The Beam is dim, the arena is dark. The Sacramento Kings are firing coach Mike Brown, ESPN’s senior NBA insider Shams Charania reported on Friday afternoon. The Kings are in the middle of a nose dive and are currently on a five-game losing streak and have dropped 12 of their last 17 games.
Assistant coach Doug Christie, who played for the team from 2000 to 2005, will be promoted to interim coach, according to multiple reports.
On Thursday night, the Kings (13-18), five games below .500, lost in heartbreaking fashion to the (14-17) Detroit Pistons by one point on a four-point play in the game’s final seconds. According to ABC10’s Matt George, Brown was fired in a controversial way, after being allowed to run practice and talking to reporters, just prior to the team boarding a flight to Los Angeles for their matchup with their adversary, the Los Angeles Lakers on Saturday night.
“I’ve been through a lot in this business, I’ve been through way more good times than bad times, but I’ve been through some bad times,” Brown told reporters on Friday. “I’ve been fortunate, blessed … to be around great players and great coaches, and the crazy part about it is I’ve been around coaches that have won titles. And they have a lot of smoke they’ve got to face when their little stretch of adversity is not great.”
Brown, 54 years old, was named Coach of the Year in 2023 and had inked a three-year extension with the team through the 2026-27 campaign in June.
Embed from Getty ImagesBefore agreeing to the extension, the Kings and Brown had not come to terms on the average annual salary in a new deal and it appeared that he might be forced to finish out his contract after this season without long term security. His eventual deal put him in elite company, being among the top eight head coach salaries in the league at $8.5 million per year.
Brown had previously served as head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers (2005-10 and 2013-14) and Los Angeles Lakers (2011-12). Prior to his first head coaching position, he cut his teeth and worked as an assistant for eight seasons with the Washington Wizards, San Antonio Spurs and Indiana Pacers.
Christie joined the Kings’ coaching staff as an assistant under Alvin Gentry for the 2021-22 season. For the previous three seasons, he was a color analyst on the team’s TV broadcasts. Christie has a long history with the franchise, playing five seasons for the Kings among his 15 seasons in the NBA. He also played with the Lakers, New York Knicks, Toronto Raptors, Orlando Magic, Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Clippers.
