Calvin Booth

Look, let me just say this.

Calvin Booth did a very regrettable interview.

And I only say this because he regretted doing the interview with Kevin O'Connor a couple years ago after he was fired from the Nuggets.

But there are some real pearls within the interview.

And they'll tell you that we need to stifle some of that because the youthfulness, it's useful, but it needs to know its place.

And the thing is with the Denver Nuggets, y'all, we have been in a years-long struggle of how do we incorporate the up-and-coming next-gen Nuggets with the core of the Nuggets, where you have Malone and Calvin Booth for this power struggle for who controls division of the Denver Nuggets, who controls the future, who controls who's going to be on the team and who plays.

And that... fight became debilitating and ended up cracking and changing the culture of the Denver Nuggets.

And for so long, we have kind of walked this line of we have young players, but are they good enough? We have young players.

I mean, last night I was joking and I said, Trevor Brazil for rookie of the year and all this stuff.

I don't believe that is his trajectory, but I do think sometimes a team needs, unlike the way that, Calvin Booth saw this when he went too far in one direction.

Having a guy a guy like...

Trevor Brazil, who you can kind of plug in because he kind of does these little things like that and then kind of does the out-of-control athletic things that, quite frankly, no one else on this team can do, then, I mean, it benefits the team in such great ways because it kind of links everything together.

He was never a good player.

There was absolutely no reason outside of Calvin Booth and his big old head thinking that Russell Westbrook was better than Jalen Pickens.

Getting mad at Mike Malone for wanting to play veterans.

Again, if you look at what the Denver Nuggets could have had last year if they brought in Jonas Valanciunas, they brought in Tim Hardaway Jr., Russell Westbrook was still there.

If we

got one or two games like this from Trevon Brazil, then Calvin Booth would storm back in the building and signing for a max that day.

A 10-year max.

No, just three years.

And to me, that's what that feels like.

I remember Calvin Booth did an interview years ago with Kevin O'Connor, which he regretted doing because he revealed too much.

One of the things he said is overlap is the killer.

Having a bunch of guys that have similar skill sets.

Those two things are both, it's weird to say this, both of those scenarios are both equally, in my view, possible.

You know, people forget in the 2024-25 year with Michael Malone and Calvin Booth's slap fight that was going on that was really affecting the team, it took a three-game winning streak at the end of the year to get the Nuggets to 50 wins.

And that team was not heading to a good place.

And somehow they ended up the four seed.

But anyway, this Nuggets team was spiraling right when Josh Kroenke fired Michael Malone and Calvin Booth with three games left in the year.

And those things, you know, no one wants to put in their head in a scenario like that.

But the worst-case scenario of this Denver Nuggets team is the health goes south, and then the Nuggets are forced into a scenario where they have to make long-term choices rather than short-term choices.

This is, this is a, this is a-- or 11th year for Jamal, and Cam Johnson's heading to his 10th year, and, you know, this is, this is, this is harder to do with a veteran lineup.

And this is a problem Calvin Booth had when he tried the same strategy, and this is gonna be the same trouble, problem if the Nuggets try to shoehorn this in.

The best thing you could do for Trevin Brazile is to hope that he gets meaningful min- minutes midway through the year in a way that he is showing out, uh, in an obvious way in, in, in a part of the season that you could probably afford to be experimental, and that is why-- what the, the thing will be.

But the problem is Trevin Brazile doesn't know what he's doing on defense yet, and, uh, it was very glaringly obvious in the Clippers, uh, game.

Um, and be okay with that 'cause it's, it's just the way it is.

[clears throat] It's gonna be hard to wedge him into significant time due to the amount of veterans that this team now has.

If this was, like, maybe even two years ago, uh, I could see more of it due to the amount of, of drafted players that Calvin Booth had loaded the, uh, loaded the, uh, [clears throat] the, um, Nuggets lo- roster with.

But it-- that's not the case right now.