The Nuggets might undergo a lot of changes, but is Adelman one of them?
Denver Nuggets head coach David Adelman just wrapped his first full season, and the way it ended is not what anyone in the building expected.
After a 54-28 regular season and the No. 3 seed out West, the Nuggets got knocked out in six games by a Minnesota Timberwolves team that did not even have Anthony Edwards available by the end of the series.
With Nikola Jokic still in MVP form, an early exit like that gets people in Denver looking hard at the head coach, especially one who got the job under strange circumstances to start with.
The Case For Keeping Him
Despite that flame-out, president Josh Kroenke went out of his way at his end-of-season presser to back Adelman, and it sounds like he is coming back for year two.
Part of that has to do with how Adelman handled an injury-wrecked regular season.
He ran 28 different starting lineups and still got the team to 54 wins.
Denver even went 10-6 during a stretch when Jokic was out, which for a roster this tied to its three-time MVP is genuinely impressive.
The locker room is also clearly with him, with both Jokic and Murray defending him publicly after Game 6, and the front office thinking this same group can run it back.
There is also the simple fact that better options are not falling off trees right now.
The Case Against
The other side of this is real, though.
Adelman has now been outcoached in back-to-back playoff runs, and this one was uglier than last year's loss to OKC by a wide margin.
Minnesota was missing rotation pieces and the Nuggets still could not generate offense when it counted.
Jamal Murray made his first All-Star team this year and put up 25.4 points a night in the regular season, but he hit just 35.7 percent from the field over six playoff games.
A drop that severe is not all on the player, the staff owns part of that too.
With Jokic still in his prime, Denver's margin for error gets smaller every spring.
Adelman has not yet beaten a sharp veteran like Chris Finch when both benches are coaching for their lives, and that question follows him into year two whether anyone wants to admit it or not.
The Verdict
Keeping Adelman is a bet, not a no-brainer.
He is 44, he clearly has Jokic and Murray on his side, and there is real value in continuity going into a summer where this roster might look pretty different by August.
Still, if Denver wants another shot at a title before Jokic's prime is gone, year two needs to look a lot different than year one.
The pressure on Adelman is about to be the heaviest of his career, and the franchise is more or less betting that one more year of seasoning is worth more than whatever doubts came up this April.
If they are wrong, they will know it fast.