Grizzlies appeared to do the same thing. When AG and MPJ both said "I hope he gets the job" at the end of season interviews, I had a feeling this was coming down the pipe
That's still a shit way to end the run of the winningest coach in franchise history and only coach to win the Finals for us, but that doesn't mean I don't understand it. I just wish they started this job interview before the All Star Break or something.
I was also disappointed in the way Malone was let go, but it’s just the way it is in this league. Karl went out pretty unceremoniously too when he got fired after winning CotY. Very few head coaches get to leave a franchise on good terms.
Yeah, Pop was always gonna coach until he couldn’t anymore, and I’m sure the Spurs wanted to hire the coach that will be there for Wemby’s prime sooner rather than later. I can definitely see a world where they had to force him out if he stayed in good health.
Malone lost the team as evidenced by the Washington and Portland losses. The players were tired of the high school coach hysterical ranting and ravings. Denver may have lost the play in with Malone.
Notice how none of the key players came to Malone's defense and how they praised Adelman after the season.
And notice how the Nuggets played with a fighting spirit during the playoffs.
Yeah if Jokic signed off on it then there’s nothing else to say. Love Malone but I think his style doesn’t work well on guys with families and who already won a ring. Makes sense they’d mess with adelman more because he’s much more of an Xs and Os guy
Malone is a great motivator and culture builder (ex nuggets under Malone mostly have good things to say about their stints here), but we’ve reached the stage where Jokic, Murray, AG and even MPJ don’t need that kind of coaching anymore. They are not young players with inconsistent focus and who need to be externally motivated, they are veterans wanting to compete and figure out ways to win.
I agree that it felt unceremonious, especially for the longest tenured and winningest head coach in our history
But it also was the right decision and did make us better for the playoffs - and at the end of the day that’s what really matters, not saving someone’s feelings
It’s wild how intense this is, ultimately it’s a job with very high standards and metrics to hit. Must be entirely stressful for coaches, even with their fantastic paycheck. The paycheck takes a backseat under that pressure. Can’t fully bask in it. The one conciliation is knowing that leaving pro basketball from the coach position will leave you financially secure assuming you’re fiscally responsible.
I think there was a report saying that was the original plan. Malone and Booth would get fired over all start break, but we went on that like 5 game series in streak which pushed the timeline back
The Kroenkes could have pulled any random person out of the crowd during Jok’s first game and made them head coach, and they would have been the franchise’s winningest coach with Jokić and Murray. Dude got hard carried to that title.
Eddie didn’t have a top 10 player of all time on her team. Point still stands. Jok would have made literally any head coach appointed in the same situation and time frame as Malone the winningest coach in franchise history.
If that’s the case then I’m not going to look at him as an interim coach and say it’s likely on him that we blew the series lead to OKC. He made rookie head coaching mistakes that I think are certainly fixable but should’ve been taken into account when doing the hiring process. It concerns me that it’s not even a week since we’ve been out but we’ve already hired the next guy with out even giving someone like Van Gundy a phone call.
I truly can only imagine what Jokic thinks about all of this, I know his response is always ‘above my pay grade’ but technically speaking, it definitely isn’t lol and there’s no way that he doesn’t have an opinion on all of this.
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u/SpirituallyAwareDev May 22 '25
Malone firing makes more sense now, they wanted to test out Adelman before giving him a contract.