Recklessness and carelessness haunted the Kings in their ugly 111-104 loss to the Charlotte Hornets on Tuesday night.
Emotions ran high at Golden 1 Center and even carried over to the Kings' bench when coach Mike Brown and Malik Monk got into a heated exchange during a third-quarter timeout.
Brown was seen walking and leaning over to Monk during the break as the two shared words with each other. While it's unknown what was being said, it's clear by body language alone that it wasn't a friendly chat. After the game, Brown explained what happened in that moment and how things escalated to that point.
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"Heat of the moment," Brown said (h/t FOX40's Sean Cunningham). "Malik and I, I think everyone has seen it, but Malik and I have gotten into exchanges before. This is not the first time and I'd bet a lot of money it won't be the last time. That's not a big deal."
While Brown didn't share details of his and Monk's emotional encounter, he explained his general frustrations with the team during the loss.
"The first five out there, I thought they initially did a good job," Brown said. "And then once we made subs, we were throwing underhand passes. It was, in my opinion, probably one of the laziest, loosest games that we've had where we decided to play that way. It gave them confidence. And any time you give an NBA team confidence, especially when they struggled scoring, they were missing a handful of guys, but they're NBA players.
NBA
"Cliff [Hornets coach Steve Clifford] does a nice job with that group. But when you give a team confidence like we gave them tonight, things like that can turn into a loss."
And they did.
Just like Brown, Monk is very animated and doesn't shy away from speaking what's on his mind. But this isn't uncommon between a player and coach, as the two must be prepared to turn the page on the ugly loss -- and the exchange -- and focus on Wednesday's game against the Orlando Magic.