As he caught a pass from Nikola Jokic and began to uncork a 3-pointer moments later, his old friend suddenly lunged toward him and shouted, doing his part to distract the open shooter. But Braun was ready for it. “When I catch the ball in the corner, they say the same exact thing every single time,” he said. “So I’ve come to expect it. … It’s a lot of different things from different people. So I try to pick out one or two things that I hear and go for that person.”

Usually, that person is Bones Hyland.

Braun drained the shot and pointed at his former Nuggets teammate. It was the first quarter of Game 1 between Denver and Minnesota, and the trash talk was already flying both directions.

“I’m pretty close with Bones, from when he was here. So he’s obviously a really good dude, and I love going back and forth with him,” Braun explained. “It was funny because I think in the preseason, it was the same exact thing. I caught it in the corner, hit a shot, turned around, looked at him — and it just feels so familiar. Playing these guys. We’ve played them so many times.”

The Nuggets and Timberwolves can’t seem to escape each other. Not in the regular season, when they face off four times as division opponents. Not in the offseason, when their coaching staffs and front offices regularly trade places. And not in the NBA playoffs, where they’re meeting for the third time in four years.

Not all NBA rivalries are created equal. This one has persisted long enough to stand tall as arguably the most compelling of the 2020s. In large part because the only feeling more satisfying than defeating your enemies is that of defeating your friends.

“It’s weird to shake their hands after the series,” Nuggets coach David Adelman said, “because you know those guys so well. But during it, it’s kind of, ‘See you in a couple of weeks.'”

Tim Connelly’s fingerprints on both rosters

The staff connections were already endless, and they’ve somehow expanded over the last year. Most of them were related to Tim Connelly, Minnesota’s president of basketball operations, who previously ran Denver’s front office for nine years. He was the Nuggets’ lead executive when they drafted Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr.; when they hired Michael Malone; when they traded for Aaron Gordon. He was the chief architect of a championship team. But he walked away from Denver less than a year before his vision was realized, taking the Timberwolves job in 2022. Jokic still stays in touch with him.

“I think people see Tim as a general manager, but he is a really good person, really good friend,” the star center said last week. “So I wish people (could) know Tim. Like, (so they) don’t look at Tim as a general manager.”

Connelly took Jon Wallace with him to Minnesota. Wallace had joined the Nuggets in 2019 as a basketball operations associate — a low-level role that included building relationships with players. (Connelly introduced him and Murray via group chat, sparking a friendship.) Then last June, the Nuggets snatched Wallace back from Minnesota, hiring him as their new co-general manager alongside his friend Ben Tenzer — another longtime Connelly disciple who’d been a steady hand behind the scenes in Denver’s front office since 2013.

Wallace and Tenzer’s fingerprints are all over this Nuggets roster, even though they’ve only been in charge for 10 months. They brought in four new rotation players in their first offseason, including Bruce Brown — another link to the Nuggets-Wolves rivalry. It was he who said after Denver won the championship in 2023 that “our toughest series was Minnesota,” despite the first-round clash lasting only five games.

“Jon and Ben, they’re like family. We couldn’t be more proud,” Connelly told The Denver Post earlier this season. “It’s awesome, you know? Josh (Kroenke) has remained one of my best friends. To see Ben’s growth, to see Jon, his rapid ascent, and to see the team’s success, to see DA — there’s a tremendous sense of pride watching your buddies do such great things professionally. And they’re all just great guys. … Four times a year, I want to beat them, and the other 78, you won’t find a bigger Denver Nuggets home than ours.”

Connelly’s audacity as a lead executive has likewise been apparent throughout his time in Minnesota, even though the franchise-altering Anthony Edwards draft pick was before his time. When he traded four first-round picks for defensive stopper Rudy Gobert, he had Jokic specifically in mind. And his decision to partner with Gobert was a full-circle development dating back to his first week in Denver. In 2013, the Nuggets traded away Gobert’s draft rights to Utah for cash and a future second-round pick.

The connections run even deeper. Denver’s general manager before the Wallace-Tenzer tandem, Calvin Booth, ascended with the Timberwolves from 2013-17, first as a scout then as their director of player personnel. Connelly hired Booth away from Minnesota in 2017. Then Booth succeeded Connelly as Denver’s lead executive when Connelly left for Minnesota. Roster-building gamesmanship ensued between the rivals. In the 2024 NBA Draft, Denver originally possessed the 28th pick in the first round — one spot behind Minnesota. Booth was high on Dayton’s DaRon Holmes II, but he thought his former boss might nab the big man prospect at No. 27. Whether those suspicions were valid or a result of subterfuge by Connelly, the Nuggets ultimately traded up six spots to draft Holmes, sacrificing three future second-round picks.

First-year Nuggets coach David Adelman got his start in the NBA as a Timberwolves player development assistant under his dad, Hall of Famer Rick Adelman. JJ Barea was a player in Minnesota at the time and lived in the same building as David. They used to meet up for postgame beers to rehash the night and talk basketball — laying a groundwork, unbeknownst to them, for Adelman to hire Barea more than a decade later. Barea is now one of the top assistants on Denver’s staff, collaborating with Adelman on the offense.

Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch is a former Nuggets assistant under Malone. So is Micah Nori, Finch’s lead assistant. Nori and Jokic talked last week before the playoffs began, with Nori lamenting that he was sick of watching Jokic’s film. “We’ve definitely played, like, 40 times in the last three years against them,” Jokic agreed. They’ve exchanged a sizable amount of good-natured trash talk, both in private and public.

“We were together in the Summer League,” Jokic reminisced, “and he always made me run the lines. And I didn’t get the ball from him. He didn’t trust me at all. And then he always wants to take all the credit for my success right now.”

Hyland was on the Nuggets’ roster the year they won the championship, but he fell out of favor with veteran players and was shipped off to Los Angeles at the trade deadline that season. Three years later, he has found a home in Minnesota, where Connelly took him back. Hyland said this season that he feels no ill will toward the Nuggets. When he arrived at Ball Arena for Game 1 of the series last week, he and Tenzer greeted each other in the back hallways fondly.

Then the ball was tipped, and Hyland assumed his role as an irritant of Denver’s corner shooters.

“It’s fun, man,” Braun said. “They’re a really good team. They’re a competitive group. And this series between the two teams is always really fun for us. … Just a lot of familiar faces. So you bump into the same person a million times. That’s kind of what happens. So it’s a fun series, and I think both sides enjoy playing each other.”

“I kind of felt it in preseason, to be honest with you,” said Tim Hardaway Jr., a newcomer to the rivalry. “Just how kind of physical it would be. Both ends of the floor.”

The players have increasingly bought in over the years, even those without as many connections to the other city. Edwards taunted Nuggets fans at the end of Minnesota’s Game 7 win in 2024, getting on Jokic’s nerves in the process. Regular-season games have turned into classics since then. There was Russell Westbrook’s missed layup in double-overtime. There was Jokic’s 56-point Christmas masterpiece this season, which ended with a frustrated Edwards getting ejected and laughed at by Ball Arena.

Jaden McDaniels upped the stakes this week when he called out several Nuggets players by name, labeling them bad defenders. The Wolves backed up his talk with a Game 3 rout. A first-round series to settle the score had taken another dramatic emotional swing, as these matchups between the Nuggets and Timberwolves tend to do.

“Just playing Denver,” McDaniels said afterward, “really motivates us.”

The first-round pick that belonged to the Broncos in February — No. 30, the third-from-last in the pecking order this past Thursday night — wound up going through three teams’ hands before it turned into a good-hands guy

The Broncos traded the pick to Miami last month for veteran Dolphins wideout Jaylen Waddle. Miami then swapped it to San Francisco to move up in the draft, and the 49ers shipped it to the New York Jets to move down.

To the wanna-be draftniks up in the Grading The Week offices, Cooper Jr. is obviously the big loser here — largely because he seems like a good kid, and nobody, especially good kids, deserve Jet Life if they can help it. Alas. With Hoosiers teammate Fernando Mendoza officially joining the glittery dumpster fire that is the Las Vegas Raiders, you’d imagine the two will have a lot to text about, back and forth, these next few years. Godspeed, dudes.

But speaking of speed, there’s been at least one very clear winner in the No. 30 sweepstakes so far — and that’s the Broncos.

Waddle as Broncos’ “first-round pick” — A-

Why? For one thing, precedent says that Waddle’s production this fall should, health permitting (knocks on wood), just about double whatever numbers Cooper puts out as a rookie for the J-E-T-S in 2026.

We’ve got a few amateur Mel Kipers on Team GTW, and crunched some numbers that had to have played at least some role in GM George Paton’s decision to act against his history by giving up a cost-controlled, young first-round draft pick in favor of a veteran instead.

Since his rookie season of 2021, Waddle, a home-run hitter out of the University of Alabama and longtime pal of Broncos icon Pat Surtain II, has averaged a stat line of 75 catches, 1,008 receiving yards and five touchdown catches per year. Three of those five years saw him nab 70 or more receptions. In four of those five, he racked up at least 900 yards receiving.

Comparatively and historically speaking, that’s a heck of a lot better bang for the buck than what a very-late-in-the-first-round wide receiver gives you during his rookie campaign.

From 2021-2025, the span of Waddle’s career so far, eight wideouts have been drafted from picks 25-35 in the NFL Draft. All contributed as first-year players, but some better than most. The Chargers’ Ladd McConkey put up a Pro-Bowl caliber campaign in ’24 as a first-year target (82 catches, 1,149 receiving yards, seven scores), while Rashod Bateman’s numbers as a rookie in ’22 were merely serviceable (46 grabs, 515 yards, one TD).

Of those eight receivers taken in the 25-35 range, their average rookie stat line read like this: 48 catches, 611 receiving yards, 4.8 TDs. So, basically, an average Troy Franklin year for first-round money.

Paton and coach Sean Payton wanted to do better — especially given the Broncos’ title window, the low cost of Bo Nix’s rookie contract, and the number of veteran deals set to expire after the 2027 season.

Cooper Jr. would have looked great in orange and blue. But he also might have taken time to develop into the kind of sure thing that Waddle’s already become. Waddle is plug, play and get out of the way. He should also prove to be a better “first-round” addition for the ’26 and ’27 windows than anything the Raiders, Chiefs and Chargers snapped up on Thursday night.

David Adelman’s second playoff crucible — D (as of Friday)

Michael Malone would’ve blown about 17 gaskets if Jaden McDaniels had said what McDaniels said about one of his Nuggets teams out loud. He’d have had “THEY’RE ALL BAD DEFENDERS” signs attached to every player’s locker when they showed up to work the next day. He’d have reminded them every six minutes about how a rival was challenging their very manhood.

Maybe that would’ve worked before Game 3 in Minneapolis. Maybe it wouldn’t have — the longer a “bad cop” rages, the more likely a player is to tune them out. But we know this much: Adelman publicly shrugging McDaniels off earlier in the week didn’t exactly translate into hunger or a fight when the two teams went at it again on Thursday night, did it? Good cops in this business tend to have more friends but fewer rings.

Minnesota shook. And the Nuggets looked shaken. They were a no-show for most of Game 3 of their first-round playoff series Thursday, never leading in a 113-96 loss to the Timberwolves. It was only the third time this season that Denver has failed to score 100 points. The other two were without Nikola Jokic.

“It’s tough. Nobody on the team was making shots, including myself,” Jamal Murray said. “… They played with a lot of adrenaline. The crowd was into it in the first quarter, and I feel like we were just playing a little too fast. And after that quarter, the score was pretty even quarter to quarter. But that first really hurt us. Couldn’t recover from that. So we’ve just gotta be better to start the game and have a calmer mindset, especially on the road.”

Starting power forward Aaron Gordon was sidelined by left calf tightness, but his presence might not have mattered. Jokic and Jamal Murray never established any sort of scoring rhythm in the rout. They combined to shoot 12 for 43, scoring 43 points between them, and it took until the second half for a third Nuggets starter to make a shot from the field.

Jokic missed his first six shots. The team missed 16 of its first 18. The Timberwolves foamed at the mouth, eager to back up Jaden McDaniels’ trash talk about Denver’s defense from three days earlier. The Nuggets didn’t appear bothered enough by it. They allowed 40 points in the paint before halftime. They had scored 39 points total at half — in and outside of the paint.

“We just had a hard time making shots tonight,” coach David Adelman said. “… Our two best players, from the field, obviously really struggled.”

Adelman turned shades of Michael Malone late in the half, seething as he called a timeout after Denver failed to get back on defense off of a made shot. He burned through three of his timeouts in a four-minute stretch of the second quarter, as the Nuggets’ defense abandoned them.

It had saved them from getting run out of the gym early — they trailed 25-11 after the opening stanza — but Minnesota’s relentless downhill driving was too much of a problem. Especially with Gordon and Peyton Watson out.

“Guys were trying to get back to their matchups as opposed to: Just match up,” Adelman said. “They’re gonna play faster in this building than they do on the road. All teams do. And it was unfortunate because I thought the group to start the second quarter really competed. … But every time we would make a run, we’d give up a runaway layup after a make or a miss. You can’t do that in a playoff game. So we’ll definitely watch the film. That has to get better.”

Ayo Dosunmu, one of the most impactful trade deadline acquisitions in the NBA this year, led the Wolves with 25 points and nine assists off the bench. He exposed Denver’s transition defense, forced the Nuggets to collapse with his straight-line speed and finished a flawless 10-for-12 inside the arc. McDaniels exposed the Nuggets on the glass, crashing for four offensive rebounds en route to a 20-point double-double. Rudy Gobert continued to be the most valuable player of the series, keeping Jokic uncomfortable at all times.

He and McDaniels — the two best defenders on either team in this series — have outplayed Denver’s two best offensive players through three contests. That’s been enough for Minnesota to seize a 2-1 lead after trailing by 19 points early in Game 2.

And it was enough on Thursday to compensate for a choppy game from Anthony Edwards, who developed a limp in the fourth quarter after spending most of his evening in foul trouble. He finished with 17 points, five boards and three assists.

The Wolves left the door open for a second-half comeback when Edwards and Julius Randle were both off the court. But Denver failed to cut substantially into a 27-point deficit. It was still 20 after the third quarter. Going to a zone defense slowed Minnesota down further in the fourth, but the Nuggets weren’t generating the shots they’re used to getting automatically.

Christian Braun finished the game with two points and no field goals. Cam Johnson scored six on as many shots.

“I think to get those guys going, they have to screen better,” Adelman said. “If you can free up your best players, that’s gonna bring rotations. That’s gonna bring a low man.”

Julian Strawther entered the rotation as Adelman searched for offensive punch, but he missed five of his six attempts from the field.

Zeke Nnaji slid in as a backup center and provided good energy. The Nuggets won his 16 minutes by two. Nobody else finished in the black. Spencer Jones replaced Gordon in the starting lineup and limited Randle, though he added very little offensively. The Nuggets are unsure what Gordon’s status will be for Game 4, which tips off Saturday at 6:30 p.m. MT at Target Center.

Sean Keeler: Friday, when you toss in the snow and the USWNT? So cool. Literally. Saturday? Electric. Sunday? TCB. As in, Take Care of Business. And, by golly, the Avs better. When it comes to the first two rounds of the playoffs, there’s more pressure on Bednar to not get upset, because a.) He’s been here longer and everyone’s opinion on the big guy — pro or con — is pretty well set in stone by now; b.) You’re the No. 1 seed; c.) Bednar’s contract is up after next season. The Kings are the kind of first-round opponent the Avs should dispense of quickly — but they’re also the kind that are going to make you absolutely work for it. The Kings are going to hit you late. Hit you early. Hit you coming off the dang bus. Ugly hockey with a hot goaltender is Plan A for any underdog, and Bednar has to prove for the next eight days or so that he can win 3-2, 2-1, 1-0 kind of slugfests. So far, so good.

Renck: Outcomes microwave expectations. The Nuggets shot poorly and still smashed the Timberwolves in Game 1. It cemented the notion that Denver is capable of reeling off 16 victories over the next two months. But it is not likely. Having to go through the Spurs and Thunder creates a path more suited for a mountain goat. This is the first reason Adelman has less at stake. The second? Injuries provided him cover all season. The Nuggets secured the No. 3 seed because of his dynamic offense and ability to help role players reach their potential. But if Denver loses to the Spurs, for instance, it will be viewed as a disappointment, not a crash out. The same cannot be said for Bednar if the Avs fail to reach the Stanley Cup Finals.

Keeler: The outside noise will be louder for whatever the Nuggets do (or don’t do) this spring. The road’s tougher. The tension’s higher. Adelman’s regular season had more twists and turns than Nikola Jokic’s over 30 now, and everybody knows we’re unlikely to see his kind of NBA greatness in Denver gold, for this long, ever again. Josh Kroenke loves all his assets equally (wink), but let’s also be real: He’s a hoopster, not a puck head. The highest-up in KSE have the last word on Nuggets business. When it comes to the Avs, they’re more likely to defer to Joe Sakic and Chris MacFarland and admit they know what they don’t know. Unlike the end of the Michael Malone Era, Bednar’s led a comparatively calm, steady ship. Sakic digs that. C-Mac digs that. So do Josh and Stan.

Renck: Bednar has shown growth this season. He seems more willing to experiment, and demonstrated common sense by sticking with Scott Wedgewood in goal. Management has always exercised patience with Bedsy. But fans will not. In the recent ESPN top 50 ranking of players in the postseason, the Avs featured three in the top 10 — MacKinnon (first), Cale Makar (fourth) and Martin Necas (10th). And Wedgewood came in at No. 34. It is impossible to have this kind of star talent and steady third-and-fourth-line grinders and not be favored. Bednar is under more pressure, but must remain aggressive. Adelman, in some ways, has nothing to lose after the first round. Bednar must see his situation as everything to gain.

Keeler: And as much as we harp on Joker’s window, the Avs have long since pushed all their chips to the middle of the table. They’re bringing nine players who are 31 years or older into the postseason grind. Gabe Landeskog is 33. Naz Kadri is 35. Brent Burns is 41. If it’s not now, is it never? Should Bedsy get bounced before the second round, Stan Kroenke might have no choice but to change horses in a race he’d prefer to leave alone.

Which is a shame, really, because Adelman’s done a better job in his first season as Nuggets coach than social media would ever let on.

We’ve devoted a lot of bandwidth to the games Adelman has let slip away this regular season.

Yet ask yourself this: What would’ve happened in those 17 tilts the Nuggets played earlier this season without Nikola Jokic if Michael Malone was still coaching this team?

They wouldn’t have gone 11-6. I’ll promise you that.

Adelman won 11 of the 17 games he coached this season when the Joker was inactive or didn’t dress. Context: Malone went 11-16 from 2022-2025 in non-Jokic games. More context: Malone was 2-6 in the eight non-Joker games prior to that.

Say what you will about DA, the motivational speaker, DA the wordsmith, DA in the locker room, or DA at the postgame podium. The man can coach.

We mention this because of the calendar. The Great Nuggets Purge celebrates its first birthday on Wednesday. On April 8, 2025, Josh Kroenke dismissed Malone as coach and Calvin Booth as general manager, ending years of awkward, often conflicting news conferences and months of behind-the-curtain tensions.

Yes, Malone, the winningest coach in franchise history, was done dirty in the deal. But the move hasn’t exactly aged poorly so far, has it?

On Tuesday, Malone was officially introduced as the new men’s hoops coach at North Carolina. Tar Heels brass celebrated Purge Day by handing Malone a $50-million gift card. Pretty nice parachute, if you can get it.

The Nuggets (51-28), meanwhile, entertain the Memphis Grizzlies on Wednesday night at Ball Arena, having won nine in a row and vaulted the LOLakers into the third spot of the Western Conference playoff bracket in the process.

The Grizz (25-54) are the last team to beat Denver, notching a 125-118 stunner in Bluff City on March 18 in the second half of a Nuggets back-to-back.

On this day last April, the Nuggets’ record was 47-32. They’d gone 3-7 since St. Patrick’s Day, had lost four straight, and were fading fast. They were 17.5 games back of conference-leading Oklahoma City.

On Tuesday, after a wild OT win over Portland, the Nuggets had won 51 games and were 11.5 games back of OKC. They’re 9-0 since March 19.

So: Did Josh make the right call?

From a chemistry standpoint, there’s no doubt. The organizational “vibe” is better, by all accounts. And, sure, Adelman has a deeper, better, more modular, and more veteran roster than Malone got in either of the previous two campaigns.

Would Booth have gotten the green light to trade Michael Porter Jr.? It’s tough to say. But what his replacements, Jon Wallace and Ben Tenzer, pulled off by swapping MPJ to the Nets opened up desperately-needed cap space. Which, in turn, allowed the Nuggets to turn one very good player (Porter) into four pretty good veteran ones (Cam Johnson, Bruce Brown, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Jonas Valanciunas). Which, in hindsight, helped Denver to weather its non-Jokic month, too.

But be careful with revisionist history.

DA Ball at Ball can be an acquired taste. The defense continues to go as far as Aaron Gordon and Peyton Watson can carry it, and the two have rarely played together since Christmas. Denver rallied Monday night against Portland, but gave up a whopping 25 3-pointers along the way. It feels as if at least 15 different players have put up career shooting nights against this bunch.

But if the Nuggets win Wednesday, it’ll be 10 straight victories — something no Denver team has done in the Jokic Era.

Shouldn’t Adelman be getting some flowers for that, at least? His 51 wins are the most ever by a first-year Nuggets coach in the NBA era during a full initial season. Larry Brown still holds the first-year record overall, with a 65-19 ABA mark in 1974-75.

Elsewhere, the world keeps turning. Malone held his inaugural UNC news conference on Tuesday. His first collegiate head-coaching job is one of the bluest of blue bloods — and hottest seats in the sport. Since Dean Smith hung up his gilded whistle in 1997, the three coaches who’ve followed (Bill Gutheridge, Matt Doherty, Hubert Davis) who weren’t Roy Williams averaged just 3.7 seasons each at the helm.

Note to Triangle media: Michael can be as cuddly as a New York cabbie, with the patience and vocabulary to match. He suffers fools ungladly, although often with humor. To wit, when a reporter on Tuesday mentioned the coach’s “tenacious” defense with the Nuggets, Malone replied, “It wasn’t always tenacious.”

Laughed at that one.

Still, deep down, Michael’s a family guy. Malone’s daughter, Bridget, is in her second season with the UNC volleyball team after a stellar run at Mountain Vista High School. Chapel Hill is one of the premier college towns in America. Wish him well. Wish him luck. With that fan base, he’ll need it.

“He belongs in coaching,” Adelman said of Malone on Monday. “And that’s what he should be doing.”

A month earlier, funny enough, Booth also went the college route. . The Lions finished 12-20 a year ago and have reached the Big Dance just once since 2010. Happy Valley is gorgeous (significantly less so in the winter), but it’s also a wrestling school the way DU is a hockey one. Wish him luck, too.

Ain’t it funny how time flies when everybody’s pulling in the same direction? A year after Purge Day, Malone’s a Tar Heel. Booth’s a Nittany Lion. And the Nuggets, in spite of themselves, might be better off.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Michael Malone acknowledged that he’s an outsider as North Carolina’s basketball coach.

“I did not play here. I’m not from Carolina,” he said Tuesday evening during his introductory news conference at the Dean Smith Center. “But I think they’re ready to embrace somebody new. A new vision to try to get this program back to where we all want it to be.”

The Tar Heels hired the NBA championship-winning coach on Tuesday, signing him to a six-year deal worth $50 million in base compensation.

Malone replaces Hubert Davis, after five seasons

Nikola Jokic, Nuggets react to UNC basketball hiring Michael Malone as coach

The 54-year-old Malone spent 12 seasons as a head coach in the NBA, including a 10-year run in Denver. He led the Nuggets to behind three-time league MVP Nikola Jokic.

The Nuggets with Almost a year to the day, in another surprise move, Malone took over a blue-blood program with six national titles, a record 21 appearances in the Final Four and alums including Michael Jordan, James Worthy Vince Carter and Atlantic Coast Conference career scoring leader Tyler Hansbrough.

Malone said 10 to 12 former UNC players visited him in his arena office in the few hours after he arrived earlier in the day from Colorado.

“I think family is important,” he said. “It����ap something we talked a lot about in Denver. I think it����ap even more important in the college landscape because you’re talking about young men coming to your program.”

Malone’s six-year deal starts at $7.5 million in base compensation and rises to $9 million by the 2031-32 season. Malone can also earn incentives worth up to nearly $1.5 annually, while he has a buyout that starts at $8 million through April 1 and drops to $6.5 million in 2028 and $5 million in 2029 as it continues to decline over the life of the deal.

Additionally, the agreement requires a $4 million salary pool for assistant coaches and support staff, as well as for the school to commit no less than $6.75 million of its revenue-share allotment to men’s basketball.

Davis’ firing opened one of the top jobs in college basketball for only the fourth time since the late Hall of Famer Dean Smith’s retirement after 36 seasons in October 1997. The job had stayed in the “Carolina Family” ever since. Longtime assistant Bill Guthridge replaced Smith, followed by former UNC player Matt Doherty, former Smith assistant Williams and then Davis, who played under Smith and worked on

Malone has never been a college head coach and has spent most of his career in the NBA. His primary connection to UNC athletics is the presence of daughter Bridget on the Tar Heels’ volleyball team. He told the in October that he had attended multiple recent basketball practices -- with Davis even asking him to speak to the team at least once.

AP Basketball Writer Aaron Beard in Indianapolis contributed to this report.

“I’m happy for him,” Jokic said. “Probably a little bit different. Was he ever a coach in college? No?”

Malone was in fact a college hoops assistant coach throughout the 1990s, before he entered the NBA, Jokic was informed.

“Yeah, that doesn’t matter,” the Nuggets’ three-time MVP center joked.

News of UNC men’s basketball hiring Malone to replace Hubert Davis was the talk of Ball Arena on Monday. Denver’s only Tar Heel, Cam Johnson, joked that he had already been asked for his opinion dozens of times when the topic came up with reporters. He was traded to the Nuggets three months after they fired Malone in 2025, so he was more curious to hear what his teammates had to say.

“Honestly, I don’t really know Coach Malone,” Johnson said. “I came 17 games too late. But I’ve been talking to the guys, and they think that he’s gonna be a good fit for what we’ve got going on back there. I wish him the best. I’ll probably connect with him soon.”

Denver’s veteran players were able to congratulate him more thoughtfully, speaking from experience.

“I wish him all the luck,” Jokic said. “I think it’s a little bit different just because he was coaching NBA for how many years — 12, 15 years? But he definitely has the poise and the brain to do it. I think he’s gonna do a really good job because he can actually coach the guys. He’s gonna have time to coach the guys and teach them how to play the right way.”

The end of Malone’s 10-year Nuggets tenure was abrupt and awkward. His voice grew stale in the locker room and his intense personality grated on players, as team and league sources detailed to The Denver Post last year. He was fired with three games remaining in the regular season, along with former general manager Calvin Booth.

Still, Malone left Denver as the winningest coach in Nuggets history with 471 regular-season victories and the franchise’s only NBA championship in 2023.

“Shoutout to Coach Malone,” said Jamal Murray, the veteran star guard to whom Malone was fiercely loyal. “I think he’ll be great. I think he’ll be a great college coach. I think his daughter is there as well. So I think it����ap a win-win for him, and I think he’ll enjoy his next chapter of his coaching career.”

“I think it’s gonna be good for him,” Aaron Gordon added. “I think it’ll be a change of pace. I think he’s gonna be a great coach for that program.”

Jokic, who played his amateur hoops in Serbia, isn’t as familiar with the specifics and idiosyncrasies of NCAA basketball as most of his teammates. He’s occasionally roped in when he falls in love with a skilled big man like North Carolina State’s DJ Burns two years ago.

But in general, he’ll likely be rooting on Malone from afar. As the sport’s preeminent offensive player, he can’t find it within himself to stay focused for all 30 seconds of the shot clock.

“I just don’t understand why the rules are different,” he said. “It’s so slow, and they just go around and ’round and ’round. But it’s still basketball. It’s a little bit different. … I just don’t understand the 30 seconds. It’s just too much.”

The University of North Carolina is appointing Michael Malone as its next men’s basketball coach, according to a — a hire that sent shock waves through the college hoops world and through Ball Arena on Monday.

“Very unexpected,” first-year Nuggets coach and longtime Malone assistant David Adelman said, “just because I hadn’t heard anything about that. … After shootaround, we saw that it was a possibility. So I’m just happy for him and his family. He belongs in coaching, and that’s what he should be doing.”

Malone, 54, has taken the year off from coaching after the Kroenke family fired him three games before the 2025 playoffs. He enjoyed a 10-year tenure in Denver, leading the Nuggets to their first NBA championship, winning a franchise-record 471 regular-season games and overseeing Nikola Jokic’s development from a second-round pick to a three-time MVP.

North Carolina is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious coaching positions in the country — college or pro. The school fired Hubert Davis in March after a first-round exit from the NCAA Tournament as a No. 6 seed. It ended a five-year run for Davis, who led the Tar Heels to the NCAA title game in his first season but lost to Christian Braun’s Kansas Jayhawks. UNC has won six national championships in men’s basketball, most recently in 2017 under Naismith Hall of Famer Roy Williams.

Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan had emerged as one of Carolina’s top targets in recent weeks during a national search, but he wasn’t willing to engage the school until after the NBA season, according to reports. Malone surfaced Monday as a surprise candidate. He has spent time on UNC’s campus in recent months. His daughter, Bridget, will be a sophomore on the UNC volleyball team next season. 

“Obviously, Billy’s name had been mentioned everywhere,” Adelman said before the Nuggets hosted the Trail Blazers on Monday. “But not just the basketball part — historic job to take — but just the cool part (is) his daughter going to school there and all the elements to it. Basketball in America has changed, with the NIL in college. … A guy like (Malone), I mean, he’d be perfect for that job. So yeah, for all the guys that are here that have known him, we were all super excited.”

Malone immediately becomes the only active NCAA head coach to have won an NBA championship as a head coach.

“I just think the discipline, the fact that it’s more of a professional environment now (makes him a good fit), especially at schools like that where you have to look at it like these guys are under contract now,” Adelman said. “I think a lot of NBA coaches understand what it means to coach somebody who’s making money. There’s a level you can’t go to like it’s 1950. But there’s definitely a level somewhere in the middle, and I think that’s what’s appropriate nowadays for the college game. Just watching the Final Four, man, like Illinois is a Euro League team. It’s a completely different landscape. So I think you’re gonna see more pro coaches of Coach Malone’s caliber looking at jobs like that, and it makes a lot of sense to me.”

This will be Malone’s first head coaching job in college basketball and his first foray into the amateur hoops world in 25 years. He got his start in coaching as an unpaid volunteer assistant at Oakland University in the Detroit area, where he also worked side jobs for Foot Locker and a cleaning company that assigned him to various office buildings between midnight and 4 a.m.

When his father, Brendan Malone, was hired as the inaugural coach of the Toronto Raptors, Michael begged for a job on his staff. Brendan preferred to get settled first. He was fired after one year on the job. Michael spent most of the 1990s instead as a college assistant, with stints at Oakland, Providence and Manhattan.

He’s worked in and around the NBA since 2001, serving as an assistant for the New York Knicks, Cleveland Cavaliers, New Orleans Hornets and Golden State Warriors. His first head coaching job was in Sacramento, where he was fired early in his second season. Malone has won 510 games between the Kings and Nuggets.

During his year off, he has worked as a studio analyst and color commentator for ESPN’s coverage of the NBA.

“Ten years ago, I was presented with the incredible opportunity to be the head coach of the Denver Nuggets. Little did I know the profound impact that would have on the next decade of my life,” Malone wrote last year in a full page advertisement he took out in The Denver Post. “… It has been my absolute pleasure to lead and fight for our team every night. To help bring Denver its first NBA championship is an accomplishment that I will always cherish.”

Let me explain. The Broncos landed receiver Jaylen Waddle in a trade this week. He makes their offense better on first down, third down, against zone coverage and over the middle because defenses know he can bust them over the top.

When Waddle does score, he celebrates with a “Penguin Waddle” dance. Waddle’s ability to create space will force opponents to shade coverage in his direction. That means more openings for teammates, most notably Courtland Sutton.

But it also needs to unlock Evan Engram’s potential.

Last season he was the most disappointing Joker since Jared Leto.

Billed as a player capable of creating mismatches on linebackers and safeties, Engram filled a truncated role, catching 50 passes for 461 yards and one touchdown. Because the Broncos lacked confidence in Engram’s blocking, Adam Trautman took the majority of snaps. Engram played 42% of the time, a stunning decline from his 76% average over the previous eight seasons.

With Davis Webb given a chance to put his stamp on this offense with Waddle’s arrival, Engram should benefit. Webb helped recruit him to Denver. It does not require a leap of faith to believe Webb has a vision for his former teammate even if Denver drafts Ohio State’s Max Klare in the second round.

When Engram was on the field, it became a tell that the Broncos were passing. That might be the case this season, but teams will have way more difficulty choosing how to guard Engram with Waddle and Sutton on the outside.

Let’s be fair. Engram’s salad days from Jacksonville are over. But he needs to eat. Give him 50% of the snaps, and it should translate to 60 catches for 650 yards and four touchdowns.

His improvement will help determine if the Broncos offense is good or dynamic.

Thin Ice: The NHL’s ridiculous playoff format, which will again pit top teams against each other in the first two rounds, might goose ratings, but it hurts coaches. The Avs should face the Stars in the Western Conference Finals. If Colorado gets bounced in the second round, it is hard to see Jared Bednar surviving. He is the best coach in franchise history, but like Michael Malone a year ago, will become a victim of expectations. It’s not unfair given the Avs’ talent. But it remains stupid that the NHL’s playoff bracket plays a role in this.

Lake Show: Reading this next sentence aloud is nauseating. It is no longer a given that the Nuggets will beat the Lakers in the playoffs.They have owned them of late. That has changed this month, explained through the MVP race. Luca Doncic now boasts the second-best odds — Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is the runaway favorite — ahead of Victor Wembanyama and Nikola Jokic. Jokic should have four MVPs, but he has no case this year because of Denver’s recent slide and his career-high 3.9 turnovers per game. With LeBron James buying into a supporting actor role, the Lakers are a legitimate threat because Doncic is more focused on scoring buckets than whining to officials.

U-S-Hey Now: Giants pitcher Logan Webb took issue with the narrative that Team USA did not share the same passion for winning the World Baseball Classic as champion Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Japan and Italy. “That’s complete (BS). I think we probably cared the most of any team, to be honest with you. We do things in different ways than some of the other teams, but we care a lot.” The way to show it? Convince the best starting pitchers to sign up. And get a manager with prior big-league experience.

On the Road Again: It’s OK to note the difficulty of the Nuggets’ travel schedule and the number of back-to-back games, especially this month. The problem is that it feeds into a victim mentality of a first-time head coach dealing with a battery of injuries. If it makes you feel better as a way to explain the season, fine. Just know that it will sound like an excuse if Jokic never wins another championship in Denver.

Full disclosure: The basketball wonks in the Grading The Week (GTW) offices were fans of the Michael Porter Jr.-for-Cam trade last summer. Again, not because it was a fair swap of talents. It wasn’t — the Nets got the guy with the bigger frame and far sexier upside. It was a “win” because it got MPJ’s bloated contract off the books and enabled the Nuggets to grab the cap space to land three more veteran players (Bruce Brown, Tim Hardaway Jr., Jonas Valanciunas) in the process.

But what’s often said about Christian Braun applies to Johnson, too — he’s got to show up offensively within the flow of the offense, not get down when the shots aren’t falling, and find ways to contribute when the moment finds him. Because it inevitably will.

Cam Johnson’s rebound — B

From last Saturday through Friday, the up-and-down In three games prior to the Nuggets’ visit to the Lakers on Saturday night, Cam was averaging 12.7 points, 3.3 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 1.7 3-point makes per contest. He put up 17 points and three treys in a rout of Houston and added another 15 points in a huge win at San Antonio late Thursday night.

Here’s why that matters, and why coach David Adelman has remained in Johnson’s corner through thick and thin this season: The Nuggets look like a title contender when Johnson contributes offensively — and are more of a play-in level team when he doesn’t.

Heading into Friday night, when Johnson scored at least 11 points in a game, the Nuggets were 15-4 (78.9% win percentage), and 26-22 when Cam was 10 points or less.

When Johnson made at least five field goals in a game, the Nuggets were 13-4 (76.4% win percentage), 28-24 when it was four makes or fewer.

When Johnson drained at least two treys, they were 13-6 (68.4% win percentage), 28-20 otherwise.

“It����ap been a tough year for the Nuggets in the clutch, which is something that we’re not used to seeing.” former Nuggets coach Michael Malone, now an ESPN analyst, offered up on the “NBA On ESPN” halftime show Wednesday. “And they’ve got 17 games to go to try to figure it out.”

They figured it out in San Antonio. If they can get Johnson figured out for the stretch run and the postseason that follows, hold on tight.

Broncos’ free agency start — D

Oh, we’ve heard all the caveats by now. There’s time. You just went 14-3. The selection wasn’t that great. The locker room is full of good players and good guys who get what Sean Payton, Davis Webb, Vance Joseph and Darren Rizzi are all trying to do. And we get all that. And we get that, as of last Friday afternoon, per OverTheCap.com, the Broncos still had $22.3 million cap room for ’26 to play with — even after bringing almost everybody back.

Yet there are good reasons why ����apountry was more than a little alarmed at the alacrity with which GM George Paton and coach Sean Payton seemed to sit on their respective hands during the opening  days of the NFL’s free-agent signing period.

Why? Two words: Rookie contract.

QB Bo Nix has a cap hit of $5.1 million in ’26 and $5.9 million slated for ’27. That’s going to change. Joe Burrow had a $9.87-million cap hit in 2022, the third of his four-year rookie deal. On Burrow’s second deal, If Nix continues to trend upward, and health permitting, he should, the Broncos are going to have another Russell Wilson-sized cap number to deal with in a few years.

Which is why they may regret not spending while they were in a period of flexibility “between” big-time/franchise-level QB cap numbers. Especially when you’ve got a Super-Bowl-worthy roster that’s, quite literally, only one or two playmakers away from winning it all — and only one or two offensive playmakers in particular. But, hey, we can get admittedly panicky in the GTW offices, so maybe that’s just us. Although based on our emails and social media exchanges since Monday night, it’s definitely not just us. At all.