Nik Stauskas’ Replacement

The 2014-15 Sacramento Kings were a bad team, no doubt, but not the kind Kings fans are used to.

Despite lacking reflection in the team’s regular season record, last season’s starters formed the fifth-best five-man lineup in the entire NBA. The group of Darren Collison, Ben McLemore, Rudy Gay, Jason Thompson and DeMarcus Cousins was behind only four other lineups in terms of net points.

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In polar contrast, the Kings’s bench was the NBA’s fifth-worst, superior only to the secondary units of the Minnesota Timberwolves, Cleveland Cavaliers, Los Angeles Clippers and Orlando Magic, per hoopsstats.com. Sacramento’s subs were a particularly atrocious three-point shooting bunch, connecting on roughly 29 percent of their long-range attempts (only the Memphis Grizzlies and Denver Nuggets were worse).

Nik Stauskas, the rookie, was supposed to bandage up the open, soupy, repulsive eyesore of a wound that was the Kings’s perimeter shooting last season. At the very least, based on his .441 three-point percentage as a Michigan Wolverine, he would be the outlier on a bad shooting team. Instead, Stauskas’s play was ultimately representative of the bench’s overall performance: mostly operating without direction, production or consistency.

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This doesn’t mean Stauskas won’t improve (he will), and it’s certainly not to suggest that he was a source or predominant cause of the second unit’s lack of production (he clearly wasn’t). The poor play of point guards not named Darren Collison and a stark lack of inside scoring contributed more to the bench’s general ineffectiveness than Nik did.

Regardless, the supposed sharpshooter didn’t do much to help matters, so, when Vlade Divac and company searched for ways to improve a flawed — but reasonably fixable — roster, they believed Stauskas’s talents to be expendable in the right scenario. Thus, he was included in the salary dump with the Philadelphia 76ers.

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Let’s be clear: Marco Belinelli is an immediate upgrade over Nik Stauskas, offensively and defensively. That, alone, doesn’t justify the deal with Philadelphia, and, despite what national media personalities might insist, it’ll be years before we can accurately gauge Sacramento’s part in this trade.

That’s the point, after all. The Kings mortgaged future assets for immediate gains (cap space), and the 76ers and general manager Sam Hinkie did the opposite.

When a bad team gives away draft picks and/or young prospects, rarely will it emerge shining in the immediate aftermath of the deal. In this case, however, the Kings saw an opportunity to improve its roster with a few key free agent additions, without giving away any of the players that were crucial to whatever success the team did experience. Marco Belinelli was one of those additions.

He’s an improvement over Stauskas in almost every aspect. Starting with the obvious, Belinelli is a 39 percent three-point shooter for his career. Last season’s .374 three-point percentage was his second-worst shooting campaign in eight NBA seasons, which would’ve been good for the second-best three-point percentage on last year’s Kings (Omri Casspi led the team at 40.2 percent). Compare that with Stauskas’s .322 clip from beyond the arc, and you have a substantial improvement in Belinelli.

Taking total field goal percentage into account, the following are last season’s shot charts of each shooting guard, in which the shading of each zone is measured against the league average by individual zone:

Marco Belinelli’s 2014-15 Shot Chart, via Vorped.

Nik Stauskas’s 2014-15 Shot Chart, via Vorped.

In only two of 14 zones (the left baseline and upper-left portion of the paint) did Stauskas convert attempts into made baskets at a higher rate than Belinelli. Though both players struggle to finish around the basket, Marco is more adept at creating for himself inside the arc, thanks in large part to his long, deceptively slow shot fake that baits defenders off-balance due to his well-reputed shooting acumen.

Just as basic box scores suggest Belinelli is a significantly better two-guard than Stauskas, so, too, do the advanced statistics on each player justify that assertion. The win share (WS) statistic, in particular, is especially kind to Marco in contrast to Nik.

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And, while Stauskas is calculated to cost his team 1.35 wins under a replacement-level player, Belinelli offers 5.94 wins over replacement, per Basketball-Reference.

Now, comparing Marco Belinelli’s stats to those of Nik Stauskas, while convincing, doesn’t come without its own share of shortcomings. For one, last season was Belinelli’s eighth in the NBA, and Stauskas’s first. You can expect a considerable variance in production based on years of experience (especially when the difference in two players’ playing time is seven years), and that fact shouldn’t be ignored. How can you properly compare two NBA players’ numbers when one is an eight-year veteran, and the other is a rookie?

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Well, that isn’t this article’s intention: to argue whether Belinelli or Stauskas is the better player. (For what it’s worth, Marco may model the type of NBA player Nik could become, but that’s beside the point.) Rather, it’s to explain how, right now, Marco helps Sacramento much more than Nik would.

As evidenced, Belinelli is a better shooter, passer, defender (still not a good one, granted), and decision-maker. It should also be noted that veteran experience brings advantages apart from those that can be recorded on a stat sheet, like playoff savvy, leadership, etc.

And then there’s the Spurs factor. For the last two years in San Antonio, Belinelli functioned as part of a scheme that can make just about any four-limbed human being look like an above-average NBA player. How much of Marco’s play was a reflection of his actual basketball ability, and how much was dictated by the team he played on?

Well, he hasn’t always played on perennial playoff contenders, in established team schemes. In his second year in the NBA, as a member of the 29-53 Golden State Warriors, Belinelli shot .442 from the field, and .397 from three. As a Toronto Raptor in 2008, he shot .406 from the field, and .380 from beyond the arc (the Raptors weren’t terrible, but 40-42 isn’t very good). And on the 21-45 New Orleans Hornets in 2011, Marco’s FG% was .417, and his 3P% was .377.

Though the Spurs likely suited his talents best, he’s played well on very bad teams, bad teams, mediocre teams, good teams, great teams and championship teams, all the same.

In a grander scheme, Sacramento’s success won’t be so simply defined as “take out Stauskas, insert Belinelli.” Sure, Marco is better than Nik right now, but the Italian is 29 and the Canadian is 21. For the second time in four years, the Kings traded away a player taken with a lottery pick before the start of his second year (Thomas Robinson, drafted fifth overall in the 2012 NBA Draft, was traded to the Houston Rockets part-way through his rookie season). A small market organization cannot afford to miss on draft picks, especially those that fall in the lottery. Historically, a team like Sacramento doesn’t have a fall-back option like free agency.

But, for better or worse, Vivek and Vlade’s winning interests are singular: to do so right now. Ideally, the Kings don’t engage in high-risk transactions that limit the team’s future opportunities to acquire talent, but hey, if you have trouble drafting good players with the picks you have, preemptively trading them away is the next best thing, right?!

After nine years of playoff-less basketball, the Sacramento Kings are done planning for the future. The Sacramento Kings are done rebuilding. The Sacramento Kings are done losing, hopefully. Marco Belinelli can’t fix all of the team’s problems, but he definitely fixes one. With him in place of Nik Stauskas, the Sacramento Kings are better, and better is better than nothing.