Kings Remove Interim Tag, Trusting Doug Christie To Lead Amid Uncertainty
The Sacramento Kings' future is murky. They fired former Coach of the Year Mike Brown and traded the face of the franchise, De'Aaron Fox. The primary return for the latter was Zach LaVine, a lottery-protected first-round pick from the Chicago Bulls this year, and two more future Round 1 selections.
While the added draft capital should aid their future roster construction, parting with a former All-NBA guard who's 27 and not acquiring promising young players from the San Antonio Spurs was a head-scratching decision. Instead of prying Rookie of the Year Stephon Castle or a two-way wing like Devin Vassell from San Antonio, the Kings reunited LaVine and DeMar DeRozan.
That's a pairing that, in part due to injuries, didn't achieve much success in Chicago. The idea that it would all of a sudden work in the Western Conference with more mileage on their tires was nearly impossible to find optimism about.
The duo, with Domantas Sabonis, led Sacramento to the play-in tournament this year, but they got dispatched 120-106 by the Dallas Mavericks on their home floor. The usually raucous Golden 1 Center became a library as the game turned uncompetitive.
The Kings immediately fired general manager Monte McNair after the loss. They replaced him with former New York Knicks GM Scott Perry. The latter spent three months with the franchise he's returning to, acting as their vice president of basketball operations in 2017.
It's now official that Perry will work in concert with Doug Christie. According to Shams Charania of ESPN, Sacramento removed the interim tag, agreeing to a multi-year contract. The Kings went 27-24 after Christie replaced Mike Brown this season. They ranked ninth in offensive efficiency in that stretch.
Putting leadership in place, with a fresh set of eyes and opinions in the front office, was the crucial first step forward. Now, Sacramento must determine Sabonis's future with the franchise.
Owner Vivek Ranadive has long seemed resistant to embracing a complete rebuild. It's likely why the Kings got LaVine in return for Fox, but not younger building blocks for a brighter future.
According to veteran NBA insider Marc Stein of The Stein Line substack, the team has no plans for an "offseason teardown."
While LaVine, Sabonis, and DeRozan are under contract, Sacramento's lack of cap space this summer suggests it will have to get creative to acquire impactful players. It also reads like a situation likely to end the way the last two seasons did: a play-in tournament elimination.
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Indianapolis Star
43 minutes ago
- Indianapolis Star
How Pacers' Tyrese Haliburton shut out the noise and found a way to beat the Thunder
INDIANAPOLIS -- Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton knows what to expect from the online and television discourse every time he has a performance like he had in Game 2 of the NBA Finals -- when his scoring and field goal attempt numbers take a dip and he doesn't make the impact he wants to. During the regular season it's more of a local phenomenon, but once the postseason hit, the discourse became more national with every round. How is it possible someone capable of so much magic in a historically improbable late-game comeback such as Game 1 of this series when Haliburton hit a game-winning jumper with 0.3 seconds to go to be so quiet in games the Pacers lose. They say he's not aggressive enough or too inconsistent to be considered a superstar and wonder why the 2023-24 NBA assist leader hasn't figured out that he should just shoot more. The narratives are overly simplistic, but Haliburton knows at this point there's only so much he can do to change that. He admits that he is "chronically online" and has a better sense of the NBA and how it's covered than just about any other active player, but at this stage he's actively trying to avoid the social media that he usually drinks in. "I think the commentary is always going to be what it is, you know?" Haliburton said. "Most of the time, the talking heads on the major platforms, I couldn't care less. Honestly, like what do they really know about basketball?" Re-live the Pacers unbelievable run to the NBA Finals in IndyStar's commemorative book Haliburton is aware there's a correlation between his scoring and the Pacers' success. He averaged 21.2 points in wins in the regular season on 14.6 field goal attempts per game and 14.3 points per game on 12.4 field goal attempts in defeats. But he views his scoring less as a cause of the Pacers' wins and more of a connected effect. He scores more and the Pacers win more when he's getting two feet in the paint, and that happens when he's orchestrating the Pacers whirling, ball-movement oriented offense the way that he wants to. The wispy 6-5, 185-pounder who was raised on Magic Johnson highlight videos is neither physically nor mentally built to doggedly drive into the lane to pile up shots and draw fouls in an effort to score 30 or 40 points every night. But when he gets the offense spinning, he can put up big scoring and assist numbers by letting the game come to him. Usually when he doesn't score much, that's a sign of a deeper dysfunction in execution, and Haliburton looks to find that issue rather than focus on his field goal attempts. And in Game 3 he made the adjustments he needed to make. After scoring 17 points in Sunday's Game 2 with 12 of them coming in the fourth quarter after the Pacers had faded too far to come back, Haliburton dazzled in Game 3 with 22 points, 11 assists and nine rebounds to help lead the Pacers to a 116-107 win over the Thunder on Wednesday in their first NBA Finals home game since 2000. Twenty-five years to the day after the Pacers' Game 3 win over the Lakers in the 2000 Finals, they took a 2-1 lead in this NBA Finals with Game 4 coming up Friday at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Haliburton didn't view the performance as a triumph of aggression or will but of an adjustment in mindset and strategy against a Thunder defense that he told ESPN he considers to be the best he's played against. In Game 2, Haliburton believed he allowed the Pacers' system of randomized movement to become too predictable and too predicated on high ball screens -- usually Haliburton's bread and butter, but an action that plays right into the hands of a swarming Thunder defense. In Game 3, he mixed up actions well enough to create space which was beneficial not only for him but everyone else on the Pacers' roster. Their 116 points were the most they've scored in a game this series, they shot a series-best 51.8% from the floor and scored 50 points in the paint after scoring just 34 in each of the first two games. "We did a great job of just playing off the pitch, off handoffs, screening, all those things," Haliburton said. "I thought we did a great job of -- this is a defense that you can't consistently give them the same look. If you try to hold the ball and call for screens, they crawl into you and pack the paint. It's not easy. It's really tough. That's why they are such a historical defense. You just have to continue to give them different looks as much as you can. I thought we did a great job of just playing and continuing to play random basketball. Against a team like this, there's not really play calls. You've just got to play." That's what Haliburton did and he let his own offense come to him as the game went along. He didn't take a shot for nearly six minutes to start the game and he missed his first field goal attempt, a 20-foot step-back pull-up jumper with 6:10 to go in the first quarter. But he followed that by driving past Thunder All-NBA second team defender Jalen Williams to the right side of the foul line and hitting a 16-foot floater over Thunder center Isaiah Hartenstein with 5:10 to play in the first quarter. Then he hit his first 3-pointer in first-team All-Defensive Team pick Luguentz Dort's face with 3:00 to go in the period and suddenly he had his rhythm established early. Haliburton put faith in his floater -- a weapon he's admittedly sometimes too reluctant to use -- hitting three mid-range shots in that fashion over top of charging big men. He scored two buckets at the rim -- one an impressive finish on a drive through contact and the other an easy two-handed fast-break dunk off a steal. He was 4 of 8 from 3-point range, hitting his most 3s since he made five in his 32-point, 15-assist, 12-rebound triple-double in the Pacers' win over the Knicks in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals. But he didn't just look for his own offense. He helped get fellow All-Star Pascal Siakam started early as Siakam scored the Pacers first six points en route to a 21-point night. Haliburton still got center Myles Turner involved with pick-and-roll and pick and pop actions even though the Pacers tried not to live off those as much. He made plays "off the pitch," using give-and-go actions with bigs operating near the top of the key with their back to the basket catching his passes and tossing them right back to him and that got Haliburton downhill momentum that he could use to either go to the rim or pass and it helped keep the Thunder from loading up their defense quickly. The Pacers managed 41 field goal attempts in the paint after taking just 27 in Game 2. "Terrific," Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said of Haliburton. "Look, every game you're going to have to make adjustments against this defense. There's just going to be different looks. You're going to have different high-level defenders on you. You're going to see some different coverage stuff. It's going to be constantly changing. So I thought his approach tonight was exactly what it needed to be, a combination of spatial awareness and aggression, and you know, a real good feel for aggression to score along with getting his teammates involved at the right times." Haliburton moves forward knowing that solving the Thunder defense for a game isn't the same as solving it for a series. Oklahoma City led the NBA in defensive rating and allowed the fewest paint points, and they'll find more ways to keep the ball away from the rim in Game 4. He also knows that there will be games when he's successfully bottled up or scores fewer points because he's more focused on creating for others. "I think there's going to be ebbs and flows," Haliburton said. "I'm never going to be, you know, super great and shoot so many shots every game consistently. There's going to be games where I don't and I've got to be able to find the right balance between the two. But I mean, I think experience is the best way I can learn from it. So seeing where I can be better is important through the first two games and just trying to be better today. You know, taking what the defense gives me, trying to play the right way and watch film and see where I can get better and be ready to go for Game 4." Haliburton has a lot of voices telling him he needs to shoot more. His personal trainer, Drew Hanlen, is particularly explicit about it, and Haliburton acknowledges that he sees plenty of examples of himself passing out on shots he should take and make in the course of a game. But part of that is a product of focus on making the textbook right play and keeping in mind the importance of involving his teammates. In turn, they trust his judgment. "Ty's got to do him," Siakam said. "That's what he's got to do, he's got to be himself every time he's out on the floor. He can impact the game in so many ways. So I'm really not worried about his scoring. I just know that he's going to make the right play. But when he's intentional about doing that every single play, I know something good is going to happen. So as long as he keeps doing that, we're going to be all right."
New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
Maybe the Pacers are just this good, plus a (scary) U.S. Open preview
The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic's daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox. Good morning! Fact-check your dad today. Three games aren't enough to judge a series, but we have a pretty clear narrative already in these NBA Finals: While Oklahoma City may be a slightly better team by most metrics, there is no group more clutch than Indiana. Undoubtedly. The Pacers are up 2-1 in this series after a 116-107 win last night, and I'm still agape at what happened last night. Two reads: Our friends at BetMGM have Indiana at just +200 to win the series now. I might favor them at this point. This is just good basketball. Onward: The rough, the rough, the rough. Have you heard about the rough at Oakmont, site of this week's U.S. Open? Coverage on the ground suggests missing a fairway is akin to throwing a ball in the Mariana Trench. Bye bye, ball. The Open begins today, and golfers will start teeing off shortly. Let's try to stay in the fairway for this preview: It all sounds a little … chaotic, right? It will be entertaining, do not fret. But if you need some zen beforehand, just look at the grounds crew cutting the grass via an army of push mowers: Wait for the maintenance staff member at 23 seconds. Shout out to those getting Oakmont in mint condition. — U.S. Open (@usopengolf) June 9, 2025 Let's keep going: Dobbins addresses false Yankees claims Red Sox rookie Hunter Dobbins caused rancor last weekend when he told the Boston Herald he'd rather 'retire' than play for the Yankees — not just due to the rivalry, but because his father had been drafted by the Yanks twice and traded to the Diamondbacks. The thing is, per the New York Post, Dobbins' father never played for either New York or Arizona. Whoops. Dobbins seemed unfazed yesterday, saying he doesn't 'go and fact-check my dad.' It's all pretty funny. Read his explanation here. Advertisement More news 📫 Love The Pulse? Check out our other newsletters. Many things make me feel like we live in a simulation these days, but seeing the pope wearing a White Sox hat during his weekly general audience in Rome might be the new No. 1 in my simulation power rankings. That's all. Almost done: 📺 Golf: The U.S. Open at Oakmont 6:30 a.m. ET on USA and Just keep it on in the background all day. 📺 NHL: Oilers at Panthers 8 p.m. ET on TNT/Max It's difficult to ever dismiss this Edmonton team, but going down 3-1 in this series, the way Florida has played of late, would feel like a death knell. I just hope it's a closer one than Game 3. Get tickets to games like these here. Politics and sports can often be inexorably intertwined. A new investigation from The Athletic reveals the latest surprising intersection: the charter airline that flies sports teams across the country … and does deportation flights for ICE. Read it here. Fresh off the digital presses this morning: Andrew Marchand went inside the world of Pat McAfee, including his banishment of Adam Schefter from his show. Wild stuff in there. This year's MLB anonymous player poll is finally here. I love seeing these unvarnished opinions. No, I would also not want to face Chris Sale in a tough spot. Read all the answers here. As silly as it sounds for people making seven and eight figures per year, raising a family while playing Major League Baseball can be extremely difficult. The relief? Summertime. As a dad, I found this fascinating. The best women's soccer player you don't know is Evelyn Shores, who has only won a national title this year, made a $1 million goal and scored for the USWNT U-23 team. Get to know her before she becomes a superstar. NBA coaches have quickly gone from a sharp-dressed group of suits to a cadre of quarter-zipped dudes. Will the league ever go back? Most-clicked in the newsletter yesterday: Our story on the Bengals and their weird fight with first-round pick Shemar Stewart. Most-read on the website yesterday: Rustin Dodd's story on that Roger Federer commencement speech, again.
USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
How Tigers' fallen star, late-blooming No. 1 picks got Detroit roaring atop AL
How Tigers' fallen star, late-blooming No. 1 picks got Detroit roaring atop AL Show Caption Hide Caption Watch baseball player's emotional reaction to surprise MLB promotion During a minor league baseball game in Tacoma, Washington, Cole Young was pulled aside and informed he'd been called up to play in the big leagues. BALTIMORE – They have been machinelike for nearly 120 games, spanning two seasons, and now sport the best record in the American League. Yet peel back a layer from the Detroit Tigers, and the players responsible for that excellence aren't far removed from the pitfalls of the sport. Perhaps it was the extra baggage No. 1 overall picks carry, a weight Spencer Torkelson admits delayed his eventual rise to feared slugger. Or the isolation one can feel as a flailing superstar with a $140 million contract on a struggling team, like Javy Baez endured for most of three seasons. Not even the greatest Tiger of all, peerless left-hander Tarik Skubal, is immune, undergoing Tommy John surgery at his no-name college, climbing to the big leagues only to suffer a flexor tendon injury that wiped out nearly a full season of his prime. Yet look at them now. The Tigers are 44-25, a start so dominant that the last Detroit club to break so strongly reached the 2006 World Series. They are a curious mix of largely twentysomething talent, versatile and fungible youngsters and the occasional veteran like World Series champion Báez – all willing to play anywhere or bat in whatever position, so long as everything they have is for the team. 'All things that it takes to have a lot of sustained success is definitely shining,' Torkelson, their first baseman possibly headed to his first All-Star Game, tells USA TODAY Sports, 'and having guys that have been at the bottom, been at the top, like Javy, it's such a cool perspective. 'That's baseball. That's sports. It's not going to be amazing every single day, every single year. You're going to battle through it. 'For me, that's what's so rewarding about it. You've seen the worst and when you do have success, it makes it that much sweeter.' The franchise itself can relate. A 114-loss 2019 was the nadir during seven consecutive losing seasons, a stretch of futility that netted it the top overall pick in two drafts. It wasn't until this spring that those two No. 1 overall picks, Torkelson and right-hander Casey Mize, found concurrent success. 'This is definitely a game of failure,' says Riley Greene, the Tigers' All-Star outfielder. 'They worked on the things they needed to work on and they're crushing now. Some people don't get it right away and others do; but that's the ups and downs of baseball. 'They had stuff to work on, and they took it and ran with it. And now look at 'em.' 'I wanted to make everyone happy' For Torkelson, the unkindest cut of all came when he least expected it. After spending all of 2023 in Detroit, the Tigers shipped him to Class AAA Toledo on June 3, 2024. He was toting a .201/.266/.330 slash line, with just four homers and 56 strikeouts in 230 plate appearances. It would have been humbling for any player who fancied himself a big league regular. But carrying that first overall pick designation – a tag no one ever forgets – only added to the weight. So Torkelson, still just 25 even as he's five years removed from the Tigers taking him No. 1 out of Arizona State, learned to leave all that behind. 'A lot of it was eliminating expectations. As a people pleaser, I wanted to make everyone happy,' says Torkelson. 'As a No. 1 pick, you want to live up to what everyone's writing about you rather than take a step back and be like, 'Wait, what got me selected No. 1?' My God-given ability and work ethic got me selected. So why not trust that – which is a lot easier said than done. 'Really going back to the basics and doing it not for anyone else but my own pleasure.' The mindset paid off. Torkelson earned an August recall to Detroit and produced a .781 OPS over the final two months, compared to .597 before his demotion. He's continued the trend this season, his 16 home runs tops among AL first basemen. He also leads the majors with 10 two-strike home runs, possibly a testament to his adjusted mindset. 'Baseball or golf, it's like, staying out of your own way is probably the biggest key to success for guys,' says Torkelson. 'The goal is to stay as present as possible. As a baseball player, your mind is always looking forward. You get a hit, now you're 3 for 4. You get another home run, now you've got 17. Your mind is always trying to look into the future, which it is supposed to do. 'But that's not how you maintain in a sport. It's taking a step back and seeing how you attack this pitch. Sometimes you catch yourself and you get yourself back to present.' Says manager A.J. Hinch: 'The way he bounces back from tough at-bats – he's pretty resilient.' A star embraces versatility Torkelson's recall, combined with a trade-deadline makeover and Hinch unleashing the Tigers' 'pitching chaos' plan awakened a franchise. The Tigers finished 33-16, snagged a wild-card spot and upset the Houston Astros in the wild-card round before losing a wild five-game AL Division Series to Cleveland. And Báez wasn't around for almost all of it. He and the Tigers decided he'd undergo season-ending hip surgery after an August series at Wrigley Field, sight of Báez's greatest triumphs as a member of the 2016 World Series champion Chicago Cubs. With the Tigers, he'd been more a liability, producing a .221 OBP and 71 adjusted OPS in his first three seasons. Repairing his hip might have been the unkindest cut at the time, but now he and the Tigers are reaping the rewards. Báez returned healthy and with a new identity – the do-anything super utilityman. Báez hadn't played center field since winter ball in 2015 until Hinch tossed him out there as a late-game defensive replacement. He ended up playing 23 consecutive games in center, robbing home runs, chasing balls into the gap and, in that span, slugging six home runs with an .898 OPS. With center fielder Parker Meadows' return, Báez is more often back at his natural shortstop. Either way, he has been remarkably valuable, producing four outs above average and 1.3 WAR, putting him on pace for his finest season as a Tiger. 'A guy like Javy, who's been the center part of a lot of teams he's been on, can just be one of the guys,' Hinch says of Báez, who made two All-Star teams and won a Gold Glove and Silver Slugger as a Cub. 'He doesn't have to carry us; we have a true team and a lot of guys who can do it. But when he adds something to the mix, we usually win. 'He's a big part of what we're doing and I think he's one of the best, versatile players in the league.' Báez's production fused with the young core was the outcome he envisioned when he signed with the Tigers, the last major transaction of former GM Al Avila's tenure. 'Everything is getting better as a team, as an organization. The only difference for me is being healthy,' says Báez, whose deal runs through 2027. 'I'm playing better for myself and playing better for the team. 'That was one of the reasons I came here: I saw the other prospects coming here and would make a good team in the future. The future is now – we're doing it right now.' Báez might have been envisioned as a franchise hub, but he's probably serving as a better avatar for the young players in his current role – versatile, willing to trot out to any position, starter or reserve, always ready. 'He's unbelievable. He's one of the best athletes, baseball players, that I've got to see live,' says Torkelson. 'You stick him in center field, he'd probably win a Gold Glove out there. He's such a great athlete and special to see every day. 'He's willing to do whatever. And he's so comfortable in whatever situation he's in – he's never sped up. He's always cool, calm and collected, something we aspire to do every game.' 'A complete team' As the season unfolds, the Tigers will have to accept their new lot in life – that of division favorites. They hold a seven-game lead in the AL Central, and with the rampant inconsistency in the AL West, would be a fair bet to earn a first-round bye should they hold onto the division. Promising right-hander Jackson Jobe has been lost to Tommy John surgery, a big blow for his development, yet one the Tigers can weather given their depth with Skubal, Jack Flaherty and Mize out front of the rotation. Mize, the No. 1 overall pick in 2018, already weathered that storm undergoing Tommy John and also back surgery, a double whammy that wiped out his 2023 season. 'We have Tarik leading us at the top. He's the best pitcher in the league,' says Mize, who has a 2.95 ERA in 11 starts. 'And we have some depth we really like and bullpen guys we really like. 'A complete team.' One that's on the verge of what could be an unforgettable summer, the promise of greatness tempered by the humility that helped them reach this threshold. 'What got us to this point is taking it day by day, being there for each other and enjoying the ride,' says Torkelson. 'It's not going to be perfect. But it's going to be a lot of fun.'
