SACRAMENTO, CA — It’s been over a year since New York Knicks head coach Mike Brown was fired from his role as head coach with the Sacramento Kings. He hadn’t stepped foot in Golden 1 Center since he was let go in December 2024.
On Wednesday, Jan, 14, Brown returned to the place he coached for two seasons – where he became 2023 NBA Coach of the Year with the Kings.
The short reunion ended with Brown’s Knicks suffering a 112-101 loss to the Kings, who now are on a three-game winning streak.
‘I had a great time here (in Sacramento),’ Brown told USA TODAY Sports after the loss. ‘My family had a great time here. … I enjoyed my time here, so it was great to be back.’
For a third consecutive game, Sacramento fans chanted ‘light the beam’ as they were lifted to victory behind a game-high 27 points from DeMar DeRozan.
‘We got our behinds kicked. We talk about the game and we get ready for the next one,’ Brown said to USA TODAY Sports. ‘That’s what this league is about. Got 82 of them, got to take them one at a time. You have to keep trying to coach and get better and then move on to the next one and that’s kind of how it is.’
Zach LaVine added 25 points, while Russell Westbrook had another double-double, 19 points and 11 assists.
The game’s X-factor was Precious Achiuwa, a former Knick, who torched his old team for 20 points, with 14 rebounds, two steals and two blocks.
‘Give Precious Achiuwa a lot of credit,’ Brown told reporters. ‘He was with me during the Nigerian national team. He impacts the game in a lot of ways. He had 20 and 14. He’s a guy when you close out on him, we want to be the second jumper. To start the game we ran him off the line three times, so we didn’t do a good job of following our gameplan tonight.’
Brown was greeted with an ovation by the 15,095 fans at Golden 1 Center during the team introduction. The arena as filled by a number of Knicks fans, but mostly Kings fans regarded as Sacramento’s ‘Sixth Man.’
‘The fans were fantastic,’ Brown said to reporters. ‘We enjoyed living here, so I appreciate it. A lot of love from the fans here. But in the same breathe, we’re happy as hell in New York, we enjoy the organization, we enjoy the fans there and we enjoy where we live.’
During warmups, Brown had a brief interaction with Kings owner Vivek Ranadive, who fired Brown.
Brown said they just exchanged pleasantries as Ranadive was just saying ‘hello.’ There was the game to be played, but Brown – and his abrupt December 2024 firing – was the talk of the town. Brown had just finished a post-practice media scrum and started heading to the Sacramento international Airport, when he received the call from Ranadive that he was being fired.
Brown used the time away from basketball to spend time with his family. He traveled different parts of the world with his wife, spent time with his grandson at amusement parks. He stayed away from basketball but his phone was nearby.
‘When it happened you process it real quickly,’ Brown said to reporters. ‘My wife and I went to Australia for UFC 312, Brooklyn, Puerto Vallarta, St Barts. … It’s life, you keep moving forward. You can really beat yourself up if you try to guess or figure what should’ve happened, why it happened, what could’ve happened, all that stuff. Life is short, I try to embrace it. Try to be in the moment, like I said, enjoy what I can enjoy, control what I can control. If I can’t control it, try to find something else to do.’
He got a call from the Knicks in the summer of 2025 and accepted a head coaching role of one of the NBA’s most-storied franchises. So far, he’s coached them to the second-best record in the Eastern Conference at 25-15 and a NBA Cup championship.
That’s not his ultimate goal, nor was beating the Kings.
‘The most positive is being able to hang a banner up in MSG, the most iconic arena in the league,’ Brown said to reporters in December following their NBA Cup championship.
The Knicks sit 3.5 games behind the first-place Detroit Pistons, while the Kings (11-30) are searching for their identity and continue develop a standard of a winning culture.