The last embers of Grit and Grind are immortalized in Dave Joerger’s heart and framed on his wall. By March 7, 2016, the end was near and maybe he could start to sense it, at least enough to stash a keepsake from an unlikely win in Cleveland. It’s the only box score he’s ever kept from his NBA coaching career.
His Grizzlies were on the second night of a back-to-back, fresh off a home loss to the bottom-dwelling Suns, and they were running out of players fast. They didn’t know it yet, but Mike Conley had played his last game of the season the night before. Achilles tendinitis. Marc Gasol was already done for the year with a broken foot. Zach Randolph was out with a bad knee. No amount of grit could overcome the injuries.
“They were laughing at us because we don’t have enough dudes warming up to do the layup line,” said Joerger, who joined the Nuggets this summer as their new lead assistant coach.
It was Joerger’s ninth year in Memphis, his third as the head coach. In two months, the Grizzlies would be swept in the first round of the playoffs, and he would be fired.
“We got so smoked,” he said. “San Antonio ran us out.” The most enduring era in franchise history, and one of the most beloved NBA teams of the early 2010s, was slowly fading. Golden State was taking over the West. The Cavaliers were preparing to momentarily conquer a budding dynasty in the Finals.
They were at full strength on the night Joerger cherishes. LeBron, Kyrie, Love, the whole gang. Eight players dressed for Memphis. They were led by 34-year-old Tony Allen, returning from an eight-game injury hiatus of his own. The legendary defender scored 26 points, a rarity for him even in the halcyon days of the Grit and Grind Grizzlies. Backup point guard Mario Chalmers scored a go-ahead bucket late. Allen and a cast of understudies shocked the eventual champions, 106-103. Joerger felt the spirit of the team he had grown up with all around him that night, defiant. Chalmers ruptured his Achilles tendon two days later.
“It’s probably nothing to anybody else, but for me, it epitomized the history of Grit and Grind,” Joerger told The Denver Post. “The pride in what had been laid out in the history of a franchise where guys were starting to get a little older, wondering how many playoff runs we have left in us. There was a history there that, for that night, (you felt). There’s a pride at having a depth of success and a history together. It’s so (freaking) cool, man. It’s cool to be a part of.”
Head coach David Joerger of the Memphis Grizzlies argues a call during the second half against the Cleveland Cavaliers at Quicken Loans Arena on March 7, 2016 in Cleveland, Ohio. The Grizzlies defeated the Cavaliers 106-103. (Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images)
A seasoned tactician on the bench
Joerger recognizes what he’s walking into in Denver. Stylistically, Joker’s Nuggets and the Grit and Grind Grizzlies might exist at opposite poles. But there’s a spiritual kinship — chemistry, continuity, a distinct identity sustained over a stretch of years. Stuff that’s increasingly uncommon in the NBA.
In Memphis, Joerger was an assistant who helped build it up for six years before taking over the top job. A handful of stops later, he’s joining a head coach who’s had a similar arc in Denver. David Adelman was one of the architects of this Nuggets era, first as an assistant specializing in offense for almost eight seasons. He’s been at the helm for two playoff runs and one full season now.
Joerger is meant to be the seasoned veteran in the room. Nuggets upper management implored Adelman to add an assistant with head coaching experience to his staff this summer, league sources have told The Post, and Joerger is the result — a widely respected in-game tactician who went 147-99 in Memphis.
But Joerger is a basketball romantic as well. He’s arriving with a respect for the history Adelman has with Denver’s core players, not to mention the “corporate knowledge” he has from years of molding the Nuggets’ system. Joerger can remember times when a newcomer on the Grizzlies’ coaching staff would suggest an idea, to which the answer would be: “Well, we tried that six years ago. Here are all the reasons we don’t do that anymore.” He’s comfortable with the reality that he’ll be that guy in Denver sometimes.
But he’s also been around the league long enough to familiarize himself with the Nuggets as a perennial contender and difficult opponent. He hopes his fresh perspective can make for a strong collaboration with Adelman.
“He’s like an encyclopedia,” Joerger said. “He remembers stuff going back years. I’ll say, because I’m a big X’s and O’s guy, ‘I remember that play Avery Johnson ran. It was a side pick, then we had a shovel cut.’ And (Adelman) will go, ‘Oh yeah, that was X yadda yadda.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, well we need to talk some more, buddy.’ It’s just fun to kick stuff around like that … And it does lend itself to the problem-solving conversations. ‘Hey, remember when we had to deal with this guy? And this was one of the things we did, and we didn’t double-team him, but we put him in every action at the other end of the floor and wore him out.’ Then it leads to other ideas.”
Milwaukee Bucks assistant coach Dave Joerger talks to an official during an NBA basketball game against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Tuesday, March 17, 2026, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Aaron Gash)
‘I’m just more grateful on a daily basis’
It’s been seven years since Joerger was last a head coach. He’s part of a long lineage of coaches who’ve been fired by the Sacramento Kings at head-scratching moments — in his case, after outpacing the expectations of a rebuilding franchise to win 39 games in his third season. If it can be considered a badge of honor, he shares it with Michael Malone and newly minted NBA champion Mike Brown.
Since then, Joerger has been nomadic. He’s made stops in Philadelphia and Milwaukee as an assistant for Doc Rivers, with a detour to Cleveland sandwiched in between. He’s been divorced, remarried, diagnosed with cancer, and healed.
“There was no ‘woe-is-me, why did this happen to me’ — it was stage one. We attacked it,” he said. “But it was hard, man. And I’ve got friends going through it right now that I try to communicate, ‘This hurts a little, bro. This is a tough treatment.’ … I think more so than anything, I’m just more grateful on a daily basis. Like man, I’ve had a great life. Maybe I don’t realize that as much if I didn’t go through that process. And on a regular basis, just like, here’s a couple things I’m thankful for and I appreciate.”
He’s reflected on his years as a head coach, on the situations he might’ve handled differently in hindsight. The interpersonal side of the job. He sat out for a year between Sacramento and Philly, coinciding with the pandemic. He learned new perspectives on leadership from observing his wife, Kimberly, who’s a corporate executive.
“There’s a lot of, ‘How do you become more self-aware and learn about your experiences?’” Joerger said.
He wanted to show he was willing to be an assistant coach again when he joined Rivers in Philadelphia. It opened doors for him. He’s coached an impressive list of big men over the last two decades, from Marc Gasol to Zach Randolph to DeMarcus Cousins to Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo.
“And now this guy?” Joerger said, referencing Nikola Jokic. “Come on. This is pretty cool.
“When you can have conversations on the side, in the training room, in a very low-key place and say, ‘Why do you have success against so and so? What have you stolen from this guy? Joel, when you and 15 go (head to head), what is it that you’re really locked in on?’ It’s really interesting. Because it’s so high-level, it’s ridiculous. … Then when you go to the next, you can go, ‘You know what Joel doesn’t like?’ … We learn as much or more from them, but trying to help them on their journeys is really cool.”
He remembers a game he coached against the Nuggets in Sacramento. It was during the early stages of Jokic’s ascent, before he begrudgingly accepted that he would need to become a dominant scorer and not merely a facilitator.
Still, the Kings were struggling to guard his two-man game with Jamal Murray.
“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” Joerger eventually told his defense. “When Nikola gets it, you back up 8 feet. And when Jamal comes off it, we’re not gonna let him come back (around the screen). Because they would just go back and forth, back and forth, and just wear you out. So just lock him up over there.”
Jokic stationed himself at the left elbow, right in front of Joerger’s bench. Murray fed him the ball and started his bob-and-weave routine. The Kings executed the plan. The big backed off.
“And (Jokic) looks at me,” Joerger said, “like, ‘What are you doing?’ I go, ‘Shoot it! Twenty-five times! Because I know you don’t want to.’ You could never do that now. He would take two dribbles, put you under the rim and go, ‘Thank you very much.’”
The evolution of Jokic’s game brings a gleam to Joerger’s eye. He treats basketball lore with reverence, and the arc of a great player’s career as one of the most wondrous things to behold. Gasol used to defend Embiid exceptionally well, Joerger pointed out, but “that was a younger Joel. He was certainly very talented, but a little less experienced. Marc gave him problems, but Marc was an 11-year vet, would never leave his feet, has the best swing-down of anybody you’ve ever seen, and Joel plays with the ball to his left side. These are very nuanced deals.” Years after against Embiid, Joerger got to work up-close with a fully formed MVP in Philadelphia, a product of those experiences against Gasol.
Earlier this summer, the 52-year-old had an opportunity to be the head coach for Paris Basketball in the EuroLeague, but when Adelman texted him out of the blue, the gravitational pull of Jokic was one of the factors that made Denver hard to resist.
Joerger texted Gasol after he accepted the job: “I have lived a very charmed life if I get to coach you two guys.”
When the Nuggets begin training camp next week, Joerger won’t be focused solely on one side of the ball, he told The Post. He has experience managing both offense and defense as an assistant. He does, however, realize more collective brainpower will need to be dedicated to the defensive end, where the Nuggets have ranked in the NBA’s bottom 10 twice in a row. Their roster is tailored to score at an astronomical rate — not so much to grit and grind their way to stops. Finding new ways to deploy Jokic on defense has been a work in progress since Adelman and Jared Dudley took over.
“That may be an issue, but there’s also — I don’t want to say other issues — but other metrics we can improve on,” Joerger said. “So maybe transition defense. Number of deflections, steals. Turnovers forced. These kinds of things. What can you do on the margins? … I think some of the things that you’re gonna see this year are gonna be kind of fun. There can be some opportunities where we’re doing more attacking of the ball.”
He’s along for what should be a fascinating ride. The Nuggets are widely perceived as a championship team in decline. A first-round exit from the playoffs in April — their first since 2022 — left them reeling. Their flexibility to reshape the roster this offseason was near-zero. A significant addition to the coaching staff was one of the biggest changes they could muster.
But while the core of their 2023 team remains intact, Joerger can aspire to help these Nuggets recapture the feeling of what they were then.
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