The Sacramento Kings fired Mike Brown on Friday. He was just 31 games into his third season as head coach, and just two years removed from being named Coach of the Year after ending Sacramento’s 16-season playoff drought — as a No. 3 seed, no less — in 2022-23.
The Kings, after adding DeMar DeRozan this summer, as well as the heightened expectations a player of that caliber brings, have gotten off to a 13-18 start and have lost five straight, with the latest being a gut punch against Detroit when they coughed up a three-point lead in the closing seconds on a four-point play.
That wound up being the straw that broke Brown’s back, as ESPN reported that Brown was informed on a phone call as he was on his way to the airport to leave for Los Angeles, where the Kings are scheduled to play the Lakers on Saturday.
Many of Brown’s coaching compatriots expressed genuine shock in Sacramento’s decision to fire Brown. Pacers coach Rick Carlisle, who described Brown as “one of the standard bearers for integrity for our profession,” and Warriors coach Steve Kerr both called the Kings’ decision to fire Brown “shocking,” and it was clear in comments made by fellow coaches Tom Thibodeau, Jamahl Mosley and Jordi Fernandez, who called Brown “one of the best,” that pretty much nobody agrees with this decision.
But none of them went as far as Nuggets coach Mike Malone, who was fired by the Kings in 2014 just 24 games into his second season as the team’s coach and went full scorched earth on his former employer (particularly Kings owner Vivek Ranadive, though he didn’t name him directly) when he was asked about Brown’s firing.
“We’re going into a [Nuggets coaches] meeting this afternoon … I’m not on social media. I’m not aware of what’s going on outside these walls sometimes. It’ll probably take off six years of my life,” Malone began. “I go into the meeting and the coaches say, ‘you hear about Mike Brown?’ I said, ‘why, what happened?’ They said he got fired.
“At first I was really shocked and surprised,” Malone continued. “Then I caught myself. I said, why am I shocked and surprised? [I’m not] for two reasons. One, because as an NBA head coach, ultimately, you’re going to get the blame. When [the Kings’ win, [the credit is] gonna go to [De’Aaron] Fox and [Domantas] Sabonis, and when [they] lose, the [blame] is gonna go to Mike Brown. That’s the way it works.
“And two, who [Brown] works for,” Malone concluded as he launched his shot at the Kings. “So I’m not surprised that Mike Brown got fired, because I got fired by the same person. And what really pissed me off about it was the fact that [the Kings] lost last night, fifth game in a row, I believe. Tough loss, fouling a jump shooter. They had practiced this morning. He does his media, and he’s in his car going to the airport to fly to L.A. and they call him on the phone [and tell him he’s fired]. No class. No balls. That’s what I’ll say about that.”
Malone clearly has some hard feelings about his time, and the way it ended, in Sacramento, and he has a point. Yes, NBA coaches are, for the most part, hired with the expectation that they will one day, probably fairly soon, be fired. It’s not fair, but it’s the way it works. The coach is the easiest variable to change when things are going poorly. You can’t just get rid of players.
But there’s a classier way to do it than on the phone, especially after you let the guy go through a practice and head off to the airport to fly to the next game. The Kings were a mess before Brown showed up. You can, if you’d like, blame him for the fact that Kevin Huerter and Keegan Murray have seemingly forgotten how to shoot for the bulk of this season, or that the Kings have gone 3-11 in games decided by five or fewer points, but Brown deserved to be talked to face to face. Through that lens, it’s hard to argue with Malone’s point.
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