Why Offense Is the Biggest Thing to Watch In Kings' Season Opener in LA

The Sacramento Kings’ were the worst offense in the NBA this preseason, besting just the London Lions who played one game against the Portland Trailblazers. They averaged just 102 points per game which was second worst behind the Charlotte Hornets (and the London Lions) while shooting 28% from three, 41% from the field, and turning the ball over 20 times per game. It’s a rule that you have to qualify any preseason numbers with “it’s just preseason,” but I’m concerned that their current offense won’t be any more successful in the regular season without major changes.

Older NBA Fans, Avert Your Eyes

Sactown 1140’s Brenden Nunes has been asking some incredible questions so far this year and highlighted some of the same things I’ve noticed about Doug Christie’s offense. We all know that the majority of NBA teams (if not all) focus on rim and three-point attempts while trying to avoid the mid-range as much as possible, but why does every team need to play this way? The truth is that there is still some variance, especially in the playoffs, but there’s math behind why most teams focus on those two areas of the floor.

Midrange shots are only made at a slightly higher clip than three-pointers in the NBA, and with teams racking up 1.07 points per attempt, they would need to be shooting nearly 54% in the midrange to even things out. When you look at it this way, it makes sense that moving those shots behind the line would create better offense. There are very few players in the NBA who shoot 50%+ from the midrange; in fact, only Jalen Brunson and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander were above that line last season on more than three attempts per game. Even DeMar DeRozan, one of the best midrange shooters in the game, was under 50% at 47.6% last season.

Scheme Issue, Spacing Issue, Or Both?

Now that we’ve established the basis of modern NBA offense, let’s talk about why the Kings’ offense looks closer to what we saw in the 1990s than it does to a standard 2026 offense. Last season, 43.2% of Sacramento’s shots came in the midrange, 25.8% at the rim, and 30.9% from behind the line, according to Cleaning the Glass. I won’t sugarcoat it; that isn’t a shot profile that you would usually see from a good (or even average) NBA offense.

We know the Kings don’t exactly have the ideal personnel to be a high-volume three-point shooting team, but they’re in a much better spot than they were last season and aren’t devoid of shooters by any means. Having Sabonis, and often another non-floor-spacing big, on the court certainly doesn’t help, but teams make it work. Rudy Gobert is even less of a threat from three, yet 38.6% of the Minnesota Timberwolves' attempts came from behind the three-point line last season.

Spacing can still be a schematic issue, and in this case I believe it is. Watching Sacramento’s offense last season and in preseason, most of the actions they’re running aren’t creating attempts from three. Taking their first play against San Antonio (below) as an example, you can see why they’re not creating many open three-point attempts even when they’re trying to. Part of this is dealing with Victor Wembanyama’s ridiculous recovery ability, but you can also see that no one else is moving besides the two players involved in the action (LaVine and Domantas Sabonis), and that’s been commonplace since last season.

Missing Mike

Even though it’s clear that Sacramento’s offense has become less dynamic by watching the game, it’s unfair to use pure aesthetics to make that judgment. Luckily, there’s plenty more data to back up the drop-off we’ve seen since Doug Christie took over the team. In 22/23, the Kings led the NBA in offensive rating and were second in effective field goal percentage while attempting the sixth most threes in the league. As you can see from the numbers below (via Cleaning the Glass), the Mike Brown-led teams also shot far fewer midrange shots and got to the rim more often. 

Whether it’s players not following the game plan or the game plan itself, something is going to have to change offensively for Sacramento. The Kings’ defense won’t be great regardless of scheme, and they’ll need to rely on their offensive firepower to stay out of the relegation zone this season. So far, it doesn’t seem like they’re on track to be any better than they were last season when they ended the year 26th in the league.

Tonight against the Los Angeles Clippers, I'm hopeful that the Kings will look like a different team offensively and that Christie and his staff will show that they really are trying to play the right way. I don’t think anyone is expecting the Kings to be the league’s best offense, but they have enough scoring and shooting to be close to average and shouldn’t look as bad as they have thus far. If tonight’s game is more of the same, I think it’s fair to start questioning whether this staff is the right one to turn the Kings around. 

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