On June 5th, the Nuggets lost to the heat in the G2 finals, which was their first home defeat in the playoffs this year. After the game, coach Michael Malone rarely criticized the whole team publicly, saying that it was a “big problem” that the attitude of nuggets was not enough “.
It is normal for the team to lose key games and the coach to be furious in NBA, but the efforts made by ma long to boost the team’s status are the key to nuggets winning two consecutive games in miami. After public criticism, Ma Long prepared 17 videos for all the players, which were fragments of 17 players in the playoff this year who were not well defended, everyone has a share from playing the absolute core of 40 minutes to playing a two-way contract for a few seconds.
This time he did not become a critic, but asked the players to laugh at or criticize the wrong clips of his teammates at will.
Obviously, this adjustment had an effect. In the next two games, the Nuggets quickly recovered their defensive state, making the Heat only get 94 points and 95 points respectively-it is worth mentioning: yokedge’s data on the ball holding of G3 main defense opponent was one of the best defensive performances in his career in the 19th shot and 3 Th shot.
In the past few years, the progress of the nuggets has been obvious to all. Jokedge’s coffee position has been rising continuously, but Malone has never really become a hot candidate for the best coach of the year (the highest ranking is fifth). But if he can come to this day, he will not be surprised to know his insiders, including his defeat.
“In my early years, when I was serving as a knight, he brought great help to my growth, and I only had the highest respect for him. I am always very pleased to see such an old friend, or a partner who used to work with me, succeed, “LeBlanc James said before being swept by the Nuggets.
When LeBlanc’s career was swept for the first time, Malone was the knight’s teaching assistant (his evaluation of the Knight at that time was “maybe we won too fast”). He worked with Mike Brown for many years, he served as a defense coach under him and made great contributions to the knight’s creation of the best victory record in the history of winning the team 66. Perhaps because the work was too excellent, when Brown hoped to transfer Malone to the offensive coordination coach, LeBlanc once expressed opposition.
Malone never gives praise to LeBlanc. Someone once asked him whether LeBlanc also made a contribution to his enlightenment on the defensive end. He immediately said modestly, “it has little to do with my teaching or not, because he already had that strength”, in addition, he also attributed the foundation of Knight success to Brown, who was very good at being a human being.
The Nuggets may make some people feel boring when playing the hot finals. Indeed, these two teams lack the problem, there are no stars on the field, and the audience rating will not burst, but perhaps they will also turn against each other, before the start of this round of competition, experts were already thanking the two head coaches, Sibo and Malone, who were so competitive that they came to the highest stage with two teams that were not so “fashion, at the same time, it also made the whole alliance see the significance of persistence and patience.
This is the 15th consecutive year that Sibo was the coach in the heat and the eighth year that Malone was the coach in the Nuggets. In today’s NBA, only they have done this with Popovich baby and Cole. Among these four people, Malone is the most low-key and the latest one, the other three established their status and prestige before the tide of player empowerment came. If it weren’t for the trust of nuggets, Malone, a “born coach”, might have been buried in NBA.
Referring to NBA coach Malone, the older generation of fans may remember Michael’s father Brandon.
Brandon Malone has been a coach for a lifetime. Since the 1980 s, he has taught in six NBA teams one after another until he retired in 2016. His most famous title should be the inventor of the “Jordan Rule”, because as a defense coach, he helped the piston win two consecutive championships, and the “bad children Army”, used to be the shadow of bull and Jordan.
Because of the smiling assassin, Brandon Malone became the first head coach after the Raptors built the team, but he only coached for one year because of his poor record. But even if the Raptors only won 21 games, it was also one of the only 9 teams that defeated the Bulls in the season.
Jordan: Are you dedicated to I am?
This was the only chance for Brandon to be a coach in his coaching career. Since then, he has been a teaching assistant. During the 2004-05 season, Knight coach Paul Silas finished class in the middle of the season. As a temporary coach, he was coaching 18 games in LeBlanc, the team finally missed the playoffs, and he was also kicked out, then he was idle for several years.
Because he had experienced what it was like to move around multiple teams, Brandon did not support his son as a coach at first. “I don’t want him to be a coach because there are too many uncertainties in this line,” he said. “I am lucky to be able to do it for so long, but many coaches with excellent abilities have no such luck.”
Old Malone in the Cavaliers
But Michael’s coaching path was actually a crooked one. Malone really loves basketball. He generated electricity for love during his college years and worked as a teaching assistant in a high school in Baltimore. He was eager to enter the NCAA level-1 College, and wrote countless self-recommendation letters for this, which basically sank into the sea. After graduation, he went to a university in Michigan as a volunteer teaching assistant without receiving salary. In order to make a living, he had to work two part-time jobs, working as a sneaker shop assistant and office cleaning, and often working until early morning.
“After living like this for about half a year, I asked myself, ‘What am I doing? Is this the life I planned for myself? ‘”Malone recalled. “I don’t want to go on like this without direction.”
Malone didn’t find the picture when he was a college coach, but found a picture of his player period.
If he can’t be a coach, the way he plans for himself is to take public examinations-because many male elders in his family are policemen, another dream he has had over the years is to work in the Secret Service.
But just before he was ready to be admitted to the police academy, he received an invitation from ploywitons College, worked as a teaching assistant for three years, and then went to the University of Virginia to manage the basketball department, by 2001, I finally got the chance to work in the Knicks team in my hometown.
However, ma long’s position at the beginning was not a formal coach, but a lower-level coach assistant. He had to do all kinds of chores, including training players, helping the coaching staff prepare for war, and fighting for video editors and scouts, after two years of persistence, he was promoted to teaching assistant.
After that, his development seemed to be the same as that of his father, moving around many teams and winning a good reputation by transforming and upgrading the team’s defense. However, the coaching experience of the warrior greatly plated his resume with a layer of gold.
In fact, before going to the Warriors, Malone attracted the attention of the industry in the year when he was the chief assistant of the Hornets (the predecessor of Pelican). He made a qualitative leap in the team’s defense under Monty Williams, the average loss in the game was 8.7 points lower than the previous year, and he successfully returned to the playoffs, so he was dug by the Warriors.
At that time, Warrior coach Mark Jackson was an old acquaintance of his family. As early as Jackson was still in high school, Brandon recruited him to join Syracuse University, but he didn’t accept it. The warrior was also quite generous to Malone, offering a 3-year 2.25 million-year contract, making him the assistant with the highest annual salary in the league at that time. A year later, Malone was selected as the best teaching assistant by the general manager of the alliance.
Jackson and his teaching assistant team created the champion prototype of the warrior dynasty. Many years later, several core players appreciated Malone. After helping the warriors return to the playoffs in 2013, malone quickly received an offer from the king’s head coach, thus becoming the second pair of father and son who had served as head coach successively in NBA history with his father.
Malone father and son
But this good news has an unexpected episode. Less than a month after Malone took office, he recruited his father and appointed Brandon as his assistant. But before the new season officially started, Brandon resigned on the grounds of “not adapting to NBA coaching strength”, and father and son failed to become a reality.
Such a bad start may have doomed Malone’s ending in the King. He soon broke out conflicts with the management because of the lineup problem. There was a saying that the king wanted Malone to reuse Royce-white, but Malone refused. There are also rumors that boss ranadif and general manager de Alessandro want to exchange for Josh Smith. Malone is also unwilling.
Ranadiv later said, “from the first day, the general manager and the head coach had a relationship. They simply hated each other and couldn’t even share an assistant.” (However, de Alessandro and Malong have cooperated peacefully in the Nuggets for three years, and the former has not intervened in basketball operations.)
Mike Malone was once praised as a miracle for making cushins play basketball honestly.
Malone was dismissed before half of the King’s second year of teaching. This brought a big blow to his career and family planning. At that time, his two daughters were still young and had a hard time staying at home in SA Cheng, but they had to start wandering again.
Half a year after the clearance adjustment, Malone regained pointer in the gold nuggets in the summer of 2015. What he faced was still the unknown with many difficulties. The Nuggets changed to a coach halfway the year before, winning only 30 games, and the back of the core Court, Ty Lawson, was also traded. However, the opportunity that Malone saw was the second round show yokedge that came to Denver the same year as him.
Since 2015, the idea of building a team for nuggets has come naturally. Everything is very simple in Malone’s description, “We chose Nicola and cultivated him. We chose Jamal and cultivated him. We chose Xiao PROTONIC and trained him.”
But it is not that yokki has not been involved in the transaction discussion, and the management has also proposed to Malone the idea of changing Murray for the big brand. But Malone’s attitude is firm: “Why worry? Since the bosses are very patient, why don’t we step by step? Big names do not mean they are useful.”
He had a close relationship with Tim Connelly, the then general manager, because Malone University’s alma mater was near Connelly’s hometown, and they also had a smooth cooperation in Pelican. In addition to the patience and support given by the crenke family, malone did not ring the alarm bell after class for the first three years when he was teaching nuggets.
In 2018, the Nuggets won 46 and ranked ninth in the West. It was the Timberwolves led by Butler who squeezed them out.
When he was questioned by the outside world, he even talked for him after his dream, “I hope (Nuggets) not to let him finish class, because I really think, he is very suitable to be the head coach in this team. Coach Malone has never been selfish. He just wants to win.”
In the view of many people, another coaching crisis of Malone also occurred after the 2020 finals. In that year, the Nuggets overcame the disadvantages of 1-3 in the playoffs for two consecutive rounds and reversed the promotion. However, after breaking through the expectation of entering the Western finals, the Nuggets failed to go further and encountered setbacks for two consecutive years.
For many teams today, if the results do not go forward or retreat, the management’s patience with the head coach is very fast. Such fate is inevitable for the coaches with already brilliant resumes such as Budenholzer, Nick Naus, Doug Rivers and Monty Williams, who cannot establish a real foundation in a team.
Even sibo sighed with emotion. If it weren’t for the heat, “I’m afraid I ‘ve been fired N times. If I can’t make the playoffs or my performance is not up to expectations, I may finish class. But if a team changes a batch every two or three years (coach team), it is extremely difficult to build a culture.”
In this way, Malone’s luck was much better than his father expected. The reality that he and the nuggets have seen for many years in the west is that the moon outside is not always round. “I believe nicola has understood that this team will build a team around him unswervingly, he also saw the amazing growth and maturity of (Murray) over the years. Our players will not come and go casually. The culture we build is integral and a real bond.”
After the outbreak of G3, many people began to compare joki Murray with O’Neal Kobe. But in fact, the nuggets are essentially different from the OK of those years: they are not the products of the american star-making machine, and their contempt for NBA fame and wealth is simply not like the top stars. This is the basis for Malone to coach them or allow Malone to coach themselves.
The eight-year championship is definitely not efficient in today’s NBA, but for malone and the players he is willing to go through fire and water for, the efforts and waiting are worth it. They have taken every step steadily, all will lead to a better future.
“NBA or the whole professional sports no longer value patience,” Malone said. “But today we have perfectly proved how much patience can bring.”
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(Text/kewell)
