It was widely known that Denver Nuggets head coach Michael Malone and general manager Calvin Booth didn’t always see eye to eye.
Several reports came out over the summer about the Malone-Booth Cold War, an uncomfortable situation for the entire organization pulling between two forces that saw things differently.
Both wanted to win another championship. Both worked incredibly hard to make that reality happened. Both saw things differently in how to win around three-time MVP center Nikola Jokic.
On one hand, it’s widely regarded that Malone wanted his veterans. He relied heavily on players like Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Bruce Brown and Jeff Green en route to Denver’s first ever championship, players that understood the NBA and were willing to buy into a role around what the Nuggets were doing. Booth acquiesced to Malone’s desires on several occasions too, adding a veteran voice in DeAndre Jordan who’s been more than just a locker room option. He also added Reggie Jackson on the buyout market and Dario Saric in free agency. Jackson was okay. Saric has not been.
But working alongside those veteran additions was Booth’s vision of younger, more athletic talent to prolong Denver’s championship window. Booth traded Denver’s future assets to add young talent to the mix, turning a 2022 first round pick, 2027 first round pick, and 2029 first round pick, and roughly five second round picks into six young players currently on the roster: Christian Braun, Peyton Watson, Julian Strawther, Jalen Pickett, Hunter Tyson, and DaRon Holmes II. Holmes suffered a torn achilles injury in his first Summer League game, an extremely unfortunate moment for everyone in the Nuggets organization but especially Booth, who traded three second round picks to move up six spots in the 2024 Draft to select Holmes. The Phoenix Suns drafted Ryan Dunn, who has played nearly 1,300 minutes this year.
The vision was reasonable, and Braun has turned into a quality starter. Watson has his moments but is still raw. Ditto for Strawther. Up until this season, Malone actively chose not to trust or play Pickett because Booth wanted Pickett to play so badly. Tyson just hasn’t worked out. Holmes is a wait-and-see.
But that’s six roster spots focused on young players on rookie scale contracts. In the 2022-23 season, the Nuggets had four players on rookie scale deals: Braun, Watson, Zeke Nnaji (who also hasn’t worked out), and Bones Hyland, who was traded in the middle of that season due to immaturity. Denver simply didn’t have to rely on so many young players, and yet, Malone chose to anyway, playing Braun throughout the NBA Finals and trusting him. Braun helped Denver win a championship, and Booth saw that vision and wanted more.
The Nuggets ended up running it back in 2023-24 with basically everyone outside of Bruce Brown, who they couldn’t re-sign due to financial limitations by the CBA, not a choice by Denver. Except, rather than replace Brown and Jeff Green in free agency with comparable veterans, the Nuggets committed to a younger approach. The bench unit on opening night of the 2023-24 season was Reggie Jackson, Christian Braun, Peyton Watson, and Zeke Nnaji. Denver got away with that for almost the entire season because they had the best starting lineup in the NBA. Malone later included Strawther in the mix. Booth wanted Malone to play Pickett over Jackson too.
No matter the issues Denver’s bench was going to have with youth and inexperience, the belief was that Denver could develop players on the fly while relying on the best starting unit in the NBA: Jamal Murray, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Michael Porter Jr., Aaron Gordon, and Nikola Jokic. Unfortunately for Denver, this simply translated to Denver being too reliant on those five players. While Malone trusted Braun, Jackson, and Justin Holiday, he was still hesitant on Watson, Nnaji, Strawther, and others. The Nuggets ultimately didn’t have enough in the playoffs when their starting lineup was solved by the Minnesota Timberwolves, and even then, Denver nearly advanced anyway barring a Game 7 home collapse.
In the offseason, Booth was given full autonomy to explore a variety of different moves by ownership. It was supposed to be a collaborative effort among the organization, but Booth made the majority of decisions by himself without consulting most of the Denver brain trust, including Malone, league sources tell Mile High Sports. Booth identified Holmes in the draft and moved mountains to get him. He sent out multiple draft picks to force Reggie Jackson out of Denver and free up Pickett to be the backup point guard. Booth and ownership were in lockstep about Kentavious Caldwell-Pope not being worth going into the second apron, so they let him go. While Malone was a fan of Christian Braun and trusted him, he didn’t sign off on letting KCP walk away for nothing in free agency and wanted the veteran back.
Dario Saric was signed in what can be only described as a failure in evaluation. He wasn’t alone though, because Saric seemed like a reasonable backup center addition in the moment to most.
Booth was also responsible for the handling of the Jamal Murray extension talks. Before Murray signed his extension, Booth explored the idea of trading Murray rather than signing him to a max. According to league sources, Josh Kroenke ultimately put a stop to that idea and gave Booth the go-ahead to offer a full max contract to the Nuggets point guard instead.
The addition of Russell Westbrook was a direct result of Nikola Jokic’s dissatisfaction with the plan being laid out. Jokic was just fine seeing Jackson depart, but he wanted another veteran point guard he could trust. Not just in place of Pickett, but also in place of Jamal Murray at times. Murray’s injuries had put Denver in a difficult situation, and Jokic made it known he wanted another veteran ball handler for a variety of reasons. So, Westbrook arrived in Denver. He has largely been exactly what the Nuggets hoped he could be. Lately, he’s also been what the Nuggets feared he could be too if too much burden was placed upon him.
Of course, that probably came at a cost. Justin Holiday wasn’t brought back to fill in the 3&D role he had played in 2023-24. It wasn’t a major role, and the Nuggets didn’t feel like they needed his contributions in the moment. Still, with so many rookie scale contracts, Saric and Westbrook ended up taking one of the spots Holiday, or any other veteran wing, could have filled. It was no guarantee that Holiday would be back, but he was a trusted option for Malone especially in moments KCP was out. Losing both of them gave Denver a lot fewer defensive connectors and communicators on the perimeter this season.
So, the Nuggets went into this season with questions about what was once a great starting lineup, the defense, the young guys, a volatile new point guard in Westbrook, and only “nine real guys” on the roster. That was according to Booth himself, which isn’t something you want to broadcast to the world.
And yet, Josh Kroenke and KSE were willing to look the other way. They entered contract talks with Booth on a new extension with the expectation of providing long term security. Booth balked at the money offered, and KSE ended talks pretty abruptly after that. It’s something that was an open secret in the hallways of Ball Arena this year. Booth wasn’t happy about the way contract negotiations went and that he didn’t get a new deal. In fact, it was a frequent topic of discussion by Booth to members of the organization.
AND YET, it all nearly worked out because the Nuggets have Jokic. Porter stepped up early on. Braun found his stride as a starter. Murray started slow but figured out a way forward and got better as the year went on. Gordon was great offensively when healthy. Westbrook found a home, at least before an injury heading into the All-Star break. The Nuggets pieced things together reasonably well for a while, but the defense continued to be a problem, and players simply stopped listening to Malone’s pleas for more attention to detail and a higher level of effort on the defensive end. Several players have been checked out on the details for a while, so much so that Malone critiqued Denver’s attention to watching film after a blowout loss to the Portland Trail Blazers.
The final straw was either the Minnesota Timberwolves loss or the Indiana Pacers loss. Both were clutch losses that didn’t feature Murray, whose injury status remains shrouded. The mistakes made by Westbrook at the end of the Minnesota game were of the backbreaking variety. Similar mistakes were made by just about everyone at the end of the Indiana game on Sunday. Careless turnovers, lax levels of effort on defense, poor attention to detail, and more. It simply looked like a team that had lost interest in the season with just three regular season games left to go and a possibly playoff run to undergo.
Now, the Nuggets will be doing that without Malone or Booth. It was an open possibility that one or both could be gone by the end of the season. The timing of the firings is aggressive, but ultimately unsurprising. Josh Kroenke and the Nuggets ownership clearly didn’t see a path for this team to compete at a high level under the current circumstances. So, rocking the boat could be the right call. It also could be the wrong call. Malone is the winningest coach in franchise history. He had earned a bit of leeway after winning a championship. Unfortunately, the Nuggets have been close to firing Malone at various points for years though. Jamal Murray helped save Malone’s job with performances in both the end of the 2018 regular season and in the 2020 Playoff Bubble. That relationship had been ironclad ever since, but even Malone had grown a bit frustrated with Murray’s inconsistency at times. Jokic had grown a bit impatient with Malone at others.
So, this is where we are now. David Adelman will take over as interim head coach. The Nuggets will vet Adelman as a possible option for the permanent coaching spot. More than likely though, the Nuggets will be canvassing the league for head coach and GM options over the next few weeks, Whoever they bring in will need to revitalize and reconnect the team around Jokic.
Because it was the Malone-Booth Cold War, in part, that caused the fracture.
The Michael Malone-Calvin Booth feud probably cost the Nuggets a championship Mile High Sports.
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