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. The headliner of the bunch is, arguably, Trey Lyles, who has spent the last three-and-a-half years with the team.
In today's day and age, that's a long time to be with one team. But should the Kings try to retain him this offseason?
Should the Kings bring back Trey Lyles?
Lyles is both a fascinating and frustrating player. He is fascinating because, in theory, he should be the exact type of piece the Kings are desperately craving. At 6'10 with the ability to stroke it from downtown (career 36.2% from three with the Kings), Lyles has the size and skill to fill in some of the blind spots of their current core four (comprised of Domantas Sabonis, Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan, and Malik Monk).
Unfortunately, Lyles did not live up to that standard in practice. Lyles struggled offensively for most of the season. After shooting nearly 60% true shooting every year from 2022 to 2024, Lyles' efficiency fell to just 54.9%. More specifically, he had his worst rim finishing season since 2019-20 and his worst 3-point shooting campaign since 2022-23 (per Dunks & Threes).
Overall, after having an Estimated Plus-Minus (EPM) in the top half of the league, Lyles was just in the 32nd percentile in this one-number metric (a measure that is, for my money, the best publicly available catch-all number on the market). These factors led to Lyles having the third-worst contact on the team.
While I haven't gone through the team's cap sheet thoroughly enough to know what financial mechanisms they will have available to them for acquiring players (that will come as we get closer to the 2025 Draft/free agency), it is fair to say that you don't want to bring Lyles back on a similar figure as his previous deal (one that was paying him eight million dollars per year).
Still, down years are a part of sports. There is a reasonable chance that Lyles will bounce back and get back to the level he was at in 2023-24. Because of this, it would definitely be worth bringing Lyles back for the veteran's minimum (or something similar to that).