[KINGS] Comments that don't warrant their own thread (Redux)

Goes to my “There’s an advanced stat for absolutely anything you want to fit your narrative” argument about a lout of those stats.

yeah, I’m wondering if the surprising output just says more about that stat than any of the teams?

Denver being 9 and OKC and MIN being absent are two big question marks if not red flags about this metric, but don't get me wrong, I do think the Kings team needs much more of a tweak than a complete overhaul. I don't see why we can't get the offense looking more like 22/23 while building on the defensive improvements from this year but ???

Yeah, if I had the time, the stats I would be interested in taking a deep dive into would be comparing the offense from last season to this season, both individually and as a team.

I honestly have no idea what that post is supposed to mean.

Or there is an anomaly with certain stats. The Warriors are up there too so maybe play style effecting things? The Kings were basically playing .500 ball in most ten game splits since the turn of the year. The safe bet would be to assume a fairly strong start and as teams started to gel they were surpassing the Kings as time went on.

And that two lottery teams in the Warriors and Kings with a similar style of play and defensive system were above actual contending teams. That might be your correlation there.

My guesses are like most modern NBA there may be an overemphasis on 3pointers coupled possibly by the fact that we won a lot of games bigly while also our losses were really painful. Including some huge blown leads (largely because of 3 ball) that feel super painful. Up 30 and lose by 1, as a fan that is a direct nut shot. On stats if you won the game before and after by 15 you are a great team.

I think what @pdxKingsFan is getting at is that we have an advanced stat here which is at least somewhat reputable among advanced stats enthusiasts and it appears to show that the Kings were ranked #1 in the Western Conference. How then did they finish with the 9th best record in the conference and lose to New Orleans 6 times (including the last game of the season). For folks who do like to make use of LEBRON here (I know there's at least a few) and understand what it's trying to measure enough to explain it to the uninitiated, can you see any exlanation for such an incongruous result? Is there some area where the Kings were elite this past season which aligns with Boston, Milwaukee, and Cleveland? And if so, did that get negated by bad luck or by some equally bad (measurable) performance in another area?

I'm genuinely curious myself as well. I can't remember what LEBRON measures other than I believe it's derived from box scores? Which would make it somewhat pace dependent unless that is accounted for as well. Sure it may feel viscerally correct to dismiss this result as "we just sucked whenever we needed to perform under pressure" -- colloquially that's how this season felt as a (biased) fan -- but stats are supposed to eliminate the whole bias thing so what is this one actually showing us and is it relevant for next season?

^ all of that. Yes please.

Mike Greenberg said on ESPN that he is hearing but not reporting that the Lakers would like to hire Mike Brown as coach haha

Let me guess his source... does it rhyme with "Mike Brown's agent"? lol.

"Hearing but not reporting?" That is an oxymoron. Given that Mike Brown has a successful history with Lebron James, and that he seeks a contract extension with Sacramento, I would not put it outside the realm of possibility.

Soooo...saying a thing on ESPN is now NOT reporting it?

the media guys say that all the time now. I suppose in some cases the info they hear is second hand but from a reliable source.

Solid primer. Nothing ground breaking but good. Said he thinks Monks value should br at about what the kings can offer. Would be looking out for Philly more than Orlando. Compared Keegan to MPJ sorta and thinks we need 20-22 ppg from him.

Think his analysis about Monk is spot on. I feel good about keeping him on a 4/78 since that seems to be his market rate this off season, the only big question is how bad does he want to be a starter. I don't see Philly thinking he would be a good backcourt mate with Maxey due to size concerns. That only leaves ORL, but they have other big expenses on the horizon with player contracts. The biggest threat there seems to be a 2/$50M with a starting spot guaranteed. I don't think Monk wants to go to the wasteland of DET, but I also could be wrong.

More or less. LEBRON is one of the better "catch all" stats around. Obviously still a snapshot, but I do think this lines up with a lot of our season.

Again, I keep harping on this, but we were 17-11 vs the top 7 seeds in the West. We blew this season because we were only 4 games above .500 vs the rest of the NBA. So our top end was incredible, but we bottomed out hard

This is the same Mike Brown the Lakers ran out of town years ago. The LA fans and organization never embraced the down to earth personality of MB the first time, what makes them think anything would be different. The LA fan base needs a flashy coach, they would never embrace MB.

I would hope MB would be smarter than returning to that dreadful situation again.

However, if LeBron wants a reunion with MB, he knows where he can find him.

Watching the Pacers yesterday, is Davion capable of playing a role like TJ McConnell? TJ almost exclusively looks to drive the paint and use his craftiness to get to the hoop, get some easy layups or dish out to an open teammate. He’s been a career 36%+ 3pt shooter but he put up less than 1 3pt FG per game this year. Contrast that with Davion who attempted over 2 3s per game, and those were the majority of the shots he took.

This is one of the things I liked about what Fox said at the end of the season. He pointed out that the games at the beginning of the year matter just as much as the ones at the end. I believe he said something to the affect that there were around 19 games that they could have won, but found a way to blow it. Need to fix that for next year.

Funny thing is, I remember nearly all those plays, except no. 6.

Gotta love both the Pacers and the Mavs being in the second round as we didn’t even get into the dance. Smh

yeah: Besides Luka, Hardy is a key contributor, Richaun and a first was leveraged for Gafford and Prosper looks good. Mavs should be sending Monte a thank you note.

Oi vey.

Hahaha

But he's actually wrong, the Kings were on a 50-51 win pace prior to January which appears to be a reasonable and good result. They win half of those games and they're a 60+ win team which is obviously not what they are most likely. What you are in the end usually balances out although shooting teams can indeed rock the league for a season here and there. Once January hit, when the schedule got tougher and some of the newer teams got some consistency the Kings were on a 43 win pace. That's where things got real. The big concern should be their reality as a team almost entirely reliant on the DHO and shooting percentages. Teams like that fluctuate year to year and month to month. Part of that might also be relying so heavily on someone like Monk to pick the up the slack since his month to month efficiency is pretty extreme. The Kings this year were the definitions of extremes. They could be the best teams, lose to the worst teams, but one truth is teams that took away the DHO buried them.

Hardy played a grand total of 13 minutes in the Clippers series and OMax Prosper is so far out of the Mavs plans that they traded for his replacement (PJ Washington) midseason and banished him to the G-League for most of 2024. Richaun wasn’t so much leveraged for Gafford so much as his salary was the only contract moveable enough to get someone into a trade. The Mavs also pretty much had to give up their only remaining assets aside from two pick swaps in 2026 and 2028 to make things happen.