The Sacramento Kings faced more scrutiny in their 124-118 loss to the Golden State Warriors on Tuesday night.
Another loss for the 22-59 Kings isn’t all that noteworthy, but the Warriors’ resident pot-stirrer Draymond Green accused Kings first-year head coach Doug Christie of instructing his team to foul Seth Curry with a little over three minutes to go.
“We love taking money from players,” Green said during his postgame press conference. “Keep fining the teams. I’ve seen two fines, and we all know everybody [is] tanking.”
The NBA probed whether the foul was evidence of blatant tanking. The league cleared the Kings of those accusations and stated, “Christie made no intentional effort to give the Warriors a shooting foul, or to cause the Kings to lose the game,” per The Athletic’s Sam Amick.
The Kings weren’t swayed by Green’s argument, either.
On Sunday, Amick reported that the Kings are sticking with Christie as head coach next season.
Amick relayed the Kings’ reasoning for keeping Christie despite having the fourth-worst record in the NBA, as excerpted below:
“While Christie’s Kings were bad from the start — a league-worst 12-46 on Feb. 21 before going 10-13 since — there were roster realities outside of his control that had everything to do with the struggles. The Kings, who have been buried by the De’Aaron Fox trade with San Antonio in February of 2025, hired longtime NBA executive Scott Perry as general manager to rebuild the roster two months after that disastrous deal, and still have much work left to do on that front.
What’s more, the rash of significant injuries to the Kings’ best players — from Keegan Murray to Domantas Sabonis, Zach LaVine, DeAndre Hunter and more — made an already-challenging situation worse in the eyes of the team’s decision-makers and led to the conclusion that Christie deserves more time to prove himself in the position. As such, the choice has been made to keep Christie at the coaching helm for the start of next season and continue the evaluation from there.”
As of March 11, ESPN’s Jeremy Woo projected the Kings to select Kansas star guard Darryn Peterson at No. 1 overall. Of course, two things would have to happen for that prediction to come true. The Kings would have to win the NBA Draft lottery, and Peterson would have to declare for the draft as expected.
But even if Sacramento wins the lottery and has its pick of an extremely talented class, the Dallas Mavericks just proved that doesn’t automatically reverse a franchise’s fortunes.
Dallas drafted Cooper Flagg at No. 1 overall last summer, and while Flagg has been exceptional at just 19 years old, the Mavs are one notch above the Kings in the standings at 22-58.
The Kings keeping Christie bucks the league-wide trend of bailing on a head coach after a year or two. In recent years, even championship-winning head coaches have lacked job security. It could be seen as complacency, or, if you want to employ an optimistic lens, as remaining committed to a long-term plan.
Ultimately, it will fall to Christie and the Kings’ front office to determine whether the Kings can reignite the hope fans had during the 2022-23 season, when “Light the Beam” chants rang out as the 48-34 Kings made the playoffs under Mike Brown.
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