Mike Brown is an NBA champion coach with Knicks, 18 months after controversial Kings firing

The head coach of the 2025-26 NBA champion New York Knicks, a team that will be remembered for mental toughness, is the same man who was told 18 months ago he was not fit to coach the Sacramento Kings.

That man is Mike Brown and he has been on a journey, which ended with him boisterously leading a “Who let the dogs out?” chant with his players on the podium while holding a confused child.

Brown just capped off a dream first season with the Knicks, leading them on a run in which they won 15 of 16 games in one of the most dominant stretches in NBA history. This was no superteam, but a team of well-defined role players and, of course, the unflappable Jalen Brunson. They fell behind in every game and they never blinked. The right buttons were pressed, such as the revamp of Karl-Anthony Towns’ offensive role.

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It was a great coaching job, and also exactly what one of the most moribund franchises in the NBA decided Brown was incapable of doing less than two years.

The Kings’ firing of Mike Brown has looked worse with every month

Rewind back to 2024 and Brown was the head coach of the Kings and seemed to be doing a pretty good job at it. He joined the franchise after winning three rings as an assistant with the Golden State Warriors and led a turnaround that saw Sacramento go from 31 wins or fewer in its previous three seasons to 48-34 in 2022-23.

Under Brown, the Kings reached the NBA playoffs for the first time, ending a 17-year drought that was the longest in major North American sports.That earned him the first unanimous Coach of the Year honors in NBA history.

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The Kings went on to win 46 games in 2023-24, falling short in the play-in tournament, but they were still a competitive team. Then they began 2024-25 with a 13-18 record and, well, panic set in. Panic that they might be the same old Kings again.

So they made the most Kings move possible.

The Kings’ firing of Brown, after a practice and before a team flight, left the NBA stunned. Coaches around the league were publicly befuddled that a team could so quickly fire the coach who delivered their best season in two decades, most notably…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/mike-brown-is-an-nba-champion-coach-with-knicks-18-months-after-controversial-kings-firing-053814162.html

Author : Jack Baer

Publish date : 2026-06-14 05:38:00

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