The Atlanta Hawks do not need the Sacramento Kings to make the playoffs to receive their first-round pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, but they need them to come close. The Kings are not making things any easier.
Atlanta will get Sacramento’s pick if the selection falls anywhere from 13 to 30 as a result of the trade that sent Kevin Huerter from the Hawks to the Kings (that will be relevant again later).
As things stand, the Kings’ pick is slated to fall in at No. 9 and, thus, not convey.
Well, the Kings fired their head coach, Mike Brown, and have replaced him with top assistant Doug Christie. Naturally, the initial reaction to the news from a Hawks perspective is not optimistic, and for good reason.
“I've been through it with you, and we're right back on it. The coaching carousel is back in Sacramento after the Kings made the horrendous – but not at all surprising – decision today to fire Sacramento Kings head coach Mike Brown. But before we get into the completely disrespectful way of how they did it, let's just state the obvious right out off the bat: This fixes nothing. It changes nothing,” ABC 10’s Matt Brown said on the “Locked On Kings” podcast on December 27.
“You can pull the wool over my eyes or try and put the blindfold over my eyes. I see right through it. Because I've seen what we've all seen over the past two decades of this organization's history. This is a disaster for the Sacramento Kings; an absolute disaster.”
To underscore the levels of dysfunction the Kings are putting on display, here is star point guard De’Aaron Fox in June, speaking highly on the “stability” Brown, his fourth head coach, brought.
Spoke with De'Aaron Fox (and Reign) at Fox's basketball camp in Rocklin today.
— Matt George (@MattGeorgeSAC) June 19, 2024
Fox spoke about Mike Brown's contract extension and the stability it brings to the Kings organization. pic.twitter.com/DYnVHm862t
NBA insider Jake Fischer reported on a disconnect between Brown and ownership despite the head coach earning a two-year extension with $21 million in new money in June.
Kings repeating Hawks' mistake
“Getting back to the playoffs had been the minimum internal expectation for Brown's third season,” Fischer wrote on December 28. “It sure seems backwards to scapegoat the only coach who'd managed to deliver on that goal over a span of nearly 20 seasons.
“Perhaps he and the Kings are just the latest brutal example of how arriving too early as a team can prove to be burden rather than blessing, like those Hawks who reached the 2021 Eastern Conference finals well ahead of schedule, only for Atlanta to lock itself into multiple contracts that the organization would soon start looking to trade.”
Huerter was one of those players.
The Hawks traded him, in large part, to avoid the luxury tax after trading for Dejounte Murray. Huerter said he believes that run began the downfall for that iteration of the Hawks.
“That was almost like the start of our downfall, was the run that we went on,” Huerter told J.J. Redick and Tommy Alter on “The Old Man & the Three” in May 2023. “We won before we were expected to win, or before we should have won let’s call it…That just put a fast forward on our timeline, and I don’t think our team as a whole was fully at that point.
“The expectations for that team just went through the roof the next year because we made a Conference Finals. And it was Conference Finals or Finals-or-Bust. And, maybe as a unit that wasn’t where we were yet.”
Fischer also pointed to Kings owner Vivek Ranadive wanting a different coach anyway.
However, the Kings – in another parallel to the Hawks – traded for their version of Murray, acquiring DeMar DeRozan from the Chicago Bulls this past offseason.
It is no surprise, then, that Fox, a Klutch Sports client, now finds himself mired in trade rumors. It is much like Hawks star Trae Young – a former Klutch client – has in the time since that run. The Kings should take another page out of the Hawks’ book.
The Hawks retooled around Young. Part of that included hiring Quin Snyder as head coach.
Of course, they gave themselves a chance to fully opt-out of the Trae Young era. But they essentially went back to basics and built a group that supports Young.
Hawks have vested interest in Kings' success
The Hawks actually need the Kings to do that. If they do not get the Kings’ first-round pick this season, the protections lighten to the top 10 in 2026. However, if it does not convey then, it becomes second-round picks (one each in 2026 and 2027).
If the Hawks sense a Kings rebuild coming as seems possible, trading that pick would be wise.
The glimmer of hope is that the Kings follow the same path the Hawks did to even make that run in 2021 – firing incumbent head coach Lloyd Pierce and turning to Nate McMillan.
McMillan, now an assistant for the Los Angeles Lakers, was unable to recapture that success with the Hawks in the following seasons, leading to Snyder’s hiring following the All-Star break in 2022-23.
The lesson for the Kings?
Without the right roster to enact his plan, a coaching change could do more harm than good for a roster that was trending in the right direction just one season ago.