DENVER: Nuggets vice chairman Josh Kroenke was apologetic for changes made last week, when coach Michael Malone and general manager Calvin Booth were fired without warning.

But he also hinted that the changes have already brought upon the desired result.

“The season is not over yet,” Kroenke said Monday. “We just finished the season like a freight train as far as I can tell.”

Entering the locker room after a Sunday night (April 6) home loss to Indiana, the Nuggets’ fourth consecutive loss, the picture before Kroenke prompted him to pull the plug on the status quo.

“I could feel how flat the room was,” he said. “On a four-game losing streak heading into the playoffs with a flat locker room, I internalized how much I had let the room slip. It was not up to standards of Denver Nuggets basketball.”

Kroenke said there were two prior moments when he felt the team was headed in a direction “not up to my standards” but he resisted making a change out of respect for Malone and Booth.

Ben Tenzer was named interim general manager on Monday and will be in place for the duration of the playoffs working alongside interim head coach David Adelman.

Kroenke pulled back on his initial hunch last Thanksgiving that a change was required, and then again before the All-Star break during an eight-game win streak.

“It was either out of personal feelings or a belief in the group,” Kroenke said, confirming he sat in on meetings with Booth and Malone. “I need people who are policing the culture and pushing forward. We went on a little run before the All-Star break. There were reports out there I was contemplating something then. That is true.

“Those eight games masked a trend that was going on behind closed doors.”

No players or club personnel requested the change in organizational structure, Kroenke said. He offered three-time MVP Nikola Jokic a chance to discuss a decision that had already been made, but Kroenke said Monday that Jokic’s response was a head nod of “no.”

However, Kroenke reached the point where he realized “certain things had slipped to a point where they shouldn’t have been” between his senior basketball officials. He said he apologized to Booth and Malone with “as positive a bad conversation as we could have.”

“To be frank, neither of them deserved it. For that I apologize. As the leader of the organization, I need to be better,” Kroenke said.

Lando Norris may be top of the F1 standings but he feels like he’s driving “nowhere near” his best and can’t work out why.
After placing third Sunday at the Bahrain Grand Prix — won by his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri — Norris said he felt far more confident last year, when he lost out on the drivers’ title to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.
“I’m confident that I have everything I need and I’ve got what it takes,” Norris said. “I have no doubt about that, that I’m good enough, but something is just not clicking with me in the car.”
Norris, who qualified sixth for Sunday’s race, saw Piastri close to within three points of him in the standings.
“As soon as you’re not gelling (with the car), then you’re going to be in issues, and that’s what I have at the moment,” Norris said.
Even though he’s still leading and won the season-opening Grand Prix in Australia last month, Norris said he hasn’t felt comfortable all year with McLaren’s car — widely considered the fastest on the grid.
Last year, “I knew every single corner, everything that was going to happen with the car, how it was going to happen. I felt on top of the car. This year could not have felt more opposite so far,” Norris said.
“Even in Australia, I won the race but never felt comfortable, never felt confident. The car was just mega and that’s helping me get out of a lot of problems at the minute, but I’m just nowhere near the capability that I have, which hurts to say.”
Norris and Piastri combined to help McLaren won the constructor title in 2024, the team’s first since 1998.
Teammate battles which shaped F1
The years when F1 has been dominated by a single team have produced some of the most bitter rivalries, as McLaren witnessed in the late 1980s with a feud between Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost.
More recently, the relationship between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg turned sour during their championship fight at Mercedes in 2016.
Norris and Piastri are keeping things civil, though there were awkward moments last year when Norris was asked to make way for his teammate in a race.
McLaren has faced tests from other teams, with Verstappen winning in Japan last week for Red Bull and Mercedes’ George Russell competing with Norris and Piastri on Sunday. Still, the pace of the other teams seems to be fluctuating from race to race, and McLaren’s isn’t. The gap of 58 points on the constructor standings to second-place Mercedes after just four races is vast.
“We haven’t had a consistent challenger week-in, week-out,” Piastri, a 24-year-old Australian, said. “As long as we have the best car, it’s going to be tight between Lando and I.”