Nicholas Cage and Lisa Marie Presley got a longer honeymoon than David Adelman.
Man, it was fun, though. Right? Eighty-five days, pure bliss, from interim status to the Michael Porter Jr. trade. We’ll always have Sacramento, Coach. We’ll always have Inglewood.
“I want to win,” new Nuggets forward Cam Johnson said Friday at Ball Arena during an introductory news conference. “At the end of the day, I want to win. I want to win a championship. And obviously, we have the pieces to do it here. And that’s what I’m most excited about.”
From here on out, it’s business time. Hey, Adelman salvaged the spring admirably. He hopped onto a moving train, kept it from careening into the play-in round, survived the Clippers, then pushed the best team in basketball — the Oklahoma City Thunder — to seven games with a beat-up roster.
Fast forward seven weeks, and DA’s got more tools, sharper tools, in his shed to play with. The Nuggets’ VP tag team of Jon Wallace and Ben Tenzer, on paper, knocked their first try at Jokic Era 2.0 out of the park, flipping two bad contracts (MPJ and Dario Saric) into four good players.
Come to think of it, this is how the Nuggets should’ve looked in 2023-24, when they were coming off a title run. Instead, ex-GM Calvin Booth went young, pooh-poohing the importance of a repeat in favor of a five-year plan. Naturally, it went wheels-up in about two.
Now Adelman’s been handed the kind of rotation his old boss, Michael Malone, always wanted.
“I mean, look, we’re sitting here in July right now,” Wallace offered Friday. “We think we’ve given ourselves a chance to give (Adelman) some tools, to have some resources to where we can be competitive. Obviously, the season has to play itself out.
“But do we feel confident? Yes. But like I said, there’s a lot of basketball to be played. These guys have to gel. (Adelman’s) got to put his new philosophies in. So, time will tell.”
Jonzer did their job. The ball, literally and figuratively, is in DA’s court. The better the roster, the hotter those stage lights burn.
Fair? When you’re a caretaker for the basketball legacy of the best player in the world, “fair” no longer applies. The Nuggets have finally backed up the Joker again with a supporting cast that’s no worse than third-best in the brutal, unforgiving Western Conference.
Adelman was rightfully applauded for guiding the wounded Nuggets through May and into a second-round exit. If they’re eliminated before the conference Finals next spring, he’ll be pilloried. And justifiably.
“I wouldn’t say I’m nervous because there are still enough basketball minds around,” former NBA guard and current NBA TV analyst Dennis Scott told me recently. “Settling on Adelman being the head coach, if I’m being honest, I think it’s a safe move because he knows where the bodies are buried. The guys know who he is. You’re not bringing in a brand new voice trying to change things overnight.”
Meanwhile, how cheesed off must Malone be right about now?
April’s Nuggets went six deep on a good day and ran out of gas, just like in 2024. July’s Nuggets, assuming center Jonas Valanciunas comes to his senses, have the juice to match the Thunder and Timberwolves, body for body. Shooter for shooter. Veteran for veteran.
One of those veterans, the amiable, 29-year-old Johnson, said the quiet part out loud a bunch on Friday. The Nuggets’ newest catch-and-shoot threat uttered the word “championship” four times over about 20 minutes of back-and-forth with reporters. He said “win” or “winning” on seven different occasions.
Johnson even noted that the stakes hit him, of all places, while noshing at a breakfast spot in greater Phoenix, not long after the Nuggets-Nets trade was reported. A table of Denver fans recognized him and made a giddy approach.
“This whole table, I’m talking 10 old people, were shaking,” Johnson recalled.
Other than that, coach? No pressure. It’s now or never. And as Lisa Marie’s dad once sang, tomorrow will be too darn late.
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