Sacramento Kings: 3 biggest takeaways from preseason play

 On Friday Oct. 12, the Sacramento Kings wrapped up the preseason with a loss to the Portland Trailblazers, while the record wasn’t pretty there are some big takeaways from the exhibition games.

The Sacramento Kings finished the preseason with a 2-4 record, with their wins coming against the Phoenix Suns and Israel’s Maccabi Haifa B.C. and two close loses to the Los Angeles Lakers and the Blazers.

In their two losses, Sacramento was blown out in embarrassing fashion against the Steph Curry and Draymond Green-less Golden State Warriors and the Utah Jazz, who they play on opening night.

There were plenty of highlights, like De’Aaron Fox’s electric one-half of play against the Lakers, and there were plenty of lowlights as well. For this, we’re going to focus on the positive takeaways, though the positives might be the biggest takeaways regardless.

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There’s a lot to choose from, such as Marvin Bagley III’s stellar per-36 numbers, Harry Giles’ even better numbers and Nemanja Bjelica’s strong play but there’s some that stand out even more than those.

Theres plenty to harp on as well with Buddy Hield, Justin Jackson and De’Aaron Fox struggling with efficiency, Willie Cauley-Stein’s inexplicable lack of rebounds and the entire Jazz and Warriors games but where’s the fun in that?

With that said, let’s hop into it, starting with Frank Mason III’s fantastic preseason play.

What got into FM3? During the preseason, he not only played like a completely different player, but he played like somebody who genuinely deserves a spot on an NBA roster.

Over the course of six games Mason maintained fantastic efficiency, shooting 50 percent from the field, 61.5 percent from three and 95.5 percent from the free throw line.

Before going any further, let’s add his shooting statistics from last season. Over 52 games, FM3 shot 37.9 percent from the field, 36 percent from three and 81.7 percent from the free throw line.

Now obviously Mason isn’t going to shoot north of 60 percent from three over a full season and he likely won’t shoot north of 50 percent from the floor either but if he can shoot 40 percent from three and 45 percent from the floor, we could be looking at a potential draft-steal for the Kings.

Of course shooting percentages aren’t everything. On top of those, Mason scored 11.2 points per game, 2.2 rebounds, 5.7 assists, 1.5 steals and 1.5 turnovers per game in just 22.5 minutes a night.

Compared to the 2017-18 regular season, Mason doubled his assists and steals while adding nearly four points to his points per game average.

Will he sustain that in the regular season? It all depends on his role. Prior to preseason, Mason was likely on the outside looking into the rotation but after a stint with Team-USA over the summer and a fantastic showing early he’s all but guaranteed himself significant minutes.

Will he get the 22 he got in preseason? He certainly could, especially with Bogdan Bogdanovic still out. Last season he averaged 18.9 minutes so it wouldn’t be too big of a jump.

As it stands now, Mason is deserving of a bigger role in the regular season but it all depends on how ahead Coach Dave Joerger sees it.

We’ll revisit this at the end of October after the Kings play a few regular season games.

The Sacramento Kings look like they finally hit on a draft pick. That’s not to slight De’Aaron Fox, Marvin Bagley III or Frank Mason from above but man did Harry Giles looks fantastic in preseason play.

After missing all of last season recovering from a torn-ACL in college, he was a bit of an unknown. Yes, he was, at one point, the #1 ranked high school prospect in the country and appeared to be a lock for the top-five in the NBA draft but injuries killed that dream, possibly to the Kings benefit.

Sacramento held him out all of last season to get him fully healthy for this year, similar to what the Philadelphia 76ers did with last season’s Rookie of the Year Ben Simmons. Will Giles turn into Ben Simmons? Of course not, they’re not even remotely the same type of player but he could be a contender for RoY and make a big impact for Kings right off the bat.

In his six preseason games, Giles scored 13.3 points per game which would’ve ranked third on the team last season. On top of that, though, he added in 5.7 rebounds, 2.3 assists, 1.0 steals and 0.8 blocks per game. He also shot just 43.3/66.7/66.7 from the field and that 43.3 percent field goal percentage isn’t ideal for a center.

Per-36 minutes, as was alluded to in the intro, those numbers explode. Giles played just 22.1 minutes per game in the preseason but extrapolate those numbers over 36 minutes and his averages jump to 24.3 points, 9.3 rebounds, 3.3 assists, 1.3 steals, 1.7 blocks and a solid 47.4 FG%. Yeah, I think the Kings will take that.

When the Sacramento Kings signed Yogi Ferrell away from the Dallas Mavericks by offering $900 thousand more than Dallas with a two-year $6.2 million contract, it was well received but puzzling.

Yeah, the Sacramento Kings got a solid player but why did he turn down Dallas over $900k? Where would he fit in among the glutton of guards the Kings have on roster? What happens to Frank Mason III?

We have no answers to any of those questions but, unquestionably, Ferrell had a fantastic preseason and looks like a solid bargain for the Kings thus far.

In four preseason games, Ferrell played 28.8 minutes a game, averaged 13.8 points, 2.0 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.2 steals while shooting 46.3/42.1/60.0 and only turning the ball over once all preseason.

That is, uh, pretty good. It’s even better when he’s signed for just $3.1 million per season and the Kings didn’t vastly overpay.

I’ve been driving the Yogi hype-train all offseason and was very happy with his signing. I wholly expected him to takeover the backup PG role from Mason (still think that’s the case despite Mason’s strong play) and wrote about it extensively, here, here and here.

Will he keep up his preseason play? We won’t know until the regular season starts, but he’s certainly proved he’s a more than capable as a scorer in Dallas and that’s something the Kings desperately needed.