After winning the 2023 NBA championship, Denver Nuggets head coach Michael Malone took some very subtle shots against LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers. James wasn't born yesterday; he knew that they were the objects of the Nuggets' banter even if their names weren't explicitly said, and as such, The King is coming into the 2023-24 season motivated to make the Nuggets eat their words.

This is exciting stuff for neutral fans, as they will get to witness the animosity between the Nuggets and Lakers grow even further, perhaps even into a full-blown rivalry. But Malone contends that there's no such thing as a rivalry between the two, even if they recently squared off in a heated Western Conference Finals series.

“That's not a rivalry. I mean, you can't play a team in the Western Conference finals twice in the last couple of years and think it's a rivalry,” Malone said, per Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN.

The Nuggets head coach does have a point. There needs to be more tangible vitriol between the two parties for them to decidedly become full-fledged rivals. As of the moment, it has been all bark and no bite from both the Nuggets and the Lakers, and their playoff battles haven't been heated enough for them to be classified as each other's nemesis entering the 2023-24 season.

At the moment, Michael Malone still has a high standard for what constitutes a rivalry, and the Nuggets and Lakers are yet to reach that standard of his. In fact, he's not thinking about it that much, as he doesn't want to get stuck in the past as he tries to steer his team to a successful championship defense.

“When I think of rivalry, I think Boston-L.A. I think of the Knicks and the Miami Heat back in the day. But I don't welcome it or not welcome it [with the Lakers]. I'm on 2023-'24. I'm not living four months ago,” Malone added.

Given how heated the Western Conference playoff picture figures to be, the Nuggets and Lakers will have to go through plenty of hoops (perhaps in a literal sense as well) just so they could face each other once more in the postseason and rekindle a “rivalry” that's still in gestation.