Kings’ Brown fined $50,000
The NBA fined Sacramento Kings coach Mike Brown $50,000 on Tuesday for his court-storming outburst against a referee.
Joe Dumars, the league’s head of basketball operations, announced the fine against Brown for “aggressively pursuing a game official during live play, and for publicly criticizing the officiating” after his team’s 143-142 overtime loss to Milwaukee on Sunday night.
Brown was ejected in the fourth quarter. He stormed onto the court and began screaming at referee
Intae Hwang. Kings players had to restrain him.
Brown later pulled out a laptop in his postgame media session to highlight a disparity in free throws and multiple calls that he found frustrating.
“The referees are human, and they’re going to make mistakes, but you just hope that there’s some sort of consistency and there’s some sort of communication between the refs,” Brown said. “The refs tonight, they were great, they communicated with me all night. But in terms of consistency, you guys saw it right here. In my opinion, the consistency wasn’t here tonight.”
The Bucks won on Damian Lillard’s 3-pointer at the overtime buzzer.
CLIPS LAND ’26 ALL-STAR GAME
The NBA is bringing the 2026 All-Star Game to the Clippers’ new arena, which is set to open in time for the 2024-25 season.
“I was giddy when I heard it was possible and even giddier when the NBA said we were getting it,” said Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, who attended Tuesday’s announcement inside Intuit Dome in Inglewood.
Commissioner Adam Silver toured the building with Ballmer earlier in the day and said “there is technology unmatched in any facility I’ve ever seen.”
The privately financed arena will house all of the Clippers’ basketball and business operations, with an eye on landing major events.
The first will be All-Star weekend. The event returns to Southern California for the first time since 2018, when it was played in downtown Los Angeles at the arena formerly known as Staples Center.
Indianapolis will host next month and San Francisco is the site in 2025 at Chase Center, the Warriors’ arena that opened in 2019.
SAINTS OC FIRED
The Saints have fired offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael Jr. along with senior offensive assistant Bob Bicknell and receivers coach Kodi Burns.
“These types of decisions are never easy to come to, but are necessary as we move forward,” Saints coach Dennis Allen, who oversees New Orleans’ defense, said in an announcement Tuesday.
The Saints ranked 14th overall in yards per game with 337.2, but the offense — led by 10-year NFL veteran quarterback Derek Carr — often stagnated in clutch situations during the first 12 games of the season. New Orleans (9-8) started 5-7 before winning four of its final five games, narrowly missing out on the postseason because of unfavorable tiebreakers with Tampa Bay and Green Bay.
New Orleans converted just 53.3% of red zone opportunities into touchdowns, which ranked 18th. For much of the season, however, the Saints were in the bottom third of the NFL in that category and lost seven games by fewer than 10 points.