Nuggets vice chairman Josh Kroenke was apologetic for changes made last week, when coach Michael Malone and general manager Calvin Booth were fired without warning.
But he also hinted that the changes have already brought upon the desired result.
“The season is not over yet,” Kroenke said Monday. “We just finished the season like a freight train as far as I can tell.”
Entering the locker room after a Sunday night (April 6) home loss to Indiana, the Nuggets’ fourth consecutive loss, the picture before Kroenke prompted him to pull the plug on the status quo.
“I could feel how flat the room was,” he said. “On a four-game losing streak heading into the playoffs with a flat locker room, I internalized how much I had let the room slip. It was not up to standards of Denver Nuggets basketball.”
Kroenke said there were two prior moments when he felt the team was headed in a direction “not up to my standards” but he resisted making a change out of respect for Malone and Booth.
Ben Tenzer was named interim general manager on Monday and will be in place for the duration of the playoffs working alongside interim head coach David Adelman.
Kroenke pulled back on his initial hunch last Thanksgiving that a change was required, and then again before the All-Star break during an eight-game win streak.
“It was either out of personal feelings or a belief in the group,” Kroenke said, confirming he sat in on meetings with Booth and Malone. “I need people who are policing the culture and pushing forward. We went on a little run before the All-Star break. There were reports out there I was contemplating something then. That is true.
“Those eight games masked a trend that was going on behind closed doors.”
No players or club personnel requested the change in organizational structure, Kroenke said. He offered three-time MVP Nikola Jokic a chance to discuss a decision that had already been made, but Kroenke said Monday that Jokic’s response was a head nod of “no.”
However, Kroenke reached the point where he realized “certain things had slipped to a point where they shouldn’t have been” between his senior basketball officials. He said he apologized to Booth and Malone with “as positive a bad conversation as we could have.”
“To be frank, neither of them deserved it. For that I apologize. As the leader of the organization, I need to be better,” Kroenke said.
