Josh Kroenke and the Denver Nuggets front office shocked the league when they fired then-head coach Michael Malone with just three games left until the playoffs. It was the latest coaching change by a contending team in league history, but Kroenke knew that change was needed heading into the postseason.

Denver had lost four consecutive games before making the coaching change on April 8, as the front office felt that a different voice in David Adelman could possibly provide a spark heading into the postseason. That decision ended up working out, as the Nuggets took the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder to a deciding seventh game in the Western Conference Semifinals.

Some people thought that the coaching change showed signs of instability within the organization.

However, Kroenke talked about the topic of instability surrounding his decision and the franchise at a press conference on Thursday.

“From an instability standpoint, that’s why I made the decision that I did before the playoffs,” Kroenke said. “I think the real instability would be if I just hid behind the curtain and allowed the plane to continue to go where it was heading, and probably, I think that plane would have landed in the Play-In and probably gone right out then. I made that decision because I thought there was more in that group, and from a stability standpoint, I feel way more stable right now than I did six weeks ago.”

By hitting the eject button on the pilot and letting the co-pilot do all the work, Kroenke’s decision extended the Nuggets flight by a few extra weeks, and gave fans plenty of great moments to see from their star players. That decision also benefitted the Nuggets because it gave them a chance to see what David Adelman was really made of in a high-stakes setting, and he showed that he can hang with the big dogs.

Besides Adelman’s decision to have both Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray on the bench at the same time in the second quarter of Game 7, he made some great coaching decisions and adjustments that hadn’t been seen with Malone, and Kroenke noticed it. The 17-game interview that Adelman had, a stretch in which he led Denver to a 10-7 record against some of the toughest teams in the West, including a 2-1 record in elimination games, resulted in him officially being named the franchise’s next head coach on Thursday.

If Kroenke didn’t make the decision to fire Malone early and see what Adelman was made of, Denver would’ve been stuck in a same-old coaching search that so many teams have gone through over the years with names like Mike Brown (yawn), Frank Vogel (yawn), Taylor Jenkins (yawn) and others. Instead, they got a guy who’s been with the organization since 2017, a favorite of the players, and someone who knows what has gone wrong and what has gone right for Denver over the years.

Kroenke’s comments also come after Malone took a subtle shot at Jokic on the ESPN broadcast on Tuesday when he talked about how Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s MVP season. Could Kroenke’s words be a rebuttal back at the longtime Nuggets coach who was at the head of the 2023 championship team?

If Malone has anything to say in response to Kroenke, he will be back on the air Thursday evening for ESPN’s coverage of Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals between OKC and the Minnesota Timberwolves, starting at 5:30 p.m. Denver time.