The Denver Nuggets won an NBA championship in 2023. Less than two years later, they fired the coach who got them there.
Denver fired head coach Michael Malone with three games to go in the regular season. That’s less than two years after he and the Nuggets won it all in the 2023 playoffs.
But Malone isn’t alone in getting a short leash, even after a title. Three of the last five title-winning coaches lost their jobs two seasons after raising the Larry O’Brien Trophy.
Frank Vogel led the Lakers to the 2020 title, then lost his job after the 2021-22 season when his team missed the playoffs, a year where LeBron James and Anthony Davis missed a combined 68 games.
Mike Budenholzer won a title with the Milwaukee Bucks the following season, but the Bucks fired him in 2023 after a first-round exit, though superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo was injured in that series.
It’s hard to argue that the coaching changes paid off for these teams. The Bucks replaced Budenholzer with Adrian Griffin, then fired him midway through his first season. Doc Rivers replaced Griffin, and the Bucks lost in the first round, again without Antetokounmpo.
The Lakers reached the conference finals in 2023 with new coach Darvin Ham, but replaced him with JJ Redick a year later.
Malone’s firing feels desperate. It’s tied for the latest firing in NBA history. In 1981, the Atlanta Hawks fired Hubie Brown with three games to go, but they were 10 games out of the playoffs. Now the Nuggets will go into the postseason with assistant coach David Adelman, the son of Hall of Fame coach Rick Adelman.
If recent history is any guide, Adelman won’t have the job for long. If teams will readily dismiss title-winning coaches, they’re certainly not going to show patience to their replacements.
