Like many other basketball fans, I was shocked last month when the Denver Nuggets abruptly fired head coach Michael Malone. Coming with only three games left in the regular season, this move tells us a lot about sports and society. The Malone case is an apt metaphor for what is happening in our lives.
I was taken aback because Malone is the winningest coach in franchise history. He compiled a 471-327 record over 10 years and led his team to net the National Basketball Association championship in 2023. Moreover, Malone coached the Nuggets for longer than any of his predecessors. But continuity can be a liability, not an asset.
A string of recent firings of NBA coaches is striking. Ditching Malone, along with general manager Calvin Booth, is not an isolated case. Mike Budenholzer (Phoenix Suns), Taylor Jenkins (Memphis Grizzlies), Mike Brown (Sacramento Kings) and more are on the list.
After 29 seasons, Gregg Popovich (San Antonio Spurs) stepped down in 2025. This longevity in coaching rarely occurs. Instability rather than stability is prized.
Propelled by hypercompetition and the need to turn a profit, shakeups in sports management happen frequently. Ethics and sentimentality be damned. The counterpoint to these feelings is, yes, capitalism is a ruthless system in which highly salaried individuals willingly assume the risk of job loss.
By this token, dismissing Malone was unsurprising. There is an underlying market logic. Structural drivers constitute impersonal processes that impinge on personal lives. Three powerful forces are in play.
#### Big money
Recurrent personnel changes are a byproduct of the vast wealth that dominates the sports industry. Nuggets team president Josh Kroenke, who decided to let Malone go, is heir to the Walmart family fortune and his father’s conglomerate, Kroenke Sports & Entertainment.
Josh Kroenke plays a major role in running the Colorado Avalanche, the Colorado Rapids, the English football club Arsenal and other business ventures. As principal owner of the Nuggets, he deals in a globalized market for labor imports, including Nikola Jokić (Serbia) and Jamal Murray (Canada).
Something similar to ending Malone’s tenure is happening with the consolidation of money and power in other enterprises, such as the media, publishing and health care. The marriage of big money and power is evident, too, in the executive branch of the federal government. Multibillionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is spurring mass firings and contributing to widespread despair: growing insecurity, heightened uncertainty, mental stress and societal distrust.
#### The churn factor
In the business world, the churn factor is a measure of performance. Although churn rate is often employed to calculate dissatisfaction, attrition is also seen as a positive signal in industry and, for Trumpists, a means to smash the state.
The likeness to management strategies in other sectors is palpable. For example, according to The New York Times (June 15, 2021), the turnover rate among warehousing and storage workers at Amazon’s distribution centers in 83 U.S. counties jumped an average of 30% above the previous average within two years of plant openings.
#### Creative destruction
Private-sector actors such as NBA owners are crafting new strategies and growing their enterprises to the point of “creative destruction,” an idea popularized by the eminent Austrian political economist Joseph Schumpeter. In his telling, innovations disrupt old structures and create new ones. The most recent advancements are rendered obsolete and superseded by leading-edge products. To execute these actions, old managers are removed. Their successors typically come aboard for but a short period.
In these cycles, nothing is enduring. Capitalism remains in flux. The challenge is to convert cumulative human costs into humane gains.
The overriding lessons of flipping NBA coaches are about more than basketball. They pertain to all of us. We can enjoy athletic contests and also read individual stories as vehicles for understanding vulnerability and reclaiming dignity.
I have three modest suggestions for making the sports industry serve society rather than the other way around. First, strive for greater transparency in transactions by dominant owners. Second, impose stiff taxes on personnel changes and use the proceeds to elevate underserved communities. Third, give fans more voice in how to remake the NBA in a democratic way. These steps could catalyze realigning American society and the economy.
_Jim Mittelman, a Boulder resident and Camera columnist, is an educator, activist, and author. His books include “The Globalization Syndrome,” “Hyperconflict,” and “Runaway Capitalism” (due out in late 2025)._