The Sacramento Kings have fired general manager Monte McNair, according to Sam Amick of The Athletic, just a few hours after the Kings season concluded extremely anticlimactically, with a blowout loss to the Dallas Mavericks in the Western Conference No. 9 vs. No. 10 play-in game.
After a season which included trading away one of the best players in franchise history and firing a head coach that led the team to the NBA Playoffs for the first time in two decades, the Kings move on from their GM, and will be on the hunt for a new face yet again — a common theme for a franchise that is allergic to stability.
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Monte McNair fired by Kings as franchise looks to start anew... again
Welcome back to Basketball Hell, Kings fans. Sorry. You really don't deserve this. I really thought something was brewing under Mike Brown with De'Aaron Fox running the show. Now they're both gone, and Bay Area ownership reamins impressively incapable of building winners — or indifferent to it.
I won't claim that keeping McNair around was the path this franchise should have taken — it probably wasn't — but Monte McNair did some good things in Sacramento that GMs before him weren't able to do (playoffs). When no coaches or GMs can establish continuity with a franchise... maybe the franchise is to blame more than the coaches and GMs. The franchise, in this case, is named Vivek Ranadivé.
Until the Sacramento Kings are owned by someone else, continuity will be borderline impossible to come by. It's a sad state of affairs for a fanbase that deserves so much better, and for a few years, appeared like it was going to be treated to something better, only for that dream to be ripped from them again.