{"id":263930,"date":"2026-04-12T12:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T12:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/263930\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T12:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T12:32:08","slug":"sacramento-kings-expected-to-retain-head-coach-doug-christie-sources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/263930\/","title":{"rendered":"Sacramento Kings expected to retain head coach Doug Christie: Sources"},"content":{"rendered":"

Doug Christie will remain as the head coach of the Sacramento Kings, team sources told The Athletic.<\/p>\n

With the Kings (22-59) falling well short of their internal expectations, and league-wide speculation that they might move on from Christie at season\u2019s end, the decision has been made to continue forward with the 55-year-old, first-time head coach. Christie, a former King who remains a fan favorite,\u00a0took over for the fired Mike Brown on an interim basis in late December of 2024 and signed a three-year deal last summer. As The Athletic previously reported<\/a>, that contract includes two guaranteed seasons (approximately $2 million annually) and a team option for the 2027-28 campaign that would include a significant raise if it was exercised.<\/p>\n

The rationale of retaining Christie, it appears, is two-fold.<\/p>\n

While Christie\u2019s Kings were bad from the start \u2014 a league-worst 12-46 on Feb. 21 before going 10-13 since \u2014 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\u2019Aaron Fox trade with San Antonio in February of 2025, hired longtime NBA executive Scott Perry<\/a> as general manager to rebuild the roster two months after that disastrous deal and still have much work left to do on that front.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the rash of significant injuries to the Kings\u2019 best players \u2014 from Keegan Murray to Domantas Sabonis, Zach LaVine, DeAndre Hunter and more \u2014 made an already-challenging situation worse in the eyes of the team\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

In the interim, the Kings are hoping to get lucky in the draft lottery on May 10 (the draft is June 25-26) while resuming the sort of trade discussions they had at the February trade deadline involving their priciest veteran players. That\u2019s no easy task, though.<\/p>\n

The 31-year-old LaVine is expected to pick up his player option for next season ($48.9 million), meaning the Kings will be forced to reassess his market \u2014 or lack thereof \u2014 as they attempt to free up finances for their future. Big man Domantas Sabonis, who had season-ending meniscus surgery in mid-February, is owed a combined $94 million in the next two seasons. The Kings had extensive talks with the Toronto Raptors about a deal in February, but their refusal to take on the contract of big man Jakob Poeltl was a deterrent at that time. Those talks, and others like them, are expected to resume.<\/p>\n

Kings guard Malik Monk, who was prominent in trade talks in February, is owed $20.1 million next season and has a player option worth $21.5 million in 2027-28. Veteran guard DeMar DeRozan, who averaged 18.4 points, 4.1 assists and 2.9 rebounds while playing in 77 games, is under contract through next season. But the final year of his deal is partially guaranteed (approximately $10 million of the $25.7 million), which gives the Kings multiple options with his situation going forward. Per team sources, no decision has been made about whether DeRozan will remain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Doug Christie will remain as the head coach of the Sacramento Kings, team sources told The Athletic. With…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,128,122],"class_list":["post-263930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-kings","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}