Rob had a question. And he said, do MVPs get their coaches fired mid-season? Mm. And he's probably talking about Yo-Kitch.
Yeah. This is actually at the end of the season. So let's talk about it, man. Breaking news that took place today, the Denver Nuggets who are currently the fourth seed in the Western Conference made major changes to the franchise by firing not only head coach Mike Malone, who brought them a championship in 2022, but also Calvin Booth, the general manager, with the playoffs and playing tournament less than a week away, what are your reactions to these changes, and is never in a good position for a soft rebuild, meaning that will Yo-Kitch prime years be wasted after a move like this, or can they remain entitled contention?
And that's a great, great, little third there. I left it all my local. I was going to say, you messed up. You should have said post Malone.
Yeah, post Malone. That was your general. Yeah, you messed up. You go to the top five.
I would say I'm going to go real quick. I'm somewhat shocked, but Ken is also hilarious, because remember that championship at the parade. He was talking, you know, noticing my deferese was like, I'm going to go here. It seemed like a lifetime.
I was just talking cash. Because the first time you were, you fuck that was when he said Bruce Brown was coming back. I'm looking back. That's the same.
But I'm low-key shot. I'm low-key shot, because it seemed like no matter what you do, you're going to get fired as a head coach. I guess if the owner, because if you're firing a GM, this is the owner decision. If they're getting rid of the head coach and a GM.
And I guess maybe, Manny was the one that said in the chat that the GM has been fucking up, not Mike Malone. But so far, it does seem like the nuggets were kind of going to be mid this season or this post season. Like, yeah, Joker was probably going to get his numbers. But I don't think anyone had the nuggets.
Like, people, do you think that they had a legit chance going to the finals this year? Because the playoffs is all about matchups. And nobody can match up against Joker. Like Joker has shown his dominance now for multiple seasons.
This is arguably his most dominant season. Why is that not going to translate to the post season? They're on a four-game losing streak, and they're fourth in the West. If you would, if you would, like, to me, if they were a top two seed, then I would be like, OK, I'll get what you're saying.
But they're in the, like you mentioned, like in about three days or four days, they could be 60. You know what I'm saying? And that's a whole different matchup. So I don't really see them going into the post season when I'm momentum outside of Joker just playing out of his mind.
So I mean, Mike Malone is what? Less than three years away from a title? Like a title? Two years away.
So you fired at? You know what I'm saying? And right before the playoffs, it just doesn't make sense to me. So this is like, who was the other coach that was just fired?
Not too long ago? Taylor. Taylor Jenkins. Yeah, Taylor Jenkins.
And we question that. I don't understand. And even Magic Johnson said, you know, he's been part of the NBA for 45 years. And he's never seen this.
I haven't either. And I don't understand the ideology behind these type of moves. I did see Nick Wright say that four out of the last five coaches to make the final season fired. So it looks like there is no longevity in the NBA as being a head coach, no matter the level of success that you have.
But for Denver's particular, because I had to watch a hell of TV and clips and all that, because I'm just like, yo, this feels like it's out of left field. But people have been discussing how toxic of a work environment has been between Calvin Booth and Mike Malone to the fact that they're not even talking anymore. And part of their rift is that Calvin Booth wants Mike Malone to play the youngins and Mike Malone's trying to win games. So he's playing the veterans.
You know what I'm saying? So there's always this tug of war between front office and head coach, because the coach always wants to win, because that's what's going to keep him in the league. But the front office has to look three to five years ahead. And it's like, hey, we drafted this guy.
We needed to develop him. He needs minutes. But if the coaches like we got to win this game, I'm going to go with the veteran. So that is the discord that they had.
And obviously it was so toxic that the owner was like, OK, I'm going to everybody go, which is crazy to me, especially before going into the playoffs. Now, the only reasoning that I can see that the owner did this was because what if Mike Malone pulled another one out of his ass and they went another championship? Are you a fire a coach that just won the championship? So I think from that perspective, I can see why he let everybody go.
It's just not a move that we are accustomed to, or one that I would have made if I was a owner, or if I was a GM, I wouldn't be firing my coach down the stretch of the season. That just is just asking the enemy. It just makes very little sense. I'm sure everybody this time, the object of the game is to win.
I don't get how this can help you. When you're in a position, yeah, to answer that question, yeah, they have an opportunity to win it all at Denver. You got the best player in the world on your team right now. You got a shot to win it.
You do. You always do as long as you're on the court. So to make this move at this moment, to me, I don't think I can think of it as if it was signed off on my Joker. Like maybe there was a rip between the two of them, or something like that, or something else bigger than we don't know nothing about.
So just to that point, they're saying that Mike Malone is a very old school type of coach, and that a lot of players didn't like it. You know what I'm saying now? Who was it? I wanted to say, who was I just listening to?
It was either Sean, or somebody was saying that. You know, Mike Malone did take it a little easier on Joker and Jamar Mary and his stars, but for the most part, he is like a tough coach, and the players just wasn't feeling it anymore. And I saw what he was saying, you know, in his presser, not too long ago, where he was getting on him by not watching film and saying the players, like basically they sub, like he kind of threw some players under the bus in one of his last pressers. And he could have very easily lost that team, he lost the top committee, and they could have easily went and said, we want him gone.
You know what I'm saying? And that could have happened. You know, these guys, they hold up more power today, players do, and you can definitely be like, I'm out of here. If we can't change this.
So we really don't know. Unless something comes out, we won't know the full reason, but I guarantee you Joker's behind this move. Something out of the way, he has something to do with this move. I don't think that you make a move like this.
I don't know what the coach is in here. You got a new coach. Russ is the coach killer everywhere. Russ is the coach.
He's right. OK, where he goes? I said, I was a coach killer last week. I just want to know what your coach is.
Well, if you count him this time, I think he has something to do with this one. Yes. I don't think so. You said.
I don't think that's it. And the only reason. So do it right for them. Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. The reason why I disagree with that statement, and I don't even want that narrative to be out there, is because let's not forget Mike Malone was fired from the Kings after he had another big man have the best year of his career in the market's cousins. And I never understood because the Kings at that point in time, and they still are fucking a catastrophe on the damn court and in the front office. The Mike Malone brought stability in the market's cousin's Ken, and that was your guy.
He had MVPs, he's in under Mike Malone, and they got rid of him. So I can't say that this is Joker driven, maybe Joker accepted, but I don't know if it was Joker driven. But at the end of the day, Mike Malone, I don't know what's being talked about him behind closed doors at this point, but I know this. Somebody's going to hire him, and I put a tee like this, Nick.
Your boy Thims might be on the short leash, and if he goes, I can see Mike Malone stepping right in and then that's further. Mike Malone's been there with him. Mike Malone's been there 10 years, right? Is that what they said?
No, I ain't. Is it 10 long? I think he's like seven, six or seven? I'm not sure.
I'm just going off the top of the dome, but I think he's like six or seven. I think Malone is a good coach. If the reports from what they're saying are true, how I would look at it is if I'm an owner, I just got tired of the bullshit. Like beyond the players that Joker telling me to do it or a wrestling in the coach killer, I'm not paying a GM and a coach to have a toxic relationship and not even talk.
Like, how do I get good information if I'm an owner? Because the coaches telling me one thing, the GM is telling me one thing, y'all niggas don't even talk, and that's your job. So at the very least you can find out for your support nation. If I'm the owner, and it don't matter what time of season it is because I'm the owner and I'm probably disconnected from its playoff time, like the timing is bad.
Like none of that shit matters to me because if I'm an owner of an NBA team, yes winning is important to me, but money is also important. And you're affecting my bottom line with you guys doing this bullshit and me having to move forward with it. So I can see this happening right now. How do you affect the bottom line when you're a top five seed in a stronger conference?
And you already have the MVP. So I don't see how you affect the bottom line. Because as an owner, I'm forecasting on the future. It's not just about right now today.
You're absolutely right. I have a top five player now and we're successful now, but I can't even get projections correct because you two niggas don't even talk. Y'all don't even talk in the same room. So I wanna know who I need to drive.
I wanna know who I need to pay and bring back. I need to know who to pick up a free agency. And I don't even have a good enough relationship between my head coach and my GM to plan. Like y'all can't even come to me with plans.
I would absolutely fire you for that. I don't care what part of this season it is. Like I'm bringing out of my office and y'all telling me y'all ain't talking three weeks. You're not gonna get the fuck out of this pack y'all bags.
Let me ask you this though, right? Like on the other hand, the GM that they had previously that drafted Joker that drafted Michael Porter Jr. That drafted Jamal Mary and essentially built this championship court is the one that went to Minnesota. And he built that team to beat Denver.
And they lost six out of eight games where there's regular season or playoffs, right? So as the owner, why not just overpay for that GM? Because obviously that GM and Mike Malone had a great working relationship. So why am I picking Mike Malone though?
Like why would I sign with him when neither one of you showed that you were professional enough to continue this relationship? Like the problem isn't that y'all don't get along. It's that y'all can be professional enough to at least provide me. These are championship shows.
Have they had a conversation about that? Like if I'm their owner, we gonna sit down and we gonna have this conversation first. And you're not gonna say this is not gonna be me firing. But that's the point show.
We don't know how many conversations they pay. We just know what he got fired today. We might have been having these conversations all season. And this just may be him frustrating.
And be like, man, fuck, I've been trying to fix this shit all year. But that's a good point to people. Why wouldn't I pay somebody to get along with Mike Malone? But I also can look at Mike Malone and be like, bro, why can't you be professional?
This is your job. Not only the coach basketball, but you can't tell me you don't talk to the GM. That's insane. But the only reason for our coach, and the only reason basketball related to our coach is if you lose the team.
I really, I mean, I want you to get along with management and all that stuff. I want that to work. But if you got a relationship with your team, I can't let you go, especially this time of the year. What this tells me, we know that Mike Malone had a relationship.
That's what I was saying. What this tells me, they had some sort of disconnect. They had to have a disconnect. Otherwise, he can still be coaching that basketball team.
You're not gonna let go of a coach when they have good synergy with the players. You can't do that. You don't shut up. We've seen that done in the past.
My thing is this, right? To me, it's, there's certain coaches, right? I have tears of coaches. And to me, Mike Malone is a championship coach.
You want a championship? We've seen how he does his exes and o's. We've seen, especially when it comes to Big Men in the league, when he has a really good one, he elevates their game. Like they have their best seasons under Mike Malone.
In my opinion, but again, we don't know the level of toxicity that existed in that Denver Nuggets building. If it's to the point, to Spike's point, where we had these sit downs, we're trying to get it right, and it just can't happen, then you have to make an extreme call because it is your team. You know what I'm saying? And nobody else is gonna replace you, but you can replace everybody, right?
So I get it from that perspective. But from the basketball perspective, I'm like, God, like how you gonna replace him? You get, like there's not many guys that's better than Mike Malone that you're gonna get more out of your team from the head coach with. So it's over for, sorry.
No, no, no, go ahead. So it's over for Joker. I don't think so, because he's talented, can't. And then we saw.
No, no, but he needs the coach, right? Yeah, no, no, he was just about to say what he did. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, all I'm saying is that obviously Mike Malone elevates when the Marcus Cousins left Sacramento in Winston, New Orleans, and they had the Twin Towers with AB, the Marcus Cousins looked like MVP still, right?
So there's certain things from a coach that leaves an imprint on you that you will have even if that coach isn't there. I think Joker has that now. So I don't see his level of play going down. It may look different depending on the coach that they bring in and the X's and O's and how they decide to use Joker.
But Joker's Joker, Joker is arguably the best player in the NBA right now. Yeah, I understand, but you were saying that, it sounded like you were about to say that you can't find another coach as good as Mike Malone, so what are they gonna do? So replace them, replace them. Yeah, I don't know what they're gonna do for.
It would seem to me that it's over for Joker winning more championships if they can't find that guy. 100%, I think, especially in the NBA, you gotta have a more than competent head coach regardless of the talent level. I don't know who it is that they're targeting. I just have to see.
Look, at least you got different win in the title in five years, right? You put that on your mantle. Yeah, and they won. They did, they did.
And it was confirmed by the chat, appreciate you guys that he's been there for 10 years. He got a ring out of him. Joker's only known him as the coach. This is breaking news.
We already know the NBA reporters, they're gonna die. They will find and get us all the information we need. We'll have a full understanding of what happened there. What I thought was interesting, because I really been trying to think about like what does this all mean?
And it's hard to formulate an opinion without some level of inside information or facts. I did read that article about the Cold War as they labeled it that was going on with Denver at the beginning of the year when it came with Peyton Watson and some other guys. And this was when Denver was struggling. Denver has also lost 11 to 13 since all stuff break.
There was some interesting things going on. The most interesting part about this to me isn't really about what's going on in Denver. It's really about what's going on in the NBA. And it hit me when I was just reflecting back.
We got Mike Malone, we got Taylor Jenkins, and then I went all the way back to Luca. Business is super-seeding basketball. And it hit me when Shelton was talking about, you just don't do this. When you guys are talking about you running back and fire people in the offseason, these dudes are not waiting anymore.
When they know they need to make a move, they're going to make a move. It might Malone somehow, because they do have Joker, wins the title, it makes that move much, much harder. So we're just going to dump, we're going to get rid of him right now. And what does this do for the NBA moving forward when you no longer have the security of at least getting through the playoffs?
If teams are willing to fire people, fire coaches that are in the playoffs, but like seven games before the playoffs even start, that's very unstable. So this tells me, they've always been assets to come on these on the court. Now they're really displaying so much more now that that's all this is, that's all they are. And they don't care about anything that happens after that.
I got to tie it with Malone, let's get rid of all these dudes, we're going to start over and that's it. I think this is something really interesting to watch because we haven't seen these moves before. We haven't seen a guy get rid of Luca. And to certain degree, there's something Luca's been doing that's kind of proving some truth into why they made that move.
So yeah, man, this is something interesting to watch just from the overall perspective of business. That's what has my attention now. The only counter I would have with that can is the fact that now that they're single meat being at a job for 10 years, one title in 10 years with with with Joker, I can see them moving on. Cause again, like I personally, I don't other than disagree, I know people does.
I didn't see them as a legit title contender this season. It's just the field and I'm going off of vibes. So I don't really, I'm not going off for much more than that. I know that's not really a statistic to go off of, but it just didn't feel like this team was in a position like a deep run.
With that being said, we all know that Joker is in the prime. He's playing like he's top five all time. So it's like, if we're not getting the good vibes now, and it doesn't feel like we went in now, then what the hell are we doing with this team still? So like let's restart, get trying to get somebody in.
And I don't know, like you said, people I don't know what coach that is. That's going to be on the job of the new GM to get. And if then what's the new GM going to be? How good are they going to be?
But it does seem like, it was just too long. Like we just been together for too long. We just need to reset. You know, can the only way that we are going to see stability and longevity with head coaches moving forward in the league and there is less and less of this type of regime is going to be the Miami Heat model, where the owner kind of just, he signs the checks, you know what I'm saying?
He wants to know the bottom line. You know, he wants to know that everything's healthy to a degree, but then you have a president and that president picked the GM and the assistant GM and everything is hand picked. Because I can never see and shit, you know what I mean? Knock on wood by, you know, I never call for a man's job, but I can't see Pat Riley get a rid of Spostra.
At all, like Spost is his guy. Unless Pat Riley gets the boot, Spostra is going to be the coach of Miami Heat. You know what I'm saying? That's the way I see it but then we're seeing less of that, RC Beaufort and Popovich.
Popovich can have another stroke, you know, again, knock on wood, okay, and then before we come, it's taking a block, damn. I'm just saying, I'm just popping going nowhere. You know what I'm saying? So unless we see that type of regime in the front office and that's energy with the head coach, that's the only way that you're going to have longevity in this game now.
But I just, I don't know if that's going to happen. Moving forward. Yeah. Well, let's let the reporters do their job.
We'll get all the deets, as they like to say, I guess, nowadays about what went down in Denver, but yeah, shocking for sure. We'll be back with, we need to talk and then we'll talk about the basketball hall of fame and some NFL contracts. Right.