As we learned in the movie Moneyball, the best teams are the ones that can stretch a dollar the furthest. Yes, the goal is to accumulate as much well-fitting talent as possible. But you also want to do it at a price that is at/below their market value.
To do this, front offices have come up with countless formulas for estimating a player's production value. In his book, “The Midrange Theory,” Seth Partnow posited one that involved multiplying a player's impact by the value of a win in a given season.
So, in a recent article mini-series, I used a variation of this technique to identify the best/worst contracts from the 2024-25 NBA season. Now, we are going to use the same process to look specifically at which Sacramento Kings' players had the best contracts.
The Formula
In his book, the former Director of Basketball Research for the Milwaukee Bucks discusses a formula that teams use to estimate a player’s monetary value. In its essence, the formula involves multiplying how many points a player is “worth” by the amount a win “costs” in a given season. Unfortunately, Real-Adjusted Plus-Minus (RAPM) — a major component in the formula — is no longer available. So, I've revised Partnow’s formula a bit.
The Website Dunks & Threes offers a metric called Estimated Wins (EW). As the name implies, this measure quite literally estimates how many wins a player earned for their team in a given season. Theoretically, by multiplying this number by the amount a win is worth in a given season (3.4 million in 2024-25), we can get an idea of how much they should be making next season. From there, we can compare the average annual value of the contract they received to the amount this exercise produced to see the disparity in how much they got paid versus what they are actually worth.
The 3 Best Sacramento Kings Contracts From 2024-25
Now that all the background context has been established, here are the three best Kings' contracts from the 2024-25 season:
Player Name | Production Value | 2024-25 Salary | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
Keon Ellis | 15 Million | 2.1 Million | 12.9 Million |
Keegan Murray | 21.4 Million | 8.8 Million | 12.6 Million |
Jake LaRavia | 5.8 Million | 3.4 Million | 2.4 Million |
For those wondering, the chart is sorted so that the player with the highest difference between their production value and 2024-25 salary is at the top, then the second, etc.
The Kings had two of the best contracts in the league in Keon Ellis and Keegan Murray, as both of them outplayed their 2024-25 salaries by over 12.5 million dollars. Ellis actually had one of the ten best non-rookie scale contracts in the league when these numbers were run in early April.
There was a big drop-off after that, though, which makes sense given the Kings' unspectacular 40-42 record. Their next best contract belonged to Jake LaRavia, who was only with the team for half of the season after being traded to Sacramento from the Memphis Grizzlies.
Tune in for a later post where we reveal the team's three worst contracts from the 2024-25 season.