The Denver Nuggets beat the surging Golden State Warriors on the road without starters Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray and Christian Braun on March 17, suggesting that they were in fact deep enough to vie for another NBA championship. Now, disarray and confusion hover around Ball Arena. When the Memphis Grizzlies fired head coach Taylor Jenkins with nine games remaining in the regular season, they were labeled madmen. Apparently, though, they are just trend-setters.

Denver stupefied the masses after dismissing Michael Malone and Calvin Booth, the only HC-general manager duo to guide the franchise to a title in its long history. Those who had closely been watching the team over the last few weeks recognized problems. The defensive effort is inconsistent, bench depth is lacking and end-of-game mistakes are piling up. Jokic is playing better than ever, and yet, the Nuggets are in the midst of a four-game losing streak.

Nevertheless, no one expected the organization to initiate a massive spring cleaning project with the playoffs right around the corner. Hall of Fame forward and 2008 Finals MVP Paul Pierce believes ownership's decision to overhaul the management structure at this juncture shows a skewed sense of priorities.

Paul Pierce rips into the Nuggets

“Denver is not serious,” he said on Fox Sports 1's “Speak.” “Firing their coach a week before the playoffs does not give them their best chance to win a championship. What this is telling me is you're wasting one of the greatest players of this generation.

“How do you go into the playoffs with a focus like ‘hey guys, we're going to talk about winning a championship,' where now the next week or two they're going to be talking about the firing of the coach in the locker room. How are you going to be focused on winning in the playoffs when that's going to be a subject of every conversation from hereon out.”

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Pierce sees Malone's firing as an encapsulation of the Nuggets' inability to maximize their title contention window. Bruce Brown Jr. and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, key role players from the landmark 2022-23 campaign, departed in free agency in consecutive offseasons. Booth, despite locking up Denver's core, was unable to assemble an effective supporting cast. The team collapsed in the Western Conference Semifinals versus the Minnesota Timberwolves last year and might fall into the NBA Play-In Tournament in 2025.

All of these missteps are occurring as Nikola Jokic puts together one of the most dominant individual seasons ever witnessed. He is generally mild-mannered, but Paul Pierce is throwing out the possibility of the three-time MVP center reaching a breaking point.

Can Denver keep Nikola Jokic happy?

“I wouldn't be shocked if Joker demands a trade this summer,” he said. A distressful situation could turn into a never-ending nightmare if Jokic takes his future into his own hands.

The Nuggets (47-32) are barely clinging to fourth place in the West, in realistic danger of falling into seventh or eight place in the final three games of the season. They must immediately work out all the bugs under interim head coach David Adelman, otherwise Pierce's words will be hard to deny.