Kings fire Brown amid skid, name Christie interim

The Sacramento Kings have fired coach Mike Brown less than halfway through his third season with the team mired in a five-game losing streak.

General manager Monte McNair called the move a “difficult decision” and thanked Brown for his work. Assistant Doug Christie will take over as interim coach, with his first game coming Saturday night at the Los Angeles Lakers. Christie has been an assistant with the Kings since 2021-22 and played in Sacramento for five of his 15 NBA seasons.

Sources told ESPN’s Shams Charania that the Kings informed Brown of the firing on a phone call while Brown was driving to the team plane for a flight to Los Angeles, where Sacramento plays the Lakers on Saturday. The Kings made the decision to part with Brown mid-afternoon and decided to call him before he entered the plane, sources added.

Brown’s firing comes as the Kings are mired in their longest losing streak since January 2022 — with all five loses coming at home. Sacramento is 13-18, entering Friday, three games back of earning a berth in a play-in game.

The Kings have lost an NBA-worst nine games this season after leading in the fourth quarter with the most woeful one coming in Brown’s final game as coach Thursday night against the Detroit Pistons.

Sacramento led by 10 points with less than three minutes to play only to collapse down the stretch. Jaden Ivey converted a four-point play with 3 seconds left when he made a 3-pointer in the right corner and was fouled by De’Aaron Fox. That gave the Pistons a 114-113 win, leaving the Kings in 12th place in the Western Conference.

The Kings came into the season with hopes of finishing in the top six in the West and avoiding the play-in tournament after acquiring DeMar DeRozan in a sign-and-trade deal over the summer to add to a core that featured Fox, Domantas Sabonis and Keegan Murray.

Fox, who is in the second-to-last year of his five-year, $163 million contract, declined to sign an extension in the offseason. He said on a podcast with Draymond Green earlier this month that he wanted to be on a team that could “compete at a high level.”

Sacramento has been far from that this season, thanks in large part to an NBA-worst 3-11 record in games decided by five points or fewer. Brown publicly criticized Fox for his role in the game-winning play Thursday night, saying he should have been closer to Ivey instead of committing a foul on a close out.

“You should be hugged up to your man at the 3-point line,” Brown said. “Everybody should, and why there was a closeout by Fox, I’m not sure. I got to go back and watch the tape. But for sure 100 percent we told our guys, can’t give up a 3, can’t give up a 3, can’t give up a 3, stay on the high side, stay on the high side.”

Brown won Coach of the Year in his first season in Sacramento in 2022-23, leading the Kings to a No. 1 seed before losing in seven games to the Golden State Warriors in the first round of the playoffs. The Kings appearance snapped a 16-season drought without a playoff berth, the longest streak in NBA history.

Brown has a 107-88 record in two-plus seasons in Sacramento with a winning record in both of his full seasons. Rick Adelman is the only other coach to post a winning record in a full season since the Kings moved to Sacramento

Brown previously had two stints as coach in Cleveland and spent one-plus season as Lakers coach. He has a 455-304 record and has made the playoffs in seven of his nine full seasons. He won Coach of the Year twice, also getting the award in Cleveland in 2008-09.

Brown had signed a three-year extension through 2027 with the Kings in June.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.