2016-17 NBA Preview: Sacramento Kings

The Sacramento Kings are one of the more moribund franchises in the league. It’s a franchise plagued by poor decision-making, a lack of solid long-term goals, and a disgruntled centerpiece player. I have no idea what form this team is trying to take or how they’ll build around DeMarcus Cousins.

“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.” – Oscar Wilde

2015-16 in review

In retrospect, it’s remarkable the Kings even won 33 games. The Rajon Rondo experiment was not a success; they were slightly worse with him on the court. Rudy Gay was not an ideal partner in crime either, but Gay is probably one of their best wing players. They had some of the worst wing production in the league. The Kings still had DeMarcus Cousins, however, and they were a competitive team with him on the court. The problem was his high foul rate and numerous technicals, and he normally misses a handful of games. They finished in the lottery again and drafted a big man … yet again.

Rotation players in: Arron Afflalo, Matt Barnes, Garrett Temple, Anthony Tolliver, Ty Lawson.

Rotation players out: Rajon Rondo, Marco Belinelli.

The Kings remade their backcourt, letting Rondo and Belinelli go. Marco was one of the worst major rotation players in the league, due to his sudden inability to hit a shot. Rondo was not an ideal point guard for DeMarcus Cousins. Having an affinity for anti-analytics players in Rudy Gay and others, Arron Afflalo is a natural fit. Afflalo is not the plus 3-and-D shooting guard most had assumed, but he’s an upgrade in some ways over what they had. Matt Barnes is at least the type of role player they could use, but he’s in his late 30’s. Garrett Temple is another veteran and will be the backup point guard; it’s unclear if the Kings are trying to be more competitive or want more of a veteran presence, although with the Barnes signing it’s hard to argue they want a better locker room. Likewise, Ty Lawson is another uneasy presence, but at least it’s a high-reward gamble. Ty Lawson at his best is a fringe All-Star player. Finally, Anthony Tolliver is a stretch-4 who does little else, and they already have Omri Casspi, a better shooter, for that role.

2016-17 projected

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The Kings haven’t had a major restructuring, but they have replaced a few of their deficient parts with some veterans. Arron Afflalo does not look great by plus-minus measures, but the Kings were so terrible at shooting guard last season he’s still an upgrade. Point guard has the potential to be better, but that all depends on Ty Lawson and how Darren Collison can hold up defensively. But Lawson has already missed a team flight, and I don’t think a rejuvenation year is likely.

Matt Barnes could provide some good forward minutes, but that leads to an important question: what is Sacramento’s plan? They signed a few veterans, like they’re making a push for the playoffs, but I can’t imagine they think the players they brought over will make a big difference. It’s possible, say, DeMarcus Cousins stays healthy and they grab the 8-seed due to some luck, but where do they go from there? And the young players they drafted are big men, which is where they were deepest and have their one great player.

For instance, Willie Cauley-Stein is a promising defensive center and can score well when fed at the rim, but Cousins is best at the center position too. They have Kosta Koufos too, a good backup center, and Anthony Tolliver and Omri Casspi for shooting at the 4. Then they drafted Skal Labissiere, a hypothetical stretch four, and Georgios Papagiannis, a giant Greek center. Maybe they’re just stuck with a best player draft mentality, but it does not make Cousins confident in the organization or his future there.

The team did make one important change: Dave Joerger is an above average coach, and perhaps he can get Cousins to have a peak season and find a good rotation on the roster. They won’t be terrible, mostly because of Cousins, but there’s not much of an upside either. The one promising piece they have on the perimeter is Ben McLemore, but after three seasons he has yet to utilize his athleticism and shooting effectively. It’s going to be another mediocre season.

Quick statistic

DeMarcus Cousins is a tremendous scorer now, but I don’t think people appreciate just how unique his scoring abilities are for his position. Since he’s never played heavy minutes and hasn’t been in a high pace environment, his points per game stats haven’t been overwhelmingly good. But he led the NBA in usage rate, which is a surprising thing for a center in the modern NBA. In fact, using shot percent, which is like usage rate but doesn’t include turnovers, he had the second highest percentage in NBA history, only behind Wilt Chamberlain’s legendary 50 PPG season. You can see a few other legends on the list too, and it’ll be interesting to see how Cousins is perceived when his career is finished because the even the “lesser” players at the top of the list are still Hall of Famers (i.e. Yao Ming and Bob McAdoo.)

2017-preview-sac-shot-1 /

Summary

The Kings are a team in need of a major overhaul, and it’s no surprise DeMarcus Cousins has been involved in so much trade talk. The team has not built around him effectively, and the rest of the roster is not competitive. He also has few parts he can grow and get better with. The Kings were ranked last in ESPN’s future team rankings, and I don’t have a counter-argument here. They’ll be in the mid-30’s again, if they don’t tear it all down.

Win predictions:

Mine: 37.1. A blend of several metrics, including Dredge, with a few other factors considered, like coaching and usage.

Andrew Johnson’s: 35. A combination of PT-PM (a SportVU player tracking metric) blended with RAPM. Two-time reigning champion of the APBRmetrics board predictions contest.

Nick Restifo’s: 39. A simulation using BPM and RPM for player value, which includes game effects like altitude and rest.

Kevin Ferrigan’s: 38. A player projection system with inputs from RAPM, BPM, height, and age.

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