Nuggets fire coach Malone and won't extend GM Booth in stunning move as postseason looms

News

Nuggets fire coach Malone and won't extend GM Booth in stunning move as postseason looms

2025-04-09 04:36 Last Updated At：04:41

Michael Malone coached the Denver Nuggets to the NBA title in 2023. He has them set to make the postseason for a seventh consecutive year. Even amid a four-game slide, they're still in position to have home-court advantage in Round 1.

And he's gone with three games left — an unprecedented move for a club bound for the postseason.

The Nuggets fired Malone on Tuesday, a stunning move that comes with less than a week in the regular season. Also out: general manager Calvin Booth, whose contract will not be renewed. The Nuggets said David Adelman will be the coach for the remainder of the season.

Josh Kroenke, the vice chairman of Kroenke Sports and Entertainment, which owns the Nuggets, said “it is with no pleasure” that the team made the change at coach.

“This decision was not made lightly and was evaluated very carefully, and we do it only with the intention of giving our group the best chance at competing for the 2025 NBA championship and delivering another title to Denver and our fans everywhere,” Kroenke said.

There's never been an instance in NBA history of a team officially changing coaches with three games left and going to the postseason; the Nuggets aren't in the playoffs yet but are assured of a play-in berth at worst. The latest in-season change for a playoff team before now was in 1983, when Larry Brown left the New Jersey Nets with six games left to take over at the University of Kansas.

The Nuggets are 47-32 this season but are part of a logjam of teams fighting for home-court advantage in Round 1 of the playoffs. Denver won the title in 2023 and lost a Game 7 at home in the Western Conference semifinals a year ago to Minnesota.

Malone pointed the finger at himself after the most recent loss, a 125-120 defeat to Indiana on Sunday.

“I'll start with me: We've lost four games in a row and I'm never going to this-guy, that-guy. How about me, as a head coach, not doing my job to the best of my ability,” Malone said. “We haven't lost four in a row in a long time. It's really easy to be together and say ‘family’ when you win, but when you're losing games, can you stay together?”

The slide comes despite Nuggets star Nikola Jokic — a winner of three of the last four NBA MVP awards — having a historic season, averaging 30 points, 12.8 rebounds and 10.2 assists per game. But even that wasn't good enough for Denver to enter the final week of the season certain of having home court in Round 1.

After that loss to the Pacers, Jokic was asked his biggest concern with the team right now.

“I don't know. Maybe we just, maybe we just ... I don't know, actually,” Jokic said.

The Nuggets are hoping a shakeup might provide the answer.

Malone had the fourth-longest tenure of any active NBA coach, behind San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich, Miami’s Erik Spoelstra and Golden State’s Steve Kerr.

Malone won 471 regular-season games in Denver, 39 more than Doug Moe for the franchise's all-time coaching lead.

“While the timing of this decision is unfortunate, as Coach Malone helped build the foundation of our now championship level program, it is a necessary step to allow us to compete at the highest level right now. Championship level standards and expectations remain in place for the current season, and as we look to the future, we look forward to building on the foundations laid by Coach Malone over his record-breaking 10-year career in Denver,” Kroenke said.

Malone had consistent success in Denver. The Nuggets finished with losing records in his first two seasons and posted winning records in his next eight years with the club.

This season’s postseason appearance will be the team’s seventh in a row; it has not clinched a playoff berth yet this season but is assured of finishing no worse than in the play-in tournament.

Starting with the first playoff appearance under Malone in 2019, the Nuggets got out of the first round six times in seven chances. They made the Western Conference finals in the Walt Disney World bubble in 2020 and then rolled to the championship by winning 16 of 20 playoff games in 2023.

It is the second time in the last two weeks that a postseason-bound team has fired a coach. Memphis — another team assured of at least a play-in spot — dismissed Taylor Jenkins late last month with nine games left in the season, replacing him with Tuomas Iisalo on an interim basis.

The Nets parted ways with Brown (officially he resigned) with six games left in 1982-83, and the Nets — now in Brooklyn — replaced Kenny Atkinson with Jacque Vaughn for the final 10 games of the 2019-20 “bubble” season. The 1983 Nets and 2020 Nets went a combined 0-6 in playoff games after the coaching changes; time will tell what happens with the Grizzlies and Nuggets this year.

Booth came to Denver in 2017 as an assistant general manager and was promoted to GM in July 2020. He signed his most recent contract with the club in 2022.

Kroenke credited Booth “for helping put the final pieces in place for the roster that delivered Denver and our fans their first NBA championship.”

“Calvin’s knowledge of the game, his passion for scouting, and his long history as a player and executive in the NBA helped lift our organization to new heights which we will continue moving forward,” Kroenke said.

The Nuggets play Wednesday at Sacramento.

AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba

Jury is picked for Karen Read's retrial over death of police boyfriend, opening statements next week

2025-04-16 19:28 Last Updated At：19:30

The jury has been picked in Karen Read’s second murder trial over the death of her police officer boyfriend, with opening statements scheduled for next week.

An 18-member panel — nine men and nine women — was chosen by Tuesday. There will be 12 jurors and six alternates.

Opening statements are scheduled for April 22.

Read’s attorneys had filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court for a delay in the trial, contending that trying her again on second-degree murder and leaving the scene would be double jeopardy. The high court denied the delay and is expected to consider her appeal April 25.

Read, who lives in Mansfield, Massachusetts, is accused of striking her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, with her SUV and leaving him to die in a snowstorm in 2022 outside a house party in nearby Canton. Her attorneys have said O’Keefe was actually killed by someone else, possibly another law enforcement agent who was at the party, and that she was framed.

Last year, the judge declared a mistrial after jurors said they were at an impasse and deliberating further would be futile.

After the trial, several jurors came forward to say the group was unanimous in finding Read not guilty of the most serious charge, second-degree murder, and a lesser charge. Despite attempts by Read’s lawyers to get those charges dismissed, she will face the same counts as she did at her first trial. They also failed to have the entire case tossed, arguing governmental misconduct.

Read, who worked as a financial analyst and as a Bentley College adjunct professor before she was charged, faces second-degree murder and other charges in the death of John O’Keefe, who was 46 when he died. The 16-year police veteran was found unresponsive outside the home of a fellow Boston police officer.

After a night out drinking, prosecutors say Read, who is 45, dropped off O’Keefe at the house party just after midnight. As she made a three-point turn, prosecutors say, she struck O’Keefe before driving away. She returned hours later to find him in a snowbank.

As they did at the first trial, prosecutors will try to convince jurors that Read’s actions were intentional. They are expected to call witnesses who will describe how the couple's relationship had begun to sour before O'Keefe's death. Among them will be his brother, who testified during the first trial that the couple regularly argued over such matters as what Read fed O’Keefe’s children, and that he witnessed a 2021 fight the couple had in Cape Cod over how his brother treated her. The brother's wife testified that Read told her the couple had argued in Aruba after she caught O’Keefe kissing another woman.

The defense is expected to portray the investigation into O’Keefe’s death as shoddy and undermined by the close relationship investigators had with the police officers and other law enforcement agents who were at the house party.

Among the key witnesses they will call is former State Trooper Michael Proctor, who led the investigation but has since been fired after a disciplinary board found he sent sexist and crude texts about Read to his family and colleagues. He is also on the prosecution's witness list.

A key moment in the first trial was Proctor’s testimony, in which the defense suggested his texts about Read and the case showed he was biased, and had singled her out early in the investigation and ignored other potential suspects.

They also are expected to suggest Read was framed, saying O’Keefe was actually killed inside the home during a fight with another partygoer and then dragged outside. In the first trial, defense attorneys suggested investigators focused on Read because she was a “convenient outsider” who saved them from having to consider law enforcement officers as suspects.

Ahead of the second trial, the two sides sparred over whether Read's lawyers will be allowed to argue that someone else killed O'Keefe. Judge Beverly Cannone ruled Monday that attorneys can't mention potential third-party culprits in their opening statements but will be allowed to develop evidence against Brian Albert, a retired police officer who owned the Canton home, and his friend Brian Higgins. Lawyers cannot implicate Albert's nephew, Colin Albert, the judge said.

A town-commissioned Canton Police Department audit following O'Keefe's death was released March 30. While not reinvestigating any cases, its top suggestions regarding Read's were that first responders should have photographed O'Keefe where he was found before he was moved; that all interviews of “critical witnesses” should have been done at the department after O'Keefe was taken to a hospital; and that agreed-to recordings of witness interviews be conducted.

Soon after the mistrial, Read's lawyers set out to get the main charges dropped.

They argued Judge Cannone declared a mistrial without polling the jurors to confirm their conclusions. Defense attorney Martin Weinberg said five jurors indicated after the trial that they were only deadlocked on the manslaughter count and had unanimously agreed that she wasn’t guilty of second-degree murder and leaving the scene, but that they hadn’t told the judge.

The defense said that because jurors had agreed Read wasn't guilty of murder and leaving the scene, retrying her on those counts would amount to double jeopardy. But Cannone rejected that argument, as did the state's highest court, a federal court judge, and an appeals court.

Prosecutors had urged Cannone to dismiss the double jeopardy claim, saying it amounted to "hearsay, conjecture and legally inappropriate reliance as to the substance of jury deliberations.” Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally argued that the jurors never indicated they had reached a verdict on any of the charges, were given clear instructions on how to reach a verdict, and that the defense had ample opportunity to object to the mistrial declaration.

The second trial will likely look similar to the first. It will be held in the same courthouse before the same judge, and dozens of Read's passionate supporters are again expected to rally outside. The charges, primary defense lawyers and many of the nearly 200 witnesses will also be the same.

The biggest difference will be the lead prosecutor, Hank Brennan. A former prosecutor and defense attorney who was brought in as a special prosecutor after the mistrial, Brennan has represented several prominent clients, including notorious Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger, and experts think he might be more forceful than Lally was in arguing the case.