Keeler: Josh Kroenke’s new Nuggets GM plan feels like Dunder Mifflin. Only joke’s on Nikola Jokic.

Dunder Mifflin is now Denver Mifflin Let me get this straight Josh Kroenke fired his coach and president of basketball operations in April to end years of not-so-secret intra-office backstabbing and rancor House Lannister stuff The Nuggets president explained he needed to get his franchise operating under one vision One plan One voice So he hires two mouthpieces And he takes two months to announce it Welcome to the corner of th and Chopper Circle where Nikola Jokic shouldn t sign anything else unless it s notarized by Dwight Schrute first After eight weeks of occasional news conferences and mostly silence Kroenke on Monday publicized that the Nuggets had filled their GM vacancy by not adding one Or rather by adding two Interim GM and incumbent Ben Tenzer becomes executive vice president of basketball operations while Minnesota Timberwolves staffer and former Nuggets scouting coordinator Jon Wallace comes on board as executive vice president of player personnel Co-managers basically Which reminded me more than a little of that season from the sitcom The Office in which Michael Scott Steve Carell and Jim Halpert John Krasinski split managerial duties at paper company Dunder Mifflin There was a koi pond hijinks ensued and Kathy Bates eventually had to step in and clean everything up Yes the Kroenkes have made a habit of hiring promising basketball minds as Nuggets GM over the last decade and a half But man do they have a heck of a time keeping those promising basketball minds And an even harder time explaining how they got there I don t know if I ll be any more or less involved Kroenke narrated us in April after letting go of the only coach Michael Malone and only director of basketball ops Calvin Booth to win his franchise an NBA title I think that from my perspective I ve constantly been pretty hands-on in a way maybe more so than certain people realize Related Articles Renck vs Keeler Will Rockies follow Charlie Monfort s advice for change Keeler Broncos Marvin Mims says bromance with QB Bo Nix just getting started We re going to do specific special things Rockies Journal German Marquez leads commerce parade hands off Ezequiel Tovar Hunter Goodman Grading The Week Shedeur Sanders necessities to slow down Or next ticket could be one-way flight out of Cleveland Keeler If Rockies really love Ryan McMahon German Marquez they ll commerce them What does that mean I m not sure But I think with my background it s natural for me to kind of think about it particular I mean I live and breathe this stuff This is what I do This is what I ve done for the last years And so if anybody has a good read on the group hopefully it s relatively me at my level But I m never going to be somebody that s saying what athlete to pick or anything like that I ve moved way past that in my career and my roles and my responsibilities That doesn t mean my basketball instincts won t kick in So why not just name yourself GM and be done with it No grey area No delegations No parsing What the Nuggets stated instead risks too countless layers too multiple forms too plenty of meetings too a large number of cooks The presumption is that Wallace is the basketball guy and Tenzer is the numbers guru So what if an agent has a question for the former about a contract clause Let me call Ben What if a member asks the latter why coach David Adelman isn t giving him enough minutes Let me call Jon and get back with you It s a bit like that old chestnut about co-starting NFL quarterbacks If you re using two do you really have any We kid we kid I mean this doesn t mean it can t work The Nuggets got to the Western Conference finals in behind a two-headed GM monster of Mark Warkentien and Rex Chapman And in Josh s defense his last three GM hires all landed in one way or another Masai Ujiri had never been an NBA GM when the Nuggets handed him the keys in August He flipped Carmelo Anthony into what became the winningest regular-season squad in the Denver s NBA history and acquired the draft pick that became Jamal Murray Tim Connelly was another first-timer plucked from New Orleans He drafted Nikola Jokic Murray and Michael Porter Jr traded for Aaron Gordon and built the core of the NBA champions The man who succeeded him Calvin Booth also hadn t ever been a GM before KSE elevated him He consummated the Kentavious Caldwell-Pope bargain and signed Bruce Brown within seven weeks of replacing Connelly Which capped off the greatest season this franchise ever had Then it got weird mind you but that s not the point The clock is ticking Jokic s clock in particular The next five months could shape the next decade of the franchise In two weeks the Joker is eligible to sign a three-year -million contract extension Christian Braun and Peyton Watson are up for extensions this summer too and the domain pegs the former jumping from million on his rookie deal in - to anywhere from - million annually going forward The Nuggets in - per Spotrac com are already projected to have four starters making at least million in the Joker million Jamal Murray million Michael Porter Jr million and Gordon million Meanwhile the too-young Thunder are too-young no longer an NBA champion with a surplus of draft capital still to burn The Rockets were a band of Alex Carusos who needed a front-line scorer to get them a bucket and just traded for Kevin Durant arguably the best pure scorer of his generation The Grizzlies in recent months added Cole Anthony old friend Caldwell-Pope and a slew of picks The Western Conference is like a shark If you re not constantly moving constantly looking you re dead in the water You re not bringing in a brand new voice trying to change things overnight NBA TV analyst Dennis Scott notified me in the last few days Hopefully the GM you bring in they get on the same page right away with the coach and owner Because that s going to help success When the head coach GM owner when all three are on the same page you have a better chance of winning Assuming of unit anybody can get a word in Want more Nuggets news Sign up for the Nuggets Insider to get all our NBA analysis