With the departures of George Karl and Masai Ujiri this offseason, Josh Kroenke has taken the Denver Nuggets in the direction of a more modern front office.

Kroenke hired Tim Connelly as general manager and Brian Shaw as head coach.

"We never want to tell the coach what he has to do: He has to decide the best combinations on the floor, who to play, what to run," said Kroenke. "But the best organizations in the NBA have that camaraderie, that cohesion, between the front offices and the coaching staffs. There's so much information available now, and this makes the most sense. It's a good dynamic to have, and you can feel everybody is on the same page here."

Kroenke was a heavily recruited basketball player in his own right and played rotation minutes a decade ago for Missouri.

Kroenke has built his resume controlling the Nuggets over the past three years.

"I've been around pro sports since an early age, with the NFL, the NBA, soccer," he says, "and I've picked up things. But I've also found my own path. There's always a fear of failure in this family. I don't want to feel out of place in it. I want to go prove things to myself.

"I think that I can figure out people pretty quickly, that I've developed a good sense of reading them," he says. "From a young age, I've had people coming to me asking me for stuff; people always want something."