Willie Cauley-Stein Showing Offensive Improvement

The Sacramento Kings invested their most recent first round pick on Willie Cauley-Stein, and naysayers thought it was a mistake due to him being an apparent “offensive reliability”.

Throughout this season, Cauley-Stein is proving those naysayers wrong as the former Kentucky Wildcat is making huge, and unexpected, strides in his offensive game. Making the 22-year old an all-around force in the making.

I will admit. I also had concerns about Cauley-Stein’s offensive ability for this season, but also pointed out the potential he had as an offensive asset as well.

I thought it would take some time before Trill would make progress offensively, but he has pressed the fast forward button and has shown through the eye test and numbers that he can be an offensive option for his team now.

When looking at the offensive statistics they won’t knock your socks off. Through his first 44 games, Cauley-Stein is averaging just 6.5 points per game. He is also making 61% of his shots, which is solid, but is also only making 61.8% of his free throw attempts.

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The numbers do not look great, but going through his season month by month improvement jumps right out of the page.

In the months October, November, and December (20 games), Cauley-Stein averaged 4.8 points off 60.9% shooting from the field and 51.4% from the charity stripe.

Going forward to January Cauley-Stein then averaged 7.2 points a contest off 57.6% from the field and 64.3% from the free throw line. And lastly, after concluding this month of February Willie averaged 8.6 points off of 64.6% shooting and 84.6% from the line.

February 19, 2016; Sacramento, CA, USA; Sacramento Kings center Willie Cauley-Stein (00) shoots the basketball against Denver Nuggets center Joffrey Lauvergne (77) during the fourth quarter at Sleep Train Arena. The Kings defeated the Nuggets 116-110. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports /

Not only have the numbers shown WCS improvements, but when looking at the tape Cauley-Stein is becoming more versatile on the offensive end.

Producing most of his point in the beginning of the year off of dunks and hustle points, there are now times where Cauley-Stein was able to put the ball in the bucket off of post-up hook shots, close-range jumpers, and free throws. The shot is gold.

Overall, fans of the Sacramento Kings expected Willie Cauley-Stein to be productive defensively, but watching him improve so much game by game on the offensive end is definitely a bright spot to what has been a frustrating season for the Kings as a whole.

The Kings only have 23 games left to muster up before the regular season is over. With no signs of the team turning things around it looks like the purple and white are not going to be playing in the playoffs this season.

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With that being said, it also means that Cauley-Stein has 23 games left for him to keep getting better as a player, of course, factoring out injury (knock on wood).

For the last couple of seasons it has been the norm to see Kings rookies struggle in their rookie seasons, but Cauley-Stein is finally breaking that drought. He has been making great strides so far in his developing process, and it looks to be optimistic for Kings fans that they are going to have a young player that the franchise and fans can rely on going ahead in their future.

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