I expect this to go over as well as every other thread I've started here in the personnel section of the forum, but what the hell. It's a long off-season, might as well take one more crack at it. Obviously my dreams of an Evans/McLemore backcourt did not pan out. Igoudala moved on to greener pastures and brought Speights and Douglas along with him. So far we've managed to bring back another failed PF experiment and flirted with a couple of Bucks castoffs, one of them I've always quite liked (Mbah A Moute) and one of them I can't stand (Ellis). I unintentionally hinted at this already in the summer league thread, but perhaps the way forward involves another member of the Bucks' suddenly all-too-expendable playoff backcourt -- yes, I'm gonna talk about Brandon Jennings. Lord help me it's come to this, but I'm squinting here and my devil's advocate is telling me this might not be a horrible idea.
First of all -- let's talk price. Like Ellis, Jennings was hoping for a deal similar to the one Igoudala got and he'll probably end up taking considerably less due to lack of market demand. Figuring Jennings would still be there as a fallback plan the Bucks signed Jeff Teague to a 3 year $24 million deal which Atlanta matched. They also traded nothing to acquire one year of Luke Ridnour from Minnesota. Do they match a 3/30M figure for Jennings? It's hard to say. Based on the rest of their off-season, it seems like they've decided to go scorched earth on their roster and hedge their bets on the 2014 lottery. Coming off another first round playoff loss which capped 4 years of no progress under Jennings and Coach Skiles it's easy to see why they felt a change was needed. On the other hand, talent is talent and while Jennings isn't elite by any means, he's an asset and only 23 years old. I think they still match 3/30M for that reason but they probably flinch at 3/33M.
Ignoring the elephant in the room then, why is Brandon Jennings worth $11M a year to us and not Milwaukee? I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that it's not the intention of the managment in Sacramento to be one of the 5 worst teams in the league next season. Operating off that assumption, what are we looking at from the PG position next year? IT and Jimmer are known quantities. McCallum is at-best a deep bench player this season. A 3 year deal to Jennings isn't going to interfere with his timeline. And then there's Vasquez. It seems pretty clear that management thinks he's the answer this season at PG. I'm not convinced. Why? His value is almost entirely tied to assists. He's negative value as a defender. His scoring is about league average. And the assists look like fool's gold to me. Here's his per-season assist rates ('11 - 25.3%) ('12 - 35.7%) ('13 - 44.9%). Now those increases do correspond to increased minutes per game but it's not my intention to suggest he won't have a top 10 assist rate next season given comparable minutes, just that past history suggests this kind of a growth curve is unsustainable. 10th in the league this season was Lebron James at 36.4%. Some reversion should be expected and a 36.4% assist rate would put him closer to his sophmore season per/36 total of 7.6 assists per 36 min. I'll get to why this is significant later. First ---
Brandon Jennings. Loathed on kingsfan.com for being a cocky insult spewing sonuvagun since his rookie season, is actually not as bad as you think he is. No really. Let's examine why.
First let's look at what he's good at. He's amongst the leaders in points and 3 pointers made:
Points: (1) Westbrook, (2) Curry, (3) Ellis, (4) Lillard, (5) DWill, (6) Kemba / Jrue (8) Jennings
3PM: (1) Curry (2) Lillard (3) Foye (4) Jennings
He also ranks highly on rebounds, assists, steals, and PFs
Reb: (11th) 3.1
Asst: (15th) 6.5
Stl: (12th) 1.56
PFs: (26th) 1.9
He's middle of the pack on free throw attempts (though he does make them at a good %), 3pt %, and assist to turnover ratio
FTA: (18th) 3.5 -- FT%: (15th) .819
3P%: (17th) .375
A/TO: (23rd) 2.57
And lastly, an underappreciated stat I think, he's played in 291 out of a possible 312 games over 4 seasons since entering the league. That's outstanding. (btw Russell Westbrook was the only guard who didn't miss a single regular season game during that span)
Now for the bad news -- only Jameer Nelson had a worse season shooting from the field this season amongst qualified PGs. It was ugly -- .399. And the worse news -- average it out over his four year career and the number actually goes down to .394. That alone explains why Milwaukee isn't eager to bring him back. For more on this, let's dive into NBA.com's wonderful new stats database:
http://stats.nba.com/playerShotchart.html?PlayerID=201943&display-mode=performance&Season=2012-13
My god, we're looking at Tyreke Evans' evil twin! He's actually pretty decent from midrange with one (flukey?) exception. And he's worked that 3pt shot into a weapon that has to be respected. But this is a player who clearly cannot finish in the paint.
Let's look at the previous season:
http://stats.nba.com/playerShotchart.html?PlayerID=201943&display-mode=performance&Season=2011-12
The midrange and 3pt shot still look pretty good except for a few areas on the floor -- not repeated the following season so again those look flukey overall. But his percentage at the rim goes up from 42% to 50%. Hmm. Let's go back another year.
http://stats.nba.com/playerShotchart.html?PlayerID=201943&display-mode=performance&Season=2010-11
Uh oh! This guy is terrible from all over the floor! So the overall picture on the shooting is actually encouraging, I think. He had an abnormally terrible year finishing at the basket this season, but he's improved his shot in every other way. And it's telling I think that this team played almost the entire season with a frontcourt rotation consisting primarily of Luc Richard Mbah A Moute, Larry Sanders, and Ersan Ilyasova. [link] That's two defensive specialists and a stretch four known more for his long-range shooting than his abilities in the post. Mbah A Moute would be playing primarily SF for us and Demarcus Cousins would be the first legitimate low-post scoring threat he's played with in his NBA career. Is that enough to open up some better shots for Jennings? There's no way to know for sure. It's a lot of uncertainty to be gambling $11M with, but the trends at least look encouraging to me.
To satisfy my own curiosity, I decided to go back and compare him to a player he's always reminded me of, our own Jason "white chocolate" Williams. 3 years in Sacramento was enough to make him a fan favorite but look at his production during that span --
PER: ('99 - 12.8) ('00 - 11.6) ('01 - 12.8)
TS%: ('99 - .483) ('00 - .477) ('01 - .498)
Asst%: ('99 - 25.2) ('00 - 30.7) ('01 - 27.6)
Stl%: ('99 - 2.6) ('00 - 2.0) ('01 - 2.1)
WS/48: ('99 - .055) ('00 - .026) ('01 - .079)
Yikes. A lot of that is pretty ugly. Now let's compare to Brandon Jennings' first 3 seasons in the league:
PER: ('10 - 14.5) ('11 - 15.6) ('12 - 18.4)
TS%: ('10 - .475) ('11 - .493) ('12 - .514)
Asst%: ('10 - 29.6) ('11 - 25.9) ('12 - 26.7)
Stl%: ('10 - 2.1) ('11 - 2.3) ('12 - 2.3)
WS/48: ('10 - .075) ('11 - .086) ('12 - .114)
Maybe I've persuaded some of you that Jennings isn't a horrible idea. But don't we already have a guy in Vasquez who could be better or at least just as good? To answer that question you'd need some kind of crystal ball right? Or maybe just a handy sample of stats to analyze. Thankfully, basketball-reference has done the hard math for us by including a handy [projection system] for estimating future stats based on past performance. Here's what they predict for next seasoon. Note: the counting stats are per 36min.
Jennings: 18pts, 6.1assts, 3.4reb, 1.6stls, 2.4TO, .413, .367, .818, .096 WS/48
Vasquez: 14pts, 8.7assts, 4.4reb, 1stl, 3.2TO, .434, .337, .806, .067 WS/48
Now there's two things I want to look at here. The big numbers that stand out to me are the assists and WS/48. Assists because they're Vasquez' raison d'etre and WS/48 because it's a handy measure of a player's overall impact offensively. Now obviously 8.7 is better than 6.1 but notice how this corresponds to WS -- even with a generous 8.7/36 min (he was 9.4/36 this season on a team where no other big-minute player averaged even 2 ) his overall impact is still not very good. Lebron James' this season was .322. That's superb. Generally you want to see a number higher than .100 for this stat. Demarcus Cousins last season was .092 -- he's got to work on the shooting percentage, fouls, and turnovers. Remember what I said before about Vasquez' assist rate likely going down? Jennings has the opposite effect. His advanced stats were all on a steady rise until last season when his usage % dropped (Ellis) and his true shooting and effective shooting percentages took a slight dip. His assist rate, steal rate, and turnover rate are all holding steady and his 3pt % is right where it was his rookie season. For all these reasons and the age factor, I think he's a good candidate to exceed his projected numbers (if only just by a bit) while Vasquez is a good candidate to under-perform relative to these projections.
But wait, there's more!
For my next course of action I'm going to an old standby, Greg Oden. Advanced stats love this guy! He's only played bits of two seasons but what's there on paper is enough to make your eyes pop. You want PER? ('09 - 18.1) ('10 - 23.1) You want True Shooting %? ('09 - .599) ('10 - .647) You want WS/48? ('09 - .167) ('10 - .214). Those are all top 5 in the league numbers. Okay not quite, the PER is 9th. But nobody needs convincing (I hope) that Greg Oden could play once. The question is can he play now? And nobody knows the answer to that. But we do know that the Kings still have a huge need for a defensive post presence going forward and with expectations hovering around "let's at least play like a team this year" territory, if ever there was a team with nothing to lose by stashing Oden on the bench for a year it's this one.
We're going to have to amnesty Salmons to get the money for Jennings which is fine, we have until July 17th to do so. I'm not clear enough on our current cap situation to say whether we also need to sign and trade with Milwaukee or not to afford Jennings. Probably we need to send them Thompson or Patterson -- especially if we want to make an offer to Oden that exceeds the minimum he can get from Miami or San Antonio. I believe as long as we're still under the salary cap, we can also send Milwaukee Geivis Vasquez as part of the deal which we would want to do as we'd no longer have a spot for him here and he might help convince them to let Jennings go. Heck, maybe he even knocks the price back down to 3yr/30M.
First of all -- let's talk price. Like Ellis, Jennings was hoping for a deal similar to the one Igoudala got and he'll probably end up taking considerably less due to lack of market demand. Figuring Jennings would still be there as a fallback plan the Bucks signed Jeff Teague to a 3 year $24 million deal which Atlanta matched. They also traded nothing to acquire one year of Luke Ridnour from Minnesota. Do they match a 3/30M figure for Jennings? It's hard to say. Based on the rest of their off-season, it seems like they've decided to go scorched earth on their roster and hedge their bets on the 2014 lottery. Coming off another first round playoff loss which capped 4 years of no progress under Jennings and Coach Skiles it's easy to see why they felt a change was needed. On the other hand, talent is talent and while Jennings isn't elite by any means, he's an asset and only 23 years old. I think they still match 3/30M for that reason but they probably flinch at 3/33M.
Ignoring the elephant in the room then, why is Brandon Jennings worth $11M a year to us and not Milwaukee? I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that it's not the intention of the managment in Sacramento to be one of the 5 worst teams in the league next season. Operating off that assumption, what are we looking at from the PG position next year? IT and Jimmer are known quantities. McCallum is at-best a deep bench player this season. A 3 year deal to Jennings isn't going to interfere with his timeline. And then there's Vasquez. It seems pretty clear that management thinks he's the answer this season at PG. I'm not convinced. Why? His value is almost entirely tied to assists. He's negative value as a defender. His scoring is about league average. And the assists look like fool's gold to me. Here's his per-season assist rates ('11 - 25.3%) ('12 - 35.7%) ('13 - 44.9%). Now those increases do correspond to increased minutes per game but it's not my intention to suggest he won't have a top 10 assist rate next season given comparable minutes, just that past history suggests this kind of a growth curve is unsustainable. 10th in the league this season was Lebron James at 36.4%. Some reversion should be expected and a 36.4% assist rate would put him closer to his sophmore season per/36 total of 7.6 assists per 36 min. I'll get to why this is significant later. First ---
Brandon Jennings. Loathed on kingsfan.com for being a cocky insult spewing sonuvagun since his rookie season, is actually not as bad as you think he is. No really. Let's examine why.
First let's look at what he's good at. He's amongst the leaders in points and 3 pointers made:
Points: (1) Westbrook, (2) Curry, (3) Ellis, (4) Lillard, (5) DWill, (6) Kemba / Jrue (8) Jennings
3PM: (1) Curry (2) Lillard (3) Foye (4) Jennings
He also ranks highly on rebounds, assists, steals, and PFs
Reb: (11th) 3.1
Asst: (15th) 6.5
Stl: (12th) 1.56
PFs: (26th) 1.9
He's middle of the pack on free throw attempts (though he does make them at a good %), 3pt %, and assist to turnover ratio
FTA: (18th) 3.5 -- FT%: (15th) .819
3P%: (17th) .375
A/TO: (23rd) 2.57
And lastly, an underappreciated stat I think, he's played in 291 out of a possible 312 games over 4 seasons since entering the league. That's outstanding. (btw Russell Westbrook was the only guard who didn't miss a single regular season game during that span)
Now for the bad news -- only Jameer Nelson had a worse season shooting from the field this season amongst qualified PGs. It was ugly -- .399. And the worse news -- average it out over his four year career and the number actually goes down to .394. That alone explains why Milwaukee isn't eager to bring him back. For more on this, let's dive into NBA.com's wonderful new stats database:
http://stats.nba.com/playerShotchart.html?PlayerID=201943&display-mode=performance&Season=2012-13
My god, we're looking at Tyreke Evans' evil twin! He's actually pretty decent from midrange with one (flukey?) exception. And he's worked that 3pt shot into a weapon that has to be respected. But this is a player who clearly cannot finish in the paint.
Let's look at the previous season:
http://stats.nba.com/playerShotchart.html?PlayerID=201943&display-mode=performance&Season=2011-12
The midrange and 3pt shot still look pretty good except for a few areas on the floor -- not repeated the following season so again those look flukey overall. But his percentage at the rim goes up from 42% to 50%. Hmm. Let's go back another year.
http://stats.nba.com/playerShotchart.html?PlayerID=201943&display-mode=performance&Season=2010-11
Uh oh! This guy is terrible from all over the floor! So the overall picture on the shooting is actually encouraging, I think. He had an abnormally terrible year finishing at the basket this season, but he's improved his shot in every other way. And it's telling I think that this team played almost the entire season with a frontcourt rotation consisting primarily of Luc Richard Mbah A Moute, Larry Sanders, and Ersan Ilyasova. [link] That's two defensive specialists and a stretch four known more for his long-range shooting than his abilities in the post. Mbah A Moute would be playing primarily SF for us and Demarcus Cousins would be the first legitimate low-post scoring threat he's played with in his NBA career. Is that enough to open up some better shots for Jennings? There's no way to know for sure. It's a lot of uncertainty to be gambling $11M with, but the trends at least look encouraging to me.
To satisfy my own curiosity, I decided to go back and compare him to a player he's always reminded me of, our own Jason "white chocolate" Williams. 3 years in Sacramento was enough to make him a fan favorite but look at his production during that span --
PER: ('99 - 12.8) ('00 - 11.6) ('01 - 12.8)
TS%: ('99 - .483) ('00 - .477) ('01 - .498)
Asst%: ('99 - 25.2) ('00 - 30.7) ('01 - 27.6)
Stl%: ('99 - 2.6) ('00 - 2.0) ('01 - 2.1)
WS/48: ('99 - .055) ('00 - .026) ('01 - .079)
Yikes. A lot of that is pretty ugly. Now let's compare to Brandon Jennings' first 3 seasons in the league:
PER: ('10 - 14.5) ('11 - 15.6) ('12 - 18.4)
TS%: ('10 - .475) ('11 - .493) ('12 - .514)
Asst%: ('10 - 29.6) ('11 - 25.9) ('12 - 26.7)
Stl%: ('10 - 2.1) ('11 - 2.3) ('12 - 2.3)
WS/48: ('10 - .075) ('11 - .086) ('12 - .114)
Maybe I've persuaded some of you that Jennings isn't a horrible idea. But don't we already have a guy in Vasquez who could be better or at least just as good? To answer that question you'd need some kind of crystal ball right? Or maybe just a handy sample of stats to analyze. Thankfully, basketball-reference has done the hard math for us by including a handy [projection system] for estimating future stats based on past performance. Here's what they predict for next seasoon. Note: the counting stats are per 36min.
Jennings: 18pts, 6.1assts, 3.4reb, 1.6stls, 2.4TO, .413, .367, .818, .096 WS/48
Vasquez: 14pts, 8.7assts, 4.4reb, 1stl, 3.2TO, .434, .337, .806, .067 WS/48
Now there's two things I want to look at here. The big numbers that stand out to me are the assists and WS/48. Assists because they're Vasquez' raison d'etre and WS/48 because it's a handy measure of a player's overall impact offensively. Now obviously 8.7 is better than 6.1 but notice how this corresponds to WS -- even with a generous 8.7/36 min (he was 9.4/36 this season on a team where no other big-minute player averaged even 2 ) his overall impact is still not very good. Lebron James' this season was .322. That's superb. Generally you want to see a number higher than .100 for this stat. Demarcus Cousins last season was .092 -- he's got to work on the shooting percentage, fouls, and turnovers. Remember what I said before about Vasquez' assist rate likely going down? Jennings has the opposite effect. His advanced stats were all on a steady rise until last season when his usage % dropped (Ellis) and his true shooting and effective shooting percentages took a slight dip. His assist rate, steal rate, and turnover rate are all holding steady and his 3pt % is right where it was his rookie season. For all these reasons and the age factor, I think he's a good candidate to exceed his projected numbers (if only just by a bit) while Vasquez is a good candidate to under-perform relative to these projections.
But wait, there's more!
For my next course of action I'm going to an old standby, Greg Oden. Advanced stats love this guy! He's only played bits of two seasons but what's there on paper is enough to make your eyes pop. You want PER? ('09 - 18.1) ('10 - 23.1) You want True Shooting %? ('09 - .599) ('10 - .647) You want WS/48? ('09 - .167) ('10 - .214). Those are all top 5 in the league numbers. Okay not quite, the PER is 9th. But nobody needs convincing (I hope) that Greg Oden could play once. The question is can he play now? And nobody knows the answer to that. But we do know that the Kings still have a huge need for a defensive post presence going forward and with expectations hovering around "let's at least play like a team this year" territory, if ever there was a team with nothing to lose by stashing Oden on the bench for a year it's this one.
We're going to have to amnesty Salmons to get the money for Jennings which is fine, we have until July 17th to do so. I'm not clear enough on our current cap situation to say whether we also need to sign and trade with Milwaukee or not to afford Jennings. Probably we need to send them Thompson or Patterson -- especially if we want to make an offer to Oden that exceeds the minimum he can get from Miami or San Antonio. I believe as long as we're still under the salary cap, we can also send Milwaukee Geivis Vasquez as part of the deal which we would want to do as we'd no longer have a spot for him here and he might help convince them to let Jennings go. Heck, maybe he even knocks the price back down to 3yr/30M.
