Wind Chimes: Michael Malone is captaining the real Trust the Process

Welcome to Wind Chimes, a notebook of reporting, observations and analysis from me about what I’ve seen, heard and talked to people around the team about over the last week.

Here’s the thing about today’s NBA: almost everyone hates their head coach.

Warriors fans think Steve Kerr has been holding Steph Curry back for most of his career. Spurs faithful have sourced on Gregg Popovich. Somehow, Frank Vogel is shouldering much of the blame in Los Angeles for wasting a year of LeBron’s prime. Mike Budenzoler wasn’t a good enough playoff coach to get the Bucks over the top until he won a championship last year.

Michael Malone isn’t without his faults, but here are the facts.

• Malone is currently the fifth-longest tenured coach in the NBA after Popovich, Erik Spoelstra, Kerr, and Quin Snyder. That doesn’t happen by accident.
• The Nuggets own the best record in the Western Conference from the start of the 2018-19 season through 20-21 (the last three seasons) and trail only the Bucks for the most combined regular-season and postseason wins over the last three-plus seasons (210).
• Denver is the only team in the West (and the only other team other than Milwaukee) to finish in the top-3 of the conference each of the last three seasons.

Just those three bullets should place Malone among the NBA’s head coaching elite. But maybe because he’s coaching a generational superstar, or that the loyalty he has to his veterans — even though it has rarely steered him wrong in the past — is easy to call out, or because there’s a stigma that’s always surrounded Malone that he’s not an innovative X’s and O’s coach even though it’s been mostly his staff and not Nikola Jokic diagramming the offense over the years, Malone doesn’t get his shine, especially here in this town.

Plenty of franchises would love to have him. A coach who captained a rebuild, constructed a real culture from nothing, built a tight-knit relationship with the league MVP, helped inspire two 3-1 series comebacks in the bubble, consistently won in the playoffs, and oversaw multiple player development success stories are characteristics that any team with a head coaching vacancy would covert. It’s one of the key reasons why Malone and the Nuggets worked out a multi-year extension last week that will take him at least through the 2023-24 season.

One source close to the Nuggets told DNVR that if the Lakers fire Vogel this summer, which seems like a lock to happen, Malone likely would have been on the short-list of potential candidates if his long-term future in Denver wasn’t clear. Malone coached LeBron James for five seasons in Cleveland and the two have kept a strong relationship since.

Another job that I would have been keeping an eye on if the Nuggets and Malone didn’t agree to an extension? The Knicks, once they eventually part ways with Tom Thibodeau. They’re Malone’s hometown team and gave him his start in the NBA when he was an assistant there from 2001-05. Malone’s also a CAA client and would likely be in for a substantial pay increase with the Knicks or Lakers. Read Ethan Strauss, who also appeared on the DNVR Nuggets Podcast last week, about the Knicks and CAA’s relationship here.

With an extension in hand, the Nuggets don’t have to worry about any of those overtures. Malone’s future is clear. He’ll be with the Nuggets for next season and at least the year after that to chase a championship, which talking to those within the Nuggets’ organization, remains Denver’s one and only goal.

So much about coaching in today’s NBA has nothing to do with your gameplan or tactics. Can you create an environment where all anyone cares about is winning? Does the core of your team respect you? What about managing egos? Can you get motivate and get everyone on the same page to fight for the same goal? Malone does that better than most.

Brett Brown didn’t survive the 76ers’ Trust the Process rebuild. He was canned after Philadelphia, who was without Ben Simmons, got swept by Boston in the first round in the bubble in 2020. But Malone’s survived the Nuggets’ rebuild, a process that actually didn’t skip any steps and never abandoned its vision unlike the 76ers eventually had to. He’s here for the long haul.

The latest on Murray/MPJ

It’s been more than seven weeks since Tim Connelly said that both Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. would be medically cleared in the not too distant future. I think seven weeks definitely qualifies as further than the “not too distant future” and I’m sensing that both have been cleared. At this point, I get the feeling that they’re battling through the mental side of an injury return.

The Nuggets have seven regular-season games left, and although they’ve both been ruled out of tonight’s matchup in Charlotte, I’m told Murray and Porter are with the team on this current two-game road trip. Denver visits Indiana on Wednesday and then is back home vs. Minnesota on April 1.

I, unfortunately, can’t report that I was encouraged the last time I saw Murray in person (I personally haven’t seen Porter out on the court pregame in a bit.). I watched Murray go through his shooting routine prior to the Nuggets’ win over the Clippers back on March 22, but the workout was definitely dialed back from the pace he was operating at a few weeks ago. I’m not going to jump to any conclusions, but it didn’t seem like a great sign for his return. For what it’s worth, I have talked to people within the Nuggets over the last couple of days who are still optimistic that both will return this season. The door isn’t shut completely.

It seems impossible to me that Denver would throw either into a playoff environment without giving them substantial game reps in the regular season. This is a different scenario than the 2020 playoffs where Gary Harris returned from a fairly minor injury compared to what Murray and Porter have gone through to give Denver positive minutes against the Jazz and Clippers in the first round.

DNVR Member Question of the Week

Here was last week’s question: What’s the most memorable, arena, stadium, ballpark, etc. where you’ve seen a game?

DNVR Member remingham said: I was at the Jan 16, 2020 game in the new Warriors arena, the Chase Center, when we beat a Steph-less Warriors squad in overtime. The arena was memorable because of the contrast to the Warriors’ previous arena, Oracle. Oracle felt like a WWE death-cage with concrete everywhere and the smell of beer, peanuts, and a locker room full of forgotten sneakers. Chase felt like the type of place that ultra-rich silicon valley-ites conceived of when trying to drum up interest in the local sportsball team. But it really showed how much winning can do for a franchise – the place was beautiful. The game was memorable because even without Steph, the Warriors shot the lights out, keeping pace with the offensive juggernaut Nuggs. But mostly it was memorable because it was the last game I was able to see pre-COVID. Two months later, the season was canceled and life as we know if was turned around. In some small way it felt like an immensely positive experience that I was able to take with me as the first weeks of covid isolation turned into months and life as we know it changed. Now, of course, I hate the Chase Center with every fiber of my being for what happened to Jamal and later, to Will. Anyway, it’s no Cameron during one of Coach K’s final games ? but it was a memorable experience.

(Mine was Cameron Indoor for Coach K’s second-to-last home game vs. Florida St. in February. It was incredible, by the way. It felt like I was watching basketball being played in a museum. It actually felt like a professional college basketball game in a sport that can seem so amateur at times.)

To your answer, remingham.

I haven’t been to Chase Center but already know, based on your experience and how I viewed it before it is a death pit, but one where tech bro’s in polyester vests emblazoned with their company’s logo pack the lower bowl. Chase Center is an example of the perfect storm in NBA gentrification. A team close to a business and tech hub in San Francisco gets really, really good, takes in a record amount of cash during a few championship runs, abandons its roots in Oakland where its fan base lives, and moves to the nicer side of town. I feel for the diehard Warriors fans that go watch their team anymore, but the NBA is a league that in my opinion is continuing to care less about the actual sport and its real fans and more about how “cool” it is to a casual basketball observer. Going to an NBA game in a lot of cities feels like going to a nightclub and not a sporting event anymore. That’s what’s happening in the Bay. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the reality that we’re facing.

Here’s this week’s question: If both Murray and Porter don’t return this year, what would constitute a successful season for the Nuggets? A first-round win? A competitive playoff series?

Let me know in the comments below.