Kings coach Mike Brown on Dejan Milojevic’s passing
Sacramento Kings head coach Mike Brown shared his favorite stories of late Golden State Warriors assistant coach Dejan Milojević. On Wednesday afternoon, the Warriors announced the tragic news of Milojević's death after suffering a heart attack during a private team dinner on Tuesday in Salt Lake City.
Brown, who shared a couple of years in the Bay with Milojević. expressed his condolences to the late coach's friends and family Wednesday, while speaking to reporters after the Kings' practice in Sacramento.
"My condolences to Deki, his family, his friends and the Warriors organization," Brown said. "He was a great man, and I don't even want to talk about basketball stuff because he was a great basketball mind, but a great man, and we will all miss him very much."
Brown remembered Milojević as a calming presence who was beloved by all within the Warriors organization.
"He meant a lot, because we're all kind of like a family, so you have your ups and downs with a lot of different individuals at different times, and he never had an up and down with anybody. It was always ups," Brown recalled. "And that's a unique skill set to have in this business, especially when you command the type of respect that he commanded without getting too high or too low".
When asked what memories best described Milojević, Brown smiled as he recalled his former colleague's fun-loving personality.
"The first thing -- and people say this all the time about people, and I think it's an overused explanation or term for big guys -- but they'll say 'he's a big teddy bear,' " Brown said. "If you open Webster's [Dictionary], he should be by that term. He is a sweetheart of a giant man".
"He's a big guy. When he played, he was an enforcer, he played with passion. But he's so sweet, so gentle, so smart and so approachable, just a big teddy bear that when you see him, you just want to put your arm around him. For me, that's the first thing I think of when I think of Deki, just his relaxed, happy personality. He's special."
"The respect level was very high. That's very, very unique to have that with all the coaches, all the players, the medical people, front-office people. He was just loved by everybody, and he loved back."
After postponing the Warriors' game against the Utah Jazz on Wednesday at the Delta Center, the NBA announced its decision to also postpone Golden State's game against the Dallas Mavericks on Friday at the Chase Center. Both games will be rescheduled at a later date.
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