Josh Kroenke’s decision to fire Michael Malone was not a spur of the moment

Josh Kroenke stunned the NBA world last week when he fired Michael Malone, the head coach of the Denver Nuggets, and told general manager Calvin Booth that his contract would not be renewed just days before the regular season ended. Kroenke recently made himself the interim president of basketball operations for the team and spoke about what the next steps for the Nuggets needed to be.

On Monday, he spoke to the press for the first time since the spring cleaning moves were made.

“It was around Thanksgiving at some point when I was really feeling like things were not headed in a direction or up to my standards as an organization,” Kroenke said. “I saw it was reported that I would sit in with meetings with Calvin and coach [Malone] at times, which I did. We had great, great conversations in those meetings. But I need more when I’m when I’m not around. My role is not to necessarily be there on a daily basis. I need people that are policing the culture and pushing it forward for me on a daily basis.”

Kroenke also stated that the reports of him considering moving on from Malone around the All-Star break are true, but the team’s eight-game win streak had Malone hanging on by a thread.

“When you have a roster like we do, you have the best player on the planet, it can mask a lot of things,” Kroenke said. “What would be crazier? Me doing what I did last week or doing it on an eight-game win streak? … My feeling and my belief is there was more in that locker room and that’s what I acted on.”

On Thanksgiving, the Nuggets had a 10-7 record, but were sputtering after a five-game winning streak early in the season. The team continued to be on and off throughout the next month as injuries started to mount, but a switch was flipped after Christmas. The Nuggets went 21-3 from late December to mid-late February and were one of the hottest teams in the entire NBA. If Kroenke were to fire Malone during that stretch, many more eyebrows would have been raised.

Kroenke hesitated in both of those moments to fire Malone and Booth as the personal side of the business creeped into his mind.

“They’re both really good people,” Kroenke said. “As an organization, we start with good people who work hard … My respect for them as people probably led a little bit to that hesitation, but there’s also a lot of other factors that it’s my job to understand.”

Even though the firing happened late in the season, it came after a four-game losing streak in which the organization was at its lowest point in years. Malone seemed to be out of answers, none of the players seemed to be engaged, and the Nuggets looked to have a one-way ticket to the Play-In Tournament.

After a loss to the Indiana Pacers to extend the losing streak to four, Kroenke knew something had to change.

Josh Kroenke: "Coming into the locker room after our loss to Indu. I could feel how flat the room was. And on a four game losing streak heading into the playoffs, with a flat locker room, that was when I understood, and I internalized how much I had let this room slip."

— Jake Shapiro (@Shapalicious) April 14, 2025

Since the move, the Nuggets are 3-0 under interim head coach David Adelman and hold the No. 4 seed and home-court advantage in the Western Conference Playoffs. Kroenke wanted a spark from his team, and the move flipped the fate of the season for Denver.