NBA fans think Mike Malone took a gleeful shot at LeBron James over retirement rumors

With an NBA title officially under his belt, Denver Nuggets head coach Mike Malone has earned the right to talk an appropriate amount of trash. But before his team finished its climb up the NBA’s tallest summit, Malone made a lot of headlines for what he believed was a massive disparity in coverage between the Nuggets and the Los Angeles Lakers.

On Wednesday, in a reflective appearance on The Pat McAfee Show, Malone showed he hasn’t entirely forgotten how the Lakers seemed to draw so much attention away from a team that swept them in the Western Conference Finals.

When asked about the Nuggets’ new place as kings of the West (and the league), Malone appeared to make a not-so-subtle joke about LeBron James. The Lakers star, of course, had rather convenient rumors about a possible retirement right after the Nuggets qualified for the NBA Finals.

And Malone seemed so delighted to talk about his own rather convenient “retirement.”

Man. I can’t remember the last time James and a team he played for were the likely butts of a low-hanging fruit joke like this. For Malone’s sake, if the Nuggets continued dominating the West and the league in the years to come, I don’t think he’ll have to worry about Denver lacking a requisite spotlight anymore.