Sacramento Kings’ Coach Dave Joerger recently stated in an interview that the team plans to play small this season. This article examines the ramifications if that actually becomes the case.
According to The Sacramento Bee, Coach Joerger said the team plans to play small this season. Below is the video if you care to watch Coach Joerger speak about it himself courtesy of The Sacramento Bee.
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As you can see and hear for yourself, he expects to start big and then match-up against the opposition on their second units. Those units often feature smaller line-ups, so let us view the ramifications of the Kings playing smaller.
Who Gets the Minutes?
The Kings are well-equipped with depth in each position. You can read an article from my colleague Rafe Wong that goes in-depth about the depth chart at each position here.
The Kings have the forward depth to play a small ball lineup. Rudy Gay, Matt Barnes, Omri Casspi, and Anthony Tolliver can all play as a stretch four. Skal Labissiere has been expanding his range to play stretch four as well. Arron Afflalo and Garrett Temple could both slide down to the three in small ball lineup. The Kings definitely have the options and the depth to play small.
I wrote about my opinion on the Kings best small ball lineup here if you care to read who I would play in my optimal small ball rotation.
Is that the best fit for this roster?
They have the depth to play small, but it may not be the optimal fit for their roster. DeMarcus Cousins is going to play his 34 minutes a night, so that leaves limited action for the centers behind him on the roster.
That leaves a crunch for minutes between Kosta Koufos, Willie Cauley-Stein, and Georgios Papagiannis. Koufos is proven back-up who should get his 15-20 minutes a night. Willie Cauley-Stein was your 6th overall pick in the 2015 NBA draft and got 21.4 minutes a game last season, so if anything his minutes should increase in year two not go down. Then you have the 13th overall pick from this year’s draft in Papagiannis behind them all.
You can solve part of the problem by sending Papagiannis to the D-League and letting him get big minutes and expand his game. Coach Joerger alluded to playing two traditional big men at the start of games, so you should see both Cousins and Cauley-Stein start. How minutes from that point shake out gets tricky.
Minutes Spilt
I figured I would do a little math to see what we should expect from each player this season. There are 48 center minutes up for grabs and if you are going to match-up against the opposition probably around 25 power forward minutes for a traditional big man, so that is 73 minutes to split between the three players.
Assume Cousins gets 34 minutes a game, which he has played slightly more than 34 minutes a night each of the last two seasons, that puts us at 39 minutes to split between WCS and Koufos. Assuming Koufos plays his career average of 16 minutes per game that leaves Mister Cauley-Stein 23 minutes a night. It is a slight increase over last year, but most Kings fans hoped he’d get more run and contribute more. If they are going to play small it and match-up it will be difficult for him to get big minutes.
Summary
Coach Joerger says he wants to play small to match-up against opposing second units. That puts the Kings roster with four centers who all think they deserve minutes in a bit of bind. The Kings have the personnel to play small and match-up, but it is going to hurt the minutes of the centers.
The potential ramifications for the centers are as follows. It almost certainly forces lottery pick Papagiannis to play in the D-League. It forces Cauley-Stein to see around 23 minutes a game, which is probably a slight disappointment to him or forces down Koufos’ or Cousins’ minutes.
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If the Kings prove that playing WCS and Cousins together can be a dominant tandem, then you could see WCS minutes increase as the season goes on. The small units could also prove ineffective causing Coach Joerger to switch things up. I do not know about you, but I am pumped for the season to start. We can get a look at all the lineups. We will see if Coach Joerger’s current plan sticks and if WCS gets big minutes or is relegated to a 20-25 minute a night role.