For several seasons, the Coach of the Year award in the NBA has often proved to be a curse rather than a boon.

Back in 2013, George Karl won the award for coaching the Denver Nuggets, sans superstar, to a 57-win season. The Nuggets rallied around their coach’s playing style, getting up and down the floor with reckless abandon and having fun doing it.

A few weeks after the regular season ended, Karl was out of a job.

Mike Budenholzer won the award twice, once with the Atlanta Hawks, and once with the Milwaukee Bucks. The Hawks job was doomed after Paul Millsap and Al Horford departed in free agency in back-to-back seasons. The Bucks job took awhile to get over the top, and two years after winning a championship in 2021, the two-time award winner was out of a job again.

Monty Williams had it even worse. He won the award in 2022 for a phenomenal Phoenix Suns season, but poor playoff performance in back-to-back years forced him out. Williams signed a massive contract last season with the Detroit Pistons, and it turned out to be a disastrous fit for all sides. Williams was fired after just one season.

It’s a dangerous game to play. The Miami Heat have often lamented Erik Spoelstra never winning Coach of the Year despite clearly being deserving. Perhaps that lack of recognition has also saved Spoelstra’s job at times. There’s a spotlight that’s placed on an award winner, and if playoff success doesn’t immediately follow, scrutiny ensues. Spoelstra may never win the award, but it won’t change that he’s one of the greatest coaches in NBA history.

So, why pine away for Michael Malone to win a Coach of the Year award if it places the spotlight directly on him?

Well, the Nuggets need a jolt of energy in the worst way. After losing Bruce Brown and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in consecutive seasons, the Nuggets are less talented than they were in 2023. There was a perfect mix of talent, veteran leadership, youth, health, and hunger for success. It might never be a mix the Nuggets ever achieve again, at least in the way it initially happened.

Replacing two veteran wings are the young trio of Christian Braun, Peyton Watson, and Julian Strawther. There’s uncertainty there — not in the talent or capability but in how that trio can be maximized. Nuggets fans discuss Caldwell-Pope and Brown and often lament their lose because of the confidence in those players, seeing how they handled different scenarios, and succeeding under immense pressure. Braun was a smaller part of that group, playing 13 minutes per game in the 2023 playoffs. What happens when he’s asked to play 30 or more consistently? Ditto for Watson and Strawther who haven’t proven anything yet.

The Nuggets aren’t going without veterans entirely. In fact, they’ve brought in two that could make or break Denver’s bench units. Russell Westbrook has a well-charted history of playing aggressive, downhill, and often reckless. Dario Saric couldn’t finish the season in the rotation for the 10th seeded Golden State Warriors, a team that desperately needed size and skill in the frontcourt. Can those two resuscitate their careers in Denver? It’s a situation that makes sense on paper but might be a difficult fit, as all lineups without Nikola Jokic seem to be.

Oh, and Jamal Murray hasn’t signed a contract extension yet. Aaron Gordon is also eligible for contract extension. Nikola Jokic is fresh off of the Olympics and appears ready to go once the time comes.

That’s where Malone comes in and where he could really shine.

See, the primary reason why Michael Malone has a job is Nikola Jokic. Malone knows and understands this, and it’s not a slight. Every great coach is tied at the hip to their best player.

Jokic is also potentially the biggest reason why Malone has never won Coach of the Year. The Serbian center is just too good. It’s hard for Malone to garner enough credit for the success of the Nuggets while Jokic has three MVPs and a Finals MVP. When Jokic is off the floor, the Nuggets struggle consistently. There was a brief time from 2019 to 2021 when the Nuggets stabilized the bench lineups, but that time has long since passed.

Data via PBP Stats

It’s this stat that gives Malone critics their strongest ammunition. It’s also this stat that, if Malone could turn in the right direction, could give the Nuggets the 2024-25 season they need.

While the starters have been better than they ever have, it’s come at the expense of the bench unit. That’s where the Nuggets coaching staff has to dedicate more time and resources next year. Not just with bench players, but a built-in rotation of starters playing without Jokic more consistently. Jamal Murray, Michael Porter Jr., and Aaron Gordon specifically must re-learn to excel without Jokic again. All three struggle to drive consistent offense without Jokic, largely due to a learned dependency on the best player in the world. It’s time to break that up, and Malone can speed that process along, even if it costs some wins early.

Breakout seasons for Denver’s young bench wings in Peyton Watson and Julian Strawther would go a long way. Those two in particular give Denver some explosiveness. Strawther can catch fire offensively, and if he did it more consistently would remove some stresses on the starting offense being great ALL the time. Watson can catch fire defensively, and a consistent leap from him would look like a younger version of Herb Jones on the New Orleans Pelicans, someone who impacts the game every single night with defensive playmaking.

Not everything can be on Jokic’s shoulders this time, and if there’s a way for Malone to lessen that burden, he has to figure out how. A bench group that consistently keeps Denver in the game or even gives them an advantage would go a long way.

The only, and I mean only, responsibility on Jokic’s plate should be to get Christian Braun up to speed as fast as possible in the starting unit.

Let Malone and the rest of the roster worry about other problems.

Michael Malone is tied for the eighth best Coach of the Year odds at +1400 on BetOnline with a few others. He’s behind Joe Mazzulla, Jamahl Mosley, Nick Nurse, Tom Thibodeau, JJ Redick, Ime Udoka, and Mark Daigneault (last year’s winner).

Often times, a Coach of the Year award winner emerges when a team has a surprisingly good start to the season and then sustains that success for long enough after that. That’s how Thibodeau and Mike Brown won their recent awards. It’s difficult to foresee Malone winning an award that way because the Nuggets are unlikely to surprise anyone significantly. “Oh, the Nuggets are on pace for 55-wins? Whoop-de-do. They have Jokic. They’re guaranteed to win 50+.”

Now, if the Nuggets started the season 20-4 with Westbrook and Saric shining off the bench, Murray playing like an All-Star, and the young wings helping Denver’s Net Rating without Jokic? That would draw some attention. I don’t know how viable it actually is, but it would mean a lot for the Nuggets to get off to a great start and it not be entirely because Jokic is the greatest player ever. It has to be something schematic, or tangible growth from young players, or the successful implementation of a bench around Westbrook that works.

If the Nuggets can find a way to make that happen, I will be calling for Michael Malone to win Coach of the Year.

And they desperately need that kind of shot in the arm if this season is going to go the way many hope it can.