Sacramento Kings head coach Mike Brown has agreed to a three-year, $30 million contract extension that will keep him with the team through the 2026-27 season, Adrian Wojnarowski reported, just days after reports of a rift between the two sides over the terms of the deal.
Earlier this month, Kings reporter James Ham reports. Brown's “inability to replicate last year's success” has frustrated the owners, Wojnarowski said, while there is a “rift” between the two sides over compensation for the 2023 NBA Coach of the Year award. Recently, Shams Charania Brown asked for $10 million per year, but the Kings offered $7 million, with a deal that could rise to $9 million with bonuses.
In the end, Brown got his prize and the Kings got to keep one of the league's top coaches.
Brown was hired in May 2022 and immediately got to work making the Kings relevant again. In his first year, he led the team to a 48-34 record, the third seed in the Western Conference, and their first playoff appearance since 2006. This ended the longest playoff drought in NBA history and the longest active playoff drought in major North American professional sports. The Kings narrowly lost their first-round series to the Golden State Warriors in seven games.
This season, the key numbers were the same, but the Kings just couldn't get back to the playoffs. They went 46-36, but this time they could only qualify for the play-in tournament in ninth place. After beating the Warriors in the first round of that tournament, they lost to the New Orleans Pelicans in the game that would determine the eighth seed. That loss came without key guards Malik Monk and Kevin Huerter, both of whom missed time due to injuries sustained late in the regular season. Had they been healthy, the Kings could have returned to the postseason and Brown's contract extension might have been a simple process.
With Brown under contract for the time being, the Kings can now turn their attention to the next big challenge of the offseason: the free agency of Monk. Monk has been a star player in Sacramento the past two seasons, finishing as runner-up for Sixth Man of the Year. He's in line for a big raise this summer, but collective bargaining rules mean the Kings can only offer him a four-year, $77.9 million contract, while other teams with more cap space could offer more than $100 million over four years.
He has expressed his desire to stay with the Kings, but financial demands may come in. If he were to leave, it would be a huge loss for Brown and company, as Monk's scoring off the bench has been a huge part of the team's resurgence and he will be very hard to replace.
