DENVER – Michael Malone is the fourth-longest-tenured coach in the NBA, and he said the Nuggets’ patience with him is one reason they are in the finals against the Miami Heat.
“The fact that I’m one of the top four longest-tenured coaches, that has a ton to do with where we are today,” said Malone, prior to Game 1 of the Nuggets’ first-ever finals game Thursday. “I couldn’t be more thankful for working for an ownership group that is not impatient and it’s not trying to find the next great thing … let this problem marinate into something special.”
Malone — with eight consecutive years coaching the Nuggets — trails Miami’s Erik Spoelstra, who in season 15 is the league’s second-longest-tenured coach. The longest is San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich (27 seasons) and the third-longest is Golden State’s Steve Kerr (nine seasons).
In the last week, two coaches who were fired at season’s end already have new jobs. Nick Nurse, who won a championship with the Toronto Raptors in 2019, was announced as the 76ers’ new coach; Monty Williams, the 2022 NBA Coach of the Year in Phoenix, just landed a reported $78.5 million contract (that could be worth much more) from the Detroit Pistons.
“I’ve got to hit him up, I need a loan,” Malone joked of Williams. “He got fired in Phoenix. OK, well, Detroit realized … here’s a guy that’s not only a great coach, more importantly, he’s going to be a great example for our team with a bunch of young players. So you know that that’s what you want. If it doesn’t work out in one place, you know that 29 other teams are watching to see things that could work here.”
Malone, 51, was hired by the Nuggets for the 2015-16 season after being fired by Sacramento the season before. He has already won more playoff games (33) than any previous Nuggets coach, but for the two seasons prior to this one, Denver didn’t get as far as it did in 2020 — when it reached the Western finals in the NBA bubble.
Such regression — regardless of the reason (Jamal Murray’s torn-up knee played a major role) — is typically grounds for firing in the NBA.
“I would have been fired four or five times already, any of the years we didn’t make the playoffs or whatever the years where there were great expectations and we didn’t do what people thought we should have done,” said Spoelstra, 52, who is coaching in his sixth finals. “There’s something to be said for consistency. It is really a tough task to rebuild a culture over and over and over with new people and doing it every one to two to three years. That’s just a tough task.”
Malone said he gave his players a quiz on the Heat’s tendencies Thursday morning, something he said he picked up from former NBA great coach-turned-Heat president Pat Riley. Malone said he read in a book that Riley would quiz players.
Spoelstra said he doesn’t do that, even though Riley is his boss.
“I’m glad Pat has never given me a quiz,” Spoelstra said. “I probably would have failed.”
Required reading
(Photo: Kyle Terada / USA Today)
