The Sacramento Kings were a mess this year. They traded away their upcoming star in Tyrese Haliburton for a glorified role player in Domantas Sabonis. The Kings were 30-52 which was 12th in the West, and they are back in the lottery this year. They fired their old coach Alvin Gentry and hired Mike Brown on a four-year contract. Brown has a winning record in his coaching career and won the Coach of the Year in 08-09. Recently, he has been a fill-in coach for Steve Kerr since he has Covid. During that time, he has had a win where the Warriors were down for the 47 minutes of the game and suffered a 40-point loss in the playoffs. Although he is a winning coach, he was mostly an assistant coach throughout his career, so King’s fans are not sure if this was the King’s best option. The other options for the Kings might have been better.

The first option they should have gone with was Mike D’Antoni. D’Antoni was very qualified for the job. D’Antoni has a winning percentage of .560. For those who don’t know, that means that he wins over 50% of his games. D’Antoni also has coached some deep playoff run teams, so he has experience with high-pressure situations. The main reason why everyone thought he would have been such a good fit is that D’Antoni is known for a seven-second of less offense. That means that he likes to play really fast and shoot the ball within seven seconds. That would have been perfect for the Kings with them having the fastest point guard in De’Aron Fox. The kings also have some great shooters so he could just drive and kick to them to get wide-open threes. The Kings also have a small center in Domantas Sabonis, so he could keep up with the speed. The last reason why D’Antoni would have been a great option is that he is great at developing point guards. He developed Jeremy Lin during Linsanity and he also helped James Harden be one of the best shooting guards of all time. That would have been perfect to develop our recent lottery pick in Davion Mitchell.

Another coach that would have been great was Mark Jackson. Mark Jackson was a coach for the Warriors for three years. In those three years, he took them to the playoffs three times. Jackson also has a winning percentage of .526. That would be great for the Kings because all we want is a winning season and if he can bring it to the fans he would be one of the best coaches in recent history for the Kings. Jackson also helped develop Steph Curry into the plater he is today so maybe he could have done the same thing with Fox. Jackson’s resume as a coach might not be as impressive as some others, but he shines on his resume as a player. Player coaches tend to be the best because they have been by basketball for all of their lives and know the tricks of the NBA. The best type of player coaches though is role players because star players don’t know how to treat the role players. Mark Jackson fits perfectly in both of those descriptions. Jackson played 17 years in the NBA and in that time he average 9.6 points per game and 8.0 assists per game. Those assists matter because that means he knows how and where to get players open. So he can draw up a lot of great plays for the team.

The last coach that would have been better for the Kings is Steve Clifford. Clifford wins just under half his games with a winning percentage of .458. Clifford doesn’t have a long resume with only coaching eight seasons and having three Eastern Conference Coach of the Month awards. The reason why most Kings fans would like him as a coach is that he gets bad teams in the playoffs. An example of this was the Orlando Magic in the late 2010s. Those teams had no reason to be making the playoffs with their best player being a fringe All-Star at best, but what Clifford does best is getting the best out of his players. He had Evan Fournier look like an All-star some season, he had Terrence Ross be one of the best sixth men in the league and had Nikola Vucevic be one of the better centers in the league. It is no fluke that now Evan Fournier is almost out of the league, Terrence Ross is irrelevant, and Vucevic is not an all-star anymore just two seasons after their last playoff run.

Although the coaching hire of Mike Brown wasn’t the worst for the Kings, the fans and I agree that there was way better options that they could have gone after.