‘I failed them’: Josh Kroenke opens up on Nuggets’ internal turmoil

DENVER — When Josh Kroenke walked into the Denver Nuggets locker room on April 6 after a loss to the Indiana Pacers, it confirmed what he already knew: Change was needed in the Mile High City.

Eight days later, the Nuggets owner spoke to the public for the first time since shocking the NBA world by firing Michael Malone and Calvin Booth. But the move wasn’t a stunner to him; no, it was overdue. The question to Kroenke was when, not if, as he detailed parts of the rift between the head coach and general manager. The owner apologized to fans for being too patient with two longtime leaders, who had pushed the Nuggets to new heights.

Kroenke accepted responsibility for the disagreements, internal fractures and the regression the Nuggets have experienced since winning the 2023 championship.

“I could feel how flat the room was,” he said about the final loss before the firings. “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 the standards of Denver Nuggets basketball.”

“I’m very protective of that culture at this point, and that’s why I say that I failed both Cal and Mo as a leader, because I let certain things slip to a place that they never should have been,” Kroenke said. “We wound up making a decision last week that I hesitated on twice, and I needed to be better for the group, checking some personal feelings my respect for both of them to be a better person for the overall group.”

The issues between Booth and Malone varied between a wide range of topics from roster construction to playing time of youngsters and resulted in what has been widely described as a cold war within the Nuggets organization. A two-sided tension was simmering in every corner where staffers and players had to pick sides. This was not a recent issue either but one that was well known in league circles and to Kroenke for months.

“I hesitated, and it was either out of personal feelings or belief for the group,” Kroenke explained. “One (time) was last fall, 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 shared that he joined meetings with Booth and Malone in the fall, which he felt were productive, but that it wasn’t enough.

“I need more when I’m not around. My role is not to be there daily. I need people that are policing the culture and pushing it forward for me daily,” Kroenke said.

The Nuggets came close to clearing house again in February, but that’s just when the team got hot.

“I was contemplating something around then, but when you have a roster like we do, you have the best player on the planet, it can mask a lot of things,” Kroenke shared. “What would be crazier, me doing what I did last week or doing it on an eight-game win streak? There’s no real right answer to questions that I have to ask at times, but my feeling and my belief was there was more in that locker room, and that’s what I acted on.”

What wasn’t acted on was any major changes to the roster this season, despite the turmoil. One name floating around a ton was Michael Porter Jr. One report said the Nuggets wouldn’t trade Porter because of his connection to Kroenke via the Missouri basketball program — but that was shut down by the owner.

“Any kind of report saying that we’re not open to trading everybody possible to improve the team is completely false,” he shared and then explained why no moves were made at the trade deadline for a second-straight season despite the lulls. “I’m not going to be green-lighting any trades around here when I don’t see complete organizational cohesion, and we’re not maximizing the group we got.”

With that, the Nuggets move on, first to the playoffs, then to an offseason of uncertainty.

“My thoughts aren’t (on the off-season) because this season is not over,” Kroenke said less than 24 hours after the Nuggets clinched a playoff berth with home court in the first round. “We just finished the season like a freight train.”

Denver is now riding a three-game win streak in the postseason. Is it masking larger issues behind the scenes like these stints have in the past this year? We don’t know right now, but there’s been a clear vibe shift. The Nuggets look closer to the 2023 champion version of themselves in attitude than they did at any other point in the 2024-25 campaign. Maybe it’s as simple as new voices in David Adelman and Ben Tenzer carrying a similar message.

That may be on a micro level but the macro is still clear: The organization’s mission is to do right by Nikola Jokic.

“You have a responsibility when you have a player like that, especially obviously in his prime, but I feel an even greater responsibility to Nikola, as I’ve watched him ascend to the player that he is today,” Kroenke said.

While Jokic didn’t make the call on the changes atop the Nuggets, Kroenke made it clear he’ll have a voice on the fixes.

“I’d be, I’d be the dumbest guy in basketball if I wasn’t asking him for his opinion on certain things,” Kroenke said. “But it’s my responsibility to make those decisions for the best of the organization. And I think Jok, he understands that and respects that very much.”

The Nuggets will go through a search for new brass at season’s end. Kroenke intends that hunt to be as open-minded as possible. Even if he says the roster can win a title, he knows the team is limited on assets in trying to get the group improved this summer. His goal there is to find value where others may not, a motto that may bleed into the Nuggets’ search for a new general manager and coach. Though it’s a bigger hint at the roster that Denver doesn’t plan to panic trade for a superstar to co-lead with Jokic but rather reaffirm the current group’s successes.

“I saw some stuff out there where Nikola Jokic has never had an All-Star teammate. He’s got some teammates that are ready for that big moment, and they’re not afraid of it. And there are a lot of All-Stars out there that can’t say that.”

Kroenke will take some of the blame for the division in Denver as he tended to his many other businesses, but he won’t let this rare moment in Nuggets history slip away — hence the extreme action of firing brass moments before a playoff run.

“We’ve worked really hard to put ourselves in this position; it’s a position that we’ve never been in before,” Kroenke said.