Sports
Mike Brown is the latest coach to get bit by NBA’s Surprise Season Curse
Expectations are a dangerous thing.
Nobody knows that more than NBA coaches, and we had our latest example Friday when the Coach of the Year Curse came after Mike Brown. The Sacramento Kings deposed him as head coach on Friday, a little more than two years after taking over a 30-win team that had an NBA-record 16-season playoff drought and failing to lead them to a championship.
I kid … slightly. Arguably, there were reasons here, and the Kings front office knows more about what was happening behind the scenes than you or me. As near as anyone can tell, this was the front office’s call and not an impulsive Vivek Ranadivé Special, as our Sam Amick and Anthony Slater noted Saturday.
At a 10,000-foot level, there wasn’t a lot of difference between this year’s Kings and the Kings of the last two seasons. Sacramento had a positive scoring margin on the season (plus-1.2, not far off the plus-2.6 of 2022-23 or the plus-1.7 of 2023-24). If you strip out their bad fortune in late/close games (something that tends to be pretty random over larger samples), the Kings’ underlying data wasn’t that different from the 48- and 46-win seasons of the two preceding years.
Notably, they also were 16th in defense despite a seeming paucity of defensive talent on the roster, and they were 14th a year earlier despite similar shortcomings. If you’re going to blame the coach, you also have to explain how a team with Domantas Sabonis at center, no backup bigs of note and a 6-6 “power” forward managed to form a credible NBA defense. The game that got Brown fired was one he narrowly lost with Alex Len as his starting center.
On the other hand, the Kings had dropped to 13-18, including five straight home losses, after Thursday night’s collapse against Detroit. Brown’s postgame news conferences increasingly consisted of him imploring players to do the things they weren’t doing, and the underlying message to the attuned ear seemed to be that his message wasn’t traveling as well as it used to.
Thus, reasonable people can argue about whether Kangz gonna Kang, or if it’s more of a story about the team’s response to Brown’s message not resonating with key players the way he once did.
But as I alluded to, there’s a bigger story here, about the hidden danger of surprise seasons. If you’re wondering why the average job timespan of a Coach of the Year award winner is barely two years, look here, because we’re talking about two highly correlated groups — with the Coach of the Year often being the one whose team was the biggest surprise.
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Brown might have been a victim of his own success at some level, after the invigorating “Light The Beam” campaign in 2022-23 when the Kings unexpectedly won 48 games and grabbed the third seed in the West. It was a perfect storm of health, production, weakened opposition and vibes, and as such, it was always going to be difficult to repeat, much less exceed in future seasons. That became a bit more clear when a 44-win Golden State Warriors team beat them in seven games in the first round of the playoffs.
Unfortunately, the success likely shoved the Kings in a direction where the short term became too prioritized at the expense of bigger-picture roster building; they just weren’t talented enough to be thinking this way. I say “likely” since I don’t have the counterfactual of a 35-win Kings season in 2022-23, but the roster moves speak for themselves.
To review: Sacramento traded its 2023 first-rounder to generate enough cap room to do a renegotiate-and-extend deal for Sabonis rather than make a pick and use the space to add another player. The Sabonis deal still paid him richly in the out years (he makes $40.5 million this year), so it felt like a bit of a pyrrhic victory given his relatively limited flight risk. (Few contending teams have cap room, not everyone needs a center, Sabonis isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, etc.) The organizational “win” was locking in Sabonis, but that thought process made a lot more sense if it was a 60-win team in the first place.
Mike Brown had coached Domantas Sabonis in Sacramento since 2022. (John Jones / USA Today)
Similarly, the Kings extended Harrison Barnes rather than seek to get younger or use him in a sign-and-trade, traded two second-round picks for Chris Duarte and waived Neemias Queta to sign JaVale McGee. A critical scouting fail on Sasha Vezenkov also shot their midlevel exception into the sun.
A year later, after winning 46 games, they went a step further by trading Barnes, Duarte and draft capital for a 35-year-old DeMar DeRozan. A player known more for raising his team’s floor than its ceiling, DeRozan hasn’t totally fit in his 31 games, and his lack of size at the four is an obvious problem for a team that lacks length and athleticism up and down the roster.
Look, any of these decisions were at least quasi-defensible in a vacuum. In the aggregate, however, they paint a picture of a franchise getting a bit out over its skis. And now, that same organization likely feels the pressure of De’Aaron Fox looking at his future. That, and his potential free agency, as well as seeing a future cupboard in Sacramento that is slightly bare.
It’s a movie we’ve seen before. Success is a hell of a drug, but surprise success, in particular, can be real plot twist in the team-planning process.
Take Atlanta, for instance. The Hawks made the 2021 Eastern Conference finals and then spent two years mistakenly thinking they were on the cusp of contention. In reality, they were the apex of averageness, going 120-126 in the following three seasons and finishing ninth, eighth and 10th, respectively, with three playoff wins in those seasons. A reckless trade for Dejounte Murray and some rose-colored extensions painted them into a cap corner, one the Hawks only now are emerging from.
Examples from the wayback machine are abundant — 2013-14 Phoenix Suns, anyone? — but for more recent fare, consider a few examples: Would the Los Angeles Lakers have attacked their roster more proactively in the summer of 2023 if their 43-win team hadn’t made the Western Conference finals? Would the Portland Trail Blazers have thought more about breaking up the Damian Lillard–CJ McCollum backcourt if it weren’t for their own deep run in 2019? For that matter, will the Indiana Pacers end up regretting their own “lock it down” reaction to their Eastern Conference finals run in 2023, which yielded $350 million in contracts for Obi Toppin, Andrew Nembhard, Pascal Siakam and T.J. McConnell?
We can go on. The commonality for all of them (well, not Indiana … at least not yet) is that they never got any closer to their intended destination than they did in the surprise season and ended up churning through coaches and roster convulsions.
There is one other thread: Those teams couldn’t stick through whatever their plans were once things got hard. I think that’s because it was a revised, improvised plan to start, and that made it easier to shift to Plans B, C and X and start throwing things at the wall.
It takes a strong organization to survive that. The Miami Heat went through that in 2017 when they miraculously turned around an 11-30 start with a 30-11 second half and nearly made the playoffs. Miami’s offseason was loaded with bloated contracts for the role players who turned around their season, and the result was two years of mediocrity and a slog of digging their way out. Finally, the Heat landed Jimmy Butler, drafted Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro, found Duncan Robinson under a rock and pushed to the 2020 finals.
And in those two intervening disappointing seasons, with a combined record of 83-81, the thing they didn’t do was change coaches.
“What they did there is really hard to do,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said when I asked for his thoughts on Sacramento and Brown before Saturday’s Miami-Atlanta game. “If you’ve been losing for 15, 20 years since Rick Adelman was there, and to change the culture and make the playoffs — you stick with it. Some of our best moments have been when we lost or struggled with things and you all get in a room, and the organization basically says, ‘Figure it the F out; there are no changes.’
“This league is hard. You have to go through adversity together as an entire organization if you’re going to break through and get to the other side. But yeah, that sucks.”
The next question for the Kings — whether it’s Doug Christie or somebody else on the sideline — is whether they can course-correct effectively. The good news is that the basic ingredients of a half-decent, West Play-In Tournament-level team are there right now. The bad news is that the current group has a near-zero chance of being anything more than that.
With that last sentence, at least, hopefully we’ve reset the expectations to something more appropriate.
(Top photo: Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)
Sports
Knicks miraculously overcome 29-point deficit to take commanding 3-1 lead in NBA Finals over Spurs
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NEW YORK – The New York Knicks do not die.
After trailing by as many as 29, the Knicks had yet another comeback — this one perhaps the greatest of all-time, to steal a 107-106 win over the San Antonio Spurs and take a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals.
The winning moment came at the fingertip of OG Anunoby, whose tip-in off a missed Jalen Brunson three-pointer put Madison Square Garden in an absolute frenzy.
But it sure was a grind to get to that point.
New York Knicks PG Jalen Brunson shoots over San Antonio Spurs PG De’aaron Fox in Game 3 of the 2026 NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden. (Vincent Carchietta/Imagn Images)
Karl-Anthony Towns was hit with two fouls in just the first 62 seconds of the game, one which the Knicks faithful were not happy with. And while there was plenty of ball left after that, the game changed from that moment.
The refs certainly did not help the case, but the Spurs opened the game on a 41-20 run, mostly while Towns was off the floor. Combine that with the team knocking down 54% of its three-pointers in the first half, and you have a 76-49 Spurs lead at halftime, and they got up to a 29-point lead.
But we’ve learned to never count out New York. As they cut the deficit to 15 to close out the third quarter, the crowd that was dying to pounce was finally alive. A slow start to the fourth put San Antonio up 20, but the Knicks went on a 13-2 run to cut it to just nine with a little less than seven minutes to go. And then it was seven with 5:15 to go.
Members of the New York Knicks celebrate their 107-106 victory against the San Antonio Spurs in Game 4 of the 2026 NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York on June 10, 2026. (Dustin Satloff/Getty Images)
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And then it was four with 4:32 to go.
Then one with two minutes.
And then the lead with just 90 seconds left.
Pandemonium.
The Spurs hit two free throws to regain the lead with 30.3 seconds left. Yet again — it’s the Knicks.
New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson reacts after making a three-point basket against the San Antonio Spurs during the fourth quarter of Game Four in the 2026 NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York on June 10, 2026. (Al Bello/Getty Images)
Then came what head coach Mike Brown dubbed the greatest play in the history of Knicks basketball.
San Antonio was unable to get a shot off the inbound, and Madison Square Garden was the loudest it may have ever been, as the greatest comeback in NBA Finals history was complete.
After the game, head coach Mike Brown dubbed Anunoby’s tip-in the biggest play in the history of Knicks basketball.
The Knicks outscored the Spurs 58-30.
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MEXICO CITY — The Mexican national team will kick off the 2026 World Cup against South Africa on Thursday with the weight of entertaining 83,000 at iconic Azteca Stadium and soccer fans around the globe.
The match at the venue known as Mexico City Stadium during the World Cup will kick off at noon PDT and air on Fox and Telemundo.
Once the ball starts rolling, the stadium’s altitude — 7,216 feet above sea level — will be one of the biggest assets for the Mexican lineup led by coach Javier Aguirre.
It will be Mexico’s eighth opening match in a World Cup, and El Tri carries a historical burden. It has never won a tournament opener, with a record of 0-5-2, including a 1-1 draw against South Africa in the opening match of the 2010 World Cup in Johannesburg.
Mexico coach Javier Aguirre directs his players during a friendly against Australia on May 30 at the Rose Bowl.
(Kyusung Gong / Ap Photo/kyusung Gong)
Aguirre will likely deploy the 4-3-3 formation he used during Mexico’s final warm-up match against Serbia.
“We’re ready; we’ve been working for 22 months,” said Aguirre, 67, who took the reins of the national team on Aug. 1, 2024, following Jaime Lozano’s failure at that year’s Copa América, when Mexico was knocked out in the group stage.
Since his arrival, Aguirre has led the team to its first Concacaf Nations League title and the Gold Cup. Mexico enters the tournament on an eight-game unbeaten streak, though several of those results came against lower tier opponents and at home. The two most encouraging highlights of that streak were the draws against Belgium and Portugal.
“If my teams are known for anything, it’s for their character,” Aguirre said. “My team is just like me.”
The starting goalkeeper position remains a topic of debate, but it appears Aguirre has already made his decision. Guillermo Ochoa, who will be playing in his sixth World Cup with Mexico, is considered by many to be the ideal experienced goalkeeper to use during the opener, when nerves are sure to be high. However, Raúl Rangel has been the starting goalkeeper during Mexico’s past three warm-up matches, playing the full 90 minutes each time.
Rangel, who was 10 years old when Mexico tied South Africa in the opening match of the 2010 World Cup and who fondly remembers El Tri’s victory over France that tournament, is confident between the posts.
Mexico could turn to veteran goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa to calm nerves during the World Cup opener on Thursday.
(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)
“We’re in great shape; we proved it against Portugal and Belgium, two teams that are among the world’s elite,” said Rangel, who noted that Ochoa has instilled a sense of calm in the team.
“I do believe we can be champions. We have to start keeping that in mind and believe that it’s possible. Not everyone can boast that they played in a World Cup on home soil.”
The Mexican team’s lack of elite club experience, however, is obvious and could be a problem. El Tri has few players in top-tier leagues and lacks game-changers on the wings, as Diego Lainez, Uriel Antuna and Hirving Lozano were left off the final roster. Offensive output is a cause for concern. In tight matches, goals have come mainly from defenders, with César Montes and Johan Vásquez being the primary threats on set pieces.
The commitment to youth appears to be a key factor in Aguirre’s approach to building the roster. Mexican American Brian Gutiérrez brings freshness and dynamism to the midfield, alongside Erik Lira’s energy. As an option off the bench, Aguirre could turn to 17-year-old Gilberto Mora, the youngest player in the tournament, who is sure to draw cheers from the crowd.
For his part, South Africa’s 74-year-old head coach, Hugo Broos, knows the Azteca Stadium well, having marked Maradona during the 1986 World Cup semifinals. To acclimate his players to the altitude, he held training camp in Pachuca, at an elevation of 7,979 feet.
“This game is special. I’ve played in European championships, but there’s nothing like a World Cup. And we’re going to play at the Azteca Stadium — it’s incredible that this is going to happen,” Broos said.
South Africa coach Hugo Broo talks with Nigeria’s players during a World Cup qualifying match against Nigeria in Bloemfontein, South Africa, on Sept. 9.
(Themba Hadebe / Associated Press)
He expects to be challenged by Mexico.
“They’re a very well-rounded team, with great mobility and teamwork,” Broos said of El Tri. “You can tell they want to be world champions.”
South Africa will pose a real threat with Mbekezeli Mokoena driving the midfield and the speed of Oswin Appollis and Relebohile Mofokeng on the wings. The team’s main weakness lies in finishing, as Lyle Foster is their only striker, and if he doesn’t perform well, the South African side will suffer.
“We can’t say we don’t have a chance against Mexico, because that’s not true,” said Broos about his team, which is ranked 60th in FIFA rankings and will tangle with a Mexican squad ranked No. 14.
Pregame entertainment will kick off at 10:30 a.m. PDT with performances by Shakira, Burna Boy, Maná, J Balvin, and Alejandro Fernández. As a new ceremonial feature, all 26 players from each team — starters and substitutes — will participate in the ceremony by lining up around the tournament’s central emblem on the field, rather than in the traditional pregame formation.
The match is expected to be played in the rain. Protests are expected around the stadium throughout the day, including demonstrations by the teachers’ union and groups representing the families of missing persons.
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The 2026 FIFA World Cup is almost here, and fans stateside are starting to feel the excitement.
For the next month, some of the best soccer players and teams the world has to offer will duke it out on North American soil for the right to hoist the World Cup.
The U.S. Men’s National Team in particular is an exciting young soccer squad that is looking to make some noise on their home turf, and their road to the knockout stage couldn’t have been much easier (with all due respect to their fellow group members).
Folarin Balogun #20 of United States celebrates with teammates after scoring during the second half of the international friendly match between United States and Senegal at Bank of America Stadium on May 31, 2026 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Cory Knowlton/ISI Photos/ISI Photos via Getty Images)
The Stars and Stripes will begin their quest for a World Cup on Friday, June 12, at 9 p.m. Eastern against Paraguay in Los Angeles.
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The Paraguayans will be making their return to the World Cup stage for the first time since 2010, and have been giant killers throughout their qualifying rounds, taking down the likes of South American heavyweights Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil.
Next on the docket, the U.S. will face off against Australia on Friday, June 19, at 3 p.m. Eastern in Seattle.
The Socceroos will try their best to muck it up and play a very defensive brand of soccer against America, while also boasting a great goalkeeper in Matthew Ryan.
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Tyler Adams of the United States looks on before the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Round of 16 match between the Netherlands and the United States at Khalifa International Stadium in Doha on Dec. 3, 2022. (Maddie Meyer/FIFA/Getty Images)
Goals will be at a premium for anyone who plays Australia in this tournament.
To conclude group play, the United States will play Turkey on Thursday, June 25, at 10 p.m. Eastern back in Los Angeles.
Fresh off a quarterfinals appearance in Euro 2024, this is a very talented Turkey who may not have the star power of a France or Brazil, but will be a very dangerous out for anyone in the World Cup.
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Team USA fans celebrate with a flag during the soccer game between the United States and Panama at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Ga., on June 27, 2024. (David J. Griffin/Icon Sportswire)
Though the subject of who moves on may already be decided when Türkiye and the United States square off, these are the two heavyweights of Group D and should make for an exciting conclusion to group play.
All three games will be streaming on Fox Sports and Fox One, with both the Australia and Paraguay matchups available on Fox (blackout restrictions may apply).
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Additionally, the U.S.-Paraguay matchup will be available for free on Tubi.
Happy World Cup, everyone, and go, go USA!
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