1. His consistency
Due to an early season injury, Trey Lyles has only played 34 games so far but over that stretch, he has been consistent. On a team with a rather unreliable bench, that is huge.
Lyles and Monk are the only bench players who have had a consistent impact all season long. Len has been good whenever he has gotten a chance, but Brown doesn’t play him much. McGee offers good size, rim protection, and chemistry with Monk but also often makes too many mistakes.
Davion Mitchell, Chris Duarte, Keon Ellis, and Sasha Vezenkov have all spent the entire season flitting in and out of the rotation, while Kessler Edwards and Colby Jones only rarely saw the court outside of garbage time. Coach Mike Brown just doesn’t seem to trust any of his bench players other than Lyles and Monk very much, which makes those two even more valuable to the team’s success.
In the playoffs, there is not much room for experimenting and hoping that a certain bench player will have a good night. Thus, rotations are shortened, usually down to seven or eight players, but injuries can always happen.
If Fox, Sabonis, Huerter, or Murray go down, for example, the Kings will have to face a lot of question marks. Anyone past Lyles, who is the seventh guy, has been rather unreliable so far and might not be up to the challenge of filling in for one of the main guys.
We saw it earlier this season when Fox was out with an ankle injury. The Kings fell apart, and Brown eventually felt pressured to experiment and insert Keon Ellis in the starting lineup. On the big stage, you have to be able to trust anyone you send out on the court, and Lyles is that kind of player.
Every game, he brings more or less the same things to the court: shooting, size, energy, and some rebounding. The Kings need that kind of reliability off the bench. Luckily, Lyles is under contract through the 2024-25 season and fits the Kings’ timeline rather well.