Brian Shaw Fired by Nuggets: Latest Details, Comments and Reaction

Brian Shaw spent nearly a decade on an NBA bench as an assistant before landing his first head coaching job. The Denver Nuggets relieved him of those duties after less than two seasons. The team announced the decision on Tuesday: 

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The Denver Nuggets have relieved Brian Shaw of his head coaching duties, General Manager and Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations Tim Connelly announced today. Additionally, Melvin Hunt has been named interim head coach for the remainder of the season.

“I want to sincerely thank Brian for his time with our organization,” said Connelly. “You won’t find a better guy than Brian and he is one of the brightest basketball minds I’ve ever been around. Unfortunately things didn’t go as we hoped, but we know with his basketball acumen that he has a very bright future ahead of him.”

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Chris Dempsey of The Denver Post first reported the firing, and Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports confirmed it.

Wojnarowski later reported that assistant Melvin Hunt will become the team's interim coach.

Pacers reporter Scott Agness provided some insight from the team, including reaction from David West and Frank Vogel:

Paul George also weighed in on the decision to let Shaw go:

The Nuggets fired Scott amid his second straight disappointing campaign in Denver. They are 20-39 through Monday night's games and 56-85 in Shaw's tenure.

Taking over a Nuggets team that had won 57 games under George Karl in 2012-13, Scott was expected to bring a more stringent defensive mindset to meld with an already unique offense.

Instead, Denver often resembled an incoherent mess, unable to determine its rotational makeup and philosophies on both sides of the ball on a night-to-night basis. Shaw's 2013-14 Nuggets finished 21 games worse than the season before, and they are well on their way to a second straight losing campaign this year. They battled back after a miserable 2-7 start to stick around .500 for most of the season but started falling apart shortly after the calendar turned to 2015.

They won five of their first six games in January, but the Nuggets closed the month by losing nine of 10. Things got so bad in February, when Denver went 1-9, that Shaw began wondering whether the team was actively tanking games.

Brandon Dill/Associated Press

"It just looks like you almost have to try to lose as bad, and in the way we've been losing," Shaw said, per Nick Groke of The Denver Post. "At that point, something gives. The decision-makers at some point are going to make a decision. And everybody is going to have to live with it. Then it's out of our control."

Denver has been mediocre offensively and has fallen apart completely on the other end, hovering around a bottom-five defensive rating since Jan. 1, per NBA.com. Having been Phil Jackson's defensive guru with the Lakers, and having served as Frank Vogel's right-hand man in Indiana, it's Shaw's failings on that end that spelled his downfall.

John Schuhmann of NBA.com detailed just how bad the Nuggets had been in virtually every aspect of the game this season:

The Nuggets with Karl ran a funky bit of off-brand basketball, but it worked like a charm offensively and approached competency defensively. Shaw's more rigid, traditional style—which he adjusted, to his credit, especially in regard to pacing—was always an awkward mesh for this unconventional roster.

In a way, Shaw was always swimming upstream. Karl lost his job based on a power struggle, not performance. These Nuggets were always a team in need of a particularly innovative coach to thrive. Their roster is comprised of a dozen or so players who would be third, fourth, fifth or sixth bananas on a good team. It seems to lack a general direction, with logjams at nearly every position and eight-figure players injured or playing minimal time.

Ramona Shelburne of ESPN talked about how Shaw was more or less doomed by his roster from the start:

There are pieces in place for the next head coach in Denver; point guard Ty Lawson is a skilled all-around player when motivated, the type who can be a perennial All-Star. Forward Kenneth Faried and center Jusuf Nurkic are skilled players as well. But this team could certainly use an injection of talent to get back to contending. 

Ultimately, whoever coaches this team next better be prepared for a full-scale rebuild. The Nuggets, already capped out for next season, are going to need to make bold moves to remove themselves from NBA purgatory.

The last two seasons have proved this roster isn't good enough to compete in the West. That more than anything is the reason Shaw is looking for employment.

Follow Tyler Conway (@tylerconway22) on Twitter