During the governor and president of the Denver Nuggets team, Josh Kroenke, press conference On Monday, a journalist preceded a question when describing Michael Malone’s dismissal last week As “one of the latest” decisions of this type that has taken a playoff team. Kroenke corrected him immediately.
“I think it is he Last “Kroenke, son of the Stan Kroenke team owner, he said.” I trust me, I went through all that. I’m like, ‘am I crazy?’ So I completely understand what you were probably thinking of the moment. “
The Nuggets not only shot Malone, the most winning coach in the history of the franchise, last Tuesday. They simultaneously announced that General Manager Calvin Booth was also out. Kroenke had considered saying goodbye to both. On Monday, Kroenke confirmed that he had considered saying goodbye to both men in the recess of the stars game before an eight -game winning streak were made, as well as once earlier in the season.
“In the course of the season, to be completely transparent with the group, there were two moments at the time I identified where I hesitated,” Kroenke told journalists. “And it was for personal feelings or beliefs for the group. One was the past fall. I could not tell you an exact date, it was around the Thanksgiving day at some point when I really felt that things did not go in a direction or my standards as an organization.”
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Kroenke said his respect for both Malone and Booth “probably led a little to that hesitation” and that there were “many other factors that is my job to understand.” He pointed out that, at that time, Denver was trying to establish a new rotation after deciding last summer to let Wentavious Caldwell-Pope enter the free agency. He pointed out that “some players” were “playing fit, to be honest.” This was “understandable,” he said, because “some of us” went from a “heartbreaking loss” in game 7 of the second round of the Nuggets against the Minnesota Timberwolves to the Olympic Games and then needed to take a free time to recover. (Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray played at the Olympic Games. Murray didn’t seem to be healthy at that time, and had a slow start this season).
Kroenke also confirmed that he had meetings with Malone and Booth at the beginning of the season in an effort to make the relationship between the two work.
“We had excellent conversations at those meetings, but I need more when I’m not close,” Kroenke told journalists. “My role is not to necessarily be there daily; I need people who watch the culture and push it daily.”
Kroenke said the eight consecutive games that the Nuggets won before the All-Star Break “masked a trend that was happening behind closed doors, which finally began to affect the end of our season.” The problems behind the scene between Malone and Booth were “worrying,” he said, but was not ready to clean the house at that time.
“I saw that I was contemplating something at that time,” Kroenke said. “That’s true. But when you have a list like us, you have the best player on the planet, can you mask many things. And what would be craziest: I do what I did last week or do it with a streak of eight consecutive victories?”
In retrospect, the streak is not particularly impressive: Denver beat the Philadelphia 76ers, Charlotte Hornets, New Orleans Pelicans (twice), Orlando Magic, Phoenix Suns and Portland Trail Blazers (twice). Each of these teams finished the regular season with 36 wins or less.
Kroenke said he knew he had to do something after entering the Nuggets wardrobe after his loss of 125-120 against the Indiana Pacers on April 6. “I could feel how flat the room was,” he said. After that, he made the decision that great changes were needed.
“On a losing run of four games that went to the playoffs with a flat costume, it was when I understood and internalized how much I had let this room slip,” Kroenke said. “And it was not up to what is really Denver Nuggets’s basketball.”
Kroenke said he is “very protective” of the culture that Denver has built, and that he had “failed in both [Booth] and [Malone] As a leader “by letting” certain things slide in a place that should never have been. “
“[Booth and Malone] He brought us our first championship, helped establish a new culture and new standards that will continue to advance to the future, “said Kroenke.” And to be honest, none of them deserved it, and that’s why I apologize. From my position, as leader of the organization, I needed to be better at different times. “
The Nuggets beat the Sacramento Kings in the first interim game of coach David Adelman last Wednesday. They hit the Grizzlies of Memphis two days later, and achieved number 4 at the West Conference when they beat Houston’s rocks at the end of the regular season on Sunday. Kroenke called the first victory “a great step to simply change the energy” of the team and said that the most recent “showed a group that still has a lot of resolution and a lot of belief about where they are heading this year.” He repeatedly emphasized that the season is not over.
“They were ready for a challenge that I dropped them, and I think they responded in an incredible way,” he said.
Kroenke said the Denver executive, Ben Tenzer, will be the interim team of the team for the rest of the season. After that, “we are going to go through a search, sure,” he said.
In this next season, the Nuggets will be “as open as we have been above all,” said Kroenke, emphasizing that his next main executive will need to find “value where others not” when it comes to the construction of the list.
