“Nobody wanted to fire Mike”: What went so wrong for the Kings?
Two years ago, Mike Brown led the Kings to a surprising third-place finish in the West. Six months ago, he received a $26 million contract extension. On Friday, he was fired.
The text messages came non-stop. After every practice and every field goal, De’Aaron Fox he was checking his cell phone for a detailed message from his now-former coach, Mike Brown.
“He texted me every day with a grade,” Fox told AM850 this weekend after Brown’s firing on Friday.
Fox liked the push.
“I’ve always been coached tough,” Fox continued. “I went to Kentucky because (former coach John Calipari) would be tough on me.”
That’s why Fox is bothered that Brown’s harsh comments about a serious offense he committed on Jaden Ivey at the end of Thursday night’s unseemly loss to the Detroit Pistons, in what turned out to be the last postgame press conference of Brown’s Kings tenure, had anything to do with the organization’s decision to part ways with the coach Friday afternoon.
“I feel like there’s a perception that people thought we disagreed,” Fox says. “You can ask anyone in this organization: Mike and I have never had an argument. We could disagree on something. We’d talk about it and it would be over. “.
If anything, Fox said Brown did exactly what he explicitly told him he would do, because he knew Fox could handle it and the team needed something to get them out of the crisis that ultimately cost Brown his job.
Three weeks ago, after a practice, Fox said he and Brown had had a heart-to-heart conversation about the team’s situation and what they could both do to help the Kings get out of what has now become a 5-game slide. -13. Brown told Fox that he believed he could become one of the best two-way players at his position, but that he had to keep pushing.
“It seemed good to me,” Fox said. “He told me things, then he told them to the media. And obviously he made me play 40 minutes because he wanted me to do those things. He was tough on that.”
This conversation between Fox and Brown came at the same time the organization was having difficult internal conversations about Brown’s future.
This summer, when management consulted with Fox before giving Brown a three-year, $25.5 million extension, Fox gave his blessing, saying, “I don’t want another coach.”
But Fox’s decision not to sign an extension like his coach did this offseason sent a message that was consistent with his long-standing priorities: winning and continuity.
This season, and with the firing of Brown, the team has done little of either.
IN LESS THAN two years, the Kings have gone from being one of basketball’s greatest stories (making the playoffs in Brown’s first year and lighting up the Sacramento skyline after every win in the shiny new Golden One Center) to 12th place in Western Conference despite offseason acquisition of six-time All-Star DeMar DeRozan.
In numbers, things looked good. The Kings’ offense ranks eighth in the NBA, five spots better than last season. The defense is 16th, just two spots worse. But they continued to blow big leads and lose close games despite having two of the league’s most proven clutch players in Fox and DeRozan: Fox won Clutch Player of the Year in 2022-23, and DeRozan was second to Stephen Curry last season.
And Fox and Keegan Murray They consistently rank among the best on-ball defenders in the league, so why didn’t that translate into better defense?
For weeks, everyone hoped this was just a streak of bad luck. That shot numbers, particularly those of Fox and Murray, would rise again. That Brown’s attention to detail in film sessions and practices would carry over to the game on the court, both in late-game situations and in general.
Brown put a lot of pressure on them behind the scenes and publicly. Several of his press conferences ended up going viral. He was all over the daytime talk shows last year when he brought a laptop to a press conference to explain why he was kicked out of a game.
But calling out your team publicly, explaining how the team needed to be more methodical and play the right way “possession after possession” 26 times, has a different impact when you’re losing.
“You can’t just throw your team under the bus like that,” a league source said.
As the losses piled up throughout November and December (14 of their last 20) and the Kings fell further and further behind in the Western Conference, the front office began searching for answers.
The Kings asked about Zach LaVine from Chicago, Brandon Ingram from New Orleans, Cam Thomas from Brooklyn and Kyle Kuzma Washington, league sources said. They looked at smaller moves, “just to shake things up,” as one source put it. According to sources, Brown was even asked if there were any roster or personnel changes to make that would help.
“No one wanted to fire Mike,” a Kings source said. “He’s a good coach. People here care a lot about him. Until the last moment we tried to make it work.”
THAT’S WHY, SOURCES said, the Kings let Brown handle the team’s video session and practice on Friday morning after the loss to Detroit, before informing him of their decision to fire him as he headed to the airport to fly with the team to Los Angeles.
General manager Monte McNair convened several calls and meetings with associate general manager Wes Wilcox, team president Matina Kolokotronis and governor Vivek Ranadivé during the Kings’ disastrous 0-5 home stretch, the media said. sources.
After the defeat against the Indiana Pacers On December 22, Ranadivé flew out of the country for the Christmas break and was not present for Thursday’s game against Detroit in which Sacramento blew a 19-point lead, including a 10-point lead with less than three minutes remaining. end. But I was looking.
And when everyone got in touch on Thursday night, it was decided to sleep and talk again in the morning. That call began as the team was starting their video session. This led to a few more calls and finally a decision.
McNair called Brown while driving to the airport to inform him of the decision. It was a somber call, sources said, between two men who had been at the top together less than two years earlier, when Brown was unanimously chosen as the league’s coach of the year and McNair chosen as its top executive.
The Kings’ decision (and its execution) drew criticism across the league. Nuggets coach Mike Malone called it “horrible.” Warriors coach Steve Kerr called it “shocking,” before adding: “I just know I feel very fortunate to work in an organization that really values continuity and allows our team, our staff, our group to overcome.” difficult moments”. Pistons coach JB Bickerstaff, for his part, called him “lack of class” and said: “When Mike puts in the work he does, he deserves better than that… I thought it was bullshit.” , to be honest, the way it was handled.”
After informing Brown, Wilcox and McNair called Fox, DeRozan and the All-Star forward Domantas Sabonis. Fox and DeRozan were getting ready to go to the airport. Sabonis was sick at home and was unable to take the call. None of them were consulted about the decision.
“That team has a lot of talent,” said a source with knowledge of the team. “The squad is good. They had to make a change.”
An hour later, assistant coach Doug Christie was named the team’s interim head coach. The team found out while they were sitting on the plane, waiting to fly to Los Angeles.
He is Fox’s fifth coach in his eight seasons. He is the Kings’ 13th coach since 2005-2006, the end of Rick Adelman’s career in which the franchise made the playoffs for eight consecutive seasons. Of the previous 12 coaches since Adelman, only one has posted a winning record in Sacramento: Mike Brown.
Christie has worked closely with Sabonis for several years and brings instant credibility from his playing days in Sacramento, where he was a key contributor to the Kings’ successful run in the early 2000s. It remains to be seen if he will bring wins to the team. pace the Kings expected after Brown’s success in the first season.
“Teams just adapted to us,” Kings guard said Malik Monk Saturday, when asked what has changed in the two seasons since the Kings won 48 games and finished third in the Western Conference. “They were surprised when we first went out with Mike, they didn’t know how we were playing, they didn’t know how we were going to play, and now they feel like they had time to adjust to us and get used to it.
“So, yeah, we just have to change things.”
