Tyronn Lue is riding out the 2016 championship like it's an unlimited lifetime pass to coach NBA basketball. For nearly a decade, that ring has shielded him from accountability, but the LA Clippers are 7-21 now, and the train has arrived at the station.
After Monday night's embarrassing 121-103 home loss to the Memphis Grizzlies and Thursday night's loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder, Steve Ballmer inexplicably continues to cling to the "stability" of keeping Lue and Lawrence Frank in place.
Meanwhile, a championship-winning coach is sitting at home who would be the perfect replacement: Michael Malone.
Michael Malone is the championship coach nobody's talking about
Michael Malone was fired by the Denver Nuggets in April 2025, just days before the playoffs and less than two years after winning the franchise's first NBA championship in 2023.
The timing shocked the basketball world; Denver was 47-32, sitting fourth in the Western Conference, and still positioned to make noise in the postseason. Yet team president Josh Kroenke fired both Malone and general manager Calvin Booth in a stunning organizational clean-out.
The reason? A broken rift between Malone and Booth that infected the entire organization, combined with the coach's message not landing in the locker room with the players anymore.
Sound familiar, fans of the LA Clippers? The parallels are eerie. Malone was the winningest coach in Nuggets franchise history with a 471-327 record across 10 years. He guided them to eight consecutive winning seasons, two Western Conference Finals appearances, and that 2023 championship. But when Denver lost four straight games and fell into a play-in battle, ownership decided it was time for a change.
Brian Windhorst reported that Malone's reaction to being fired "was not calm," which shouldn't surprise anyone. The man had just won a championship 23 months earlier, had Nikola Jokić playing at an MVP level, and got fired with three regular season games left.
That's the kind of deal that makes you hungry. He wants to prove he can still win, and it could be in LA.
Michael Malone replacing Tyronn Lue makes perfect sense
The LA Clippers need what Michael Malone brings: a championship pedigree, accountability, and a cohesive offensive system, rather than relying solely on Kawhi Leonard and James Harden to take turns.
Tyronn Lue has shown repeatedly this season that he has no answers when games get tight. The Clippers have been horrific in nail-biters, sacrificed double-digit leads with alarming regularity, and failed to execute basic fundamentals like inbounding the ball without stepping out of bounds.
Monday night's loss to the Memphis Grizzlies perfectly encapsulated everything wrong with Lue's coaching. The Clippers led 64-63 midway through the third quarter before allowing the Grizzlies to go on a 9-0 run and take complete control.
Memphis shot 52 percent from the field while Jaren Jackson Jr. dropped 31 points on 72 percent shooting, his first 20-point game in six contests. Even worse, role player Cam Spencer scored a career-high 27 points while making seven threes. The lack of adjustments, defensive breakdowns, and complete collapse in the second half, all fall on the coaching staff.
Malone wouldn't tolerate that nonsense. On the Denver Nuggets, he was known for holding players accountable, sometimes brutally. After a blowout loss to Portland late in the 2025 season, Malone ripped his team publicly.
That's exactly what the Clippers need. Not a coach who lets veterans sleepwalk through fourth quarters, burns timeouts on failed challenges, and prefers isolation basketball in 2025 when the entire league has moved toward pace-and-space. The Clippers need someone who will demand execution, accountability, and effort, the exact things Chris Paul was criticized for, ironically.
Malone also knows how to build an offensive system that doesn't rely solely on star power. In Denver, he constructed a system around Nikola Jokic that involved constant player movement, cutting, and getting role players involved.
Compare that to the Clippers, where there are possessions where everyone else stands around watching. It's basketball from a different era, and it's not working. The Clippers just won their first home game since October 31st, over a month and a half of home futility, because Lue has no system to fall back on when the stars aren't hitting shots.
The problem is the LA Clippers won't proceed with Michael Malone
Here's the catch: Steve Ballmer apparently believes that retaining Tyronn Lue and Lawrence Frank provides the LA Clippers with what is needed.
Everything in LA is complacent, yet Ballmer is content to let Lue and Frank "figure it out" as the Clippers sit with one of the worst records in the NBA.
It's the same mentality that led to firing Chris Paul for being "too critical" instead of addressing the actual problems causing him to be critical in the first place. The organization would rather protect egos than demand accountability.
Michael Malone is 54 years old, available, and motivated to prove the Denver Nuggets wrong. He's coached two NBA All-Star games, has a championship ring, and knows how to develop young players.
But instead of pursuing a proven winner who's hungry for redemption, the Clippers will stick with Lue, whose greatest accomplishment was inheriting a LeBron James-led championship team nine years ago.