Nuggets defensive coordinator Ryan Saunders will not be retained next season under new head coach David Adelman, a source told The Denver Post.
The Nuggets are not renewing the contracts of at least four assistant coaches, also including Popeye Jones, Charles Klask and Stephen Graham, a source told The Post, confirming a report by Chris Haynes. All four coached for the 2022-23 team that won the NBA championship — Denver’s first in franchise history.
Contracts are set to expire this offseason for the entire coaching staff. Some other assistant coaches are still waiting to hear if their deals will be renewed, one source said.
Saunders, 39, spent three seasons in Denver after a brief tenure as head coach of the Timberwolves. The Nuggets won the 2023 title with the 15th-ranked defense in the league, lower than the usual threshold for championship-winning teams. Their ranking improved to eighth-best the following year, but it dramatically regressed all the way to No. 21 this past season.
Adelman, 44, was the team’s offensive coordinator under former coach Michael Malone while Saunders ran the defense. Adelman said in his introductory news conference this week that he hopes to implement more variety into Denver’s defensive scheme going forward.
Jones spent four years on the Nuggets bench. Klask joined Malone’s staff in 2018. Graham was a player development coach with the team since 2016.
When the Nuggets hired Adelman to replace Malone, they wanted to “give him the ability to build the staff that he really wanted,” team president Josh Kroenke said last week. “That’s on one side of it, and then also to allow direct communication in as short an amount of time as possible for the people we may not want to keep. … I think that we need to reinvent ourselves in a way but not reinvent the wheel, if that makes sense.”
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