Ranadivé Hires Mike Brown To Snap Kings’ 16-Year Playoff Drought

On Monday, the Sacramento Kings announced Mike Brown as their new head coach.

Brown, 52, is most known for his time at the helm of LeBron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers teams from 2005-10. He’s spent the past six seasons as an assistant coach for the Warriors, where he won two championships.

It’s a step in the right direction, and governing owner Vivek Ranadivé will hope a stable coaching situation can refloat Sacramento’s sunken ship.

Vivek will now employ his seventh coach in nine years since purchasing the team for $534 million 2013 — and none have guided the team to the postseason. In fact, Sacramento has missed the playoffs for the last 16 years — the longest current drought in the NBA.

Perhaps Brown can help fix that. His .616 win percentage ranks ninth among coaches with a minimum of 500 games.

Ranadivé isn’t hurting off the court: His lowly Kings are still worth $2 billion — nearly quadruple what they were when he first purchased the team.

But if he wants a winning product on the court, he’ll have to spend more than what is shaping up to be the 2022-23 season’s ninth-lowest payroll ($102M) to do it.