Mike Brown has received a lot of praise from the Golden State Warriors, but the recent National Basketball Coaches Association Coach of the Year Award winner is not letting his guard down around his former team.
SACRAMENTO – Mike Brown spent six seasons with the Warriors, serving as an assistant coach and occasional interim head coach. The players and coaches came to know his sense of humor, his ultra-meticulous nature, and his energetic pursuit of excellence.
They are not surprised, then, that Brown found a way to pull the Sacramento Kings out of the NBA crypt, revive them, and get enough blood flowing to make them a playoff team for the first time since 2006.
Where in the first round they will face, of all teams, the Warriors.
It took Brown less than 10 months to complete the first goal, which speaks to the power of cheating.
The coaching of the new Sacramento Kings began in the second week of last May, while the Warriors were facing the Memphis Grizzlies in the Western Conference semifinals. Brown dispatched the first assistants he hired, Jordi Fernandez and Luke Loucks, to Sacramento on a mission of personnel reconnaissance. Survey the territory.
“I’ve known those guys for a long time,” Brown told NBC Sports Bay Area's Monte Poole. “They knew me. Jordi had worked for me before and knew exactly what I was looking for and what direction I wanted to go.
“It was really critical that those guys come aboard and start laying the foundation the right way, especially connecting with our players to let them get a feel of the direction that we wanted to go.”
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Fernandez, a native of Spain whose relationship with Brown dates to 2006, was responsible for the executive fundamentals. Build bridges throughout the basketball program, from players and fellow coaches to medical/training staffs to management. The two men talked several times each day, no matter where Brown might be.
“For him to start bringing the group together and get everybody connected from Day 1 was a godsend,” Brown says. “That connectivity carried us a long way throughout the course of the year. It didn't just happen when I came aboard. It started before I came aboard because Jordi took the reins in that direction.”
While Fernandez was responsible for executive fundamentals, Loucks, a former Warriors player-development coach, was given a specific but massive assignment: build a relationship with star point guard De’Aaron Fox. Brown knew the Kings would go only as far as Fox would lead them.
Brown quickly realized he had an ally in that union. Fox’s fiancée Receé Caldwell, who in August became his wife, played basketball at Cal, and spent time in 2018 as an intern with the Warriors. Among other tasks, Caldwell processed video under the watchful eye of . . . Loucks.
“That was a home run, assigning Luke to Fox,” Brown says. “Receé supported Luke and, ultimately, gave Luke the green light to Fox. That made it extremely easy for Luke to connect right away and get going, because Fox basically (dived) headfirst into whatever Luke was trying to work with him on.”
Six weeks and three postseason series later, with Brown and the Warriors advancing to the NBA Finals and winning it, the new head coach finally made his way to Sacramento. The road had been paved, smoothed and lighted. All he had to do was slide into the driver’s seat, grab the wheel and take off.
This head start is tantamount to cheating. In the most admirable way.
Brown’s first move was to introduce a three-step plan to achieve long-term success.
Step 1: Ensure all aspects of the franchise are aligned vertically and horizontally, with trust as the foundation. “That meant I had to be visible and bring people together,” he says.
Step 2: Establish a set of principles and values. “I had to make sure the leadership – players, medical, performance, front office, ticket sales, community relations – was in line,” he says. “And that leadership was going to help me uphold what our values and principles were, not just at the beginning but on a daily basis.”
Step 3: Delineate and delegate. “You want diverse thoughts and opinions,” he says. “Having said that, if you have a group of 10 people, there could be a chance that nine want the same role. You have to define roles as soon as possible, give people a chance to reject, accept or embrace. You hope everybody embraces.”
Brown concedes – “100 percent” – that he is a better coach in 2023 than he was in his last job as head coach, in 2014, his second such stint with the Cavaliers. His growth was mostly through his experience in the Bay Area – and not only with the Warriors.
Brown has known Saint Mary’s College coach Randy Bennett since 1990, when Brown was playing basketball at the University of San Diego and Bennett was an assistant coach. Before accepting a potentially challenging job in Sacramento, Brown reached out to Bennett, who took over at SMC in 2001, when the program had the cachet of a deflated basketball and turned it into a mid-major power.
Bennett’s advice was to instill belief. His experience at SMC taught him that his initial diligence might be immediately beneficial but that finishing games required players who not only worked hard and did the right things but also believed in themselves.
A team accustomed to losing can’t develop an expectation of winning. No team finds more ways to lose than one that doesn’t expect to win.
The belief process began before Brown arrived, Fernandez and Loucks and other assistants working with players. With star center Domantas Sabonis inviting the team to his Napa getaway for workouts, team dinners and watching NBA playoff games, including The Finals with their new coach in his final days with the Warriors. There was more team building in the Las Vegas Summer League.
“With the connectivity of the guys, you start gaining confidence because you know you’re working when a lot of people are not,” Brown says. “From that point, from the start of training camp, you celebrate every little victory. You magnify it so guys understand it’s not just about the final record or whether you make the playoffs. There’s a process, and you’ve got to be present. To be present, you have to appreciate the steps, even the small ones, because they can create something large.”
The Kings finished with a 48-34 record, their best since 2005. They won the Pacific Division for the first time in 20 years. Brown has one Coach of the Year award (National Basketball Coaches Association) in his bag, and is the favorite to win the official NBA award.
“It was all about the culture,” Brown says. “As a younger guy, I might have come in and started talking Xs and Os from Day 1 and thought it was about this play or that play. About how we defend this or that. Those things matter, they can’t be top priority.”
Brown, 53, came to the Warriors in the summer of 2016 needing to rebrand himself. He was a good coach who had been fired three times, labeled too rigid, too dedicated to the minutiae of the process. His time in Golden State rounded the sharp edges without losing his attention to detail and desire to excel.
“I attribute that to Joe Lacob and Bob Myers and Steve Kerr for giving me the opportunity to be around them for six years,” Brown says. “I learned a lot from all of them, especially Steve. But I learned just as much from the players. From Draymond Green, Andre Iguodala, David West, Steph Curry, Shaun Livingston. All those guys taught me something.”
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Brown recalls a practice session in his first season with Golden State. He was in a rage, not angry but animated. Too demonstrative. Iguodala and Livingston later pulled him aside, reminding him that he was joining a veteran team coming off two spectacular seasons. Their message: Chill. When we need to you to fire us up, we’ll let you know.
“That helped me understand it’s not about what I can bring to the table,” Brown says. “It’s about what the players need me to bring to the table.
Seems to be working quite well in Sacramento. Well enough for a competitive reunion with old friends.
