Tracymcgoaty wrote:XTC wrote:Awful move.
Malone is a good coach who became the scapegoat. I'm not even sure any Nuggets fan wanted this to happen either.
Why is it always people who aren't a fan of the team that say things like this?
Literally ever Nuggets fan i've seen on this forum wants him gone. Jokic can only save him for so long.
I would say I'm a Nuggets fan and I didn't want him gone, at least not now.
I think Malone has some weaknesses and is stubborn in his rotation/commitment to vets at times, but overall I didn't think that the Nuggets were poorly coached. A few guys would have their head in the clouds at times, but I never felt like they weren't playing hard.
Of course, like everything else with the Nuggets, though, it's hard to tell how much of that is down to the coach and how much it's down to Jokic, who ensures order every time he's on the court and always plays hard, which sets a tone.
I do think Malone never really figuring out an offense for the non-Jokic minutes that was at least semi-decent is suboptimal coaching. Even when Murray was on the floor with two other starters, they never were really able to put something together that was even a net neutral. I think he trusted too much in Murray's ability to create. I think they needed to switch to a much more structured offense in those minutes. It might limit its upside, but when you have Jokic, you just need not to completely crater in those periods when he's not on.
Malone's biggest recent player development sin in my mind was his use of Zeke Nnaji, who looked promising as a versatile 4, but who Malone desperately tried for almost 2 seasons to make a small ball center, where he just wasn't good. I have no major complaints about the minutes he played Braun, Watson, and Strawther, though. I've thought them appropriate for developing them. Pickett too really, though like many Nuggets fans, I'd like to see more of him.
What I really thought the Nuggets needed was a top class defensive assistant. They started the year playing drop on pick and rolls, but they quickly found that without KCP, none of the Nuggets guards could navigate a screen to save their lives. Braun and Watson are actually pretty good isolation defenders, but still pretty poor at screen navigation. Murray's never been that good. So teams had too much space/time with Jokic dropped. So Malone countered mid year by having Jokic go with the ball handler off the screen and try to keep them from turning the corner until the guard could get through, then rotate back to his man. But that hasn't been super successful either as he isn't super fast and it takes him really far onto the perimeter away from his man if the ball gets out and limits his ability to use his intelligence/hands to play the passing lanes. Could the team have learned to rotate faster if they'd planned to play that way from pre-season? Maybe. They looked a bit faster last game. But I'd love to see a defensive genius assistant and what they'd come up with.
But overall, every team's fans have some complaints about the coach. Nothing that was happening said to me "Change coach now!" with four games before the playoffs and Murray having been out a whole bunch lately and Gordon being in and out and really not looking his previous best, especially on defense (though he has been shooting really well).
