Not even two years in the past, Rick Carlisle publicly praised Mike Brown for his work in making an attempt to win the NBA Coach of the Year award.
And on Friday, Carlisle was among the many coaches who reacted with dismay to Brown’s firing.
The Sacramento Kings ousted Brown on Friday, with the staff off to a 13-18 begin this season and mired towards the underside of the Western Conference — regardless of back-to-back profitable seasons, one thing the franchise hadn’t achieved in almost twenty years.
“The firing of Mike Brown at the moment was simply surprising to me and I’m certain all of the folks in our career — women and men,” mentioned Carlisle, coach of the Indiana Pacers and longtime president of the National Basketball Coaches Association. “I had the privilege of working with Mike after I was teaching in Indiana for the primary time. I contemplate him one of many commonplace bearers of integrity for our career. And I’m completely shocked that that call was made.”
Carlisle — who expressed these sentiments, unprompted, to open his pre-game media session earlier than the Pacers visited Boston on Friday evening — was not alone on that entrance.
Denver coach Michael Malone — who was fired by Sacramento proprietor Vivek Ranadive in December 2014, and Brown was the sixth coach to carry that job within the decade following Malone’s departure — didn’t maintain again in his response to the information.
“As a head coach within the NBA, in the end, you’ll get the blame,” Malone mentioned. “When they win, it’s going to go to (Domantas) Sabonis and (De’Aaron) Fox. And whenever you lose, it’s going to go to Mike Brown. That’s the way it works.
“They have observe this morning, he does post-(exercise) media and he is within the automobile headed to the airport to fly to Los Angeles,” Malone added. “And they name him on the telephone. No class. No balls. I’ll say this.”
Orlando Magic coach Jamahl Mosley mentioned coaches perceive that the job is commonly thankless and that when a staff underperforms there’s a threat of firings. He mentioned it isn’t his job to debate one other staff’s decision-making course of, however he made it clear what he thinks of Brown as a coach and as an individual.
“He compiled a 107-88 report whereas he was there,” Mosley mentioned. “He modified that tradition a bit of bit in what he was doing. And I say these items not as a fellow coach. I say this as an expensive buddy. He was a mentor of mine. And I understand how good he’s, and I understand how a lot he cares, and I understand how he helped pave the way in which for therefore many people who’re on this sport proper now.”
Brown was the unanimous winner of the NBA Coach of the Year Award in 2022-23, after his first season in Sacramento noticed the Kings attain the playoffs for the primary time since 2006. All 100 voters from a reporting group and broadcasters had Brown main their vote that 12 months.
Less than two years later, he was gone.
“You hate to see it,” mentioned New York Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau, who, like Brown, is a two-time NBA Coach of the Year. “You know, it is a part of what we undergo. Mike is a superb individual and an excellent coach. It’s a disgrace.”
The change in Sacramento is the ninth teaching change within the NBA in 2024 alone – and the three hundredth within the NBA since Gregg Popovich, the league’s present longest-tenured coach, grew to become coach in San Antonio in 1996. Popovich is at the moment away from Speroni throughout restoration from a stroke.
Brown has held 4 completely different jobs in that span: He was head coach in Cleveland, then head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, then returned to Cleveland and till Friday had the job in Sacramento.
“He will certainly land on his ft,” Carlisle mentioned. “But when you take a look at the work he is achieved and the breakthrough he is had, it is actually arduous to consider that this determination was made. But groups have the appropriate to do issues like that, clearly. It’s their determination. But Mike is a superb man and an excellent basketball man. Truly one of many pillars of our career.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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