Who is to blame?

[NuggetsWY]

Vic Lombardi asked Malone what he could have done to change the outcome of the Clippers game and Malone basically said there were too many turnovers and periods lacking in effort. In other words, it's on the players. I didn't hear him talk about what he could have done when the Clippers bench was destroying the Nuggets' bench and even our starters.

Are the players responsible for wins/losses? Sure, do a degree. They are the ones playing in the game.

Is the coach responsible for wins/losses? He doesn't play, but he controls the rotation and he's the one calling plays, at least in-bound plays and setting the game plan and supposedly providing the motivational encouragement.

Is the front office responsible for wins/losses? They built this out-of-balance roster and hired this coach.

Is the owner responsible for wins/losses? He's the one that has the final say on hiring/firing the GM and the coach and the players.

The way I was raised, if workers (players) were not performing adequately, you could either fire all the workers (players) or find a new manager (coach). If the manager (coach) replacement wasn't adequately successful, the next level of management was changed and the ladder keeps going up.

Yes, I am in favor of finding a different coach. Clearly our defense is lacking. Clearly Malone's rotations are puzzling. Less clear, but it seems as though he's not very good at motivating players and/or teaching young players. His best offense is keeping his mouth shut and letting the team free-lance around Jokic. Where is his strength?

Yes, I am in favor of finding a different GM. Clearly our roster is very unbalanced with 2 centers, 2 PGs, 1 SF (with an unused vet also), 3 SGs, and 6 PFs. It might be understandable to have an unbalanced roster going into training camp. It would be stretching it to keep such a roster into the season. Being unable to bring more balance to the roster during the season, including trade-deadline time is ridiculous.

Since our ownership appears to accept our current coach and GM - in my opinion, the owner is ultimately responsible for our wins/losses. The majority of what we hear from ownership is selling tickets.

<Sigh> Still wishing I could find it in my heart to change allegiance, but I'm still holding out hope that Jokic, Harris, Murray might just become a winning team in spite of all of this.

[The Rebel]

A 26-6 run followed by an 11-3 run and Malone burned all the timeouts in the 1st half. Lack of effort to start the game, out of timeouts, and out of half times have been an ongoing issue for 3 years now.

Not being able to stop the pick and roll has been an issue for 3 years now.

Every season we start off with Malone tinkering with the lineup, we have the only team I can remember that has been better with more players injured than the full roster healthy for the last 3 years.

I cannot remember a time when a coach constantly complained about lack of effort and than allowed veterans who complained publicly all the minutes they wanted.

Another complaint I have about Malone is that while Jokic, Lyles, Murray, and Harris all have improved it appears that Beasley, Nurkic, Mudiay, and Hernangomez all regressed under Malone, that is not a good sign.

The roster composition is wrong, there is no denying it.

I am also questioning whether Connelly should keep his job.

There is no doubt that he knows how to draft, but the cap management has been horrible, and the fact that this team is struggling to make the playoffs while struggling to even make the playoffs this season while staring at the luxury tax is just terrible.

I mean we have $65 million going to our 2nd-5th best bigs right now, that is ridiculous especially when your best big is due for a max deal next year.
Our best 4 players so far this year have all been on rookie deals, and arguably our 5th best has been on a very cheap pre cap jump deal. Now Millsap being injured does hurt that, but when 4 of your 5 best players are on rookie deals and you are capped out you have a problem.

I cannot think of a single trade that Connelly has broken even on since he traded Joffrey for 2 2nd rounders. IN fact out of the 18 trades the Nuggets have made since they hired Connelly I can only think of 3 or 4 that he has made moves that we came out better for doing. McGee and a 1st for cap space at least made some sense, Afflalo for Barton was a good trade (although I still think we should have held onto Fournier and if trading him could have easily dealt him straight up for Barton and possibly a pick). the pick for Mcdermott and Anthony Randolph for Nurkic and Harris was a great trade, and of course getting 2 1st round picks for Mozgov was great, but other than that I cannot think of a good or even great trade for us.

Overall I know that Connelly will not be fired, and at this point I doubt they even consider firing Malone for at least another year, but they should be on the chopping block right now.

[NuggetsWY]

So then we have to ask; how many bad habits are our young players learning? My answer would be "too many" or perhaps it is even more important to consider how many bad habits they are learning by not learning the good habits.

[Mickey8]

60% Malone's fault, watch Jokic going back down to average self the rest of the season. In the month of February he played like the top 10 player in the league, just to remind the people, because he has ability to play like that. Malone cost this team at least 10 wins early this season, holding Jokic back, they would be comfortably in the play off's right now, probably above SA and Minnesota in the standings .

[The Rebel]

The one thing I keep going back to is Chauncey kept saying he thought this team could get the 3rd seed. If he is seeing it than other basketball people are seeing it and maybe josh and Stan are seeing it as well. I truly believe this team is not as strong as it's individual parts and that is on the coach. Malone is the primary reason they are in 9th as opposed to around 3rd.

I have said it before and I will say it again, while Malone was an assistant in GS when they had Jefferson, Jefferson and Josh are old drinking buddies, maybe Josh should buy him a beer and see what he thinks, he has been on some great teams and knows what it takes and whether a coach has a clue.

Also a name to replace Malone that nobody talks about. Mike Miller, he'll he was helping Malone coach last year off the end of the bench.

[THE J0KER]

Malone, of course.

The only Nuggets player I ever complain this season was Willson Chandler, but lately, his personal efforts and performances improved.

Constantly and intentionally undermining team's best player which big quality is to make teammates better is just irrational, so I don't want even to try to speculate about possible reasons. But maybe even bigger proof of his incompetence than in Jokic case is how he "using" Plumlee. Mason seems like a really great guy, real "working horse", devoted to the team. So man destined to be our very useful role player and backup option for our star center is effectively used against own team in so many ways:
- he is overpaid for his projected 15mpg backup role which put in danger our salary cap situation in next 3 season
- he is used so often as kryptonite against Jokic despite it is proven so many times that Nikola at PF is a very bad idea
- his worst skills are awful FT% (just 42% this season), but opponents would never use it effectively if he not playing so often when the foul bonus is off in the last minutes of the quarters
So there is nothing to blame Plumlee for anything why his impact on Denver game is negative, only Malone who use him in so wrong ways.

[MidMountain]

At the end of the day, it's the players that win or lose the games. The Clippers game showed that the players can execute successfully when they want to. That they didn't execute for 48 minutes is on them.

[Powder Blue]

This might come as a surprise but while the Clippers loss was baaaaad there's no point in over-reacting to it.

To this point in the season I'd have to say the Nuggets are pretty on-par with my expectations. There are some bad losses but also some good wins and the record is decent. If the Nuggets slip in the next 20 games everyone will be to blame with most blame at the top filtering down....but this Nuggets regime doesn't really blame anyone for failures, they just make excuses and carry on.

[U hova]

You bring up good points - Technically there is no reason to react to the Clippers game because there is a consistent trend of poor coaching decisions under this regime.

[youngthegiant]

Everyone. They all made mistakes and it blew up in their face.

[The Rebel]

https://nypost.com/2018/03/02/emmanuel-mudiay-cranks-up-his-expectations-starting-now/

Article about Mudiay in NY, but the reason I am posting it here is the open discussion about Mudiay not being in game shape after coming into camp in shape. It seems to be a common issue with our roster, and that is on the coaching staff and players both.

[Mickey8]

Malone after the game with Memphis basically admitted that this is Millsap team now, if the team misses the post season again don't blame Jokic, incompetent bonehead and the most expensive man on the team are to blame, if I am Jokic i would think about twice resigning with the Nuggets after this season.

[skywalker33]

https://nypost.com/2018/03/02/emmanuel-mudiay-cranks-up-his-expectations-starting-now/

Article about Mudiay in NY, but the reason I am posting it here is the open discussion about Mudiay not being in game shape after coming into camp in shape. It seems to be a common issue with our roster, and that is on the coaching staff and players both.

Well, Steve Hess did resign for a reason, his successor needs to read this. Denver is a team that needs to be in peak shape to take advantage of the high altitude, if our players aren't in shape it works against us for 41 games.

[U hova]

I've come to the conclusion that the one truly at fault is Josh Kroenke and by proxy LeBron James.
If the reason Malone is still around is because he's receiving praise for what he's doing from around the league, it's been misguided and I'm going to assume it's coming entirely from LeBron's camp, who's still friendly with him from the initial Cavalier days.
It's the "be nice to players" attitude that's been fueling terrible decisions by TC AK with trades and the Plumlee extension - we routinely cave into player demands and overpay or don't haggle enough to get them into better situations. This mentality comes in no doubt from Josh's familiarity with former NBA players including none other than the league's most prominent face.

A while back Josh said something about keeping his personal friendships out of his job as a team owner, but it's visibly not working as he's bending over to the will of players and incapable of making his own decisions.

[THE J0KER]

Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray game are broken just a week after both have a career-best month, and team chemistry is also broken. Players are not the robots, and the question is now how to put the toothpaste back in the tube as soon as possible, to not lose a playoff spot in season's photo-finish once again, like we did last season. The bill of Malone constant mocking, mobbing and undermining his two most talented players, arrives in the worst possible moment for a team.

[NuggetsWY]

Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray game are broken just a week after both have a career-best month, and team chemistry is also broken. Players are not the robots, and the question is now how to put the toothpaste back in the tube as soon as possible, to not lose a playoff spot in season's photo-finish once again, like we did last season. The bill of Malone constant mocking, mobbing and undermining his two most talented players, arrives in the worst possible moment for a team.

At least Malone gives good interviews to the media.

[NuggetsWY]

It's becoming clear that Murray is not a great PG when running Malone's plays. He seems to play better when he can free-lance instead of trying to conform to those set plays.

It's become very clear that the Nuggets are best when they free-lance based around Jokic.

[Richard Miller]

I was never really a Malone-hater, but this is getting ridiculous, Nikola again plays limited minutes in a key game, while Barton shoots his ass off and can't hit a broad side of a barn, come on.

[THE J0KER]

I was never really a Malone-hater, but this is getting ridiculous, Nikola again plays limited minutes in a key game, while Barton shoots his ass off and can't hit a broad side of a barn, come on.

Barton playing the best basketball of his life since February, but yesterday he was clearly team's worst player, so when Malone decided to replace Millsap with Barton in last 5 minutes he has 2-12 FG with -15 on +/-!? And that decision to benching Jokic, who previously played all 3rd quarter 12 minutes in 2 out of last 3 games (vs SAC and CLE) 3 minutes before the end of the 3rd quarter despite he played just 8 minutes in the whole 1st half and we have big momentum where Jokic is central figure of that is just irrational and killed us.

[psimanic1]

Malone 80%, FO 15%, players 5%

Players 5% - Chandler not playing at atleast 85% of his possibilities

FO 15% - Not trading Chandler for SF that actually wants to play and getting a lot of PFs and giving Plumlee long contract even if they knew Malone would overplay him instead of playing Jokic

Malone 80% - Not playing to players qualities and instead playing to his tactics that proved bad for how many times while he is here? Overplaying some guys that don't want to be here or are not in our future plans instead of playing guys that are the future and that want to play