Each participant was there besides veteran guard Russell Westbrook, who had flown to Los Angeles the place his household lives, a number of sources stated. Gamers and assistant coaches made their approach to Ball Area’s observe court docket at 10:30 a.m. native time. At that time, unbeknownst to everybody however famous person middle Nikola Jokic, who had a short one-on-one dialogue with Kroenke beforehand, Malone was packing a few of his belongings in his workplace after being knowledgeable that his decade-long tenure in Denver was executed. “He instructed me, ‘We decided.’ So it was not a dialogue. It was a call,” Jokic stated Wednesday evening. “He instructed me why. And so I listened. And I accepted it.” As a substitute of understanding, the remainder of the gamers have been referred to as to an 11 a.m. assembly with Kroenke, the place they realized that the one coach lots of them had ever performed for had simply been fired. “It’s just so disrespectful,” one source close to the situation said. “That’s not how you treat a championship coach.” -via ESPN / April 11, 2025
