With the 2024-25 NBA Season now over for the Sacramento Kings (courtesy of the Dallas Mavericks), the focus has now shifted toward the offseason.
As it stands, the Kings have a handful of players from their 2024-25 roster set to become free agents. Over the next few days, we are going to analyze the pros and cons of bringing back each of these players.
Doug McDermott was brought in right before the start of the season on a veteran minimum contract. But did the sharpshooting journeymen do enough in his one year with the team to warrant bringing him back in 2025-26?
Should the Kings bring back Doug McDermott?
McDermott was brought in a week before the start of the regular season for his incredible ability to knock down threes (career 43.6% 3-point shooter) and his wisdom/experience. In my mind, McDermott represented insurance in case the team wanted to part ways with Kevin Huerter at some point during the season (which they eventually did in a blockbuster three-team trade involving De'Aaron Fox and Zach LaVine).
Unfortunately, that theory did not fully play out in practice. Yes, McDermott continued to be a knockdown 3-point shooter (hitting 43.6% of the 101 threes he attempted). However, he failed to find a consistent role on the rotation, appearing in only 42 of the team's 82 games and averaging just 8.1 MPG in those contests.
The reason for this was his defense. McDermott finished in just the 21st percentile in Defensive Estimated Plus-Minus (per Dunks & Threes), marking the eleventh time in his eleven years that McDermott finished in that bottom quadrant or lower in this metric.
As the 23rd-ranked defense in the association (their 22nd straight season outside the top 10), the Kings could ill-afford to field yet another below-average defender in their rotation. So, it was difficult to make McDermott a fixture in their game-to-game lineups.
As we said with Jae Crowder, it is impossible to measure the value that Crowder's experience and wisdom helped the Kings' locker room this season. Maybe those intangibles are enough to warrant bringing him back on another veteran minimum deal.
But based purely on his on-court contributions, it is hard to argue that the Kings should exhaust precious resources trying to bring McDermott back next season. Surely, they can find a more meaningful contributor this offseason at a similar price point.