Sacramento Kings Missing Crucial Component Each Game

The Sacramento Kings have no identity 28 games into the season.

Dec 19, 2024; Sacramento, California, USA; Sacramento Kings guard Malik Monk (0) dribbles the ball next to Los Angeles Lakers guard Gabe Vincent (7) in the third quarter at the Golden 1 Center. / Cary Edmondson-Imagn Images

After losing to the Los Angeles Lakers last night, the Sacramento Kings fell to a disappointing 13-15. They sit at 12th in the Western Conference and it feels like they have no identity as a team. And that's because they don't.

The weirdest part about this Kings season is that the advanced numbers say that they should be better than their record. With the 7th ranked offense, 14th ranked defense, and 12th best net rating, they should theoretically be higher in the standings.

But the issue lies that even with those solid numbers, the Kings are losing games. While the numbers look great, looking at them more shows a different story.

Breaking it down to a game by game level shows that the Kings are struggling with their consistency from one contest to the next. Some games they are great on offense, and others they are great on defense, but rarely are they great on both ends of the floor.

For this exercise, I took the Kings average advanced ratings of 115.5 on offense and 112.7 on defense, and broke the 28 games into four different categories. Games they were better than their average on both ends of the floor, worse on both ends, better on defense, and better on offense., with records included.

• Better on offense and defense: 5-0

• Better on offense, worse on defense: 4-4

• Better on defense, worse on offense: 4-5

• Worse on offense and defense: 0-6

The numbers show that the Kings are waffling back and forth between an offensive team and a defensive team, but rarely both. When they do hit on both ends of the court, the record shows that things work, but it's too low of a number this far into the season.

As they're currently constructed and performing, Sacramento's offense isn't good enough to simply outscore teams on a regular basis and their defense isn't good enough to hold opponents under what they can score.

In order to win on a consistent basis, they need to be 'on' on both sides of the ball, and that's just not happening enough.

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