Sep 21, 2026 · 44 min · 11 segments
On the latest episode of Pickaxe and Roll, Ryan Blackburn discusses Denver Nuggets head coach David Adelman and how important Year 2 will be for his future. Ryan discusses balancing trust in the…
And one of the major tipping points that you often see for teams is changing out the head coach.
It's one of the first things that they do, especially if they're locked into a roster and they can't really change the roster.
And that was the major decision that the Nuggets made back in the 2024-25 season.
But after that, Denver didn't necessarily make major changes to their main group either.
Michael Porter Jr., I think, was arguably part of the main group, like kind of In the in the fringes there like he's part of the the main starting lineup and Denver, of course, makes a change to the starting group.
But I think you can define the players that have been either all stars or close to all stars as Jokic, Murray and Gordon.
If you're not going to change that major personnel, and you change everything around it and see what works.
The year before that, end of 24-25, he did a really good job, I think, of kind of steering the ship while Denver was trying to recover and just gave a nice performance in the playoffs, had some things to learn, has a whole bunch of grace from that Denver loss to the eventual NBA champions, understandably so.
Then this last year happened, and I thought that Denver navigated it really well.
I genuinely think that between the offseason moves that they made, the decisions that they made, and in terms of the offense that they put together, the motivation that they needed to have, I thought that there were a lot of positive things.
That's what puts you into position to get into the playoffs, and Denver was a three seed.
And one of the major tipping points that you often see for teams is changing out the head coach.
It's one of the first things that they do, especially if they're locked into a roster and they can't really change the roster.
And that was the major decision that the Nuggets made back in the 2024-25 season.
But after that, Denver didn't necessarily make major changes to their main group either.
Michael Porter Jr., I think, was arguably part of the main group, like kind of In the in the fringes there like he's part of the the main starting lineup and Denver, of course, makes a change to the starting group.
But I think you can define the players that have been either all stars or close to all stars as Jokic, Murray and Gordon.
If you're not going to change that major personnel, and you change everything around it and see what works.
The year before that, end of 24-25, he did a really good job, I think, of kind of steering the ship while Denver was trying to recover and just gave a nice performance in the playoffs, had some things to learn, has a whole bunch of grace from that Denver loss to the eventual NBA champions, understandably so.
Then this last year happened, and I thought that Denver navigated it really well.
I genuinely think that between the offseason moves that they made, the decisions that they made, and in terms of the offense that they put together, the motivation that they needed to have, I thought that there were a lot of positive things.
That's what puts you into position to get into the playoffs, and Denver was a three seed.
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