Keeler: Josh Kroenke’s new Nuggets GM plan feels like Dunder Mifflin. Only joke’s on Nikola Jokic.
Dunder Mifflin is now Denver Mifflin.
Let me get this straight. Josh Kroenke fired his coach and president of basketball operations in April to end years of not-so-secret intra-office backstabbing and rancor. House Lannister stuff.
The Nuggets president said he needed to get his franchise operating under one vision. One plan. One voice.
So he hires two mouthpieces?
And he takes two months to announce it?
Welcome to the corner of 11th and Chopper Circle, where Nikola Jokic shouldn’t sign anything else unless it’s notarized by Dwight Schrute first.
After eight weeks of occasional news conferences and mostly silence, Kroenke on Monday announced that the Nuggets had filled their GM vacancy by not adding one. Or, rather, by adding two: Interim GM and incumbent Ben Tenzer becomes executive vice president of basketball operations, while Minnesota Timberwolves staffer and former Nuggets scouting coordinator Jon Wallace comes on board as executive vice president of player personnel.
Co-managers, basically. Which reminded me more than a little of that season from the sitcom “The Office” in which Michael Scott (Steve Carell) and Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) split managerial duties at paper company Dunder Mifflin. There was a koi pond, hijinks ensued, and Kathy Bates eventually had to step in and clean everything up.
Yes, the Kroenkes have made a habit of hiring promising basketball minds as Nuggets GM over the last decade and a half. But man, do they have a heck of a time keeping those promising basketball minds. And an even harder time explaining how they got there.
“I don’t know if I’ll be any more or less (involved),” Kroenke told us in April after letting go of the only coach (Michael Malone) and only director of basketball ops (Calvin Booth) to win his franchise an NBA title. “I think that, from my perspective, I’ve always been pretty hands-on in a way, maybe more so than some people realize.
“What does that mean? I’m not 100% sure. But I think with my background, it’s natural for me to kind of think about it some. I mean, I live and breathe this stuff. This is what I do. This is what I’ve done for the last 15 years. And so if anybody has a good read on the group, hopefully it’s relatively me, at my level. But I’m never going to be somebody that’s saying what player to pick or anything like that. I’ve moved way past that in my career and my roles and my responsibilities. That doesn’t mean my basketball instincts won’t kick in.”
So why not just name yourself GM and be done with it? No grey area. No delegations. No parsing.
What the Nuggets announced instead risks too many layers, too many forms, too many meetings, too many cooks.
The presumption is that Wallace is the basketball guy and Tenzer is the numbers guru. So what if an agent has a question for the former about a contract clause? (“Let me call Ben.”) What if a player asks the latter why coach David Adelman isn’t giving him enough minutes? (“Let me call Jon and get back with you.”)
It’s a bit like that old chestnut about “co-starting” NFL quarterbacks. If you’re using two, do you really have any?
We kid, we kid. I mean, this doesn’t mean it can’t work. The Nuggets got to the Western Conference finals in 2009 behind a two-headed GM monster of Mark Warkentien and Rex Chapman.
And in Josh’s defense, his last three GM hires all landed, in one way or another. Masai Ujiri had never been an NBA GM when the Nuggets handed him the keys in August 2010. He flipped Carmelo Anthony into what became the winningest regular-season team in the Denver’s NBA history (57) and acquired the draft pick that became Jamal Murray.
Tim Connelly was another first-timer, plucked from New Orleans. He drafted Nikola Jokic, Murray and Michael Porter Jr., traded for Aaron Gordon, and built the core of the 2023 NBA champions.
The man who succeeded him, Calvin Booth, also hadn’t ever been a GM before KSE elevated him. He consummated the Kentavious Caldwell-Pope trade and signed Bruce Brown within seven weeks of replacing Connelly. Which capped off the greatest season this franchise ever had. Then it got weird, mind you, but that’s not the point.
The clock is ticking. Jokic’s clock, in particular. The next five months could shape the next decade of the franchise.
In two weeks, the Joker is eligible to sign a three-year, $212.5-million contract extension. Christian Braun and Peyton Watson are up for extensions this summer, too — and the market pegs the former jumping from $4.9 million on his rookie deal in ’25-26 to anywhere from $15-$30 million annually going forward. The Nuggets in ’26-27, per Spotrac.com, are already projected to have four starters making at least $30 million in the Joker ($59 million), Jamal Murray ($50.1 million), Michael Porter Jr. ($40.8 million) and Gordon ($31.97 million).
Meanwhile, the too-young Thunder are too-young no longer, an NBA champion with a surplus of draft capital still to burn. The Rockets were a team of Alex Carusos who needed a front-line scorer to get them a bucket — and just traded for Kevin Durant, arguably the best pure scorer of his generation. The Grizzlies recently added Cole Anthony, old friend Caldwell-Pope and a slew of picks.
The Western Conference is like a shark. If you’re not constantly moving, constantly looking, you’re dead in the water.
“You’re not bringing in a brand new voice, trying to change things overnight,” NBA TV analyst Dennis Scott told me recently. “Hopefully the GM you bring in, they get on the same page right away (with the coach and owner). Because that’s going to help success. When the head coach, GM, owner, (when) all three are on the same page, you have a better chance of winning.”
Assuming, of course, anybody can get a word in.
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