THE TEXTS WOULD come in like clockwork. After every practice and every shootaround, De'Aaron Fox would check his cell phone for a detailed message from his now former coach, Mike Brown.
"He'd text me every day with a grade," Fox told ESPN this weekend following Brown's dismissal on Friday.
Fox liked the push.
"I've always been coached hard," Fox continued. "I went to Kentucky because [former coach John Calipari] would be hard on me."
So it bothers Fox that Brown's harsh comments about a bad foul he committed on Jaden Ivey at the end of Thursday night's unseemly loss to the Detroit Pistons, in what turned out to be the final postgame news conference of Brown's Kings tenure, had anything to do with the organization's decision to part ways with the coach Friday afternoon.