What Does This Team Need Most?

[Insomniacal Fan]

Let's try out the new tables function by putting Domas up against these 5 guys in some advanced stats over the last four years (since he's been in Sac) vs. these guys' last four years and see where he stands:

Player	PER	WS	WS/48	BPM	VORP	TS%	TRB%	AST%
Sabonis	23.1	36.6	.204	5.7	16.6	.649	21.3	30.2
Don. Mitchell	21.9	30.1	.163	5.0	15.7	.589	7.4	25.2
Haliburton	22.5	30.2	.193	6.1	15.4	.616	6.3	42.9
Banchero (3y)	17.1	11.1	.079	0.8	4.9	.542	11.8	22.6
A. Davis	26.0	32.0	.199	5.2	14.1	.607	18.8	15.3
T. Young	21.5	27.0	.131	2.9	12.2	.582	4.9	45.2

So it turns out you're right! Sabonis is not even on the same tier as any of those players!

The criticism of Sabonis is that he isn't helpful at the highest level of competition. So instead of ignoring that criticism, let's probe playoff stats over the same period
Playoff advanced stats 2022-2025

| Player            |   PER |   WS |   TS% |   WS/48 |   BPM |   VORP |   TRB% |   AST% |
|:------------------|------:|-----:|------:|--------:|------:|-------:|-------:|-------:|
| Domantas Sabonis  |  15.9 |  0.3 | 0.517 |   0.064 |   0.7 |    0.2 |   16.2 |   20.8 |
| Anthony Davis     |  24.7 |  3.6 | 0.616 |   0.212 |   6.1 |    1.7 |   19.9 |   12.1 |
| Paolo Banchero    |  19.4 |  0.8 | 0.537 |   0.079 |   5   |    0.8 |   12.6 |   22.6 |
| Tyrese Haliburton |  22   |  2.9 | 0.609 |   0.182 |   6   |    1.5 |    8.7 |   36   |
| Donovan Mitchell  |  21.2 |  2.5 | 0.555 |   0.118 |   5.6 |    2   |    7.3 |   27.8 |
| Trae Young        |  14   | -0.2 | 0.501 |  -0.026 |  -1.6 |    0   |    6.5 |   34.4 |

---

Pretty clear separation there, but let's consider the difference between playoff performance and regular season performance to really highlight the issue.
Playoff - regular season advanced stats 2022-2025

| Player            |   PER |    WS |    TS% |   WS/48 |   BPM |   VORP |   TRB% |   AST% |
|:------------------|------:|------:|-------:|--------:|------:|-------:|-------:|-------:|
| Domantas Sabonis  |  -7   | -42   | -0.132 |  -0.135 |  -4.8 |  -19.1 |   -4.8 |   -8.1 |
| Anthony Davis     |  -1.3 | -28.4 |  0.009 |   0.013 |   0.9 |  -12.4 |    1.1 |   -3.2 |
| Paolo Banchero    |   2.3 | -10.3 | -0.005 |   0     |   4.2 |   -4.1 |    0.8 |    0   |
| Tyrese Haliburton |   0.5 | -31.2 | -0.001 |   0.005 |   0.6 |  -15.9 |    2.4 |   -4.7 |
| Donovan Mitchell  |  -0.7 | -27.6 | -0.034 |  -0.045 |   0.6 |  -13.7 |   -0.1 |    2.6 |
| Trae Young        |  -7.5 | -27.2 | -0.081 |  -0.157 |  -4.5 |  -12.2 |    1.6 |  -10.8 |

You could make a case that Trae is worse, but clearly there are different levels here. This is the quantified version of the argument. Taking 13 points off his TS% is

 

[SLAB]

To be fair, Trae Young sure as hell isn’t a star either. He’s a scorer. Same as De’Aaron Fox. Not a star.

 

[Joshyjosh31]

View attachment 13508

Huh, weird. B-Ball ref must be broken since Domas is better in every single category

lol Sabonis is 28 Sengun is 22 and already cleared Sabonis in playoff performance and was the all star over him. Shades of fox being better than Mitchell and Brunson

Interesting. When did you ask them? Were they taking into account current contract status or was it more of a generic "who'd you rather have to build a team around?" question?

Didn’t need to ask the all star balloting said it themselves coaches picked Sengun I’ll ask next time the criteria

 

[TheMobb]

To be fair, Trae Young sure as hell isn’t a star either. He’s a scorer. Same as De’Aaron Fox. Not a star.

So is a star just the top 10 or 15 guys in the league? Because that’s what it sounds like some definition of a star is. No Sabonis isn’t on the level of the elite guys in the league, but he’s in the tier below with guys like Young, Fox, Haliburton, Siakam, etc.

 

[Joshyjosh31]

Probably asked them the same time he was getting proof that Dallas gave the Lakers Luka as part of a conspiracy.

Let me guess tim donaghy was a lone wolf

 

[dude12]

I think most people are tired of seeing regular season Domas disappear in the play in and playoff games….the games that matter most in a season.

 

[MizzouKing]

What PGs might be out there? Besides Ja and Trae.

Josh Giddey seems like a great potential fit...

 

[Joshyjosh31]

I think most people are tired of seeing regular season Domas disappear in the play in and playoff games….the games that matter most in a season.

Apparently not

 

[QWERTYLICIOUS]

Probably asked them the same time he was getting proof that Dallas gave the Lakers Luka as part of a conspiracy.

I'm still waiting for the proof, by the way...Just in case anyone was wondering...

 

[Capt. Factorial]

The criticism of Sabonis is that he isn't helpful at the highest level of competition. So instead of ignoring that criticism, let's probe playoff stats over the same period

But over that period Domas has played in 7 total playoff games with a broken wrist and while having been chest-stomped.

I'll take four years of data over a small sample size when he was hurt. I tend to take "doesn't show up in the playoffs" criticisms with a big grain of salt. Small sample size, defenses are playing harder so everybody's numbers go down.

 

[Angelo127]

I think people just want to see Sabonis perform better in the playoffs?

 

[Joshyjosh31]

But over that period Domas has played in 7 total playoff games with a broken wrist and while having been chest-stomped.

I'll take four years of data over a small sample size when he was hurt. I tend to take "doesn't show up in the playoffs" criticisms with a big grain of salt. Small sample size, defenses are playing harder so everybody's numbers go down.

Sabonis playoff stats in Indiana filtering out three games he didn’t play over 24 minutes

10.8 ppg- 5.7rpg- 2apg

STAR PLAYER!!

 

[TheMobb]

Sabonis playoff stats in Indiana filtering out three games he didn’t play over 24 minutes

10.8 ppg- 5.7rpg- 2apg

STAR PLAYER!!

Are stats from 6-7 years ago even relevant today? Sabonis was a 21-22 year old in Indiana.

 

[SLAB]

Are stats from 6-7 years ago even relevant today? Sabonis was a 21-22 year old in Indiana.

I mean, Sengun (22) is getting compared to current Sabonis in this thread (both for better and worse arguments), so I think going backwards to Sabonis at that age is at least somewhat kind of relevant.

 

[Joshyjosh31]

Are stats from 6-7 years ago even relevant today? Sabonis was a 21-22 year old in Indiana.

We brought up Sabonis recent playoff stats and the poster I responded to said he was hurt as an excuse now we bring his Indian stats and it’s another excuse. Meanwhile anothee poster said he’s a lot better than Sengun who doubles those Indiana stats at the same age while outperforming recent playoff stats as well vs the same team, hilarious!

 

[Tetsujin]

Are stats from 6-7 years ago even relevant today? Sabonis was a 21-22 year old in Indiana.

He wasn’t even a starter at that point in his career either lol
The thing about Domas is that he is a late bloomer who got drafted after being a role/hustle dirty work big for Gonzaga, played that role for OKC in his rookie year as a backup to Steven Adams, got traded to Indiana in the Paul George deal where he was Myles Turner’s backup until he randomly got so good that Indiana had no choice but to start him. But that all happened after his age 21 season

 

[Insomniacal Fan]

But over that period Domas has played in 7 total playoff games with a broken wrist and while having been chest-stomped.

I'll take four years of data over a small sample size when he was hurt. I tend to take "doesn't show up in the playoffs" criticisms with a big grain of salt. Small sample size, defenses are playing harder so everybody's numbers go down.

Being beat up by the time the playoffs come around is a common experience. Domas didn't suffer an official injury, so I don't know what to do with that. Game 1, (pre-stomp) he had a terrible TS% of .320 for what that's worth.

Playoff - regular season advanced stats 2022-2025

Let me remove the WS column (since subtracting reg season win shares from PO win shares isn't meaningful) and adjust the color scale to make each column independant
​

All major players are game-planned against in the playoffs. Most of the players on your list don't fundamentally change under that level of scrutiny. But Domas turned into a pumpkin.

The small sample size argument isn't irrelevant, but it is a bit desperate. I thought reliability and consistency were supposed to be Domas' ineffable superpowers. Claiming that a larger sample size would change the trend, places a lot of hopes in the theory that Domas is inconsistent, and that it'll all average out someday.

---

But the small sample size argument is persuasive to me in another way. The majority of Domas' impressive regular season efficiency numbers happen in the context of bad teams that didn't even make the playoffs. The fact that Domas plays the role of facilitator on those bad teams makes those efficiency numbers completely damning. I think almost every player in the NBA could average a high TS% if they could pick which shots they wanted to take.

But that's not how it works for most players; when Keegan doesn't shoot the shots he's supposed to take, he gets yelled at and benched. Same for the vast majority of NBA players. Domas gets to choose which shots he takes, and most of the time he chooses to make things easy on himself. Domas having a high TS% in the regular season, is a sign he is an ineffective distributor. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, not every great player needs to run the offense. But having the highest efficiency on a team with meh offense is not a good look

 

[twslam07]

I love Jrue Holiday but we just finished off a season where we won 40 games and lost a play-in game on our home court because Dallas has size in the post and we do not (and still won't with your proposed rotation). Nothing about this situation points to a 35 year old PG being the final piece of the puzzle for me. I think you've just wasted a year and put us even further into a salary cap hole in the process with a full rebuild looming on the horizon.

Considering the other "one shot to fix this mess" ideas proposed though, I do kinda like the idea in theory of bringing in late career Jrue Holiday as a mentor for the PG of the future. I'm not sure that Carter is that guy yet. He has fantastic glue-guy skills and is already effective as a defensive disruptor though, so I could see him maybe growing into that role if he really focuses on making himself a reliable catch and shoot guy too.

So ultimately, I don't hate this idea. I could be talked into this team-building strategy as a way to kick off the "Doug Christie as head coach era" but you're really losing me with LaVine in the starting lineup and Ellis on the bench. If we're going to be bulldogs, let's just be bulldogs and make the starting backcourt Holiday and Ellis. LaVine gets to be the ultimate green light 6th man instead. He comes in and gets his 25 points every night and then gets out of the way and let's the starting lineup do all the dirty work of holding the lead. If he doesn't like it, he can leave at the end of the season.

I think you’re misunderstanding my POV.

I never said Holiday is the “final piece of the puzzle.” The logic behind trading for Holiday is as follows…

1.) We’d be getting a pick out of the trade since we’d be sending out Monk and saving BOS a lot of money. That’s another young player to develop or asset to use in a bigger trade
2.) Holiday fits the identity Christie & Perry want and can help us establish that identity and culture
3.) Holiday would be a great mentor for Ellis and Carter to learn from defensively and I could see him help Carter as a PG on the offensive end as well
4.) Holiday is an excellent fit next to LaVine both offensively and defensively.

As for adding more size, the first trade I proposed (the Holiday and Simmons ideas were my secondary moves) swaps DeRozan for Marshall which would help address that issue.

LaVine will be our leading scorer with DeRozan off the team. He’ll be starting especially at that contract amount. Holiday, Murray, and Marshall is a lot of defense around him (not to mention guys like Ellis and Carter coming off the bench).

Look, I’m not tied to LaVine at all. However, I see him as a useful asset the following offseason as he will be a massive expiring contract that we can dangle in front of a team (along with other picks/assets) for a big star talent. If we can’t find that type of trade next offseason, I’d be open to extending LaVine but for significantly less (like $20 mil a year - around Monk’s level), but there may be an opportunity to have a lot of cap space that offseason as well and sign a significant piece to go with Sabonis, Murray, Ellis, Carter, and the 1st rounders we have drafted along the way.

 

[TheMobb]

We brought up Sabonis recent playoff stats and the poster I responded to said he was hurt as an excuse now we bring his Indian stats and it’s another excuse. Meanwhile anothee poster said he’s a lot better than Sengun who doubles those Indiana stats at the same age while outperforming recent playoff stats as well vs the same team, hilarious!

I just don’t think stats from when he was a kid are really relevant today. And to me if you want to talk about the most recent playoffs against GSW, we can look at the numbers but it’s a fact that the Warriors game plan and number 1 priority was to stop Sabonis. Their whole defense was geared towards limiting him, so yeah we see Fox and Monk going off for 30+ points but the whole reason they’re able to do that is because the Warriors defense is keyed in on limiting Sabonis.

 

[The_Jamal]

But over that period Domas has played in 7 total playoff games with a broken wrist and while having been chest-stomped.

I'll take four years of data over a small sample size when he was hurt. I tend to take "doesn't show up in the playoffs" criticisms with a big grain of salt. Small sample size, defenses are playing harder so everybody's numbers go down.

Yeah, this. People severely overreact to tiny playoff sample sizes.

 

[The_Jamal]

Sabonis playoff stats in Indiana filtering out three games he didn’t play over 24 minutes

10.8 ppg- 5.7rpg- 2apg

STAR PLAYER!!

You're bad at this. Try and at least take Capt being nice and spelling this out for you to heart and maybe learn something

 

[The_Jamal]

We brought up Sabonis recent playoff stats and the poster I responded to said he was hurt as an excuse now we bring his Indian stats and it’s another excuse. Meanwhile anothee poster said he’s a lot better than Sengun who doubles those Indiana stats at the same age while outperforming recent playoff stats as well vs the same team, hilarious!

You told me Sengun is better than Domas. He's clearly not. Maybe eventually, but not right now.

So you move the goal-post to try and compare them both at age 22 because youre clearly wrong in your initial statment. That wasn't the question at hand.

 

[Padrino]

Being beat up by the time the playoffs come around is a common experience. Domas didn't suffer an official injury, so I don't know what to do with that. Game 1, (pre-stomp) he had a terrible TS% of .320 for what that's worth.

Playoff - regular season advanced stats 2022-2025

Let me remove the WS column (since subtracting reg season win shares from PO win shares isn't meaningful) and adjust the color scale to make each column independant
View attachment 13516​

All major players are game-planned against in the playoffs. Most of the players on your list don't fundamentally change under that level of scrutiny. But Domas turned into a pumpkin.

The small sample size argument isn't irrelevant, but it is a bit desperate. I thought reliability and consistency were supposed to be Domas' ineffable superpowers. Claiming that a larger sample size would change the trend, places a lot of hopes in the theory that Domas is inconsistent, and that it'll all average out someday.

---

But the small sample size argument is persuasive to me in another way. The majority of Domas' impressive regular season efficiency numbers happen in the context of bad teams that didn't even make the playoffs. The fact that Domas plays the role of facilitator on those bad teams makes those efficiency numbers completely damning. I think almost every player in the NBA could average a high TS% if they could pick which shots they wanted to take.

But that's not how it works for most players; when Keegan doesn't shoot the shots he's supposed to take, he gets yelled at and benched. Same for the vast majority of NBA players. Domas gets to choose which shots he takes, and most of the time he chooses to make things easy on himself. Domas having a high TS% in the regular season, is a sign he is an ineffective distributor. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, not every great player needs to run the offense. But having the highest efficiency on a team with meh offense is not a good look

This is one of the single weirdest arguments I've ever seen on this website. Domas' elite advanced statistical production and raw All-NBA numbers now amount to a bad thing. Kings fans will consistently twist themselves into knots in search of the new Big Blame. Is Domas a Jokic-tier talent? Obviously not. Can he be an extremely effective 2nd star on your team? Absolutely. More to the point, we've already seen it. Before Fox was paired with Sabonis, the Kings were a lottery team with no worthwhile ceiling. After Fox was paired with Sabonis, they became a consistent playoff hopeful. They took the Warriors to 7 games. They've flamed out two years in a row in the highly volatile play-in format, and that's a shame, but it's wild to claim Sabonis is the problem here and not, say, the extreme imbalances across the roster. And even wilder to see those same Kings fans clamoring for Zion Williamson, who has somehow proven even less than Domas when it comes to producing playoff success.

 

[Insomniacal Fan]

This is one of the single weirdest arguments I've ever seen on this website. Domas' elite advanced statistical production and raw All-NBA numbers now amount to a bad thing. Kings fans will consistently twist themselves into knots in search of the new Big Blame. Is Domas a Jokic-tier talent? Obviously not. Can he be an extremely effective 2nd star on your team? Absolutely. More to the point, we've already seen it. Before Fox was paired with Sabonis, the Kings were a lottery team with no worthwhile ceiling. After Fox was paired with Sabonis, they became a consistent playoff hopeful. They took the Warriors to 7 games. They've flamed out two years in a row in the highly volatile play-in format, and that's a shame, but it's wild to claim Sabonis is the problem here and not, say, the extreme imbalances across the roster. And even wilder to see those same Kings fans clamoring for Zion Williamson, who has somehow proven even less than Domas when it comes to producing playoff success.

If you want to ignore the playoffs (and my pretty chart) all I'm saying is that Domas' abilities aren't correlated enough with what the team needs. I think we could maybe do a little bit better, (and acheive our ambitious goal of being knocked out in round 1 of the playoffs again) if we reduced Domas' role, took the ball out of his hands, and asked him to focus on improving his weaknesses over emphasizing his strengths. Even Domas said we needed a point guard.

My interest in Zion isn't about Zion, it's about rebuilding. But that's explicitly off-topic for this thread.

 

[Jdbraver137]

If you want to ignore the playoffs (and my pretty chart) all I'm saying is that Domas' abilities aren't correlated enough with what the team needs. I think we could maybe do a little bit better, (and acheive our ambitious goal of being knocked out in round 1 of the playoffs again) if we reduced Domas' role, took the ball out of his hands, and asked him to focus on improving his weaknesses over emphasizing his strengths. Even Domas said we needed a point guard.

My interest in Zion isn't about Zion, it's about rebuilding. But that's explicitly off-topic for this thread.

I don’t think anybody thinks Sabonis is the number 1 on a playoff team. But he is a huge piece in what we do. Without him we would be in last place. Sometimes a team is just badly put together. He can contribute without being the alpha.

 

[Insomniacal Fan]

I don’t think anybody thinks Sabonis is the number 1 on a playoff team. But he is a huge piece in what we do. Without him we would be in last place. Sometimes a team is just badly put together. He can contribute without being the alpha.

I don't have any problem with Domas being on the team. I have a bit of trouble thinking up a plausible scenario where we get a better player than Domas, without tearing things down and going to the draft; but there are some interesting ideas in this thread.

 

[Joshyjosh31]

You told me Sengun is better than Domas. He's clearly not. Maybe eventually, but not right now.

So you move the goal-post to try and compare them both at age 22 because youre clearly wrong in your initial statment. That wasn't the question at hand.

Apparently the coaches who voted him an all star a wrong too huh

 

[Tetsujin]

This is one of the single weirdest arguments I've ever seen on this website. Domas' elite advanced statistical production and raw All-NBA numbers now amount to a bad thing. Kings fans will consistently twist themselves into knots in search of the new Big Blame. Is Domas a Jokic-tier talent? Obviously not. Can he be an extremely effective 2nd star on your team? Absolutely. More to the point, we've already seen it. Before Fox was paired with Sabonis, the Kings were a lottery team with no worthwhile ceiling. After Fox was paired with Sabonis, they became a consistent playoff hopeful. They took the Warriors to 7 games. They've flamed out two years in a row in the highly volatile play-in format, and that's a shame, but it's wild to claim Sabonis is the problem here and not, say, the extreme imbalances across the roster. And even wilder to see those same Kings fans clamoring for Zion Williamson, who has somehow proven even less than Domas when it comes to producing playoff success.

It’s funny that you bring up Fox because the arguments against him for years was that his advanced stats were terrible while his counting stats were great and now the argument people are making about Sabonis is that his great advanced stats mean nothing.

 

[Srzly]

I don’t think anybody thinks Sabonis is the number 1 on a playoff team. But he is a huge piece in what we do. Without him we would be in last place. Sometimes a team is just badly put together. He can contribute without being the alpha.

Meh. I disagree about being last place without him. The issue is that a playoff team is hard to build with Sabonis in the roster. There is no getting around his terrible defense. You need a rim protector next to him that won’t clog the lane on offense (a rare type of player). Even then you would be asking Domas to guard the perimeter and he doesn’t have the quickness to do it. You need to surround him with good defenders on the floor. We went the opposite direction.

I think if you replace him with a pure defensive rim protector and rebounder that we probably end up around the same spot because with DDR we didn’t really utilize Domas’s playmaking or DHO well at all. ISO ball takes away what makes Domas special on offense.

 

[hrdboild]

I think you’re misunderstanding my POV.

I never said Holiday is the “final piece of the puzzle.” The logic behind trading for Holiday is as follows…

1.) We’d be getting a pick out of the trade since we’d be sending out Monk and saving BOS a lot of money. That’s another young player to develop or asset to use in a bigger trade
2.) Holiday fits the identity Christie & Perry want and can help us establish that identity and culture
3.) Holiday would be a great mentor for Ellis and Carter to learn from defensively and I could see him help Carter as a PG on the offensive end as well
4.) Holiday is an excellent fit next to LaVine both offensively and defensively.

As for adding more size, the first trade I proposed (the Holiday and Simmons ideas were my secondary moves) swaps DeRozan for Marshall which would help address that issue.

LaVine will be our leading scorer with DeRozan off the team. He’ll be starting especially at that contract amount. Holiday, Murray, and Marshall is a lot of defense around him (not to mention guys like Ellis and Carter coming off the bench).

Look, I’m not tied to LaVine at all. However, I see him as a useful asset the following offseason as he will be a massive expiring contract that we can dangle in front of a team (along with other picks/assets) for a big star talent. If we can’t find that type of trade next offseason, I’d be open to extending LaVine but for significantly less (like $20 mil a year - around Monk’s level), but there may be an opportunity to have a lot of cap space that offseason as well and sign a significant piece to go with Sabonis, Murray, Ellis, Carter, and the 1st rounders we have drafted along the way.

With his contract, trading for Jrue Holiday is going to kill our salary cap for the next 3 years. At that point we're either somehow a playoff team or we're rebuilding. So he'd better be the final piece of the puzzle unless you're shedding huge chunks of salary elsewhere (ie unloading LaVine and/or Sabonis) as part of an overall roster churn.

I highly doubt Boston is trading Jrue Holiday for Malik Monk and also throwing in a pick unless it's a useless late second rounder. Boston already has too many guards and Al Horford is reaching retirement age soon so I expect their preference would be to target a frontcourt player.

I believe I already referenced your points 2 and 3 in my post. I agree with these points. If we can find a trade that Boston likes, I'd be happy to have Holiday on board as the tone setter and veteran voice in the locker room. Probably we'd be the ones sending out pick(s) though.

Naji Marshall is a shade under 6'7" and you've got him starting at PF next to Sabonis who is 6'10. I don't think that makes our size problem any better.

As to Holiday being an excellent fit next to LaVine... again this is just 180 degrees from how I see our current situation. I don't think we're trying to build a team around LaVine. Maybe Monte was but he just got fired. And even if we were, you don't bring in a guy who's got 4 or 5 years left in his NBA career and call that a backcourt. Holiday only makes sense as a stop-gap and culture builder while we look for a new PG.

And lastly, who is trading us a star player to get their hands on an overpaid perennial loser with an expiring contract? I guess Monte did that, but there were extenuating circumstances. If we throw in a massive haul of future picks and LaVine's negative value is just there to match salaries you might make a deal but then you're going all-in on a team with a 36 year old PG and a 30 year old undersized center (in 2026) as your foundation? This is how franchises stay bad for decades. We shouldn't fall into the same trap of selling out our future to chase after aging talent with name recognition that sinks multiple franchises every year. Just build a team of young players who fit together and play defense.