Michael Malone’s eye-opening rant resurfaces after Nuggets firing
The Denver Nuggets made the shocking decision to fire head coach Michael Malone on Tuesday, just days before the NBA playoffs. The Nuggets are currently in fourth place in the Western Conference, and they are gearing up for a postseason run.
They will be doing it without Malone, who had been the head coach of the Nuggets since 2015, and he won a title with the team back in 2023. His firing came as a big surprise to the entire NBA world, and the Nuggets fired general manager Calvin Booth as well.
Everyone was caught off guard by Michael Malone getting fired, but there were signs. For example, he went on a rant about his team just a couple of weeks ago that is now getting a lot more attention.
“It was a brutally honest message,” Malone said. “The guys that are full of s**t won’t hear it,” Malone said. “They’ll say. ‘Coach is tripping.’ And the guys that maybe do really care will because they’re not going to go back and watch their minutes. Nobody watches their minutes; nobody watches film, so we’ll have to show them the film.”
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It’s pretty clear from that quote that Malone wasn’t happy with what was happening inside the Nuggets’ locker room, and it also sounds like a lot of the players weren’t taking him seriously.
Even with the issues that the team was having, this is still an interesting time to make the move. There are only three more games in the regular season, and the Nuggets are in a heated race in the Western Conference.
They could finish as high as third place, but they could also drop all the way down to eighth place. This is a very important time for the team, and they now have a major distraction to deal with.
The Nuggets will be led by assistant coach David Adelman for the remainder of the season as he will take on interim head-coaching duties. The team will search for a permanent replacement to take over when next season rolls around.
Scotty White serves as ClutchPoints’ Chicago Bulls and Michigan Football reporter, in addition to covering NCAA Football and Basketball as an associate editor. Scotty is a graduate of the University of Michigan and has been in the sports journalism industry since 2020.
