Sacramento Kings: Front court changes on the horizon?

With dwindling playing time for Willie Cauley-Stein and Marvin Bagley’s explosive return from injury, the Sacramento Kings could be eyeing a lineup change.

The Sacramento Kings appear to be undergoing a changing of the guard up front. Regular starter Willie Cauley-Stein, who’s a free agent at season’s end, has seen his playing time drop significantly over the last two weeks, while Marvin Bagley III has started to look like a superstar in the making and Harry Giles III has trended up, until a recent thigh injury sidelined him.

Is this truly the end of the Willie Cauley-Stein era in Sacramento? Or is it just the Sacramento Kings deciding to cut their veteran big man’s minutes as the season comes to a close? Either way, Bagley is trending up, and Cauley-Stein has fallen off due to a lack of playing time.

Over his last five games, Willie Cauley-Stein’s minutes have dropped to 21.2 minutes per game, down from 27.5 minutes per game on the season. And if you take out his 32-minute performance against the Dallas Mavericks, that number drops even further to 18.5 minutes. As a result, his statistical production has fallen off a cliff, as he’s posting just 7.8 points and 8.6 rebounds, but has posted a solid 2.6 assists and 1.6 steals as well. Still, his points and rebounds are down from 12.1 and 8.5, respectively, but if you take out Willie’s career-high 18-rebound game against Dallas, his rebounds per game plummets to just 6.25 per game.

More from A Royal Pain

• 3 Ways Chris Duarte improves the Kings chances in 2023-24
• 5 Players the Sacramento Kings never should have signed
• Bleacher Report crazily lists Kings’ All-Star as “most overrated NBA player”
• Kings and Heat fans clash on Twitter to debate All-Star players
• Sacramento Kings’ Chris Duarte playing in 2023 FIBA World Cup

Bagley, however, just posted his best week as a professional, and is looking every bit like a top-two pick should. Over his past five games, Bagley is averaging 22.4 points, 10 rebounds, 1.4 assists and 1.2 blocks on 57.1 percent shooting on 15.4 shot attempts per game. On the season, Bagley is averaging 14.7 points, 7.4 rebounds, one assist and one block on 51.9 percent shooting.

Over that same time frame, Bagley has scored 73 more points than Willie Cauley-Stein, while also racking up seven more rebounds. Bagley has also posted an incredible plus-11.3 net rating, and a true shooting percentage of 61.7 despite a usage rate at 26 percent, while Cauley-Stein has posted a net rating of plus-2.5, and a usage rate under 15 percent, though his rebounding percentage has jumped up to a respectable 17.7 percent (15.2 for Bagley).

Harry Giles, for his part, had also stepped up his play before his injury. Over Giles’ last five full games, he was playing nearly as many minutes per game as Cauley-Stein (17.8) and was adding in 8.8 points, 4.2 rebounds and 2.7 assists on 53.3 percent shooting. His numbers are on par with Bagley or Cauley-Stein’s, but they represent a major improvement for a player who’s struggled thus far in his pro career. Perhaps most importantly though, was that Giles had compiled a net rating of plus-7.3 in the five games before he left with injury, and was posting a usage rate north of 20 percent.

Perhaps most importantly, is that the duo of Harry Giles and Marvin Bagley has outperformed the Kings’ starting front court pair of Cauley-Stein and Nemnaja Bjelica, albeit by a small margin. In 73 minutes in their last five games together, Bagley and Giles have posted a net rating of plus-2.2, a rebounding percentage of 52.0 and a true shooting percentage of 60.5, while adding in 37.8 points, 13.6 rebounds, seven assists, 3.2 steals and 1.2 blocks in 14.7 minutes per game while also posting a plus-minus of plus-1.3.

The Bjelica-Cauley-Stein duo, however, has posted a net rating of zero, a rebounding percentage of 51.7 and a true shooting percentage of 53.5 in 77 minutes. They’re also adding in 35 points, 16.2 rebounds, nine assists, four steals and 1.4 blocks and have posted a net rating of plus-0.2 in 15.4 minutes per game.

The numbers for both pairs are fairly comparable, but Bagley and Giles have a greater positive impact on the floor — and do so in fewer minutes. Still, the pairing of Cauley-Stein and Bjelica has worked well when both players are playing well, and Bjelica has played well as of late, averaging 9.8 points, 9.4 rebounds and three assists on 54.1 percent shooting from the field.

Bjelica has shuttled in and out of the starting lineup a few times this season, but has otherwise been a fairly consistent starter for he Kings, as one would hope a player you signed to a three-year, $20.5 million contract would be. Still, Bagley’s minutes and play has trended up, blowing past the play of Bjelica and Cauley-Stein. That’s not an indictment of either of those players either, that’s just how good Bagley has been.

With nine games left and the team almost guaranteed to be at home for the NBA Playoffs, it’d be foolish for the Sacramento Kings to not slot Marvin Bagley into the starting lineup, and even more so to not play Harry Giles 20-plus minutes per game if/when he returns from injury. The team knows what they have in Willie Cauley-Stein and Nemanja Bjelica, if they’re out of the playoffs, doesn’t it make sense for them to put their future front court out there as much as possible?