From player to helming 7-game win streak: Doug Christie’s path to coaching Sacramento Kings
Interim Kings coach Doug Christie is driven by a sense of unfinished business and his desire to bring an NBA championship to Sacramento.
Christie was a key member of a team that led the Kings to the brink of a championship before they lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in a hotly contested and wildly controversial seven-game series in the 2002 Western Conference finals.
Christie’s love for the Kings, their fans and the city of Sacramento seems to have lit a fire in his team since he took the helm after Mike Brown was fired on Dec. 27. A campaign that began with high hopes was spiraling out of control as the Kings went 13-19 to start the season, but they have won eight of 10 under Christie to get back into the Western Conference playoff race.
Christie, 54, has never been a head coach before, but he will have the rest of the season to audition for the job before Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé, general manager Monte McNair and assistant general manager Wes Wilcox fill the position this summer. Christie addressed the challenge and the opportunity in front of him before coaching his first game against the Lakers on Dec. 28.
“This is the best league in the world,” Christie said. “Through our organization, I am blessed to be a head coach of a team in the NBA, and a team I love passionately. There’s no bigger opportunity for me.”
The Kings were widely criticized for firing Brown, who led them to the playoffs for the first time since 2006, ending the longest playoff drought in NBA history after 16 consecutive losing seasons. Brown is a two-time Coach of the Year who has been a part of four NBA championship teams. His credentials are unquestionable, but he was relentless in breaking down the Kings’ biggest flaws while Christie is lifting them up.
“He works his butt off,” Kings center Domantas Sabonis said. “Just to see him instilling what he believes in the guys and the guys reacting that quickly to him is awesome.”
Kings forward DeMar DeRozan said the Kings are playing with a sense of joy, freedom and togetherness.
Kings forward Keegan Murray said Christie’s “belief in us is fantastic,” resulting in a “complete energy change.”
Winning at home has been a big point of emphasis. The Kings are 5-0 under Christie after going 6-12 at Golden 1 Center to start the season.
“He loves this city and he loves this franchise,” Sabonis said following home wins over the Dallas Mavericks and Philadelphia 76ers. “We all saw how the fans were tonight and last game. That’s something we want to bring to every home game.”
To call Christie a fan favorite may be an understatement.
When the Kings defeated the Miami Heat at home in a double-overtime thriller Jan. 6 — win No. 5 in a seven-game streak — a Sabonis 3-pointer that gave Sacramento a 111-110 lead late in the first overtime evoked a visceral reaction. Christie whipped his head and snarled his lip.
A fan quickly posted the TV highlight of the moment to the Kings’ Reddit page. That post, with the caption “That’s my coach,” is the most-upvoted post on the Kings subreddit so far in January.
Playing career
Christie was born and raised in Seattle, where he was named state Player of the Year while leading Rainier Beach High School to its first state championship. He went on to win two West Coast Conference Player of the Year awards at Pepperdine while leading the Waves to two NCAA Tournament appearances.
The Seattle SuperSonics selected Christie with the 17th pick in the 1992 NBA draft, but he was eventually traded to the Lakers after failing to reach a contract agreement with the Sonics. Christie played for the Lakers, New York Knicks and Toronto Raptors before coming to Sacramento in the August 2000 trade that sent Corliss Williamson to Toronto.
Christie spent five seasons with the Kings from 2000-05 at the height of their success under Hall of Fame coach Rick Adelman. Christie, a four-time NBA All-Defensive Team selection, was a key member of the team that lost to the Lakers in the 2002 Western Conference finals.
Five months later, Christie rocked Rick Fox with a stiff left uppercut to the jaw in a preseason game against the Lakers, forever solidifying himself as a Kings legend.
“As soon as he touched me, I just went ‘Bang,’” Christie once explained. “That was it.”
Christie averaged 11.2 points, 4.1 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.9 steals over 15 NBA seasons. He appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated with Jason Williams, Peja Stojakovic, Chris Webber and Vlade Divac, a team the magazine dubbed “The Greatest Show on Court.”
Phil Taylor of Sports Illustrated wrote: “Call off the search for the next Jordan. End the debate over how to liven up the game. There is nothing wrong with the league that can’t be fixed by cultivating more teams like the kinetic, charismatic Kings.”
Byron Scott, who was coaching the New Jersey Nets at the time, told the magazine: “If you wanted to take someone to a game that would get him hooked on the NBA, the first place you’d take him is Sacramento.”
In 1992, Christie underwent microfracture surgery — a controversial knee procedure pointed to as a prime factor in the career declines of Webber and several other NBA stars, including Penny Hardaway and Amar’e Stoudemire. Christie, who had the procedure in his early 20s, appeared to fully recover. He maintained an effective presence into his 30s, playing all 82 games for the Kings in 2003-04.
To this day, Christie espouses the wildly popular and beautiful brand of basketball the Kings achieved under Adelman and assistant coach Pete Carril, who brought the famed “Princeton Offense” to Sacramento.
“A lot of the communication and the openness and the freedom and the style of play of sharing and caring for each other, this is what I want to instill in them,” Christie said while explaining his coaching philosophy.
Christie has also made it clear that he and his team will not shy away from confrontation.
“Understand, the style you play is an irritant a little bit if you get after people like that, so we’re probably going to have to lock arms because there might be a little dustup, and that’s OK,” Christie said. “But one thing, when people leave here, they need to leave here understanding that you poured everything you had on the floor. If you do and we lose, shake their hand and keep it moving, and if we don’t shake hands, that’s OK, too.”
From broadcasting to coaching
Christie went into television and radio after retiring from the NBA in 2007.
Christie and his wife, Jackie, starred in “The Christies Committed,” a reality show that examined their struggle to balance family and celebrity life while maintaining a committed lifestyle. Christie also appeared with his wife in the VH1 show “Basketball Wives.”
The Christies have been married since 1996. They renew their vows every year. Their marriage has been the subject of conversation going back to Christie’s playing days, when he threw up hand signals dozens of times each game, once telling the New York Times: “That’s just to let my wife know I love her, and she and family are bigger than basketball.”
Christie’s wife was known to accompany him on road trips during his playing career, a routine they still practice now that he is coaching. In 2023, Jackie told Essence: “I’m there 80%, 90% of the time with him. We kind of pioneered that whole thing, and I love it because Steph Curry’s wife, everybody, they all go on the road now. When we did it, it was like, ‘Oh, they’re crazy, and she’s jealous,’ and it was never that. It was always fun.”
Christie eventually went into broadcasting. He worked as Grant Napear’s broadcast partner as a color commentator on NBC Sports California from 2018-2021. He also worked as Napear’s co-host on “The Grant Napear Show” on Sports 1140 KHTK.
Christie left broadcasting when he joined Luke Walton’s staff as an assistant coach in August 2021. Christie was rumored as a candidate for the head coaching job when Walton was fired in November 2021. The Kings gave the interim job to Alvin Gentry before hiring Brown in May 2022, but Christie filled in for five games, posting a 2-3 record, while Gentry was out with COVID-19.
Brown kept Christie onboard as an assistant when he assembled his coaching staff. Christie credited Walton and Brown for their tutelage after being named interim coach when Brown was fired in December.
“I go back to Luke Walton and I thank Luke Walton,” Christie said. “I thank Mike for keeping me on. I learned so much under him, just watching the process and being part of the process and studying and working. That’s what I try to do because I want to be good at anything I do. I’ll be better tomorrow. Every day, I’m trying to be better.”
This story was originally published January 17, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
