Matt Moore
Appearances
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
they don't have a practice facility. It's upstairs in the arena and they only have four courts, something that coaches and players have complained about consistently. They still don't have one. They're one of, I think, two teams that don't have a practice facility. So there's all these ways I can point to that.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
But if we talk about roster building, the Contavious Caldwell-Pope situation, I thought it was a mistake because I understood what KCP did for them defensively. It was him and AG making the call-outs and directions defensively CB is going to be a great defender in this league.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
He's had a rough year, but even he's gotten so much better getting over screens and the small things, making reads in terms of when they play at level pick and roll of playing to the short roll and things like that. Christian's going to be a great defender in this league for 10 years. But Casey, he's not allowed guy because he's young.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
You need a guy like Casey P to be the one calling out guys to make calls on the flight in the game, both during the play and after it to be like, hey, we can't do that. That's what they have really missed. They did not really make any sort of serious bid for Casey P in part because ownership. loves Christian Brown and believes in him. And they were ready to transition to him as a starter.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
So that one, I do believe while I do think that both Christian was easy because he was the one thing that ownership management coaching agreed on. Everybody was in step of, yeah, Christian's our guy. We believe in Christian. So that one gets made there. You mentioned the Bruce Brown limitations on what they could do. They tried to peel Bruce Brown out of the Raptors this year at the deadline.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
Couldn't get a bite on it. Then you look at like, yes, the Dario Saris thing is tough. Jeff Green, he was more of honestly that role. And that's why they have DeAndre Jordan still on this team is to provide that veteran leadership locker room stuff. DJ's had to play this year because Zeke once again has really struggled, not just with the coaching staff,
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
The players have had their times of frustration. The locker room has had times of frustration with Zeke. They love him and have his back. They want good things for him, but he doesn't have the confidence of some of these other veterans. Dario Saric was brought in to be that, and that was just a whiff.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
But the idea was, well, even if Dario's not bad, hey, we drafted Daron Holmes, he'll give us a spot. Nope, he tore his ACL. And this is how it is, Zach, where, honestly, this is what's shocking about this is a firing and a sweep like this makes you think that things were disastrous, like a Phoenix Suns level of bad. And instead, it's like they were so close. If...
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
Russell Westbrook doesn't foul NAW or if he makes that the layup, this may not have happened. If Jamal Murray doesn't get hurt, this probably hasn't happened. Like if they don't lose to the wizards twice, but one of the things I just said on locked on nuggets is these losses were a product of the problems underneath and not the problem itself.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
It's that you can point to all the things that have declined this year with this team as leading to those losses as part of the underlying culture and problem with them in general.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
Yeah, and it's hamstring inflammation. Tony Jones of The Athletic has reported that it's affecting, quote, some other things. I don't have any more details other than that, but Malone kind of signaled that, that there's been some problems with other parts. And, you know, you wonder if that's – I don't know if that's a back issue.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
I don't know if that's the knee issue, which he's had soreness with since – Um, since the ACL tear, um, he's had those kinds of problems. I will say that the stretch between January and March is not just some of the best play I've seen out of Jamal Murray in several years. This is the best that he's looked to me physically. He had pop, he had explosiveness to get separation.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
And I haven't seen that from him since before the injury. Like this is the best I've seen him look since 2021 pre-injury. And so to me, this is one of the things that's kind of gotten uncomfortable. And this is part of like, I think basketball discourse now is a connection between availability and your work ethic to see like, are you in shape to avoid injury?
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
And some of this is just like guys, like people just get hurt. And I think you can make some of those criticisms and the nuggets have had those criticisms about Jamal Murray. Like Jamal came into camp in a foul mood because negotiations for his eventual max super max, not super max, but max contract. were not as fluid as he wanted it to be. Now, that said, like,
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
He kept his head up and played through all those struggles, and he's been fantastic for them. And he has been, I think, an overall real net positive. But this has come to the point of, again, under this new CBA, availability might be the most valuable thing out there. Jason Tatum is such an incredible player. I don't know that there's anything as valuable as his availability and floor.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
You know when you're getting Jason Tatum, and you know you're getting a high level of play out of him every single night.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
Are there any ideas? Do we have any ideas? So there's two kind of things here. I think one is, is Jamal Murray a good enough number two option?
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
availability overall talent inconsistency added like all of those things combined that leads you into the question of okay you can trade him this year because of the extension is he on the table is he a team is he a player that teams will be like yeah if he can get healthy he's exactly what we need um this is speculative not based on reporting but like i would look at orlando and be like jamal murray would be very helpful for what orlando wants to do with porter
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
That was in my what I heard later was that we like on Lockdown Nuggets, we had conversations about quarter trades for two months after it was dead because ownership came in and said, no, the ownership came in and said, we don't want to do this. This is not the move that we want to make. I think the conversations with Chicago were probably wider conversations.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
than just the Levine talks that it was more like, Hey, can we get like a multi-team construct with Lonzo? And maybe I would assume new because what they need is they need more pieces. They built this roster on the previous CBA. And I've said this over and over again, the Porter contract, everybody's like, this guy's making 40 million.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
And it's like, yeah, because it used to be, you pay that and you don't lose them. And then you can just trade them later. And now we're in a new, new CBA where it's like, no, you just like trying to move these guys on big contracts is pulling teeth. And so the idea was they talked to Atlanta a lot about a multi piece component would have probably involved DeAndre Hunter with Porter going there.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
That to me is the kind of move that makes the most sense here. Porter has had the first three months of the season. He was their second best player. I thought he was great. He slowed down a little bit. He made such leaps in terms of his ability to create off of the drive and those type of things. He's had injuries. The hamstring's been bothering him.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
The Nuggets listed it as a back, and he fought against that very hard when we talked about him. He's like, they list it as a back. It's my hamstring. And everybody goes like, they're probably related. But that's probably the move is like you move Porter for multiple pieces and you make the decision on whether or not you're going to stick with Jamal.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
I will tell you there was no bigger advocate in that building for Jamal Murray than Michael Malone. So that's part of this component as well.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
Yeah, I mean, he's been so incredible, and you can't ask more of Jokic. I've criticized some of his defensive stuff this year, but I understand the load that he's carrying offensively and just how much energy you have. And some of this is because of that, though. You have to play at the level with Jokic. That's where he is most comfortable. He has said that.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
That's where he wants to play, which means you have to have backline defense, and that's been a huge issue for them. MPJ can't play 2.9 and recover to the corner. Just can't do it. If he does that, he winds up giving up a back cut for a layup. Jamal struggles with the short roll. Guys score over him or they do a switch and they'll post up Jamal if he's the on-ball actor.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
So they've got to address the defense, and that to me is why it's like you've got to get multiple veteran options. That has to be their way forward is accepting, are we going to be a – there's a lot of talk about Jokic hasn't played with an all-star and I don't know that adding an all-star, unless you're getting a guy that is a top level defender and an offensive all-star in his prime helps here.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
Like, I don't know that that helps if you get a name because you need multiple defenders who can shoot around Jokic to provide that spacing. That to me has to be the direction of the franchise going forward.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
Yeah, I think it's a combination of the CBA and then the Luka trade, and everyone's just broken. Everyone's just broken with the amount of urgency you feel.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
I've been wrestling with this because there's so many teams, it feels like, that are having 45-plus win seasons who feel this immense stress and pressure and this unhappiness with where they are, in part, I think, because flexibility is so limited. You can't make other moves to try and be like, well, we'll give this some time, and we'll try and figure this out, and we moved in the right direction.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
With the Nuggets, Zach, thanks for having me on. I think the biggest thing to kind of look at here is for the last two months, the defense has been spiraling. And Malone has come into those press conferences, and I have never heard him as resigned as he has been about the defense, about he did not know how to get it. the players to do the things that they've been told.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
And the players have echoed that sentiment. The coaches are doing their job has been a quote that they have said a lot. Jamal Murray, Christian Brown, these players have said, it's not the coaches we have to execute. We've been told what to do and we just don't do it. But once you hear that, you realize this is a real risk of them having tuned out the head coach after 10 years.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
On top of all the stress of not having enough veteran options because of the front office's decision to not only go young, but to commit guaranteed multi-year contracts to second round players, to end of first round players, to build around them and lock in your roster spots so you don't have flexibility. All of that contributed. And on top of that, Zach, for the first time since probably 2018,
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
I've heard a lot about fractures inside the organization, that there's multiple factions, like you hear a lot about in the league. That hadn't been the case under Tim Conley, but it definitely was this year. And there were Malone's guys, and there were Booth's guys, and there were people caught in the middle.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
And that made for a toxic situation, I think, that impacted the locker room and the overall direction of the organization. From everybody working in that building, I think was having a hard time getting on the same page. And it was just...
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
Maybe they'll make a run, and ownership clearly decided for whatever reason, as details are still coming out, that this was the time that they had to make the move, that they had looked at the situation and decided this is what we're doing, and we're going to go ahead and make that move, I think in part because of hope that David Adelman can pull a rabbit out of a hat.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
But in general, it's still really shocking to see this done, that no matter what level of success you reach, your job is never safe.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
Yeah. And I think there's two kind of lanes here. And one is the hyper optimistic and one is the hyper negative. And so the hyper optimistic path here is okay. We do still have Jokic. We've proven that we can get through. We have all these matchup advantages. The Thunder don't want to see Jokic. There's a lot of teams that don't want to see Jokic.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
The Wolves are probably the only team that's like, it's fine. They don't enjoy it, but they're probably like, it's fine. all right, we can get this together. Adelman, every player in that locker room loves David Adelman. They've spoken glowingly about him when he's taken over, when Malone's been out.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
Yeah, including David Adelman. There's been some disagreements with the players on some schematic stuff, and maybe the idea is that Malone is outspoken in his beliefs. He's very confident in how he feels, so maybe there's more flexibility to build in the pathways to get something better out of the defense, and maybe they can make a run.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
The other side of this is on Sunday, Michael Malone said, we're not being cautious with Jamal Murray. He's out. He's injured. And I followed up and asked – what do you believe his status is for game one of the playoffs? And Malone kind of tilted his head and said, we're hopefully he can be back. And that set off like a five alarm fire in the media room.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
So now you have this question of, was this decision in part made because you do not expect Jamal back. And so you're just like, we're not going to make a run anyway. There was an idea of our expectation, my expectation. I wrote this as a sub stack. I write called the Denver dig was the, If they lose in the first round, then Michael Malone would not be retained. That seems reasonable.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
Okay, you've gone two years backwards. There's all this tension. The players have expressed that basically it's not getting through to them. You lost in the first round. You went backwards two years in a row. That makes sense. To do it now almost seems like we do not see a path where there is a good outcome here. That unless there is a dramatic redirection, There is not a path.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
Now, I still kind of believe that most players, once you fire the coach, are kind of like, oh, so the season's done. Like, that just seems to me, especially at this point, I don't know how you're like, yeah, we can do it. You just lost the guy that helped you win a title. You just lost the winningest coach in franchise history.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
You just fired the front office, so you're clearly moving in a different direction. A lot of guys on that roster have questions about what their individual futures are. So I think there's still all this uncertainty.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
And so my question is whether it's that super optimistic we can get this done because in Jokic we trust or if it's we're getting ahead of this because we know the ship is going down this season.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
Yeah, I think the answer there is probably like the cost saving has to do with probably their approach in the CBA negotiations towards building a CBA that literally restricts ownership from having to spend because, hey, can't spend. No flexibility if we do that, and that is probably where that happened in.
The Zach Lowe Show
Instant Reaction Pod With Matt Moore: Breaking News in Denver
I've been covering the Nuggets here for 13 years, and my experience with them is this, is that they are willing to pay for premium players. They're willing to pay the tax to compete. They're willing to pay for players. Everything else is where the cost savings come in. They have not wanted to pay executives top level. They have not wanted to pay coaches top level.