Coach Mike Malone On When He Knew Jokic Is Special | 2023 NBA Finals Previews | May 31

Letting it overwhelm and distract from your guys' ultimate mission. I mean, this is part of it. So you have an option to look at it as a distraction or look at it as a part of the process. And this is the NBA finals. It doesn't get any bigger than this. So we got to work in upstairs in the friendly confines of our practice court and behind closed doors. And then we come downstairs and we do our part and make ourselves available. And I'm just following the lead of Nick O'Hare and the NBA, doing what they tell me to do and answering the same questions for the third day in a row. But I love it and I got a smile on my face. Jeff, in the middle. Jeff Zoe at USA Today, right here in the middle. Okay, I see. At the start of the last series, you had 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, who's father's Renby coaches. What's the magnetic pull of coaching that has kept you and all three of you in this for so long? Oh, 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, but I had Wes Armstead on my staff prior, another guy that grew up in this business. And 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. And when I was a player, people would say, oh, he's a coach's son, he's a heady player. And that's not always the case. I've known some coaches' sons that maybe weren't heady players. But for me, it's just having basketball people. I mean, they're junkies. David Adelman eats, sleeps, drinks basketball, as does Ryan and everyone else on my staff. But there's something to be said about growing up the son of a coach and 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. And for Ryan Saunders and the journey that Flip was on throughout the CBA and the NBA, and for Rick Adelman and his many stops, I think you're hiring somebody that knows the game and knows what comes with the game. And I feel really fortunate to have the staff that I have, not just because they're coaches' sons, because they're great guys who help me out a ton. Ohm, on your right, in the fourth row. Michael, Ohm Young, CBS fan. You guys have seen every defensive wrinkle thrown at Nikola. If Miami throws a zone at Nikola, how confident are you at him attacking that? And what do you want to see Nikola do if the zone comes his way? Yeah, I mean, they've, 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. But as you 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 it's ever been for a team in the finals. And we're prepared for it. And if we do see the zone, I think a lot of teams when they see a zone will panic. And instead of just playing the game and getting the ball into the middle of the zone, using dribble penetration to collapse the zone. And the other thing we talk about is like, if we call a play and they're in zone, just run the play. This is not college, you know, Bam Adebayo cannot stand in the middle of the paint. He's got to cleanse himself at some point. So, and the last thing I'll say to that, Ohm, 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 two, three zone and try to take you out of your rhythm. We're here in the second row. Hey coach, Arash Madani from Sportsnet Canada. Jamal's been a driven kid from the jump. When you were kind of keeping tabs on him coming off the injury, when did you start seeing flickers of the old Jamal kind of return? And how determined was he to come back and be better than the dude he was in the bubble? Well, yeah, the last part first, that was a discussion we had the day after he suffered the ACL, you know, and that was like important for him to hear, in my opinion, because in that moment, it's devastation, you know, and negativity fills your mind about, you know, what's going to happen? How do I come back from this? And that rehab process can be a torturous one and one that takes a lot of mental toughness. Jamal is really fortunate because he has a wonderful mother and father and brother, very close-knit family, and he had an organization from myself, front office ownership teammates, and medical staff that supported him from day one. I saw, you know, going into the playoffs last year, you know, there was a, you use the word flicker, a flicker of hope, last game of the regular season against the Lakers, and maybe Jamal could play. Could he be back for the playoffs? And it wasn't there, and he wasn't ready, and 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, and 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, and couldn't be more proud of Jamal. You know, Nicole Jokic was deserving of the MVP last round, fully deserving, average of triple-double, but if you really take time to look at 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. So when I take time to reflect on that, and I remember flying up to Toronto and taking him to a Raptor-Cleveland playoff game before we had made the playoffs. I wanted him to feel and see what it meant, and here we are in the NBA Finals, and 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. So, Penn Depp with the New York Times. Nicola, as you know, is a very different NBA star in that he's not as front-facing and doesn't do as much podcasting and film and TV on the floor and that kind of stuff. I was curious how, if at all, how different that makes his relationship with the city and the fan base, if that makes any difference. Well, you know, I've been here for eight years now, and I think, if anything, the fans here, and 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 Nicola Jokic, I play for the Denver Nuggets, I'm gonna do everything I can to help our team win, and I'm gonna do it with class, I'm gonna do it with professionalism, and I'm never gonna make it about me. I mean, that's a rarity. I often make the comparison, and 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, and I look at Nicola Jokic in the same vein. I think Nicola Jokic is 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 just wants to be one of the guys in the locker room, have fun, work hard, and win. And that's the one thing that motivates every one of us is that we have yet to win a championship, and that's why we're excited to be here, but know that we have a ton of work to do, and this is gonna be the hardest challenge that any of us have faced in our NBA careers. Joe, third row in the middle. Joe Varn, The Athletic. Michael, obviously it wasn't this year, but the season before there was an incident between these two teams, and most of the players from that, other than Marquis, are the same. I'm wondering if, at this big, big stage, if you think or wonder if that will carry over at all? It hasn't come up in any of my thoughts, discussions, narratives, that's a question probably more suited for the Miami Heat, but for us, all we're worried about is winning game one tomorrow night. That's our sole focus, and none of the storylines that accompany this series are going to distract us from that focus. Melissa? Hey, Michael, Melissa Roland, Fox Sports. You recently said that when you guys first drafted Nikola, that summer league, nobody thought he'd turn into who he obviously has become. Was there a moment when you realized, oh, wow, this guy could become who he has become? Yeah, it was, there was a game in his rookie season, and to just 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 gotta get in better shape and I have to lose weight, and he did that right away. So 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, and 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, and 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. And I think the second most important moment in Nikola's and our history was second year, when we tried to play Nikola and Yousef Nurkic together to start that year, did not go as well as we had hoped. And I was bringing Nikola off the bench, and we lost the game at Dallas, and I remember having the conversation about what am I doing? This kid was our rookie as a center, and I started him, that next game was probably around December 12th, year two, and that's when our team took off, he became the focal point of everything we did, and we realized that we had a player that we could build an offense and a team and an organization around. And then you draft a guy like Jamal, and the pieces that we've added, and you get to where we are today, but it was that San Antonio game that really stood out to me about the potential that he had. Thank you, coach. All right, thanks everybody.