In Nikola Jokić’s first public comments since the Denver Nuggets fired coach Michael Malone and general manager Calvin Booth, the three-time MVP said the moves jolted the locker room and “definitely changed something” with the team’s mindset heading into the playoff push.
“When someone wants to … change energy, that’s probably what they do,” Jokić said after the Nuggets 124-116 win over the Sacramento Kings on Wednesday. “In my country, if someone get fired, word is probably you are the next. So I think that definitely changed something.”
Jokić said he found out about the moves “a little bit before everybody,” but declined to further elaborate on what team president Josh Kroenke told him during their meeting.
“(Josh) told me we made a decision, so it was not a discussion. It was a decision,” Jokić said. “He told me why, and I accepted it. I’m not gonna say what he told me. I’m going to keep that private.”
Jokić called Tuesday a “heavy day for everybody” and said he reached out to Malone, who was hired by Denver in the summer of 2015, the same year Jokić joined the team after being drafted in 2014.
“It’s part of the business,” Jokić said.
“I think this is business. I have joy playing back home with my friends, but this is something that I want to win, something that — there is parts of basketball, parts of the game you can make fun and joke about it and you have joy but for me it’s just like, I think I’m a professional and I think this is my job so I’m trying to be as professional as possible.”
The Nuggets — only two years removed from an NBA championship — are now 48-32 and sit in fourth in the West. With two games left in the season, Jokić said the team’s adjustment to its new coach has to be “quick, like really quick.”
On Thursday, The Athletic reported that the Nuggets’ front office and locker rooms have been in strife this season, with Booth and Malone butting heads and multiple players, including Jokić, frustrated and fatigued by Malone’s coaching style.
Jokić’s brilliance was dimmed by the “cold war,” as team sources described it, ongoing within the organization, partly leading to the rare decision by the Kroenke family to fire both the coach and general manager in one go.
(Photo: Rocky Widner / NBAE via Getty Images)
