Tim Connelly is the president of the Nuggets right now. But will he be in Denver for the long haul?
On the night the Nuggets beat Portland 119-110 to clinch their first Northwest Division championship since 2010, Connelly refused to refute reports he is the leading candidate to become the next chief of basketball operations for the Washington Wizards.
“I’m the president of the Denver Nuggets,” Connelly said Friday. “Everything else is pure speculation.”
The Nuggets extended Connelly’s contract in February, during the NBA All-Star break. He took over as the architect of Denver’s roster in 2013, and the arduous task of rebuilding the team after the departure of front-office executive Masai Ujiri and veteran coach George Karl was finally rewarded with the first playoff appearance in his sixth year on the job.
“It has been hard,” Connelly said. “I’m a super-positive guy and we have super-positive people throughout this organization, so the challenge has been fun. But it has been so long since we’ve been in the playoffs, itap good to get the monkey off our back.”
Ernie Grunfeld, who had overseen basketball operations in Washington for 16 years, was fired Tuesday by the Wizards. Speculation turned almost immediately to Connelly as the top candidate to replace Grunfeld, in a report by The Athletic this week. Connelly has deep ties to the area and the team. He grew up in nearby Baltimore and started his NBA career as a Wizards intern in 1996.
Any distraction is the last thing the Nuggets need as they try to nail down the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference and move into the playoffs. But given repeated chances outside the victorious locker room to squash speculation he could be leaving Colorado to work his magic with the Wizards, Connelly declined to say he will be in Denver for the long haul.
