NEW YORK — Michael Malone, who was fired by the Denver Nuggets with three games remaining in the regular season, will join ESPN for its coverage of the Western Conference finals.
The series beginning Tuesday night matches the Minnesota Timberwolves against the Oklahoma City Thunder, who eliminated Malone's former team in seven games in the second round.
Malone led the Nuggets to their first NBA championship in 2023 and is the franchise's career leader in wins. But they made the surprising decision to part ways with him and general manager Calvin Booth in the final week of the regular season.
David Adelman finished the season as Denver's coach.
Malone will work on the "NBA Countdown" pregame and halftime studio show that will be on-site at all the games in the series, joining Malika Andrews, Stephen A. Smith, Bob Myers, Kendrick Perkins and Shams Charania.
27 comments
Scenes when Kendrick calls him Mike and he freaks out on him
I stopped by my biggest haters funeral today, just to make sure he was dead.
Coaches becoming TV analysts for a couple months, such a trend
Getting on TV is a good way to get coaching gigs
Hatewatch complete, time to acquire bag
Maybe wanted to wait to make sure he didn’t have to analyze the Nuggets lmao
“The Thunder actually had a very smooth path to the Western Conference Finals, they easily handled Memphis and another team I think… anyways how about that 2 man MVP race between Shai and Giannis?”
This gonna be hilarious 😂😂
Good for him to keep busy. He’s a recent coach and a solid one so his analysis is obv going to be more accurate than most
I actually don’t hate this, he knows our teams well lmao
“Holmgren looks fat” – Malone
I suppose the good thing for Malone is, he definitely can’t make the ESPN studio show any worse.
there don’t seem to be any good coaching openings , my guess is he does this next season too
Spurs was the only good gig, but they handled that in house
Suns isn’t great
LOL
NBA script writers going absolutely INSANE
It would have been awkward if the Nuggets were in it
God i love the NBA
lol Malone is a snarky prick so this should be interesting.
The worst news about this is I just learned that ESPN has the rights to the WCF
Malone is a great media personality. I was kinda hoping for the Knicks to fizzle out and for him to get the head coach gig there, because he and the NY media deserve each other.
Malika is such a weak point in that show
Get him drunk and watch him go nuclear
Waited til the Nuggets were eliminated
Michael, that Nuggets tattoo you have is a binding contract to throw a haymaker on air into Perkins stupid fucking face. It will attract viewers, ESPN execs will love you.
He waited for OKC to advance 😭
Nice get for ESPN. Malone is one of those guys who lives, eats, and breathes the game of basketball.
I really like Adelman and think he has a bright future in Denver. But in my opinion it should have only been Booth who got fired last month. Not Malone. This roster construction is why we’ve lost the last two second-round series, not coaching.
Seriously. How do you have one of the greatest Centers in history on your roster, and you let him play for 9 seasons without a single All-Star teammate???
Not gonna lie I actually love this. Extremely rare win for ESPN