Not even two years ago, Rick Carlisle publicly praised Mike Brown for his work on his way to winning the NBA’s Coach of the Year award. On Friday, Carlisle was among a slew of coaches reacting with dismay—some even with anger—that Brown had been fired.
The Sacramento Kings dismissed Brown on Friday. The team is off to a 13-18 start this season and mired toward the bottom of the Western Conference—despite back-to-back winning seasons, something that the franchise hadn’t managed in nearly two decades.
“The firing of Mike Brown today was just shocking to me and I’m sure all the people in our profession — men and women,” said Carlisle, the Indiana Pacers coach and longtime president of the National Basketball Coaches Association. “I had the privilege of working with Mike in Indiana coaching for the first time. I view him as one of our profession’s standard bearers of integrity. And I’m just absolutely shocked that that decision was made.”
Carlisle — who offered unprompted sentiments to open his pregame media session before the Pacers visited Boston on Friday night — wasn’t alone on that front.
Denver Nuggets coach Michael Malone — who was fired by Sacramento owner Vivek Ranadive in December 2014, and Brown was the sixth coach to hold that job in the decade since Malone’s departure — did not hold back in his reaction to the news, saying the firing was done with “no class.”
“As an NBA head coach, ultimately, you’re going to get the blame,” Malone said. “When they win, it’s going to go to (Domantas) Sabonis and (De’Aaron) Fox. When you lose, it’s going to go to Mike Brown. That’s the way it works.”
Orlando Magic coach Jamahl Mosley said coaches understand that the job is often thankless and that when a team underachieves, there’s a risk of firing. He said it’s not his place to discuss another team’s decision-making but made clear what he thinks of Brown as a coach and as a person.
“He compiled a record of 107-88 while there,” Mosley said. “He changed a bit of that culture in what he was doing. And I say these things not as a fellow coach. I say this as a close friend. He’s been a mentor of mine. And I know how good he is, how he cares, and how he’s helped pave the way for so many of us in this game right now.”
Brown was the unanimous winner of the NBA’s Coach of the Year award in 2022-23 after his first season in Sacramento, where he saw the Kings make the playoffs for the first time since 2006. All 100 voters from a panel of reporters and broadcasters had Brown atop their ballot that year.
Less than two years later, he was gone.
“You hate to see it,” said New York Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau, who, like Brown, is a two-time NBA coach of the year. “You know, it’s part of what we go through. Mike’s a terrific person and a great coach. It’s unfortunate.”
Golden State coach Steve Kerr said he understands that the Kings have been struggling recently, but he still expressed disappointment that Brown—his former assistant and a longtime close friend—was let go.
“We all kind of know this is the nature of the business,” Kerr said. “It just seems so shocking when a guy’s the unanimous coach of the year a year and a half ago and when you think about where that franchise was before Mike got there … shocking.”
The change in Sacramento is the ninth head-coaching change in the NBA in 2024 alone — and the 300th in the NBA since Gregg Popovich, the league’s longest-tenured current coach, became coach in San Antonio in 1996. Popovich is currently away from the Spurs while recovering from a stroke.
Brown held four different jobs during that span: he was head coach in Cleveland, then head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, returned to Cleveland, and, until Friday, he was head coach in Sacramento.
“He’ll certainly land on his feet,” Carlisle said. “But if you look at his job and his turnaround, it’s just tough to believe this decision was made. But teams have the right to do things like this. It’s their decision. But Mike’s a great man and a great basketball man. It is one of the pillars of our profession. Anyway. Onward.” (Yahoo Sports)