David Adelman will be the permanent head coach of the Denver Nuggets, the team announced Thursday. Adelman, who held the job on an interim basis in the postseason, took over for Michael Malone after both he and Nuggets general manager Calvin Booth were fired with three games left in the regular season.
“I think our group really rallied around [Adelman] and he brought a different voice and a different style of communication, which was really fantastic to see,” Josh Kroenke, the son of team owner Stan Kroenke, said Thursday during a team press conference.
“So we’re really excited about him, both from what he’s shown over the past six weeks and then to get a full year under his belt before we go back at it again next year.”
When Malone and Booth were dismissed, it looked as though the Nuggets were headed for significant offseason change. They were in danger of slipping into the Play-In Tournament at the end of the regular season just two years after winning a championship, and the feud between Malone and Booth over the direction of the team threatened to sink the greatest era in team history. Now Adelman will remain in the top job in Denver as the Nuggets look for a general manager to replace Booth.
“With the front office stuff, I want to take my time a little more,” Kroenke said. “It’s going to be an extensive process.”
The Nuggets turned things around pretty much as soon as Adelman took over. The Nuggets won all three of his regular-season games as head coach, clinched the No. 4 seed in the Western Conference, and then beat the Los Angeles Clippers in seven games in the first round.
From there, they pushed the 68-win Oklahoma City Thunder to the absolute brink in the second round, winning Game 1 on the road and forcing the series to seven games. If Aaron Gordon hadn’t strained his hamstring at the end of Game 6, and if Michael Porter Jr. hadn’t played through a serious shoulder injury all postseason, the Nuggets might even have been able to topple the championship favorites and win a second championship in three seasons.
They came up short in the final game, but coaching wasn’t the issue. Adelman’s zone defense gave the Thunder fits all series. His trust in Russell Westbrook led to inarguably his best playoff series since leaving the Thunder in 2019. Adelman took over a flawed, thin and injured roster and took it further than anyone considered likely.
“A lot of our roster is locked in from a contractual standpoint,” Kroenke said. “Right now, we don’t have a pick in the draft, but we’re going to be very active in exploring how we can improve around that.”
Their roster will probably look somewhat different next season, but with Adelman in place, they can maintain schematic consistency and build on what went right in this postseason run.
“When you have the roster that we had, anything outside of a championship is not acceptable,” Kroenke said.
