Heat HC Erik Spoelstra weighs in on Kings sudden Mike Brown firing
Yesterday at 03:05 PM
Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra doesn’t know what it’s like to be fired. He’s been in charge of the franchise since 2008. But, he certainly knows the business and has tons of sympathy for Mike Brown, who was shockingly let go by the Sacramento Kings on Friday.
Spoelstra and Brown are close friends and both started their time in the league as video coordinators. Before the Heat faced the Hawks on Saturday, Spoelstra spoke on Brown losing his job after just leading the Kings to back-to-back playoff appearances.
Via Ira Winderman:
“I texted with him last night. It’s just a really sad state of our profession. It seems like I’m making comments about coaches far too often. Somebody on our staff mentioned that it was almost 15 coaches in Sacramento since I’ve been head coach. They’ve had some really good head coaches come through there,” Spoelstra said.
“Mike and I go all the way back to the beginning. We were both video coordinators. He’s a great coach. What they did there is really hard to do. If you’ve been losing for 15, 20 years since Rick Adelman was there, and to change the culture and make the playoffs – you stick with it.
Some of our best moments have been when we’ve lost or we struggled with things and you all get in a room, and basically the organization says, ‘Figure it the F out. There are no changes. So I feel for Mike, having to go through that. He was the same guy who was Coach of the Year less than 24 months ago. This league is hard. You have to go through adversity together as an entire organization, if you’re going to break through and get to the other side. But, yeah, that sucks.”
Spoelstra, who is a Heat lifer, isn’t the only coach to comment on the Kings canning Brown. Rick Carlisle, Michael Malone, and Jordi Fernandez all chimed in, too. Malone’s remarks were by far the most impactful though. Sacramento of course let go of the Nuggets boss in 2015 after just 24 games and he absolutely ripped apart the organization for doing Brown dirty, saying the front office has “no balls, no class.”
He’s not wrong. It was a wild move considering Brown’s impact over the last two seasons. But, the Kings clearly thought a change needed to be made amid their poor 13-18 start.
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