David Adelman has been officially announced as the new Denver Nuggets head coach.
The former assistant will be responsible for one of the best teams in the NBA, following his previous impressive leadership.
After Michael Malone and GM Calvin Booth were finished, David Adelman was promoted to interim coach for the Denver Nuggets. This move only had three games left in the regular season.
He led the Ball Club to victory in all three games, coaching 14 games in the playoffs after finishing a 50-win season.
This included a seven-game victory over the LA Clippers in the opening round, pushing the final Western Conference champion OKC Thunder to the limit.
Adelman enjoyed incredible support from both Nicola Jokic and Aaron Gordon to become the Nuggets’ permanent head coach. Now he is entrusted with bringing them back to the NBA peaks.
This season, the Nuggets have had to deal with availability issues, reported dysfunctions, and unexpected firing at both Malone and Booth. It’s miraculous to think of the Nugget as a one-time victory from reaching the West Final.
However, from David Adelman’s perspective, this 2024-25 season is a complete failure and should not be perceived as a moral victory.
Knowing that Denver has three MVPs and the best player in the world, Nikola Jokic, Denver can’t waste time and will need to maximize the championship window to repeat his 2023 title victory.
At his introduction press conference, Adelman informed that the Nuggets’ priorities will be health and conditioning ahead.
“I think we can come back better. I think we’ll come back ready to start the season. Every year, every guy comes back and when they’re a year older, they try to maintain themselves in the first part of the game throughout the offseason,” Adelman said.
“The funny thing is, the year we won the championship, it was a completely different meeting, so I hope we’re more prepared, but the bottom line got off to a great start to the year and crushed it all through the season.
“We’re not going to do that because Western Conference is really difficult, but we have to give you the opportunity to get the best possible start as we can, as we can maintain our roster when we enter the playoffs. That’s what we’re looking forward to.”
The Nuggets suffered injuries throughout the season, breaking the chances of winning the NBA playoffs in the end.
Michael Porter Jr. struggled with a grade 2 shoulder sprain. Despite his 5-6 week recovery timeline, he still chose to play and support the Nuggets.
Aaron Gordon suffered a serious hamstring injury to OKC in the second half of the West semi-finals. And he played impressively through it, but he couldn’t prevent their Game 7 loss.
It was recently announced that Russell Westbrook had right hand surgery after playing the 2025 postseason with tape on his fingers.
“It’s been a really, really tough season for guys. There’s mental fatigue, physical fatigue, but when the guys are ready to go back to it, I think they have to start and understand what the challenge will be,” Adelman added.
“Usually, teams that get off to a great start at the end of the year are most likely to be healthy in these big games. It has conversations with the whole group. There is a set of goals, expectations, obviously private conversations, but that is an expectation.
The Nuggets’ desire to get rejuvenated to play back to health and get back to play and start the next season quickly becomes one of the teams they should look at.
