What was the most amazed by the NBA people about the dismissal of coach Michael Malone and the GM Calvin Booth in Denver was not the act himself: Malone was considered in difficulty if the Nuggets did not take a deep race in the playoff series, and Booth had tried to negotiate a new contract all the season and did not get a bad sign.
Is it the timing that confused everyone – who draws a coach with three games and less than a week in the regular season?
It turns out that the president of the team, Josh Kroenke reports Tim MacMahon and Ramona Shelburne in ESPN.
Kroenke made the decision to dismiss Malone and Booth late Sunday evening, sources told ESPN. It was not the first time this season that Kroenke is seriously thinking about the separation of the most victorious coach in the history of the franchise and the executive that had set up the last pieces of the puzzle of the Nuggets championship. Kroenke wanted to clean the house at the stars break, sources said, but a sequence of eight consecutive victories spared Malone and Booth.
The tension between a managing director and the coach is natural – each coach wants players who can help win now, and each GM must think about the future, not just the present. In Denver, this tension was in a spiral, had become toxic and divided the entire organization in two camps. Kroenke estimated that he had to take a step – and he probably took it at some point – and he could not leave a “win” side. Everyone had to go.
However, with less than a week to go in the season, the timing seems likely to reduce a race in the expected eliminatory series.
Some other ESPN notes:
• The players were taken in the middle of the fight against the War of Malone vs Booth and were not satisfied, and this was shown on the field with an inconsistent game. A source said this in this way:
“The players were miserable, guy. You could see it. The effort went and came. I just want it to happen earlier. We would not be in this mess. “
• Perhaps the least surprising news: Malone did not take the news well, ESPN Brian Windhorst said on his collective The Hoop podcast:
“He came out fairly quickly in the NBA that Michael Malone’s reaction to be dismissed was not calm, which is not a surprise. I don’t blame him.”
