NBA coaches seem a lot angrier than usual with referees this year.
The NBA has an officiating problem. That is, at least, if you listen to many of the head coaches around the association this season.
In a year that should be defined by stories like the Denver Nuggets’ pursuit of back-to-back championships, the rise of the young Oklahoma City Thunder, and Joel Embiid’s title pursuit with the Philadelphia 76ers, it feels like there’s a coach raging about skewed officiating seemingly every other night. Unfortunately, such a saga will often take precedence over more compelling on-court stories about some of the league’s better teams and brighter stars.
We’re over halfway into this NBA regular season, and we’ve already got more than a few doozies where coaches publicly ripped referees. Let’s take a look at some of the more high-profile incidents (so far).
After a tough personal week, Nikola Jokić showed he has the heart of a champion.
The Boston Celtics were supposed to be unbeatable at home, starting the 2023 season on a 20-game winning streak. And even though they were set to square off against the defending NBA champion Denver Nuggets, it wasn’t clear how Nikola Jokić would play after his mentor and old Serbian coach, Dejan Milojević, died earlier this week.
Let this be a lesson to everyone that you never underestimate the heart of a champion.
In a grind-it-out battle more reminiscent of June than January, Jokić (and Jamal Murray) led the Nuggets’ to a massive 102-100 win in Boston. Jokić, in particular, while battling his heavy heart, delivered a masterful 34-point, 12-rebound, nine-assist performance to take the Celtics from 20-0 to 20-1 at home. In a measuring stick game for his team, Jokić brought his absolute best even while grieving.
In the postgame, it was this sort of professionalism from the best NBA player in the world that Denver head coach Mike Malone was so appreciative of:
Michael Malone on Jokic's play tonight and how it honored Nikola's friend, the recently passed Dejan Milojević. pic.twitter.com/g6uYpcvrpw
Man, is someone cutting onions? Let’s rewind the meat of this Malone speech about Jokić’s toughness under challenging circumstances.
“I couldn’t be more proud of Nikola [Jokić] for playing the way he played with the tragic passing of Deki [Milojević]. That’s what you do, though. That’s why I’m proud of Nikola. Like you just love somebody that you love and care about that meant a lot to you, that was a mentor and coach to you. So, go honor him, you know what I mean? Nikola went out there. He honored Deki’s memory and his legacy by playing at the level he played at. Not easy to do with a heavy heart, but Nikola’s a special person, obviously. It was incredible to watch him play with that heavy heart and the level he played against when you consider who we’re playing, and you add everything else to the mix. That’s why Nikola’s the best player in the world.”
I don’t think anyone could’ve said it better. After losing perhaps the most important person of his basketball life, Jokić delivered a picture-perfect game in a heavyweight road win over the team with the best record in the NBA. If that doesn’t tell you who Jokić is as a player and a person, I don’t know what will.
NBA Finals MVP big man Nikola Jokic returned to his elite form during the game against Los Angeles, recording a triple-double during his first game of the season.
During the fourth quarter of the victory, Nuggets fans began showering the court with an overwhelmingly loud chant. Even on the television broadcast, those watching at home could clearly hear those in the arena shouting “Who’s your daddy?” at the Lakers.
“Who’s your daddy?” chant breaks out to end this Nuggets-Lakers season opener. pic.twitter.com/ewAstHHqc4
Then, he flagged down Nuggets head coach Mike Malone and put the blame on him. Here is what he said:
“This is you. This is your fault. … We gotta go to [indecipherable] and this is what you started.”
Murray then shared a laugh with Malone, though his assessment probably isn’t entirely incorrect.
During the playoffs last season, Malone called out the media for attempting to spin some sort of narrative about the Lakers. Malone was then introduced at the parade as “the Lakers daddy” after the Nuggets won the title.
Richard Sherman’s criticism of Mike Malone doesn’t even make any sense.
Richard Sherman is building a lucrative television career.
He’s a regular analyst on Thursday Night Football and occasionally moonlights as a shock jock in appearances on Fox Sports 1’s debate show, Undisputed. Based on a new opinion about Mike Malone, the head coach of the reigning NBA champion Denver Nuggets, it seems Sherman has the requisite skill of obnoxiously dispensing lazy, half-baked takes down pat.
On Wednesday, the Undisputed panel broke down portions of the 2023-2024 NBA season. One of the early marquee matchups comes on opening night when LeBron James’ Los Angeles Lakers visit the Nuggets on an evening where Denver will raise the franchise’s first-ever championship banner into its arena’s rafters. It’s a rematch of last season’s heated (but ultimately uncompetitive) Western Conference Finals, where the Nuggets swept the Lakers. It’s also a rekindling of a budding rivalry between Malone and James. Malone, of course, famously took exception to the excessive attention James and the Lakers received as the Nuggets swept them out of the playoffs.
In breaking down this matchup, Sherman defended James (who, of all people, doesn’t need the extra help) and said Malone will be an “irrelevant, erroneous name in the history books of the NBA.”
Hmm, I don’t know about that one!
Richard Sherman really has it out for Nuggets head coach Michael Malone — a reigning NBA champion with more than 400 wins on his resume across 11 seasons as a head coach in the league: pic.twitter.com/Lp0CbVWPng
Compared to James, yes, Malone’s resume is negligible.
But that would be the case for almost everyone in NBA history because James is one of the best athletes ever to hold a basketball. It’s a little absurd to compare the two with this framing. Never mind that Malone originally came at James and objected to the over-coverage of the Lakers in a competitor’s sense. Is he not allowed to stump for his team — the league’s best team right now — because James is an all-time great? Because that’s just something I can’t vibe with. What’s the point of following sports if opposing coaches or players can’t come for the King? Whether they miss or not is a different story. In this case, Malone has yet to miss in his shots at James. As the old saying goes: To the victor go the spoils.
Independently, to say Malone will be forgettable or otherwise irrelevant in NBA annals is silly. The man has over 400 wins as a head coach and just brought the Nuggets their first title in franchise history. As long as Denver has Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray in their respective primes, Malone may add at least another title banner to the Nuggets’ home arena. Coaches who win one title, let alone two, are remembered and treasured forever. Never mind when they’re the person who manifests that initial glorious breakthrough for an organization.
All this to say, Sherman’s critique and rant about Malone is wrong, baseless, and reeks of a guy just trying to stir up controversy over social media. I guess, in writing this article about it, mission accomplished!
Next time, though, Sherman should really let James fight his own battles. Unironically: Stick to football, sir.
So here we are. Malone is having the time of his life at the parade, running around with champagne and saying some amazing stuff into microphones. Hey, he’s an NBA champion now! He’s allowed!
Check out the highlights, starting with the quote that I’m sure will find its way on to a t-shirt soon enough:
With an NBA title officially under his belt, Denver Nuggets head coach Mike Malone has earned the right to talk an appropriate amount of trash. But before his team finished its climb up the NBA’s tallest summit, Malone made a lot of headlines for what he believed was a massive disparity in coverage between the Nuggets and the Los Angeles Lakers.
On Wednesday, in a reflective appearance on The Pat McAfee Show, Malone showed he hasn’t entirely forgotten how the Lakers seemed to draw so much attention away from a team that swept them in the Western Conference Finals.
When asked about the Nuggets’ new place as kings of the West (and the league), Malone appeared to make a not-so-subtle joke about LeBron James. The Lakers star, of course, had rather convenient rumors about a possible retirement right after the Nuggets qualified for the NBA Finals.
And Malone seemed so delighted to talk about his own rather convenient “retirement.”
Man. I can’t remember the last time James and a team he played for were the likely butts of a low-hanging fruit joke like this. For Malone’s sake, if the Nuggets continued dominating the West and the league in the years to come, I don’t think he’ll have to worry about Denver lacking a requisite spotlight anymore.
This is the on-site version of FTW’s daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning. Here’s Robert Zeglinski.
I appreciate that the city of Denver waited almost half a century for the Nuggets to finally win an NBA championship. To get the monkey off one’s back and see your favorite team win it all is a wonderful feeling of relief and joy. But I’m actually most impressed by the Nuggets’ faithful patience in their NBA squad over the years.
First and foremost, I think the Nuggets’ central figures should be commended. One, for taking their time. And two, for believing their road eventually had something special waiting at the end, no matter the inevitable roadblocks. In the NBA’s superteam era — where it feels like superstars are joining forces together every year in pursuit of hopeful greatness — these Nuggets stuck to their script.
I’m not surprised their key cogs were rewarded for it with a historic title.
At courtside, there’s Mike Malone. Once a renowned assistant turned maligned head coach who couldn’t get the previously bumbling Sacramento Kings to work, Malone was hired by the Nuggets in 2015. He’s been instrumental in developing their team culture every step of the way ever since. Despite some bumps in the road — Denver won a mere 33 games in Malone’s first campaign — he’s had nearly a decade to build the organization up to this uncommon climax.
And I can’t emphasize enough how rare that is. After Malone, the NBA’s next longest-tenured coach is Taylor Jenkins, who started with the Memphis Grizzlies… in 2019. Compared with his peers, Malone had all the time in the world to turn the Nuggets into a powerhouse, and they never blinked.
Next is Jamal Murray.
A former top-7 NBA Draft pick, it’s not shocking to see Murray become a difference-maker. However, it took the star point guard four seasons before the term “Bubble Murray” was coined as he became the ideal partner for Nikola Jokic. But then Murray tore his ACL and lost the better part of two years of his career. Two missed playoff runs. Two lost opportunities at championships. Two years where the Nuggets were content to let Murray take his appropriate time in recovery.
Not only because they clearly cared about him, but they also understood the wizardry he’d be capable of if he could get healthy. The Nuggets could’ve just as easily cut their losses and tried to play the free agent game. They could’ve tried to find someone, anyone else, that could complement Jokic. Instead, they waited for Murray, knowing he already worked so well in tandem with the league’s best player. Their belief in him paid off.
No story about these Nuggets is complete without Jokic. He is not only Denver’s leading catalyst but the preeminent example of what it means to develop homegrown players and give them confidence.
Some Nuggets scouts might profess otherwise, but no one in their right mind initially saw Jokic — a seemingly unathletic second-round pick out of Serbia — becoming this good. No one saw him slowly morphing into a legitimate No. 1 option for which opponents have zero answers. But the Nuggets’ coaches did. That’s why they played him at center. That’s why they gave him so much offensive responsibility. That’s why they let him comfortably grow at his own pace — because the potential was always there, and they had a plan.
So, naturally, no one should have been surprised to see Murray immediately reveling at the moment during postgame celebrations in Denver on Monday night. He seemed so especially emotional and appreciative while telling different Nuggets leaders — head coach Mike Malone, owner Stan Kroenke, and of course, his pal Nikola Jokic — how much he loves them.
Murray’s “tour” here, so to speak, is a perfect lesson for all of us in what we should do in celebratory occasions. When you reach the pinnacle of your professional life, it’s time to bask and tell the folks who helped you how much you love them.
During the fourth quarter of a competitive NBA Finals Game 5 match between the Nuggets and the Heat, something unusual happened.
Miami’s Jimmy Butler kicked his leg out on a 3-point attempt and on the possession, Denver’s Aaron Gordon was called for a foul. This was a bit of a surprising call, but even more shocking was that in the immediate aftermath, ESPN’s Jeff Van Gundy noticed something you don’t see very often.
Van Gundy says that he saw NBA referee David Guthrie encourage Nuggets head coach Mike Malone to challenge the call on the field that was made by the officials.
Aaron Gordon was called for a foul on this three-point attempt by Jimmy.
Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray deservedly got most of the headlines for the Denver Nuggets’ Game 3 win in the NBA Finals, but we shouldn’t forget about rookie sparkplug Christian Braun. In 19 minutes of play, Braun recorded 15 points, four rebounds, an assist, and solid defense in an energetic performance Denver needed off the bench.
Braun’s confident play in such a big spot drew a lot of praise from Nuggets’ leadership after they won 109-94. The most notable might have been head coach Mike Malone starting to give Braun credit … before interrupting his praise to blast the Miami press room.
Uh, okay?
After Game 3 in Miami, Nuggets HC Michael Malone pauses his praise of Christian Braun to drop in a "What a bad press room, by the way." 🏀🎙️ #NBAFinalspic.twitter.com/dNJRwkBmss
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 8, 2023
Even if Malone’s press room thought was valid (I can’t confirm one way or the other; was the aesthetic of the room poor or what?), I’m not sure why he felt it was necessary to criticize at that moment. And I love how he presents it as a sidebar. “Oh, by the way …”
Let your player have the shine and keep your discomforts to yourself!
Oh well. It’s not as if Malone isn’t pushing the right buttons for a squad two wins away from its first NBA title. Whatever works, I suppose!
![Mike Malone is having the time of his life at the Nuggets parade: ‘We’re greedy [expletives]’](https://feeds.usatodaysports.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/USP-NBA_-Finals-Miami-Heat-at-Denver-Nuggets-6-e1686851474924-1200x709.jpg)
