Tension between Michael Malone, Calvin Booth led to housecleaning, leaving former champion Nuggets in limbo

The discord between Denver Nuggets coach Michael Malone and general manger Calvin Booth has been known for quite some time around league circles, so their firings weren’t truly shocking.

It’s the timing of it that has thrown everyone off.

The tension began to mount over the past week, sources told Yahoo Sports, as the Nuggets began to lose ground in the uber competitive Western Conference playoff race, with the firings coming during a four-game losing streak.

With three games remaining in the regular season, that’s when most teams are tightening up things as opposed to looking for a jolt. But that’s apparently the call the Kroenke family made early Tuesday afternoon when it fired Malone and Booth.

David Adelman replaces Malone as interim coach for the remainder of the season and the postseason.

It’s still perhaps the most stunning firing in league history given Malone’s standout tenure with the franchise and being two seasons removed from winning the Nuggets’ first and only NBA title in 2023.

Everything had intensified between Malone and Booth, sources told Yahoo Sports, as Booth made suggestions to Malone about which players should get more opportunities, and Malone not taking those suggestions kindly.

Jamal Murray, the Nuggets’ second-best player, might best represent the schism between the two. He hasn’t played since March 26 due to a hamstring injury, and Malone cast doubt on Murray’s availability a few days ago — a death knell to their title hopes if he’s not healthy.

Yet, Murray’s 36.3 minutes per game are most of his career, and he’s a few years removed from an ACL injury that cost Denver two playoff runs in 2021 and 2022. Nikola Jokić’s 36.7 minutes are the most he’s played in his career and his usage is at it’s second highest, with only the 2021-22 season (the one Murray missed all of) topping it.

In the last few weeks, the Nuggets have lost to the Los Angeles Lakers, Minnesota Timberwolves and Golden State Warriors — teams in the same neighborhood record-wise as the Nuggets.

The Nuggets sit in fourth in the West at 47-32, tied in the loss column with the Clippers, Warriors, Timberwolves and Grizzlies but with one more win than those clubs. Yet with tiebreakers, the Nuggets would sit in seventh and in the play-in tournament if they all finish with the same record.

The slide added to the already thick tension between Booth and Malone, and the Nuggets were on the verge of wasting a historic year from Jokić, who’s averaging a 30-point triple-double in perhaps the greatest single-season in league history.

Such disagreements aren’t uncommon in professional sports, especially in the NBA, where there’s a natural tension between the front office and coaching staff. There were moments where things were so uneasy it filtered down to the front-office members and coaching staff being hesitant to interact with each other — but sources inside the building said that was overplayed and it was “just a phase” after front-office member Drew Nicholas was fired earlier in the season.

Throughout the season sources said Booth was critical of Malone’s handling of the Nuggets headliners and not asking for more from players like Murray in terms of how he coached him — especially as the team defense has faltered, dropping all the way to 22nd in rating.

Since the All-Star break, the Nuggets are 11-12 and their defense dropped to 24th, and ownership saw the possibility of another Jokić prime season being wasted.

Last season, the Nuggets were eighth in that department as they were the No. 2 seed in the West. In their title season, they were 15th but have carried a top-five offense the last three seasons as Jokić has played historic basketball on that end.

League sources said the firings happened so quickly Tuesday that Jokić wasn’t involved in them. It was an impulsive decision from ownership, which was fed up with the infighting.

Sources told Yahoo Sports in January it was likely Malone would move on from the Nuggets after the season due to the deteriorating relationship with Booth. Booth, meanwhile, couldn’t come to an agreement on a contract extension with the franchise before the season began.

In a sense, this was built to be a last run for the franchise’s two leaders, but it couldn’t even last for a final playoff run.

Being able to get back to the Finals was a hard task given the atrophy of the roster. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (starter), Bruce Brown and Jeff Green were key defections for salary-cap reasons over the last couple seasons. Christian Braun has emerged with more opportunity in his third year, replacing Caldwell-Pope, and is a candidate for Most Improved Player after averaging 15.4 points. But key starter Aaron Gordon has played only 48 games because of injuries, and now Murray’s status is in question, so the franchise hasn’t been at full strength.

Peyton Watson and Julian Strawther, late first-round draft picks the Nuggets have acquired the last couple years, have shown glimpses but haven’t gotten the full trust from Malone as of yet — thus deepening the dependency on the overused veteran players. Braun has been the only one to break through.

Denver signed veteran Russell Westbrook at a low number, and while his late-game play has come into focus recently, he’s been a net positive for the franchise this season.

But it was clear early, especially coming off last year’s shocking loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Western Conference semifinals, that perhaps the franchise needed a jolt — especially when it looked like the starters were worn down in Game 7.

The Nuggets were in play for Zach LaVine, then the Bulls’ All-Star guard who was on the trading block. A deal never consummated, as LaVine wound up going to Sacramento months later, but it felt like a signal Booth was looking for a more aggressive player who wouldn’t cede so much to Jokić every night.

With Jokić, Murray and Porter on max deals, it has limited Denver’s financial flexibility with the new economic reality of the NBA, with the punitive second apron removing mechanisms for good teams to supplement top talent.

Porter’s max contract was agreed to under the old paradigm, kicking in right as Denver’s championship season began. It’s hard to say if the Nuggets would’ve done that exact deal knowing what was coming, and he has two seasons after this one at $38.3 million and $40.8 million before hitting free agency in the summer of 2026-27.

Jokić is 30, and on a designated player supermax deal that will net him $55 million, $59 million and a player option worth $63 million in 2027-28, when he will be 33 years old.

Now one wonders where this franchise goes from here — in every direction. Both Malone and Booth should be sought after in the open market this summer, with openings to be filled. It’s just wild to consider both couldn’t figure it out together in Denver.