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Christie, Kings ‘proud’ of first win under interim coach vs. Mavs originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
SACRAMENTO – The Kings got their first win under interim coach Doug Christie on Monday, but the product itself wasn’t that much different than the one Sacramento trotted out while Mike Brown was in charge.
There still were the usual suspects – a failure to properly defend the 3-point shot, a lack of attention to details, general sloppiness in taking care of the ball.
That it ended with a win was pretty incredible, especially since the Kings were getting pushed around by a bunch of no-name back-ups on the Dallas Mavericks for most of the night in their 110-100 victory.
“It was ugly, but we got the win,” Kings center Domantas Sabonis said after his 28th double-double of the 2024-25 NBA season.
That was kind of the prevailing opinion floating around Golden 1 Center following the Kings’ first victory at home since Dec. 8. Yes, the game itself was far from picturesque, but it still ended with a W.
That, maybe more than anything, was why the Kings opted to part ways with Brown. They were the same flawed team that took to the court Monday, but the difference was that Brown’s squad let numerous big leads slip away in the fourth quarter while the Christie-led unit held tight at the end and came away with a victory.
“Super proud of the guys,” Christie said. “Obviously didn’t start out the way that we wanted to. Offensively didn’t run with the same pace that we did [against the Lakers], but defensively took a bit of a step. There’s still levels to this.
“More than anything, it’s about winning.”
Professional sports, outside of gymnastics or martial arts, don’t award style points. The only thing that really matters, to fans and most importantly to owners, is winning and losing.
The Kings had done enough losing that Brown was sent packing less than two years after being the NBA’s unanimous Coach of the Year.
There’s no telling how long Christie will carry the interim tag or if he’ll eventually be offered the full-time top gig.
In the meantime, however, the former Kings player is intent on bringing the fun back to Golden 1.
“I want them to have joy and play with joy at the same time,” Christie said. “But understand that when it’s business, we are getting after it.
“That’s what I want our fans to feel so when they come to our arena they know that there’s going to be a sense of pride in what is across our chest and our back, that we’re coming to deliver a product that they can be proud of.”
To help foster that, Christie did make a few minor changes. During one timeout, he had the players lock arms in the huddle as a sign of unity.
Afterward, Christie sounded pleased with how his team responded after digging into an 18-point hole in the first quarter.
“The process of us improving is facing adversity, facing those things and overcoming those things.” Christie said proudly.
Inside the Kings’ locker room, the players were equally proud. Having began the season with high hopes only to see them be erased less than two months into the season, then going through a coaching change, they needed some sort of good news.
“I don’t think [we] necessarily know how much it has to do with Mike not being around, but I think we kind of needed this for us,” Keon Ellis said. “We’ve obviously been struggling so to get a win kind of helps us get back on track. Hopefully we can use this to carry it on into the next couple of games.”
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