The Sacramento Kings Shouldn’t Be This Bad, And They Can Get Better

The Sacramento Kings are 6-10, but maybe there’s a way to make them good again without trading DeMarcus Cousins.

Everybody outside of Sacramento wants the Sacramento Kings to deal DeMarcus Cousins. That’s because Boogie is very good, and fans want to see him get a chance to play for a team that is also good — especially if said team happens to be their team.

The Kings have not been very good early in the 2016-17 NBA regular season. Sacramento sits at 6-10 through their first 16 games, tied for 10th in the Western Conference.

What if the Kings weren’t actually that bad, though? There are some signs that Sacramento has the makings of a good team already assembled. The Kings have already won against the Toronto Raptors and Oklahoma City Thunder this year, and they’re only two games out of the eighth seed.

It’s taken a while for new Kings coach Dave Joerger to find a smart way to fit his players together. He started Kosta Koufos next to DeMarcus Cousins 12 times early in the season, and Sacramento went 4-8 in those games.

More from Sacramento Kings

• 3 Reason why keeping Harrison Barnes was the right move for the Sacramento Kings
• How the Kings’ sneaky signing of Sasha Vezenkov can boost their offense
• Ranking the 5 best available power forwards in 2023 NBA free agency
• NBA Trades: The Kings could bolster their frontcourt by adding this center
• 3 Offseason moves the Sacramento Kings must make to win the West

Lineups with Koufos and Cousins together have an offensive rating of 103.1 and a defensive rating of 105.4, meaning they get outscored by 2.3 points per 100 possessions, per NBAwowy. Those groups are what got the Kings the bulk of their losses.

On the other hand, lineups with Cousins playing without another center have an offensive rating of 115.5 and a defensive rating of 111.9, so they’ve outscored the opposition by 3.6 points per 100 possessions, per NBAwowy. That’s not a huge margin, but it’s better than the Kings have been as a whole.

Joerger removed Koufos from the starting lineup for the past three games, and started groups featuring four shooters and Cousins. Those lineups have gone 2-1 against three really good teams in that stretch, beating the Raptors and Thunder and losing to the Houston Rockets.

The exciting thing for Sacramento isn’t just that the Kings have pulled off some good wins lately. It’s that Joerger has just scratched the surface of what he can do with the pieces on this roster.

Three of the Kings’ best players this season have been Garrett Temple, Rudy Gay and Cousins. When the Kings have those three on the floor without Koufos, they’re outscoring opponents by 22.4 points per 100 possessions, per NBAwowy. The sample size has some weight to it, as Sacramento has utilized such lineups for 77 minutes this season.

They mostly share the floor with other wings and guards like Matt Barnes, Arron Afflalo, Darren Collison, Ty Lawson and Ben McLemore. Those smaller Kings lineups have been really effective.

When Cousins gets the space to operate inside, he’s basically unguardable. Sending help to attempt to slow down Boogie leaves those wing players and guards open, allowing them more chances to take good three-point attempts. The Kings have an offensive rating of 118.6 on those lineups, which would rank first in the NBA.

The hope of playing Koufos and Cousins together was shoring up the Kings’ defense, but the lineups without Koufos have done really well on that end too. They’ve allowed just 96.2 points per 100 possessions in those limited minutes, which would rank second in the NBA behind just the Atlanta Hawks.

The Sacramento Kings don’t have the talent to truly be that good over a larger sample size, but they do have the personnel to be better than 6-10. Joerger and the Kings have taken a step in the right direction by removing Koufos from the starting lineup.

If they keep getting smaller, the Kings should see more wins coming in. The best situation for Sacramento was always to be an inside-out team, featuring Boogie Cousins surrounded by shooters, much like the system Stan Van Gundy runs to get Andre Drummond good looks with the Detroit Pistons.

More from Hoops Habit

• 7 Players the Miami Heat might replace Herro with by the trade deadline
• Meet Cooper Flagg: The best American prospect since LeBron James
• Are the Miami Heat laying the groundwork for their next super team?
• Sophomore Jump: 5 second-year NBA players bound to breakout
• NBA Trades: The Lakers bolster their frontcourt in this deal with the Pacers

The difference is that Sacramento actually has a better surrounding cast of three-point shooters than Detroit. The Kings have 1- players who are making at least 30 percent of their threes, and that number should rise to 11 once Omri Casspi gets more attempts to raise his poor percentage after his first 11 attempts.

Although 30 percent isn’t exactly a great mark, 34 percent is pretty good. The Kings can run out a group of five all hitting that many of their threes in Gay, Temple, Cousins, Lawson and McLemore.

The Pistons have just one player besides Drummond hitting 34 percent or more of their threes (Drummond has just one attempt.)

That group has played just two minutes together this season, which is unfortunate. Seeing Joerger tinker more with the plethora of shooters in Sacramento would be nice, and it might just result in the Kings finally breaking their decade-long playoff drought.