SACRAMENTO — Early Friday afternoon, not long after Mike Brown completed his final practice as head coach of the Sacramento Kings with an 18-minute news conference, general manager Monte McNair called him. Assistant general manager Wes Wilcox, who was finishing up a separate phone call, eventually joined the conversation on speaker phone.
Brown’s two-and-a-half-season tenure was over. He was fired while on the move, having left the facility to prepare for a flight to Los Angeles for Saturday night’s road game against the Lakers.
That generated an awkward interlude on the tarmac for the leftover players and staffers. They’d just completed a Brown-led practice session and abruptly learned of his dismissal — minutes prior to it leaking to the public — leaving them on a stagnant plane for a stretch waiting to hear who was now in charge.
After their first two winning seasons in nearly two decades had the organization and its community believing in the “Beam Team,” the Kings were stuck in a turbulent neutral again, a December rough patch leading to a reminder of the incessant instability.
Doug Christie’s absence was noted by a few in attendance, a signal of the news to come. The beloved former Kings guard and current assistant coach was meeting with the higher-ups, accepting their offer of a promotion into the main seat on an interim basis and leaping lead assistant and former Toronto Raptors head coach Jay Triano in the process. McNair and Wilcox eventually relayed the decision. Christie joined the plane. It took off for Los Angeles, completing a dramatic 24-hour stretch for the franchise that reverberated around the league.
The collective shock born out of Brown’s accomplishments during his short time in Sacramento was impossible to miss, especially because of the status of his most vocal supporters.
From Golden State coach Steve Kerr to Indiana coach Rick Carlisle to the most fiery of them all, Denver’s Michael Malone, there was a strong sense that Brown had been scapegoated in this situation. The collective takeaway, in turn, was that this was a reminder as to why the Kings organization has struggled to generate stability and success for decades. And Malone, more than anyone else, had hinted at the past dysfunction that came back into view with this controversial decision.
“I’m not surprised that Mike Brown got fired because I got fired by the same person,” said Malone, who was controversially let go in 2015 by the Kings only 24 games into his second season, referring to controlling owner Vivek Ranadive. Malone concluded his soundbite with a harsh critique of the manner of the dismissal: “No class. No balls.”
From the organization’s perspective, team sources said, there was no specific purpose or malice intended with the timing or execution. The decision to dismiss a head coach — one who leaves with more than $20 million guaranteed on an extension signed less than six months ago — comes attached to several necessary conversations and boxes to check. The ultimate green light from ownership didn’t arrive until the early afternoon, after the practice and before the flight. Team sources said there is no coaching search planned beyond Christie, who should have the remainder of the season to prove he’s worthy of a longer look.
Ranadive, who gets ultimate decision-making power, has been notably upset with the team’s recent play and has a history of cycling through coaches. Christie will be the eighth in his 12 years of control. Matina Kolokotronis, the organization’s chief operating officer, has long been an influential voice and a known fan of Christie’s.
But team sources insisted the decision to fire Brown was McNair’s. The organization is choosing to back the front office of McNair and Wilcox, who are still considered safe amid all this Kings struggle. The roster’s depth has eroded the last two seasons, forcing Brown to search a rotation that hasn’t always had answers. It’s a weakness the front office acknowledges and is still attempting to remedy by the Feb. 6 trade deadline.
“This was a difficult decision and I want to thank Mike for his many contributions to the organization,” McNair said in a late Friday news release.
It’s been a turbulent couple of seasons for the Kings. They outplayed expectations in Brown’s first year, winning 48 games and slipping into the third seed to break a 16-year playoff drought. He became the first unanimous Coach of the Year in NBA history and had what felt like a near 100-percent local approval rating.
But Brown and the Kings became victims of their own success. Expectations rocketed. They still won 46 games his second season, but the Western Conference strengthened around them, rendering them the ninth seed and an eventual Play-In loser. Their offense slipped from first to 13th — a fact Ranadive obsessed over, team sources said — while their defense improved from 24th to 14th, the side of the ball that Brown felt needed strengthening for legitimate playoff success.
When the offseason hit and Brown made it clear that he was looking for a significant raise, a strained negotiation unfolded that eventually led to his extension. Both sides recommitted to one another, but some lingering tension remained over the way the deal had gone down.
“There are a lot of people who may not like this,” Brown told The Athletic prior to his second season. “But the reality of it is that in order to be great sometimes you’ve got to roll the dice. It may not work. We may not have the success that I think we can have, that I truly believe we can have. And people may say at that point in time, ‘Well, you should have continued to do what you’re great at, which is focus on the offense.’ Nah. I think we still have a chance to be (great). (But) there’s a ton of room where we can improve defensively.”
As Brown walks out the door this week, the team’s metrics aren’t terrible. They are eighth in offense and 16th in defense. But their repeated breakdowns late in tight games led to the disappointing 13-18 record and ramped-up tension.
Two weeks ago, they returned home 13-13 after a three-game win streak with a palatable five-game homestand to generate some traction. That’s when everything went haywire.
In the first game, they lost in the last second after DeMar DeRozan — the front office’s prized offseason acquisition who has not fit as intended two months into a multi-year deal — fumbled a pass with a path to a game-winning layup. Brown ripped the team’s inability to execute a defensive gameplan postgame. They’d given up 130 points.
The rival Lakers came to town next and beat the Kings twice. Before the first loss, De’Aaron Fox’s agent, Rich Paul, met with the front office to discuss his client’s uncertain future. By all accounts, the pressure was being applied and the temperature was rising. The prospect of Fox potentially asking for a trade had never been real.
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In Brown’s ensuing pregame news conference, he made a circle with the microphone wiring and indirectly noted the need for people in the group to have two feet in the circle, not one foot in and one foot out. The message, it seemed clear, was aimed squarely in Fox’s direction.
The second Lakers loss ended after the officials missed an out-of-bounds call and the Kings missed a box out on a free throw in the closing seconds. In his postgame news conference, Brown went into detail about the error in execution from his team and All-Star Domantas Sabonis that led to the fateful rebound.
The next night, the Pacers and Tyrese Haliburton — a perpetually sensitive name in Sacramento considering the current front office traded him to the Pacers for Sabonis to rearrange the roster into its current form — came in and blasted the Kings by 27 points, drawing boos from the home crowd most of the second half. Ranadive sat in his familiar courtside seat for that game, with his growing frustration visible — and audible — throughout.
That set the stage for Friday’s catastrophe. Without Sabonis, away from the team with an illness, the Kings looked spirited for the majority of the game. They led by as many as 19. They were up 10 with under three minutes left. They’d all but sealed a get-right win.
But then disaster hit in crunch time again. Defensive mistakes and a slowed offensive approach trimmed their lead to three with 10 seconds left. The coaching staff instructed them to foul on the floor and — at all cost — take away the 3.
The players did neither, missing a couple of opportunities for a foul before the ball was swung to Jaden Ivey in the corner, who Fox curiously left wide open. Realizing his error, Fox closed out egregiously and fouled as Ivey rose for a 3. He hit it, made the free throw, won the game and clinched an 0-5 homestand for the Kings. Those departing the building, as one team source put it, were “on fire” afterward.
Brown was firm in his criticism of Fox postgame. He’d been hammering the Kings about the defensive details for two years running — believing if this franchise really intended to make a leap into legitimacy, it needed to focus more, scout better, practice harder and certainly take defense a whole lot more seriously. Winning in the NBA requires an uncomfortable level of work and conversation and accountability. Brown has seen it on four championship teams in his nearly three decades in the NBA.
But the stern news conferences were beginning to wear on some players, team sources said, and were part of the decision to part ways with Brown. His last postgame news conference, directed squarely at the team’s star guard, was delivered in the same week Fox appeared to be increasingly thinking about a future elsewhere. Fox gave a dismissive news conference of his own after the gaffe, skirting the questions and speaking for less than two minutes in all. Reporters spotted Brown after Friday’s practice in an extended discussion with Fox. He was dismissed about 90 minutes later.
Mike Brown had recently been critical of the defensive play of De’Aaron Fox, who had in turn signaled a possible willingness to move on from the franchise. (Sergio Estrada/USA TODAY Sports)
“When you go through adverse times, you know who was truly there for you,” Brown said in his final media session as Kings head coach. “People will jump off the bandwagon quick. The support, wherever it may come from, it may not always be there. But that’s part of what I have to deal with, not just from myself but holding everyone together. I’m OK with anybody criticizing me. I get paid to handle that. I get paid to get us through this. But whether it’s anyone that’s close — staff, players, friends, family — you’ll be able to tell who jumped off when we had some trying times. You always remember that as you go forward because you know who is truly in the foxhole with you and who is not. But at the end of the day, you best believe I’m going to handle all the smoke no matter where that smoke comes from. That’s what I’m paid to do.”
In some ways, the Christie move has been a long time coming. Back in November 2021, when the Kings decided to fire then-coach Luke Walton and planned on promoting Alvin Gentry, the then-associate head coach pushed to have the “interim” tag removed from his title.
But Christie, who served as a color commentator for the team’s broadcasts before his surprising addition to Walton’s staff just four months prior, played a tangential part in those talks, according to team sources. Ranadive, in need of leverage against Gentry, made it clear that he saw Christie as a viable alternative if they couldn’t get a deal done with the long-time head coach. In the end, that leverage helped get a deal done with Gentry.
Christie has established strong relationships with the Kings’ core players during his three-plus years on their bench. Sabonis has constantly raved about the extensive offseason work they do together. Christie’s messaging on Fox — that he’s fully capable of being an elite two-way player — has been embraced by the 27-year-old one-time All-Star. He now gets his chance to lead the franchise.
Brown, meanwhile, departs as one of the more accomplished and respected coaches suddenly on the open market with plenty of time to plot his next move. He had a 107-88 record during his time in Sacramento, leading the franchise’s most successful era since Rick Adelman roamed the sideline in the early 2000s.
“I won’t be here 50 years as the head coach of the Sacramento Kings, although I’d love it,” Brown told The Athletic prior to his second season, when his approval rating was at its apex. “So for me, if something was to end for me, as long as I can look in the mirror and I can honestly tell myself that I tried to do the best I could for this team, then I’m gonna be OK with it.”
(Top photo: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
