Michael Malone has turned the Denver Nuggets into a championship-contending team
DENVER (BVM) — Coaches, specifically head coaches, are essential and invaluable pieces to a championship team within any type of organized team sport. For example, take any of the numerous legendary teams such as the 1985 Chicago Bears, 2016-17 Golden State Warriors, or 2007 New England Patriots. What did they all have in common besides legendary player talent? Legendary coaching talent.
Head coaches within organized sports serve as so much more than just the facilitator for on the court/on the field plays. Head coaches serve as the lifeblood for every single player in the organization. The head coaches’ energy, demeanor, and rhetoric all play a factor in their players’ morale, which is directly related to the level of play put out on gameday by their players.
No other active head coach personifies that lifeblood mentality better than Denver Nuggets head coach Michael Malone. Since Malone took over the Nuggets in 2015, he has turned them around from a mediocre team that could barely post a positive win to loss record into a championship-contending team that has made the playoffs every year since 2018.
When Malone took over the Nuggets in 2015, he did not immediately turn the franchise into championship contenders. Instead, it was a long rebuilding process.
In 2015, the Nuggets posted a 33-49 record, which placed them 10th in the Western Conference standings. Although that isn’t the greatest record in the world, it was an improvement from the Nuggets’ 2014 record of 30-52 with their previous head coach, Brian Shaw.
Another thing to keep in mind about Malone through this rebuilding process is the fact that the roster back in 2015 was nowhere near what it is in 2021. Only two players from the 2021 team were still on the team back in 2015: Nikola Jokic and Will Barton. Moreover, in 2015, Jokic was only in his second year in the league, so he was not yet playing at the caliber he is today; he was still learning the ins and outs of the NBA game.
Through the next three years, until 2018, Malone continued to propel the Nuggets every single year. In 2016, the Nuggets posted a 40-42 record. In 2017, the Nuggets posted the first winning record in nearly four years, 46-36, then in 2018, they posted an astonishing 54-28 record which was good enough to place the Nuggets in second place in the Western Conference standings. This was a substantial leap in standings from their previous year, where their 46-36 record only placed them at ninth place in the West.
It is crucial to keep in mind how remarkable it is for Malone and the Nuggets to do what they did in the amount of time that they did. First, Malone took the helm of a sub-par franchise, unable to post a winning regular-season record in nearly four years. Then, in that same amount of time since their last winning record, they are posting continuously better records than their previous season and are eventually sitting at the top of the Western Conference in second place. That is one of the quickest turnarounds that an NBA franchise has ever seen.
The primary curator of that turnaround was none other than Michael Malone. Because of his fiery but blunt attitude and his lifeblood mentality, he instilled a passion and fire in his players that was so desperately needed by the Nuggets franchise.
The Denver Nuggets and Michael Malone have now made the playoffs every year since 2018 and have been one of the top three teams in the West since 2018. The next hurdle for the Malone and the Nuggets is within the playoffs themselves. In the last three years, since 2018, the Nuggets have made it to the second round conference semifinals but have only made it to the third round conference finals once — in 2019 when they ended up losing to the Los Angeles Lakers.
The Nuggets are, no question, a championship-contending franchise. They have a big hill to climb to get into the Championships, though. Unfortunately, in the past years, they have been falling short of those Championship expectations. But, of any team in the NBA, the Nuggets have the best opportunity to climb that hill with their leader, Malone, at the helm.
