In the first public comments of Nikola Jokić since the Denver Nuggets dismissed coach Michael Malone and the director general Calvin Booth, the triple MVP declared that the moves had traveled the locker room and “definitively changed something” with the state of mind of the team before the eliminatory push.
“When someone wants … changing energy is probably what they do,” Jokić said after the Nuggets 124-116 victory against the Sacramento Kings on Wednesday. “In my country, if someone is dismissed, the word is probably you are the next one. So I think that has definitely changed something. ”
Jokić said he discovered the movements “a little before everyone else”, but refused to develop more what team president Josh Kroenke told him at their meeting.
“(Josh) told me that we had made a decision, so it was not a discussion. It was a decision,” said Jokić. “He told me why, and I accepted him. I’m not going to say what he told me. I will keep this private. “
Jokić called on Tuesday a “heavy day for everyone” and said that he had contacted Malone, who was hired by Denver in the summer of 2015, the same year, Jokić joined the team after being drafted in 2014.
“It’s part of the business,” said Jokić.
“I think it’s business. I have joy to play at home with my friends, but it is something I want to win, something that – there are basketball games, games of the game you can make fun of and joke about this and you have joy but for me, it’s like, I think I am a professional and I think it’s my work, so I try to be as professional.”
The Nuggets – only two years withdrawn from an NBA championship – are now 48-32 and are in fourth place in the West. With two games to play in the season, Jokić said that the team’s adaptation to his new coach should be “fast, as very fast”.
THURSDAY, Athletics reported that the front office and the locker rooms of the Nuggets had been in conflict this season, with Booth and Malone Butting Heads and several players, including Jokić, frustrated and tired by Malone’s training style.
Jokić’s brilliance was attenuated by the “Cold War”, as team sources described, in progress within the organization, partially leading to the rare decision of the Kroenke family to dismiss the coach and the director general at once.
(Photo: Rocky Widner / NBAE via Getty Images)
