Three games before the end of the regular season, the Denver Nuggets did something unprecedented. They fired both their head coach Mike Malone and the team’s general manager Calvin Booth, in the kind of housecleaning usually saved for the offseason – and usually only done by those teams in the lottery.
Since that time, many stories have come out as to why this happened. A disconnection between the two, the apathy of continuity, the need to shake up a team whose roster is not easy to shake up – all have been cited as the major reason for the dismissals. Supposedly, according to The Athletic, Malone was fired at least in part because the organisation wanted to give his assistant David Adelman a chance at the interim position.
Whatever reasoning won the day, though, the post-firing leaks continue. Until such time as a new brain trust is in place, the thoughts and decisions of the previous one will ring loudly.
Someone Has To Be Moved
In a report reflecting on their loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder in the second round of the 2025 NBA Playoffs, while also speculating on how they might change things up this upcoming offseason, the Denver Post dropped a nugget of information about starting point guard, Jamal Murray:
Both [Murray and Nikola Jokic] are eligible to be traded â former general manager Calvin Booth explored deals involving Murray last offseason before giving him the extension, league sources told The Post â but ultimately, those recent votes of faith would suggest that [Michael] Porter [Jr] is the odd man out.
Porter being the odd man out is not a great surprise. Short of draft picks and burdened by salary, with four high-priced players and little else that can be downsized, the Nuggets – if they feel they have to move someone of note to get better – do not have many options. Jokic, the game’s best big, is unavailable, and it is hard to fathom a deal involving postseason clutch hero Aaron Gordon that would be better for the team than just keeping him. If only by default, then, Porter becomes the available one.
The surprise instead comes from the Murray tidbit. At one point, it seems, a Murray move was on the table too.
Nuggets Likely Placed The Calls
Taking trade calls, and making them, are very different things.
Professional sports team’s front office are in permanent information-gathering mode, and part of that information-gathering process is knowing who of interest is or may be available from other teams, something best ascertained through networking and direct communication. If a team rang Denver about Murray, it is only evidence that Murray is good enough to be wanted. And this could already have been safely assumed.
If however the Nuggets were making calls about Murray, and seeing what trade deals were potentially on the table for him, that is a different matter. And while the Post’s use of the term “explored” is not definitive in either direction, a reasonable inference can be made that they were indeed proactive about the discussions. Receiving interest would not be not newsworthy. Expressing it would be.
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It is important however to make clear that even if Murray was actively put on the trading table at one point, he is not likely to be now.
Far from trading Murray, Booth’s Nuggets went the other way. Weeks before the season began, Murray signed a four-year, maximum value extension that keeps him under contract until 2029. At that time, he will be earning in the region of $60 million a season. Any trade interest previous gauged on him will not have involved evaluating him at that price, for he was not at that price at the time.
Nevertheless, this tidbit goes to show more of the journey that the Nuggets have been on over the past few months. Where so recently they were title-winners and happy to pay the cost to keep together that championship core, they are now looking at having to blow some of it up, but not before first deciding who will be the blower-upper.
Missing a coach, a front office and a title-winning roster, the Nuggets have a fair bit to work to do. It was not the best season. Even the good piece of news about the Murray extension now has caveats.
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