I’ll say this for former Denver Nuggets general manager Calvin Booth. He certainly doesn’t lack in confidence.
It’s been almost a year since the Nuggets, smack dab in the middle of three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić’s prime, fired both Booth and ex-head coach Michael Malone. It was a shocking joint firing, but one that probably needed to be made amid reports that tension between the duo had leaked over to the rest of the franchise, including to the Nuggets’ locker room. Booth and Malone were, of course, at the helm in their positions when Denver won its first league championship in June 2023. Both, undoubtedly, deserve some measure of credit for helping Jokić and company reach the NBA’s tallest summit.
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But based on a new conversation with Yahoo’s Kevin O’Connor, it sure seems like Booth thinks he should get more credit for that NBA title than he actually deserves. Yeah, I don’t know about that one, chief:
What does Booth think he “made look easy,” as he notes in the clip above? What a generous self-description.
Yes, Booth may have brought in key reserve Bruce Brown and three-and-defense guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope as the finishing touches during the 2022 offseason. The Nuggets, flat-out, don’t win the title in the following summer without both role players. But, again, those were finishing touches, not core decisions. Booth is not the one who built Denver’s program from the bottom up. He didn’t draft and develop Jokić and Jamal Murray, for which Malone deserves a lot of credit, alongside former executive Tim Connelly. He didn’t trade for Swiss Army Knife Aaron Gordon or draft sharpshooter Michael Porter Jr.
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Everything that was particularly special about the Nuggets was already in place before Booth took over as the team’s general manager. Everything! That includes what was one of the NBA’s healthiest internal team cultures, largely established by Malone. A culture that, mind you, Booth helped poison the well on while also contributing to wasting two of Jokić’s prime title-contending years in the two seasons after Denver’s first championship victory. You know, two of Booth’s three years on the job.
For all intents and purposes, while the Nuggets might be back on the upswing with a new regime led by Ben Tenzer, Jon Wallace, and first-year head coach David Adelman, they’re still somewhat recovering from all the damage partly inflicted by Booth right after achieving ultimate NBA glory. That’s how much damage was done over the last two years.
So, what exactly did Booth make look easy in Denver? I’d probably go with burning two entire seasons of the career of one of the greatest basketball players ever. Booth made that look really easy, actually.
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This article originally appeared on For The Win: Calvin Booth credited himself for Nikola Jokić’s Nuggets 2023 title