{"id":51915,"date":"2025-05-23T14:10:04","date_gmt":"2025-05-23T14:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/51915\/"},"modified":"2025-05-23T14:10:04","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T14:10:04","slug":"nuggets-hire-david-adelman-as-head-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/51915\/","title":{"rendered":"Nuggets hire David Adelman as head coach"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Adelman<\/a> has shaken himself free of the \u201cinterim\u201d label.<\/p>\n

The Nuggets have hired Adelman to replace Michael Malone<\/a> full-time as their head coach, team governor Josh Kroenke announced Thursday afternoon. Adelman, 44, has been on the coaching staff since 2017 and took over the interim position with three games left in the 2024-25 regular season after Malone was fired.<\/p>\n

Denver won those last three games, prevailed in a first-round playoff series then pushed the 68-win Oklahoma City Thunder to seven games under Adelman\u2019s impromptu leadership. Multiple starters shared their hope that he would get the full-time job<\/a> after the team\u2019s season-ending loss. Kroenke said he was impressed by how the players rallied behind \u201cnot only a different voice, but a different style of communication.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also doubled down on his decision to fire Malone and general manager Calvin Booth when he did, crediting Adelman for the team\u2019s playoff run at a moment of perceived organizational instability.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d Kroenke said. \u201cAnd probably, I think that plane would have landed in the Play-In (Tournament) and probably gone right out then. \u2026 From a stability standpoint, I feel way more stable right now than I did six weeks ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adelman will have the freedom to hire his own staff. Denver\u2019s assistant coaches are no longer under contract as of the end of the 2024-25 season, as The Denver Post previously reported<\/a>. Terms of Adelman\u2019s deal with the team were not disclosed.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the reasons why we wanted to make the decision now and move forward with him as our coach was to give him the ability to build the staff that he really wanted,\u201d Kroenke said. \u201cThat\u2019s on one side of it, and then also to allow direct communication in as short an amount of time as possible for the people we may not want to keep. \u2026 I think that we need to reinvent ourselves in a way but not reinvent the wheel, if that makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adelman\u2019s NBA career began in player development. He was an assistant coach for the Minnesota Timberwolves and Orlando Magic before coming to Denver. In his eight seasons under Malone, he was tasked with designing the Nuggets\u2019 offense around center Nikola Jokic, who has won three league MVP trophies and an NBA Finals MVP. Adelman received attention as a head coaching candidate around the league while that offense thrived. He interviewed with the Hornets, Cavaliers and Lakers<\/a> in 2024.<\/p>\n

Before arriving in the NBA, he coached Lincoln High School in Portland, Ore. \u2014 his home state \u2014 from 2006 to 2011, making one state championship game. He is the son of Naismith Hall of Famer Rick Adelman, who coached the Trail Blazers, Warriors, Kings, Rockets and Timberwolves between 1989 and 2014.<\/p>\n

Adelman is the 23rd head coach of the Nuggets, succeeding the winningest in franchise history. Malone won 471 regular-season games and 44 more in the playoffs during a 10-year tenure that included the team\u2019s first NBA championship.<\/p>\n

Only six Nuggets coaches have won 100 games. As Adelman prepares for his first season at the helm, he already will have a head start thanks to his 3-0 record at the tail end of last season. He\u2019s also the sixth coach in franchise history to win a playoff series.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see this as an audition,\u201d he said after being named interim coach in April. \u201cI see this as: This franchise, this organization already has given me a chance right here. I owe them that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether he treated it as an audition or not, that\u2019s how team ownership viewed it. Kroenke acknowledged Thursday that part of his rationale behind the timing of the Malone decision was to give Adelman a chance at the helm.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s grown with the group,\u201d Kroenke said. \u201cHe understands their tendencies as players, but I think equally as important with where we are right now in our organization\u2019s cycle: He knows them as people. What makes them tick. And I think bringing in somebody from the outside \u2014 while I was very open-minded to it initially \u2014 I saw the cohesiveness of the relationships on the human side. And I think that\u2019s a big factor in where we\u2019re headed with this group now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kroenke said players were receiving notice of the hire as he was at the lectern Thursday for his end-of-season news conference.<\/p>\n

Given Jokic\u2019s status as arguably the best player in the NBA, his role or lack thereof in Denver\u2019s major personnel decisions has been under the microscope recently. He said last Sunday after the team\u2019s season-ending loss that whether Adelman should or shouldn\u2019t get the full-time job was \u201cabove my pay grade.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cConsidering what Jok makes,\u201d Kroenke retorted, laughing, \u201cit\u2019s not above his pay grade. I\u2019ll tell you that much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adelman is the Nuggets\u2019 fifth full-time head coach hired under Stan Kroenke\u2019s ownership and the third without prior head coaching experience in the NBA. The other two \u2014 Jeff Bzdelik and Brian Shaw \u2014 both finished brief tenures with win percentages worse than .400.<\/p>\n

Adelman will attempt to overcome that trend as the Nuggets chase a second championship with Jokic entering his 30s.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeading them hasn\u2019t felt any different,\u201d Adelman said recently. \u201c\u2026 Behind closed doors, I\u2019ve ran a lot of the things in practice with Coach Malone\u2019s blessing \u2014 pregame (walk-throughs) and all those things \u2014 so I would say 70% of what I\u2019m doing, I already was doing. And the other 30%, I\u2019m learning on the fly. So you can\u2019t learn anything unless you actually go do it. So I\u2019m doing the best I can. I\u2019m trying to learn minute by minute.\u201d<\/p>\n

Want more Nuggets news? Sign up for the Nuggets Insider to get all our NBA analysis.<\/a><\/p>\n

Originally Published: May 22, 2025 at 1:02 PM MDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Adelman has shaken himself free of the \u201cinterim\u201d label. The Nuggets have hired Adelman to replace Michael…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3781],"tags":[877,7,765,2606,250,301,187,3943,766,762,3787,165,4231,252,6,67,253,302,66,4713],"class_list":{"0":"post-51915","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-denver-nuggets","8":"tag-aaron-gordon","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-colorado","11":"tag-colorado-news","12":"tag-david-adelman","13":"tag-denver","14":"tag-denver-nuggets","15":"tag-denvernuggets","16":"tag-front-range","17":"tag-jamal-murray","18":"tag-josh-kroenke","19":"tag-latest-headlines","20":"tag-michael-malone","21":"tag-more-nuggets-news","22":"tag-nba","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-nikola-jokic","25":"tag-nuggets","26":"tag-sports","27":"tag-stan-kroenke"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}