{"id":133293,"date":"2025-04-08T16:15:40","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T20:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=133293"},"modified":"2025-04-08T16:15:40","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T20:15:40","slug":"nuggets-fire-michael-malone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/04\/08\/nuggets-fire-michael-malone\/","title":{"rendered":"Curse of Winning a Title Catches Michael Malone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Winning an NBA championship is a huge accomplishment. However, looking at the history of coaches who have won a title in the last couple of years, it seems that winning a title is more of a curse than a blessing. Michael Malone<\/a> of the Nuggets is the latest example of a coach being fired after winning a title.<\/p>\n

Curse of Winning a Title Catches Michael Malone<\/h2>\n

Of the last coaches to win an NBA title, four have been fired<\/a> a year or two after the championship<\/a>. Right now, Steve Kerr is the longest-tenured championship coach. He last won a title with the Golden State Warriors in 2022. This is his third season after the title, and Kerr is still coaching the Warriors. Joe Mazzulla won a title last year with the Celtics, so he is safe for at least a year or two.<\/p>\n

Nick Nurse lasted the longest among coaches with a title in the last 10 years. He won a title with the Raptors in 2019 and coached the team for four more years. During his five seasons with the Raptors, Nurse had a 227-163 record.<\/p>\n

The Lakers have fired two of their successful coaches. First, they fired Frank Vogel, the coach that helped them win a title in the bubble in 2020. Then, they fired Darvin Ham, the coach who won the inaugural NBA Cup.<\/p>\n

The Bucks fired Mike Budenholzer<\/a>, two years after their championship in 2021.<\/p>\n

If we go further down in history, the most surprising move was by the Cleveland Cavaliers. After winning their only championship in 2016, they fired Ty Lue<\/a> in October 2018 after a few games into the season. He led the team to the Finals in 2017 and 2018, but lost to the Golden State Warriors with Kevin Durant<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Pressure Of Coaching in the NBA<\/h3>\n

Coaching in the NBA is not an easy task. It is no longer enough to win. After every season, a few coaches get fired. This year, Malone is the second coach to get fired a few games before the playoffs. Memphis fired their coach Taylor Jenkins with eight games left to play<\/a>. They have been in free fall ever since.<\/p>\n

Right now, it looks like being an NBA coach is among the highest-pressure jobs in the world. Last season, the Bucks fired Adrian Griffin<\/a> despite a 30-13 record and the team being top-four in the East.<\/p>\n

The Cavaliers fired JB Bickerstaff<\/a> after last season, despite him completely turning the franchise around. To be fair, Kenny Atkinson<\/a> has taken the team to a whole new level. Nevertheless, winning in the NBA is no longer enough to give coaches stability. Even those who win a championship do not last more than three seasons. Mike Brown<\/a> was fired by the Sacramento Kings despite breaking their playoff drought.<\/p>\n

Why was Michael Malone Fired by the Nuggets?<\/h3>\n

Michael Malone went 471-327 in 10 seasons with the Nuggets for a 59% winning percentage. In the playoffs, he went 44-36 for a 55% winning percentage. During their title run, Denver went 16-4, winning 80% of their games. He has coached the All-Star team two times, in 2019 and 2023.<\/p>\n

This year, the Nuggets were fighting for a top four playoff spot<\/a> under coach Malone. Speculations will continue in the coming days for exactly why the Nuggets fired their coach a few games before the playoffs.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Ron Chenoy-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winning an NBA championship is a huge accomplishment. However, looking at the history of coaches who have won a title in the last couple of years, it seems that winning a title is more of a curse than a blessing. Michael Malone of the Nuggets is the latest example of a coach being fired after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5291,"featured_media":133302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,9,20,25,26,15,62,14],"tags":[132,4765,1230,550,528],"class_list":["post-133293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-cavaliers","category-nuggets","category-warriors","category-lakers","category-bucks","category-nba","category-raptors","tag-frank-vogel","tag-joe-mazulla","tag-michael-malone","tag-mike-budenholzer","tag-steve-kerr"],"modified_by":"Jordan Pagkalinawan","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133293"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133303,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133293\/revisions\/133303"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}