Malone already thinking about the next NBA title

AP:

THIS MAY be just the start for the Denver Nuggets.

The newly crowned NBA champions – they got there Monday night, beating the Miami Heat 94-89 to end the NBA Finals in five games – have five starters that are all 30 and under. They have a superstar leading the way, an elite second option, and a slew of really good players who could have bigger roles elsewhere yet chose to be part of something more meaningful.

All of that could have been said about the Golden State Warriors when they won their first of their four most recent titles in 2015.

Now, it’s the Nuggets who are following a similar – and proven – formula.

“You know, Pat Riley said something many years ago,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said after it was all over. “I used to have it up on my board when I was a head coach in Sacramento, and it talked about the evolution in this game and how you go from a nobody to an upstart, and you go from an upstart to a winner and a winner to a contender and a contender to a champion, and the last step after a champion is to be a dynasty.”

Even in a championship moment, Malone is already thinking about more. Riley, the Heat president and a nine-time champion as a coach, player and executive, is wired the same way.

It’s not crazy to think the Nuggets can do more. For starters, they have Nikola Jokic.

There are other stars who stand out in their own ways – Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid replaced Jokic as MVP this year, past MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo of Milwaukee may be the best two-way player in the league, Dallas’ Luka Doncic is surely going to be an MVP before long – but there’s no other Jokic, who has gone from second-round pick to triple-double machine.

Malone was an assistant coach in Golden State just as the Warriors were starting down the path of becoming the NBA’s immovable object. He left two years before Stephen Curry’s first title to take over in Sacramento, getting fired early into year two there. Then Denver hired him, and his first three seasons there resulted in zero play-off appearances. Usually, that gets a guy fired.

The Nuggets kept him. The debt was repaid in full on Monday night. Patience paid off, and so did institutional belief that Malone was the right guy, that Jokic – the greatest number-41 pick in NBA draft history – would become a great, that Denver was building something the right way.

“You know, it’s not for everybody,” Malone said. “This was the best course for us, and it’s allowed us to get here.”

It very well may allow them to stay there.

Winning isn’t easy and winning a championship is darn near impossible. There have been five different champions in the last five years now. Three of those titlists – Toronto (2019), the Lakers (2020) and Milwaukee (2021) – have since fired the coaches who won those championships. Getting to the top is hard. Staying on top is tougher. Malone knows this, and starting this fall, the Nuggets are going to learn it.

But he thinks they’re also built for whatever comes next.

“We’re not satisfied,” Malone said. “We accomplished something this franchise has never done before, but we have a lot of young, talented players in that locker room, and I think we just showed through 16 play-off wins what we’re capable of on the biggest stage in the world.”