Eleven coaches have tried and failed to bring a winning brand of basketball back to Sacramento since Rick Adelman led the Kings to their last playoff appearance in 2006.
Maybe Mike Brown will prove to be the right man for the job.
The Kings have reached a reported four-year deal to make Brown their new head coach, sources told The Sacramento Bee on Sunday, confirming a report from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. Brown, now in his sixth season as Steve Kerr’s lead assistant with the Golden State Warriors, will remain with the Warriors through the end of their playoff run before making the move to Sacramento, sources said.
NBA agent Warren LeGarie, Brown’s representative at WGL Management, shared some insight into the coach’s thinking a short time before Brown arrived in Sacramento for his formal interview Thursday, saying Brown was prepared to accept the position if the Kings offered it to him.
“Mike is willing to take the job based on the fact that he knows he’ll be supported and have a chance to win,” LeGarie told The Bee. “He sees this as a good job and looks forward to being asked to be the head coach.”
LeGarie said the job appealed to Brown for a number of reasons, pointing to roster talent, a loyal fanbase, the team’s downtown arena, Golden 1 Center, and the people who make up the organization.
“First and foremost, he likes the people who are working there,” LeGarie said. “He loves the arena. He thinks that’s a natural resource that will help attract players because you’ve always got to have a place where the fans are involved and the facilities are terrific. And he believes the team has enough talent to give them a real solid chance of becoming a playoff contender.”
The Kings set out to find a coach who can help them escape the clutches of an NBA-record 16-year playoff drought. Brown, 52, checked some important boxes as a defensive-minded coach with head coaching experience and a record of success in the NBA.
Brown has a 347-216 (.616) record with six playoff appearances in eight seasons as a head coach with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Los Angeles Lakers. He went to the NBA Finals as a head coach with the Cavaliers and served as an assistant for NBA championship teams with the San Antonio Spurs (2003) and Warriors (2017, 2018).
Last summer, Brown coached the Nigerian men’s national team at the Olympics. That team, which upset Team USA 90-87 in an exhibition game July 10 in Las Vegas, included Kings forward Chimezie Metu and former Stockton Kings guard Gabe Vincent, a Modesto native who now plays for the Miami Heat.
Brown had an informal meeting with the Kings somewhere outside of Sacramento on Wednesday. He was offered the job after coming to California’s capital city for a formal interview Thursday evening.
Kings general manager Monte McNair and his staff zeroed in on Brown following a 28-day search that began when interim coach Alvin Gentry was relieved of his duties April 11. The Kings identified seven potential candidates for the job, including Brooklyn Nets coaching consultant Steve Clifford; New Orleans Pelicans coaching advisor Mike D’Antoni; Milwaukee Bucks assistants Darvin Ham and Charles Lee; ESPN analyst Mark Jackson; and Boston Celtics assistant Will Hardy.
Clifford, Jackson and Brown all came to Sacramento this week to meet with team officials after being selected as finalists. The final days of the search were fraught with palace intrigue as reports surfaced suggesting McNair wanted to hire Brown while Kings owner Vivek Ranadive was pushing for Jackson. There was added intrigue Saturday night when Ranadive sat courtside for Game 3 of the Western Conference semifinals between the Warriors and Memphis Grizzlies with Brown on the Golden State bench and Jackson at the broadcast table.
Alarm bells sounded for fans who have suffered through 16 consecutive losing seasons while poor decisions and internal power struggles stunted the team’s growth despite the efforts of former coaches such as Paul Westphal, Michael Malone, George Karl, Dave Joerger and Luke Walton. Sources with knowledge of the situation maintained the Kings were conducting a fair and equitable search, saying each candidate had an equal opportunity to win the job. That didn’t alleviate the fears of fans who worried Ranadive would overrule the people he hired to run basketball operations, but in the end, it seems, McNair got his man.
Brown will be the 31st head coach in franchise history and Sacramento’s 12th coach in 16 years. Brown’s name surfaced shortly after Walton was fired in November and quickly came to the forefront when Gentry was relieved of his coaching duties following a disappointing 30-52 season.
In the first days of the coaching search, league sources told The Bee that Brown would be interested in the job. He was soon identified as one of seven preliminary candidates and then as a finalist. All three finalists had experience as defensive-minded head coaches who led teams to the playoffs, but Brown’s resume stood out from the rest.
Brown comes from a military family. He was born in Columbus, Ohio, but spent parts of his childhood overseas. He was a multisport standout at Wurzburg American High School in Germany before returning to the United States to play basketball at Mesa Community College and University of San Diego.
Brown started his coaching career as an assistant under Bernie Bickerstaff with the Washington Wizards from 1997-99. He worked under Gregg Popovich in San Antonio from 2000-03 and Rick Carlisle with the Indiana Pacers from 2003-05.
Brown was 35 years old when he got his first head coaching job in Cleveland in 2005. Kings assistant general manager Wes Wilcox was part of the Cavaliers organization at that time, first as a scout, then as an assistant coach and then as director of player personnel.
The Cavaliers had missed the playoffs in their first two seasons with LeBron James and had not reached the postseason since 1998. Brown won 50 games in each of his first two seasons, leading the Cavaliers to the Eastern Conference semifinals in his first year and the NBA Finals in his second year.
James was ascending to greatness, but his supporting cast featured the likes of Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Drew Gooden and Eric Snow. The Cavaliers would win 45, 66 and 61 games to reach the playoffs each of the next three seasons, but they only got to the conference finals one more time before Brown was fired in 2010. The Cavaliers ranked 15th, fourth, 11th, second and eighth in the NBA in defensive rating in five seasons under Brown.
Brown went to Los Angeles to succeed Phil Jackson as head coach of the Lakers in 2011. He took a team with Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and Metta World-Peace to the Western Conference semifinals in his first season, but the Lakers fired him five games into the 2012-13 season.
The Lakers had high hopes after trading for two-time MVP Steve Nash and three-time Defensive Player of the Year Dwight Howard to assemble a star-studded lineup. Brown tried to implement the Princeton offense — a system the Kings ran so beautifully during their glory years under Adelman — but the Lakers went 0-8 in the preseason and 1-4 to start the regular season. Brown was fired in a panic five games into the season as pressure to win mounted within the organization due to an aging roster, Howard’s pending free agency and the failing health of team owner Jerry Buss, who died later that season.
Brown returned to Cleveland in 2013 after James left for Miami. Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert admitted it was a mistake to fire Brown the first time, but the reunion was short-lived. Brown was fired again in 2014 after the Cavaliers went 33-49 with then-rookie Kyrie Irving leading a lackluster squad that featured Dion Waiters, Luol Deng, Spencer Hawes and Tristan Thompson.
Brown joined Golden State’s staff in 2016 when Walton left to become head coach of the Lakers. Brown has served as acting head coach at times when Kerr was out due to chronic back pain, including a 12-0 record during the 2017 playoffs.
Brown has a longstanding reputation as one of the game’s sharpest defensive minds. Kerr entrusted Brown with running Golden State’s offense for years, but this season he put him in charge of the team’s defense. The Warriors finished second in the NBA this season in defensive rating (106.6), second in opponent field-goal percentage (.438) and third in opponent points per game (105.5).
“Mike is very, very prideful of defense,” Warriors guard Klay Thompson told the San Francisco Chronicle. “He’s like a secondary head coach. Coached us throughout that time in the 2017 playoffs. Coached the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Finals. He’s been around some of the greatest to play the game. This might technically be a new role for him this season. But really, it’s nothing he hasn’t done before.”
That quality appealed to the Kings. The organization feels it has two pillars to build around with 24-year-old point guard De’Aaron Fox and 26-year-old two-time All-Star center Domantas Sabonis, but the Kings must improve defensively after finishing 27th in defensive rating this season and 30th last season.
Brown recently explained to the Chronicle’s Connor Letourneau why the Warriors have gone away from a switch-heavy scheme that forced the ball to the middle of the floor in favor of funneling the action toward their help-side defenders.
“If you try to keep the ball on the sideline or baseline, that’s where help is built in,” Brown said. “To be able to send the ball to where your help is instead of allowing the ball to again get to the middle of the floor, that’s something that is very beneficial to our unit as a whole.”
Another place where that could be beneficial is Sacramento, where the Kings have struggled to prevent straight-line drives, penetration and points in the paint, an area where they finished 29th and 27th over the past two seasons. The Warriors were fourth this season in opponent points in the paint.
LeGarie said Brown already has ideas that could help the Kings.
“(Brown) believes there are some adjustments that could be made that will make them far more competitive and, certainly, with a chance to ultimately be in the playoffs,” LeGarie said. “He doesn’t feel they’re very far away from that.”
