SACRAMENTO — Mike Brown didn’t stew at home after being fired by the Kings. he went on a trip.

In fact, there are many.

“When it happens, you handle it very quickly and then literally my wife and I went to Australia for UFC 313,” Brown said. “I went to Brooklyn, and I went to Puerto Vallarta.” [in Mexico]and went to St. Barts.

“Maybe I shouldn’t say that. … But in this life, you have to keep moving forward. If you try to think about what should have happened and why it happened, you can really beat yourself up. Life is short.”

Brown has moved on after being fired four times as an NBA coach, but the last one in Sacramento felt like the most abrupt or unwarranted.

And on Tuesday, on the eve of Brown’s first game against the Kings since being canned just over a year ago, it probably made it even easier to think positively as he stood after practice at his old Golden 1 Center.

In the end, Brown coincidentally recovered quickly.

He leads the Knicks (25-14), a team expected to win a championship, and are on pace to win at least 50 games for the third straight season.

He is no longer coaching the Kings (10-30). The Kings are currently on a two-game winning streak and have been playing well lately, but there remains a major disappointment since Brown left.

The coach seemed to get better after the ordeal.

The Kings, on the other hand, look much worse off with Doug Christie steering the ship.

Looking back on Tuesday, I have no regrets. I just wished the roster was healthier.

“We won 48 games the first year.” [games]This is my personal two cents: If Kevin [Huerter] won’t hurt [with] 2 more months and Malik [Monk] won’t hurt [with] “With a month left, the second year we’ll probably win 50 games and make the playoffs. So the first year we played injury-free, the second year we got hit with injuries, especially towards the end, and we were the starter and the sixth man,” Brown said. If there’s anything I regret, I know it wasn’t in my control and neither were the players, but I hope I didn’t get injured at least at the end of the season to have a better chance. ”

Still, Brown was lucky that the Kings didn’t destroy his future as an NBA coach.

There were also rumors of a rift and that his intense training was putting a strain on the players. No one could explain the decision well, and rumors quickly spread that star point guard De’Aaron Fox was on bad terms with his coach.

There were whispers that he had a bad relationship with rising star DeMar DeRozan, but those rumors were also denied.

In the end, it was probably just an ill-timed and rash decision on the part of the famously impulsive and fumbling owner, Vivek Ranadivé.

Brown, like David Fizdale in New York five years ago, finished practice and gave media interviews by phone the same day he was fired.

The big difference was that Fizdale had a terrible record as a head coach. Brown lifted the Kings from being a laughing stock and won Coach of the Year in 2022.

“I don’t know the details of how it happened, those kinds of things. The way it’s been reported all the time hasn’t been the most respectful of things,” Josh Hart said Tuesday. “I think he is, first and foremost, a great human being and someone who has the respect of his colleagues and everyone who respects him.

“I’m sure he’ll tell us a little bit more about how the incident happened, but I think the way it happened was reported as kind of unfair and unprofessional.”

Regardless of why he ended up in Sacramento, there was no guarantee Brown would get another chance.

The Knicks hired him after failing to get multiple teams to grant him access to coaches under his contract, but in the process left Brown looking more like a benefactor than a target.

Coaches rarely get a fourth crack in front of the bench.

But Brown is back in Sacramento and in a much better place than he is with the Kings right now, so Wednesday’s fans should have no choice but to show their appreciation.

“Yeah, it’s a little emotional,” Brown said. “But at the end of the day, when my fans see me during and after the game and cheer me on and give me a hug, they trust me. They want to kick my ass, and the Knicks’ ass. And we want to do the same.”

Hart, who was traded three times, understands that.

“We always say it’s the next game, but there’s always a little more behind it,” he said.