
The Nuggets beat the Sacramento Kings in interim coach David Adelman’s first game last Wednesday. They beat the Memphis Grizzlies two days later, and they clinched the No. 4 spot in the Western Conference when they beat the Houston Rockets in the regular-season finale on Sunday. Kroenke called the first win “a big step in just shifting the energy” of the team and said that the most recent one “showed a group that still has a lot of resolve and a lot of belief in where they’re headed this year.” He repeatedly emphasized that the season is not over.
“They were ready for a challenge that I dropped on ’em, and I think they responded in an amazing way,” he said.
Kroenke said that longtime Denver executive Ben Tenzer will be the team’s interim GM for the rest of the season. After that, “we’re going to go through a search, for sure,” he said.
This coming offseason, the Nuggets will be “as open-minded as we’ve ever been about everything,” Kroenke said, stressing that their next lead executive will need to find “value where others may not” when it comes to roster-building.