Following win over Jazz, Kings coach Mike Brown calls for change after mass shooting in Maine

SALT LAKE CITY — Sacramento coach Mike Brown sat down behind a table in the bowels of the Delta Center. His team had just defeated the Utah Jazz in the season opener and looked every bit as good as the team that surged to the third seed last season.

But instead of a smile, his face showed frustration and sadness. There was no excitement or joy in his demeanor; how could there be with what he had been told hours earlier?

As Brown was on the way to the game, he was told the news that up to 22 people had been killed in a mass shooting spree in Maine. After the contest, that's all he could focus on.

At that moment, it didn't seem to matter that Harrison Barnes had dropped 33 points on the Jazz, or that the Kings torched Utah in transition, or that Sacramento held the home team to 45% shooting and 32% shooting from 3-point range.

Even the chants of "light the beam" that filled the Delta Center in the closing minutes of the contest couldn't push the awful news out of his mind.

"First thing, I would like to say I don't know everything that is going on," an emotional Brown said. "I'm not that smart, but I know we as a country, we have to do something. I am walking over here and someone tells me there is a mass shooting in Maine with 22 dead at a grocery store; at a freaking grocery store. If that doesn't touch anybody, I don't know. I don't even know what to say."

Brown's information was a bit off — the shootings' locations included a bowling alley and a bar (a Walmart Distribution Center was originally reported as another shooting site, but Walmart later issued a statement saying no shooting occurred on its property) — but that likely wouldn't have changed his sentiment toward the situation.

"That is absolutely disgusting. It is sad. And it is sad that we sit here and watch this happen time after time after time after time and nobody does anything about it," Brown said. "It's a sad day. It's a sad day for our country. It's a sad day in this world. And until we decide to do something, the powers that be, this is going to keep happening. And our kids won't be able to enjoy what the United States is about, because we don't know how to fix a problem that is right in front of us."

He applauded the work of the league and players like Chris Paul and LeBron James for speaking out on such issues, but, "obviously, it hasn't done much because for something like that to happen tonight is just sick," he added. "It's just sick. I don't know what else to say."

When a reporter tried to shift the focus to that of the game played, Brown couldn't bring himself to do it.

"I don't even want to talk basketball. We played a game," Brown said. "It was fun, obviously; we won. But if we can't do anything to fix this, it's over. It's over for our country to have this happen time and time again."

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