An interim head coaching position is one of the single most thankless jobs in the entire NBA. When a head coach is fired mid-season, ownership, the front office, fans, and media outlets all typically expect a change to the quality of the product on the court. But there is little hope of delivering a substantial or sustainable improvement without adequate preparation due to the constraints of a tightly-packed 82-game season. You can't build out your own staff. There's no time. You can't overhaul the playbook. Again, there's no time. You can tinker with rotations. You can do your best to lead and motivate. You can make adjustments on the margins that ultimately will not reshape the team's fortunes. Generally speaking, a newly-minted head coach needs at least one offseason and training camp to shape a team's identity.
Time and time again, we see NBA teams who have fired head coaches mid-season win a few games during the interim's honeymoon phase only to regress to their previously-held mean. That's not to say that it's never worth it to dump an ineffective coach mid-season, but it's a fruitless enterprise to believe that a prospective first-time head coach like Doug Christie would have anything to gain from taking over an interim position from an ineffective interim head coach who himself took over the gig from another ineffective head coach. The staff around Christie would not be the same next season. The roster would likely not be the same. And the game plan on both sides of the ball may not be the same, either. If the Kings have an interest in promoting him, he should be considered during a properly-conducted head coaching search during the offseason.