Michael Malone says Nuggets haven’t had true rivalry during his 10-year tenure ...Middle East

The adage about quarterback competitions might apply to NBA rivalries, too.

If you have two, you have none.

And evidently, the Nuggets have two. That’s according to the league, which scheduled 10 games in a five-day window to be advertised as “NBA Rivals Week.” Denver is featured in a pair of those games: Tuesday against the 76ers at Ball Arena, and Saturday afternoon against the Timberwolves in Minneapolis.

Tenth-year Nuggets coach Michael Malone isn’t buying any of it.

“What do you mean, ‘rivalry week?’ Is that what this is?” he asked before the Philadelphia game, before offering a sarcastic quote: “Really stoked.”

Malone went on to say he has never viewed any opponent as a rival during his Nuggets tenure, including the Sixers and the Wolves.

“It’s so hard because the landscape of the NBA has changed,” he said. “Players change so often. Teams change. The dynamics of the Western Conference change. So you have teams in your division, like Minnesota. We’ve played them, obviously, two years in a row in the playoffs. Would I call that a rivalry? I don’t know if I’m there yet.”

There is considerable overlap between the Nuggets and Timberwolves. Minnesota head coach Chris Finch and lead assistant coach Micah Nori are both former assistants of Malone from his early days in Denver. Nuggets defensive coordinator Ryan Saunders is a former head coach of the Timberwolves. Minnesota president of basketball operations Tim Connelly previously held the same job title in Denver, and his 2022 departure cleared the way for more decision-making authority for Nuggets general manager Calvin Booth, who used to be a Timberwolves scout.

Still, that matchup pales in comparison to the old-school rivalries Malone witnessed up close when his late father, Brendan Malone, was an assistant for the Pistons and Knicks throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

“The Knicks and the Heat, or the Knicks and the Pacers. That was hate. That was rivalry,” Malone said. “When (my dad) was in Detroit, and it was Detroit and Chicago — to me, that was what a rivalry was.

“The NBA is always trying to find ways to bring that about. Like in this game (between the Nuggets and 76ers), in a perfect world, it’s Joel Embiid vs. Nikola Jokic. The two best centers in the world. And obviously, it’s not going to happen tonight. But that doesn’t affect our preparation, how we go about things.”

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Malone has also denied that the Nuggets and Lakers are rivals when asked in the past, despite two consecutive playoff meetings between them as well. Denver was one of six teams featured twice in the “Rivals Week” matchups this year, joining the Timberwolves, Mavericks, Lakers, Warriors and Celtics. Each of the 10 games are being broadcast nationally on ESPN, ABC, TNT or NBA TV.

Does Malone lament the disappearance of the vintage rivalries, the erosion of self-described hatred between teams?

“I would probably lean more toward, ‘It is what it is.’ That’s just the current state of affairs in pro sports in general,” he said. “It’s so hard to be loyal to a team sometimes as a fan, because your team is always changing. At some point, didn’t the NBA, the NBA store have a program where, like, if you bought a jersey and that player changed teams, you could get (a refund)? Probably went out of business.”

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