NBA FINALS: HEAT VS. NUGGETS

May 31, 2023

Michael Malone

Denver Nuggets

Media Day

Q. (Indiscernible) not letting it overwhelm and distract from your ultimate mission?

MICHAEL MALONE: This is part of it. You have an option to look at it as a distraction or look at it as part of the process. This is the NBA Finals. Doesn't get any bigger than this. So we got our work in upstairs in the friendly confines of our practice court and behind closed doors. Then we come downstairs and do our part, make ourselves available.

I'm just following the lead of Nick O'Hayre and the NBA, doing what they tell me to do, answering the same questions for a third day in a row. But I love it and I got a smile on my face (smiling).

Q. At the start of the last series, you mentioned that your dad maybe tried to talk you out of coaching. You indicated you were too stubborn. There are three coaches on your staff, including you, whose fathers were NBA coaches. What is the magnetic pull that have kept all three of you in this for so long?

MICHAEL MALONE: That's an interesting question. And my father did try to talk me out of it. I don't know if Rick Adelman or Flip Saunders did for their respective kids.

I had Wes Unseld on my staff prior, another guy that grew up in this business. I think for David Adelman, whose father, Rick, is a Hall of Famer, for Ryan Saunders, whose dad, Flip, God rest his soul, was tremendous to me in my career.

You know that you're getting guys that have grown up in this business, grew up in a locker room, grew up with a ball in their hands. When I was a player, people would say, He's a coach's son, he's a heady player. That's not always the case. I've known some coaches' sons that weren't a heady player.

For me, it's just having basketball people. They're junkies. David Adelman eats, drinks, sleeps basketball, as does Ryan, everybody on my staff.

There's something to be said growing up the son of a coach, being around the game at every level. My father was a high school coach in New York City, a college coach, an NBA coach, a head coach in the NBA. For Ryan Saunders and the journey that Flip was on throughout the CBA and the NBA, and for Rick Adelman and his many stops. You're hiring somebody that knows the game and knows what comes with the game.

I feel really fortunate to have the staff that I have, not because they're coaches' sons, but they're great guys who help me out a ton.

Q. You guys have seen every defensive wrinkle thrown at Nikola. If Miami throws a zone, how confident are you at him attacking that? What do you want to see Nikola do?

MICHAEL MALONE: I mean, I think they use zone more possessions than anybody. I thought their zone and their pressure back to zone was key in that last series against Boston. I thought it gave Boston trouble.

As you've mentioned, we've seen zone all year long. I think we have one of the better zone efficiencies on the offensive end. Right now in the Playoffs, I think our offensive rating is maybe the best for a team that's ever been in the Finals. We're prepared for it.

If we do see the zone, a lot of teams when they see the zone will panic instead of just playing the game, getting the ball into the middle of the zone, using dribble penetration to collapse the zone.

The other thing we talk about, if we call a play, they're in zone, just run the play. This is not college. Bam Adebayo cannot stand in the paint. He's got to cleanse himself at some point.

The last thing I'll say to that is the best zone offense is your defense. If you get stops and rebounds, that makes it really hard for a team to fall back into a 2-3 zone and try to take you out of your rhythm.

Q. Jamal has been a driven kid from the jump. When you were keeping tabs on him coming off the injury, when did you start seeing flickers of the old Jamal kind of return? How determined was he to come back and be better than the dude he was in the bubble?

MICHAEL MALONE: Yeah, the last part first.

That was a discussion we had the day after he suffered the ACL. That was, like, important for him to hear, in my opinion, because in that moment it's devastation. Negativity fills your mind about what's going to happen, how do I come back from this. That rehab process can be a torturous one, one that takes a lot of mental toughness.

Jamal is really fortunate because he has a wonderful mother, father and brother, close-knit family. He had an organization, from myself, the front office, ownership, teammates and medical staff, that supported him from day one.

Going into the Playoffs last year, you use the word "flicker," there was a flicker of hope last game of the regular season against the Lakers. Maybe Jamal can play, be back for the Playoffs. It wasn't there. He wasn't ready. We weren't going to push him.

Then throughout the summer, as he worked out in different places, whether it was at home, here, in Phoenix, he took a trip over to Australia, and I saw a video of him playing over there. That's when I knew that he was ready to come back and start the journey to recovery, and more importantly the journey to being the best version of himself as possible.

Couldn't be more proud of Jamal. Nikola Jokic was deserving of the MVP last round. Fully deserved it. Averaged a triple-double. If you saw what Jamal did in the Western Conference Finals, in a sweep, 32 points, maybe 50, 40, 90 in terms of his percentages, six rebounds, six assists, it was just incredible.

When I take time to reflect on that, I remember flying up to Toronto and taking him to a Raptor-Cleveland Playoff game before we played the Playoffs. I wanted him to feel and see what it meant. Here we are in the NBA Finals. It's great when you can reflect and have those types of memories with not only a player but somebody that I've come to really love and respect.

Q. Nikola, as you know, is a very different NBA star in that he's not as front facing, doesn't do as much podcasting, film, TV, that kind of stuff. I was curious how, if at all, that makes his relationship with the city and the fan base, if that makes any difference?

MICHAEL MALONE: I've been here for eight years now. I think, if anything, the fans here, not just in Denver, but Nugget fans everywhere, even back home in Serbia, I think they appreciate and respect him for that.

He's not trying to be something he's not. He's not trying to create a narrative other than I'm Nikola Jokic, I play for the Denver Nuggets, I'm going to do everything I can to help our team win. I'm going to do it with class, professionalism. I'm never going to make it about me. That's a rarity.

I often make the comparison, I never coached Tim Duncan, but just from coaching against him and hearing stories about those that have been around him, Tim Duncan was a selfless superstar.

I look at Nikola Jokic in the same vein. I think he's a truly selfless superstar, where it's not about him. He's not looking for people to "Look at me, tell me how great I am." He's almost embarrassed by the attention. He wants to be one of the guys in the locker room, have fun, work hard and win.

That's the thing that motivates every one of us. We have yet to win a championship. That's why we're excited to be here, but know we have a ton of work. It's going to be the hardest challenge that any of us have faced in our NBA careers.

Q. Obviously it wasn't this year, but the season before there was an incident between these two teams. Most of the players from that are the same. I'm wondering if at this big stage, if you think or wonder if that will carry over at all?

MICHAEL MALONE: It hasn't come up in any of my thoughts, discussions, narratives. That's a question probably more suited for the Miami Heat. For us, all we're worried about is winning Game 1 tomorrow night. That's our sole focus. None of the storylines that accompany this series are going to distract us from that focus.

Q. You recently said that when you guys first drafted Nikola, at Summer League, nobody thought he would turn into he obviously has become. Was there a moment when you realized, Oh, wow, this guy could become who he has become?

MICHAEL MALONE: Yeah, there was a game in his rookie season. Just to backtrack a little bit, to Nikola's credit, once we got back from Las Vegas that first Summer League where he was a solid player, he realized at that point in time that I got to get in better shape and I have to lose weight. He did that, like, right away. I think that was a sign for me that this kid is serious about this.

But there was a game in his rookie season at San Antonio. He put up a crazy stat line, I don't know, 25 or 26 points, 12 or 13 rebounds, six or seven assists against a guy like Tim Duncan. That was, for me, kind of when that light bulb went off saying, Wow, what he just did, who he did it against, on the road against this team coached by that guy, this kid has a chance to be a special player.

I think the second-most-important moment in Nikola's and our history was second year when we tried to play Nikola and Jusuf Nurkic together to start that year. Did not go as well as we had hoped. I was bringing Nikola off the bench. We lost the game at Dallas. I remember having the conversation about what am I doing? This kid was All-Rookie as a center.

I started him that next game, probably around December 12th, year two, and that's when our team took off. He became the focal point of everything we did. We realized that we had a player that we could build an offense and a team and an organization around.

Then you draft a guy like Jamal, the pieces that we've added and you get to where we are today. It was that San Antonio game that really stood out to me about the potential that he had.