Record: 25-57
Season FIC Rank: 24th, -7.8 per game
Efficiency Differential: 25th, -4.6 per game
What They Did Well In 09-10: The Kings went from 25th in offense and 30th in defense in 08-09 with a 17-65 record to a 25-57 mark and rankings of 22nd and 20th respectively in 09-10, while fostering the ROY in Tyreke Evans. Geoff Petrie and company secured the five overall pick in a four-man draft, but all in all, it was the best season for the franchise since the final stand of the Rick Adelman era when they reached the playoffs for the eighth consecutive season.
Exactly what the Kings have in Evans is still a little difficult to prognosticate, as is the kind of supporting cast to surround him with, but he unequivocally has multiple rare abilities and his rookie season compares somewhat eerily to LeBron James and is already ahead of where he was defensively.
LeBron/Tyreke
PER: 18.3/18.2
TS: 48.8%/52.9%
PTS: 19.1/19.5
REB: 5.0/5.1
AST: 5.4/5.6
STL: 1.5/1.5
FTA: 5.3/6.3
* All averages per 36 minutes
The Kings saw enough of Evans over the first three and a half months to trade Kevin Martin, on an affordable contract, to create substantial cap space and to also acquire another power forward in Carl Landry. The Martin/Tyreke backcourt was proven to be unsuccessful and Petrie expeditiously rid himself of that quagmire in a deal that was hard to find blemish in. The Kings were 7-10 in games in which Evans scored 26 or more points.
Sacramento also cultivated a promising rookie season from Omri Casspi. He is already a good finisher at the rim and shot the ball from distance (36.9%) better than I was expecting, with his mid-range jumper being the main area of needed improvement.
Beno Udrih had a nice bounce back season, posting a career high PER of 15.7 and Landry immediately upgraded Sacramento's weak post game.
Paul Westphal has also decidedly looked like the right coach for this team, developing the third youngest team in the NBA in an admirable way. As we've come to expect from his teams over the years, the Kings were good in transition on both ends of the floor and also played very sound ISO defense,
What They Need To Improve In 10-11: In Jason Thompson, Spencer Hawes, Donte Greene and to a lesser extend Casspi and Landry, the Kings have several strong young pieces up front, but they lack an overwhelming big that will be better than his counterpart 80% of the time. No team can expect to have an advantage at every position, but when all three positions are being outplayed routinely, then it is clear improvement is necessary.
The Kings were rated well below average in terms of ISO scoring, but that isn't a concern since Evans will be one of the best five or six ISO scorers in the NBA over the next decade. A much more serious concern for the Kings is their ability to hit jumpers as they have several solid shooters, but they lack a truly reliable threat. The Kings ultimately need to find a way to pair Evans with a point guard that can play off the ball and stretch the defense (think Stephen Curry as the ideal example).
Continuing the above theme of frontcourt deficiency, the Kings struggled to create offense in the post or easy buckets slashing to the hoop.
Sacramento's primary struggles defensively mirrored what went on offensively, with defending shooters and the post being the areas where teams found the bulk of their easy buckets.
Kings Draft Needs: As explicitly stated in the preceding section, the Kings need upgrades in the frontcourt and will possibly be one pick too late to select either DeMarcus Cousins or Derrick Favors. I'm slightly skeptical of what kind of improvement players like Cole Aldrich or Greg Monroe would represent for the Kings because they seem to have very similar NBA futures as the lot already in tow.
Given the potential use of cap space, perhaps the Kings won't suffer from myopia and target the best player available and lean towards Wesley Johnson, who is capable of being a secondary scorer to spread the floor. Like so many GMs, Petrie's most successful picks have come when he has ignored position and made BPA picks, ranging from Hedo Turkoglu and Gerald Wallace to Evans this past season.
If the cap space is not used to sign a player outright, which does seem unlikely considering the difficulty Sacramento has presented in appealing to players in the past, it could also be used to make a lopsided trade for a player on an existing contract.
