Denver Nuggets promote Ben Tenzer, add Jon Wallace in front-office restructuring
Associated Press file
The search is finally over.
After more than two months, the Nuggets again have a restructured front office.
Ben Tenzer, who served as interim general manager after Calvin Booth’s firing, will be Denver’s executive vice president of basketball operations, while Jon Wallace is the team’s new executive vice president of player personnel, according to an ESPN report. The Denver Gazette confirmed the hirings Monday morning.
Tenzer most recently served as general manager of Denver’s G League affiliate, Grand Rapids Gold, while maintaining his role as vice president of basketball operations with the Nuggets. He became the Nuggets’ interim general manager with three games left in the regular season and has led the team’s draft preparations. He’s been with the franchise since 2013 after graduating from the University of Colorado and Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles.
“With the benefit of hindsight, I can look back and see that very clearly that this organization does not need a cultural reset,” team president Josh Kroenke said at David Adelman’s introductory press conference.
“Ben has been unbelievable since he took the reins. … Ben and I have been spending a lot of time together, talking about each individual player and how we think we can improve them as individuals and within the context of the team. Ben has a lot of great ides of how we can improve the front office, both internally and externally.”
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Wallace is no stranger to the Nuggets. He previously served as a basketball operations associate in Denver in 2019 before being promoted to scouting coordinator. Then, he followed Tim Connelly to Minnesota in 2022. He most recently worked as the Timberwolves’ director of player personnel and general manager of the team’s G League affiliate. He played college basketball at Georgetown and played in the G League and abroad afterward. He returned to Georgetown in 2016 and spent three seasons on Patrick Ewing’s coaching staff before his first stint with the Nuggets.
The NBA Draft starts Wednesday, while NBA free agency begins June 30th.
The Nuggets don’t currently have a draft pick. If that doesn’t change in the next week, the first course of action for Tenzer and Wallace will be deciding what the Nuggets want to do with Trey Alexander, PJ Hall and Spencer Jones, last year’s trio of two-way players. The Nuggets have until June 29 to extend qualifying offers or the second-year players will become unrestricted free agents.
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Christian Braun and Peyton Watson become eligible for extensions on July 1, while Nikola Jokic can extend his stay in Denver as soon as July 7.
It didn’t take as long for the Nuggets to find their next coach. The Nuggets fired Booth and coach Michael Malone on April 8. New coach David Adelman had his interim tag removed on May 22. It took another month to settle on the front office hires.
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Booth joined the franchise as assistant general manager to Connelly in 2017. Booth was promoted after Connelly left for Minnesota in 2022 and put the finishing touches on Denver’s championship roster.
Now, it’s Tenzer and Wallace’s job to craft another contending roster in Denver.




