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A day after the Golden State Warriors’ championship parade in San Francisco, Mike Brown turned up 90 miles up Interstate 80 on Tuesday and reported for duty as the new head coach of the Sacramento Kings.
“I hope I don’t get in trouble for saying that,” Brown said as he sat next to King’s general manager and basketball operations president Monte McNair during his inaugural press conference. “I really couldn’t show up like I wanted because of that damn press conference today.”
Although his celebration was muted after his third title in his six years as a Golden State assistant, Brown said he was thrilled to discuss his fourth head coaching opportunity after two stints with the Cleveland Cavaliers and a stint with the Los Angeles Lakers.
“The potential here, I really think the potential is above the charts,” he said. “It makes me excited to think about it. … The players here, I’m excited.
“There’s just a lot of opportunity here for this place to explode, and I want to be a part of that.”
For the kings there is no other way but up.
Sacramento has not qualified for the postseason since 2006, finishing bottom in the Pacific Division in seven of those 16 years. The Kings went 30-52 last season, firing Luke Walton midway through the campaign and then releasing Alvin Gentry from his intermediate position after finishing 25th in offensive efficiency and 27th in defensive efficiency.
Brown addressed the playoff dryhead on Tuesday.
“There’s no elephant in the room,” he said. “You can talk about it. We will accept that. I don’t come here for fun, excited to join the area. I come here to win. So we’re going to take whatever’s in there in front of us that talks about winning. So we look forward to it.
Brown, who took the job while the Warriors were in the middle of their second-round playoff series against the Memphis Grizzlies, said he was “heavily involved” in taking over the Kings while he was still finishing the Warriors’ championship run. On Tuesday, he revealed much of his coaching staff, hiring Jordi Fernandez of the Denver Nuggets, Jay Triano of the Charlotte Hornets, Luke Loucks of the Phoenix Suns and Doug Christie, a former Kings standout he played against in college.
“I’ve spoken to each and every player multiple times,” Brown said. “I spoke to some of them personally. I spoke to some of them via Zoom. The same applies to the employees who are still there, talked to them via zoom, called them several times. Obviously Monty’s wife is a great lady, but every once in a while she might get a little irritated because I think he answers my calls more than hers.”
He said he used a day off between the Conference Finals and the NBA Finals to fly to San Diego and see point guard De’Aaron Fox train. He calls him “Foxy,” a nickname he gave him in high school while coaching him at basketball camp.
“Obviously I was impressed with his speed, but I thought he was a defensive dog,” Brown said of Fox. “So a lot of the pressure on him will come from me, not anyone else, to get back to what I know he can do at this level night after night.”
Brown said the Warriors’ defensive success last season, despite a roster full of players with limited defensive reputations, shows what the Kings can do this end.
“People look at Steph Curry, [Nemanja Bjelica]Otto Porter, Jordan Poole, [Andrew] Wiggins in Minnesota, I mean I could go down the line of personnel that we had with the Warriors and people didn’t think they could defend themselves,” Brown told the league. Well, will we be next year? I do not know. Probably not. It will be a process. But I’m looking forward to all the guys.”
Brown also mentioned Davion Mitchell, Harrison Barnes, Domantas Sabonis and Richaun Holmes during the press conference, as well as the No. 4 Kings in Thursday’s NBA draft as reasons to be encouraged about the team’s future.
“I’m excited to be here in Sacramento,” Brown said. “I have many friends who live like this. No one has told me anything or anything bad about the area. It was always positive. And that was before I got the job. So I look forward to being in. .. What’s this? sactown jacket bag The big tomato, something like that. There are many different nicknames for it.”