There is a lot of positivity surrounding the Sacramento Kings. They are winners of three straight and five of their last six games. This is a positive sign and something to build on moving forward.
We are all about positive affirmations here at A Royal Pain. However, at the end of the day, the Kings are still 13-13. That is only good for the 12th-best record in the West and the 18th-best record in the league. That's not a great look for a team that, coming into the season, was hoping to make a deep playoff run.
The Sacramento Kings have played an easy schedule so far
Now, one could look at the Kings' pedestrian record and justify it by saying that they have had some poor injury and shooting luck to start the season. They could add that now that these roadblocks are behind them (hopefully), the Kings are finally ready to rock and roll.
These are valid points. Points we have discussed at length at various points in the season. The issue is that this has all happened while the Kings played one of the easiest schedules to start the season in the entire NBA.
The website Dunks & Threes (an invaluable tool for diehard basketball fans) has a version of strength of schedule (SOS) that looks at the Estimated Plus-Minus (one of the best publicly available one-number metrics on the market) of the players they've played against so far and the actual minutes those players played in those games. This gives us a better picture of how good the opponents a team has faced thus far actually are (rather than just looking at the strength of opponents without factoring in the minutes played by their players).
According to this version of SOS, the Kings have had the sixth-easiest schedule in the NBA up to this point. So, the Kings are not taking advantage of lackluster opponents the way they should be. Even worse, only one team in the top 10 in the easiest schedule rankings has a worse record than them (the Indiana Pacers).
Unfortunately, Dunks & Threes doesn't have a version of SOS that predicts the strength of a team's remaining schedule. But if you look at the website Tankathon (which does have this feature), the Kings have the fourth-hardest remaining schedule in the NBA.
So, the Kings were only able to stay around .500 with a relatively easy schedule. What will happen to them now that they are facing fiercer opponents? Hopefully, the positive regression they are due for can make up for this. But still, it seems like the team wasted an opportunity to start the season off with a strong record.