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, I used a variation of this technique to identify the best and worst contracts that were signed during the 2024 offseason. Now, we are going to use the same method to see which Sacramento Kings players are on the best contracts heading into the 2024-25 season.
The Formula
The website Dunks & Threes (a statistical gold mine, by the way) has 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 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 are currently on to the amount this exercise produced to see the disparity in how much they are getting paid versus how much they are actually worth.
The players with the "best" contracts will have the highest positive difference between their production value and average annual salary, and the ones with the "worst contracts" will have the highest negative difference between the two.
Now, without further ado, here are the Kings' five best contracts heading into next season.