According to ESPN, the Denver Nuggets have been mulling over the idea of firing both head coach Michael Malone and general manager Calvin Booth since the All-Star break.
Per multiple reports, the team was “miserable” and owner Josh Kroenke thought having a clean house would repair the morale and help bolster them in the locker room to translate into wins. However, the firings never happened due to Denver going on an eight-game win streak.
The feud between Malone and Booth turned into a “cold war.” This caused a very toxic environment for everyone within the organization.
“Everybody in the organization was miserable,” a team source said. “That’s what Josh felt. It’s a bad vibe. You can’t operate like that. He felt that if he removed those two people, everybody could just focus on doing their job. Change needed to happen.”
“There were certain trends that were very worrisome to me at certain points in time, but they would get masked by a few wins here and there,” Kroenke said during an in-house interview released Tuesday afternoon. “In the world of professional sports, where winning and losing is your currency, winning can mask a lot of things.”
Beyond the toxicity, the two’s mindset were completely different. Booth wanted to play the younger guys he drafted, while Malone wanted to play the veterans more. This tore apart a clear path of how they were going to maintain their championship-contending window.
Denver is 48-32, currently holding the 4th seed in the Western Conference, and hope the team’s morale boost can help them in the postseason.