The Sacramento Kings fired coach Mike Brown on Dec. 27, and they did not hold a press conference to explain the decision. Two weeks later, Kings general manager Monte McNair sat down for an almost-15-minute interview with NBC Sports Bay Area & California. The team’s play-by-play announcer, Mark Jones, asked the questions.
Jones did not ask McNair about the rationale for firing Brown. Jones did not even say Brown’s name. Fourteen minutes into the interview, in response to a question about interim coach Doug Christie — “What kind of organizational support do you throw behind him, in terms of him getting thrown into a situation like this? I mean, he’s a pro and he’s a former player, he’s familiar with the locker room, but what does it look like when you guys are supporting him and you guys are all aligned?” — McNair mentioned Brown for the first time.
“I would say first I want to say how much we appreciate Mike and everything that he did for this organization and breaking the playoff drought,” McNair said. “I have the utmost respect for him, and, obviously, a tough decision when that time came. But at the same time, now Doug is the interim head coach and it’s our job to continue to support him and get him the support he needs for those players. And for him, he brings what he brings to the table. And he’s gotta be himself. And right now I think the guys are really responding to that.”
Neither McNair nor team owner Vivek Ranadive has taken questions from non-team-affiliated media since Brown’s firing. On Jan. 2, The Athletic’s Sam Amick reported that Brown was under the impression that Ranadive was the “driving force” behind it, and that De’Aaron Fox’s future in Sacramento was increasingly uncertain in light of the team doing little to combat speculation that the guard played a role in the firing. In McNair’s interview with Jones, Fox’s future did not come up.
Asked about the Feb. 6 trade deadline, McNair said: “I think the first thing we’re looking at is: We made a big change, what does the team look like? And we’ve seen a little bit of that, but we want to see a little bit more about how this team responds and exactly what we have. And we’re always looking — that’s our job in the front office, we’ve always gotta find ways to improve this team, especially in the Western Conference, where it feels like every year there’s 10, 11, 12 teams that you gotta compete with. So, early returns have been good, we want to continue to see that, and then we’re about three or four weeks out from that decision point and we’ll see if there’s a way to improve the team and keep climbing the standings.”
After losing to the Los Angeles Lakers in Christie’s first game as interim coach, they have now won six straight. And while they were initially beating shorthanded teams — they defeated the Dallas Mavericks without Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving, the Philadelphia 76ers without Joel Embiid and the Memphis Grizzlies without Ja Morant — they’re now winning while shorthanded themselves: Fox has missed their three most recent wins against the Golden State Warriors, Miami Heat and Boston Celtics due to a right glute contusion.
Sacramento has improved to 19-19 and ninth in the West. Maybe the organization’s point of view is that this recent stretch speaks for itself and that fans don’t deserve more of an explanation about the coaching change.
