Good morning. Let’s basketball.

A Burial at Ornans; Gustave Courbet; 1849-50

The Sacramento Kings, suffering a 5-game losing streak amid a disappointing first half of a season, did what the Kings do best: fired their head coach. The franchise parted ways with Mike Brown, the 2022-23 NBA Coach of the Year, on Friday afternoon, a day after the Kings had one of the most mind-numbing losses of the season for any team.

Vivek Ranadive bought the Kings in May 2013. He has now hired and fired five different head coaches in that 11-1/2 year span, not including interim head coaches (Ty Corbin and Alvin Gentry). This behavior isn’t unique to Vivek, of course: the Maloofs, who owned the franchise prior to Ranadive, hired and fired four different head coaches over their final seven seasons in charge.

Add it up. Over the past 19 seasons, since the dismissal of Rick Adelman in 2006, the Kings have had nine different head coaches plus four interims, now including Doug Christie, who takes over for Brown, with the team having skipped over associate head coach Jay Triano (who has head coaching experience) for the former Kings player.

Doug Christie. Bless that man; maybe he’ll be great at this. However, this is a dude who:

• Has been an assistant for 3-1/2 seasons, all with the Kings under Luke Walton and Mike Brown

• Was a T.V. color commentator and radio host for the Kings’ media partners before that

• Has appeared in multiple reality shows, including one dedicated to his infamous marriage as well as the show Basketball Wives

• Self-produced a “comedy DVD” described in an old Reddit post here and more disturbingly by T.J. Simers here

Brown was the first Kings coach since Adelman — and only the second to Adelman in the 40-year Sacramento era for the franchise — to have a winning record. He also had a winning record (around .600) over eight seasons as a head coach before coming to the Kings, and had spent time coaching under Gregg Popovich and Steve Kerr.

Doug Christie has been an assistant for 3-1/2 years and is a Kings/reality TV lifer.

Hmm.

Sacramento has this weird history of factionalism inside the franchise’s power structure. It’s a power structure that existed before Ranadive bought the team, and has survived both the transition and the mostly failed 11 years of Vivek’s leadership. Instead of bringing in his own people to run business operations, Ranadive basically inherited the voices that had carried water for the Maloofs and overseen a disastrous several years of full-on tanking and attempted relocation. Vivek did replace the front office, but the story of the Sacramento Kings is that there are two front offices: one in basketball operations (like a normal franchise) and one surrounding the owner. The front office surrounding the owner doesn’t win every battle. But it wins enough. And when it wins, it almost always means that the Kings lose.

This faction is how Vlade Divac ended up running the front office after being hired as a community ambassador. This faction is how Dave Joerger got fired so the team could hire camera-ready Luke Walton, son of fever dream part-time Kings analyst Bill Walton, and then stick with him amid assault allegations. This faction is why Mike Bibby is a studio analyst for the team, and why Doug Christie was foisted upon Walton and then Brown as an assistant coach once Christie got the bug to start coaching. This faction is, I assume, why Christie and not Triano or Jim Moran or Luke Loucks is the new interim head coach. (It could also be that the actual basketball ops faction wants to see Christie try and fail so that they can hire their own new head coach this summer instead of seeing Triano fail to salvage this roster and get saddled with Christie as the full-time head coach for, oh, 2.5 seasons as per Kings tradition.)

This faction may very well be why the team dragged its feet on an extension for Brown in the offseason, then fired him just months into that extension. This faction, after all, doesn’t really care about the financial outlook of the team all that much.

I don’t talk to people inside the franchise much at all anymore, so this is a good bit of theory on everything post-Vlade. But the shadow leadership from the previous era is still there (though the make-up does change — Vivek falls in love with basketball lifers who tell him what he wants to hear) and there’s a distinct pattern going back to the tail end of the Maloof era of in-fighting and court intrigue.

Plus, in The Athletic you have this reporting from Anthony Slater and longtime Kings whisperer Sam Amick:

Ranadive, who gets ultimate decision-making power, has been notably upset with the team’s recent play and has a history of cycling through coaches. Christie will be the eighth in his 12 years of control. Matina Kolokotronis, the organization’s chief operating officer, has long been an influential voice and a known fan of Christie’s.

(There’s more later in the piece about how Christie, then a brand-new coach, played a role in forcing Alvin Gentry to take on an interim tag instead getting a multi-year contract when he took over for Walton.)

Matina Kolokotronis is the ringleader and longest holdover in the faction surrounding Vivek. She’s been involved with the team since right around the start of the Maloofs era. Here’s what Kevin Arnovitz wrote about her for ESPN in a huge feature on the franchise’s failures in 2017:

Sources close to the Kings' nerve center say chief operating officer Matina Kolokotronis was the catalyst behind Divac's hire. "She's the only person in the organization that Vivek really trusts," says a longtime league executive. "She's the connective tissue of the organization. Her institutional knowledge is second to none, and she's politically wired in Sacramento. She knows where every body is buried." Now in her 20th season with the Kings, Kolokotronis is the team's one-woman ode to continuity. She has done it all, including negotiating player contracts, housing international players in her guest house, running the team's foundation and working the back channels of Sacramento's civic power structure. Her critics see her as a consigliere who is far too involved in basketball matters.

Kolokotronis has done a ton of good in Sacramento, and by all accounts is excellent at her job. On the contrary, Vivek is not. He hired his daughter, with no meaningful NBA, college or high-end prep basketball experience, to be the general manager of the team’s G League squad. (She has since resigned and is now dating Jeremy Lamb, one of her former Stockton Kings players.) One of Vivek’s first moves as team owner was to hire a head coach … before he had hired a general manager. Then he fired that coach (Michael Malone) while the team’s best player (DeMarcus Cousins) was out sick, leading to a losing streak.

BRIEF TANGENT: Michael Malone reacts to the news the Kings fired Mike Brown after media availability after practice while Brown was traveling to join the team at the airport to fly to Los Angeles.

“No class, no balls.” No lies. I never love Michael Malone more than when he is talking about the Sacramento Kings.

BACK TO THE NARRATIVE: Then after the bizarre George Karl era, Vivek hired Joerger (good!) and fired him after Year 2 … which was by far the Kings’ best season and best vibes in 12 years. And Joerger’s replacement was Walton, probably the third worst NBA head coach of this century (Kurt Rambis and Derek Fisher are in the mix).

Vivek has actually hired some good, respected coaches (and also Walton). But he gives them between one and three seasons and flips the table. He’s on his third front office, Monte McNair and Wes Wilcox, who appear to be safe, based on reporting from The Athletic. But Brown appeared to be safe, too. The thing about the Kings under Ranadive is that everyone — well, almost everyone — is a mood swing away from being fired. This is bad management. There was no reason to fire Brown right now, no matter how disappointing this season has been. This is right there with the Malone and Joerger dismissals given the replacements chosen in each case: disturbingly dumb and impulsive.

I hope it works out with Christie.

Hmm. OK. Okay. Oooooookay.

Anyways, how did the Kings do in Christie’s first game?

Oh, they had their worst defensive performance of the season (135 defensive rating, gave up 132 points in 97 possessions) against a league-average Lakers offense missing their second-best player (LeBron James)?

Cool!

Kings come and Kings go, and Kings coaches come and go even more often. But the Kangz are indeed forever.

And 1

If this follows the typical Kangz blueprint, De’Aaron Fox is absolutely getting traded under duress within the next five weeks. Best case might be finding a way to get their pick back from the Spurs from the DeMar DeRozan-Harrison Barnes swap. What the Kings need most is a defensive four. I’ve got Jonathan Isaac and Tari Eason on my mind.

Scores

Since the lead essay is so long, we’ll go a bit more rapid-fire here. Just the important stuff.

Friday

Knicks 108, Magic 85

Spurs 96, Nets 87

Pacers 105, Celtics 142 — Jaylen Brown would be the best player on … 15 teams?

Grizzlies 132, Pelicans 124

Timberwolves 113, Rockets 112 — Minnesota was down 16 with 4:57 to go. Then all this happened.

Anthony Edwards, talk to us about the decision to go for the win in regulation instead of overtime.

Edwards was fined $100,000 for cursing on T.V. Welp.

What a collapse for Houston. Put a pin in that.

Mavericks 98, Suns 89 — The spice level is increasing.

Suspensions have been doled out. Four games for Naji Marshall, three games for Jusuf Nurkic and one game for P.J. Washington. It’s that time of year. (Put a pin in that.)

Cavaliers 149, Nuggets 135 — Cleveland is absurdly good. Watching their offense is a delight.

Warriors 92, Clippers 102

Saturday

Heat 110, Hawks 120

Thunder 106, Hornets 94

Knicks 136, Wizards 132 — It’s not awesome that the Knicks needed 55 from Jalen Brunson to win in overtime in D.C. But past Knicks would have simply just lost the game in regulation.

Having a shotmaker like this as a big part of an offense this good with a couple of versatile defenders? The Knicks are a serious team.

Bucks 111, Bulls 116 — Giannis Antetokounmpo is still out.

Suns 105, Warriors 109 — This shot is perhaps the most wild of the season to date.

Steph’s reaction is priceless, as if he was possessed by a spirit who made that play for him.

Jonathan Kuminga had 34 points in back-to-back games. Is this a turning point for Kuminga on the Warriors, or the nudge to trade him while the value’s high?

Some hot mics caught Draymond Green ripping into Buddy Hield after a turnover. Green’s answer about why he did that after the game was actually quite insightful.

Pistons 121, Nuggets 134 — While we’re sticking to only the essential stuff from the weekend, here’s Russell Westbrook trolling the everloving hell out of Isaiah Stewart.

Sixers 114, Jazz 111

Mavericks 122, Blazers 126

Kings 122, Lakers 132

Sunday

Nets 101, Magic 102 — Another incredible comeback for the Miracle Magic. Orlando trailed by 21 in the third, by 17 with seven minutes left and by six with 90 seconds left.

Cole Anthony for the win.

Hawks 136, Raptors 107 — The Hawks are … good?

Pacers 123, Celtics 114 — Revenge for the Pacers! Boston didn’t have Kristaps Porzingis or Jrue Holiday; Indiana tortured poor Al Horford and Sam Hauser. The Pacers just lived at the rim. Tyrese Haliburton scored 31 with just one three.

The Celtics are 4-5 over their last nine games. Boston sits at 23-9. This time last season, they were 26-6.

Grizzlies 106, Thunder 130 — The injury bug is ravaging Memphis again. Ja Morant, Marcus Smart and Santi Aldama are all out a bit.

Heat 104, Rockets 100 — Back to the Rockets, who had a terrible weekend. They went scoreless for six-plus minutes in the fourth, let the Heat grab the lead and totally melted down.

Well, they had some help from … guess who? The refs! Fred VanVleet gets jacked here on a 5-second violation and makes some incidental contact to Marc Davis in the ensuing argument; Davis tosses FVV.

Tyler Herro hits the tech to go up five. Then this happens.

That is pretty spicy by NBA standards, both Amen Thompson throwing Tyler Herro to the ground and Terry Rozier diving on Thompson. I’m still not sure why Ime Udoka and Ben Sullivan were ejected but in any case: pretty spicy.

Thompson will definitely get a suspension. Rozier might also.

Spurs 110, Timberwolves 112

The Second D’Lo Era In Los Angeles Is Over

The Lakers traded D’Angelo Russell to the Nets for the second time in his career. This time: he was packaged with Maxwell Lewis and three seconds for Dorian Finney-Smith and Shake Milton.

This feels like a high price for DFS if only because D’Lo is occasionally useful for the Lakers. Finney-Smith’s defense and shooting — if he shoots enough, and keeps his percentage up — could be a major help for L.A. But he’s simply not going to shoot much when the Lakers are at full strength. I guess second rounders can just be purchased in the future?

The big cost here is the opportunity cost. Russell was the Lakers’ most tradable contract and key potential cap filler. Rob Pelinka must have determined big fish aren’t out there to be caught.

Assuming Russell gets bought out eventually, I wonder who will take a ride on that roller coaster.

Schedule

Seven games, all times Eastern.

Bulls at Hornets, 7
Knicks at Wizards, 7, NBA TV
Clippers at Pelicans, 8
Nuggets at Jazz, 9
Cavaliers at Warriors, 10
Sixers at Blazers, 10
Mavericks at Kings, 10, NBA TV

Be excellent to each other.