“I Made It Look Too Easy”: Delusional Calvin Booth opens up about time as Nuggets boss and nasty exit

Former Denver Nuggets general manager Calvin Booth broke his silence this week in a wide-ranging interview with Yahoo Sports’ Kevin O’Connor, offering his first extensive public comments since his shocking dismissal nearly a year ago.

Booth came across as neither reflective nor accountable. Instead, Nuggets fans got something far more revealing: a portrait of an executive who genuinely believes he was wronged, that the basketball world has failed to appreciate his genius and that the dysfunction which consumed Denver’s championship organization was mostly everyone else’s fault. It’s a combination of those factors that explain why Booth is currently consulting on college basketball NIL deals instead of running an NBA franchise, despite his inability to understand why.

The 75-minute conversation on “The Kevin O’Connor Show” is a sit-down with a still-proud championship executive who makes some good points, but fails to understand why he isn’t running a pro basketball team.

The interview’s most telling moment came when Booth explained why he thinks other teams haven’t come calling. His answer? He “made it look too easy.”

“A lifetime’s worth of playing basketball, being coached, having conversations, scouting — for me to go in there right away, assemble a championship team, win a championship,” Booth told O’Connor. “Anybody that’s really good at something, when they make it look easy, that was really, really hard to get to.”

That claim alone is laughable, but what followed borders on parody.

“Honestly, I think you could put 100 GMs in my position, three or four of them do as good as I did,” Booth said.

When Booth took over as the lead executive of the Nuggets, he inherited a roster featuring an MVP in his prime and all of the building blocks there. His home run first offseason was an execution of a plan already in place before Tim Connelly left. No doubt Booth should get credit for making the additions of Bruce Brown and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope while drafting three solid NBA players in Christian Braun, Peyton Watson and Collin Gillespie.

But for how good that was, there was far more bad.

Booth let Caldwell-Pope walk to Orlando a year after the title because the Nuggets didn’t pay up. He extended Zeke Nnaji to a contract that became an immediate albatross. He saw one of the worst Game 7 collapses in hoops history and then was pushed out less than 12 months later just before the playoffs because his team imploded so spectacularly down the stretch — a move so unprecedented it stunned the entire league. Both seasons suffered from the same issue — a lack of depth — while Booth used non-playable players to fill out a third of the team’s roster.

This man believes he made it look too easy, and that 96 out of 100 executives couldn’t have pulled off what he did.

“There were a number of jobs open. I didn’t speak to one owner,” Booth admitted later in the interview. “I spoke to one secondary ownership group in Atlanta. My door wasn’t knocking down with people waiting to hire me.” He attributes the silence to “media manipulation” and narratives being “blown out of proportion” rather than the reality of what he presided over and the culture he eroded.

Throughout the conversation, Booth attempted to reframe the well-documented cold war with Michael Malone as something mundane — just the normal friction that exists between any coach and front office. “Never a physical altercation in front of people. Never a verbal altercation in front of people,” Booth said. “So, like, where’s the beef?” He dismissed reports of tension as “potential gossip” and insisted the whole thing was “blown way out of proportion.”

But here’s the thing about that framing: tension between coaches and GMs happens everywhere, as Booth himself acknowledged. What doesn’t happen everywhere is both parties getting fired on the same day. That’s not a narrative problem — that’s organizational dysfunction so severe that ownership had to perform emergency surgery on its own championship hopeful team with the playoffs three games away.

Booth eventually conceded there was some friction, then tried to frame it as inevitable given the stakes. “When the stakes were higher, when we were competing for a championship, I think some of that tension is natural,” he said. “Is it fair to say there was tension? I think there’s tension everywhere at that point.” He claimed he “believed in letting the coach coach” and “never even tried to position myself like [Malone] was reporting to me.”

Yet we know the flashpoints — the fights over playing time for Nnaji and Jalen Pickett, the disagreements over veterans versus youth, the organization splitting into camps where staffers and players became either “Booth guys” or “Malone guys.” Booth wanted his draft picks on the floor developing. Malone preferred veteran reliability around Nikola Jokic. Neither would bend, and eventually the whole thing snapped under the weight of two men who couldn’t coexist.

The most insulting moment for anyone who actually cares about the Nuggets came when Booth suggested Denver doesn’t appreciate what the team accomplished.

“It’s almost like the championship isn’t real in Denver,” he said. “They never talk about it. All they do is talk about the next one. I don’t think some people within the organization really realize how hard it is to win. I think it just happened too easily and I think a lot of people in that community take it for granted.”

This is rich coming from the man who explicitly told O’Connor back in 2023 that “if everything is optimized, we should win three or four” championships. So which is it, Calvin? Should Denver have celebrated the one title more, or should they have been chasing the dynasty you promised?

The Nuggets didn’t have the “Bad Boy Pistons to go through,” Booth noted, comparing Denver’s path unfavorably to Chicago’s runs in the ’90s. He mentioned Jamal Murray’s ACL and Michael Porter Jr.’s back issues as adversity but suggested it wasn’t the kind of hardship that forges proper appreciation.

But that’s a pretty skewed way to look at it instead of the team being robbed of two chances to win with their star player at the peak of his powers.

One could argue pretty clearly that the Nuggets and Murray’s knee are one of the biggest what-ifs in NBA history.

As for the single title? Denver has had a pro basketball team for over 50 years and hadn’t gone to the Finals since they were in the ABA. Just getting there was cause for a parade, let alone winning it, and so easily. No hoops head in the Mile High took it for granted, aside from maybe the general manager who thought he could let championship pieces walk and replace them with youth and cost-controlled contracts without missing a beat.

The biggest departure was championship starter KCP.

“Was there an all-out effort to pursue him and offer him what he wanted right away? There absolutely was not,” Booth said.

By the time the Nuggets tried to match Dallas, KCP “probably felt disrespected and all that kind of stuff and didn’t even consider that an offer.” Orlando’s no-state-tax advantage made it “just too hard to beat.”

Then there was Brown. The Nuggets were limited in what they could offer him, and Booth’s response was a meek “did what we could.”

And the less talked about rotation guy who left after the title was Jeff Green. Though he is still in the NBA, he was already nearing the end of his long career even then. Booth revealed the veteran wanted a two-year guarantee that would have cost an additional $5-6 million in luxury tax. The organization balked, Green got an $8 million per year offer from Houston, and suddenly another championship piece was gone.

“I don’t think any president of basketball operations or general manager in their right mind would ask their owner to spend just $5 million extra dollars for an extra year of a contract,” Booth said.

To be fair, Booth deserves credit for some moves. Trading up aggressively to draft Watson at pick 30 looks brilliant now that the forward has emerged as perhaps the most coveted restricted free agent in years, someone who’ll command $20-25 million annually, per Booth. And sources say he would’ve given Watson $80 million over four years or just about had he been in charge this summer, which looks like a bargain.

Braun developed into a legitimate starting shooting guard. Gillespie, signed to a two-way, is now a key starter on the surprising Suns. Pickett is finding his footing as a rotation player. Julian Strawther is an NBA player for sure. Even Jay Huff has turned into a rock-solid role player elsewhere.

“You cannot separate Peyton Watson and Christian Braun from some of the other things that people weren’t happy with,” Booth argued. “If we sign Brown back, we sign KCP back, or bring Torrey Craig back out there — do Christian Brown and Peyton Watson do what they’re doing right now? Probably not. Definitely not. They’re not going to play.”

It’s a valid point about development requiring minutes. But it ignores that the Nuggets could have had both — veteran depth and young player development — if the organization had been willing to spend more aggressively. Booth was navigating those waters, and he navigated them into a shipwreck. And that’s not even mentioning that Watson and some of these other young players likely weren’t the right picks for a team whose window demanded win-now contributors, not projects. Booth mentioned he was inspired by the now-known failure that is the two-timelines plan that Golden State tried.

Booth described what he called “the gift and the curse of Jokic” — that when you have a three-time MVP, everyone else gets taken for granted.

“But I actually think it’s the opposite,” he said. “I look at the Chicago Bu lls, the Spurs, the teams that won multiples — everybody does their job the best. You could have argued in those scenarios that they had the best president, best coach, best star, best role player, best sixth man.”

It’s an interesting framing that simultaneously asks for more credit while acknowledging Jokic’s transcendence. The problem is Booth seems to believe he was the best GM for Jokic when his tenure after the title was defined as much by departures and dysfunction as by the championship parade itself, especially given what Connelly built before him.

Even discussing his successors’ work, Booth couldn’t help but claim partial credit.

“A lot of the moves they’ve made, we talked about when I was there,” he said of the current front office trading MPJ for Cam Johnson and bringing back Bruce Brown. “They did their own unique things, but it’s some paint-by-numbers stuff in the new CBA.”

The man can’t even compliment Ben Tenzer and Jon Wallace without reminding everyone he thought of it first.

The strangest moment came when Booth offered something approaching grace toward Malone.

“He doesn’t mind commentating games, but he would probably die to coach an NBA team tomorrow,” Booth said of the winningest coach in franchise history, now working at ESPN. “And he deserves it. He’s a championship coach.”

Then he shut down further questions about the rift, saying “I don’t think there needs to be an autopsy on that whole deal.”

But it’s an autopsy that will follow these two men forever and be written into the franchise’s history.

Booth and Malone had irreconcilable visions for how to support Jokic during the prime of his career. Booth wanted youth and cost control and a sustainable model. Malone wanted veteran reliability and winning now. Neither communicated well with the other, neither compromised, and the organization fractured into factions. The focus shifted from winning to being right. And when it all collapsed — when the team lost seven of 10 games down the stretch in 2025 and players were openly frustrated on the bench — ownership cut out both tumors at once.

“Some version of this was going to happen,” Booth admitted. “Could have been quieter. Could have not grown legs with the media. Could have not been such a crawl in ownership’s pants.”

That last phrase is telling. Booth acknowledges the conflict became a problem ownership had to solve. But even now, nearly a year removed, he can’t fully own his role in creating that environment.

“When you said a winner or loser, that’s a reference to a game,” Booth said about what ownership told him upon his dismissal. “It’s not a game to me. It’s my life.”

Fair enough. But when your life’s work results in a championship followed by organizational chaos so complete that your boss fires you and your counterpart simultaneously in a move that shocked the NBA — perhaps some introspection, rather than a media tour claiming you made it look too easy, would serve you better.

Maybe Malone deserves blame too. He probably does. But Malone isn’t the one out here telling Kevin O’Connor that 96 out of 100 coaches couldn’t have done what he did. Malone said he still has “a bad taste” from how things ended and that he wants to get back on a sideline. That’s about as much as we’ve heard from him on this specific topic.

Booth made some good moves in Denver. He also made some real bad ones. He won a championship and watched the foundation crumble. He had tension with his coach that became untenable. That’s not a narrative that was “blown out of proportion” by the media or anyone else. That’s just the reality of what happened — and maybe that’s why his phone isn’t ringing.

He made running the Nuggets look too easy. Finding another job running an NBA team? Not that easy.