This injury guarantees that the Sacramento Kings have to use this player as their backup center

Without question, whenever he is healthy, Domantas Sabonis is the Sacramento Kings starting center. That is indisputable.

However, even with how durable he is (he played all 82 games last year), Sabonis can't play every minute of every game. That is why the Kings need to roster a role player they can trust to give them 10 to 15 minutes of steady big man play when Sabonis is taking a breather.

Who is the Sacramento Kings backup center?

Heading into the season, it seemed like there would be a mini-competition for the Kings' backup big man position. The two candidates in this race were supposed to be Alex Len and Orlando Robinson (who they just added this offseason). Unfortunately, a sprained MCL is causing one of these players to drop out of the race.

On Saturday, it was announced that Robinson would miss at least a month with a sprained MCL in his left knee. This means that, at least for the start of the season, Len will have to don the mantle of backup center.

Is Alex Len a good backup center?

In sports, there are a lot of questions that we ask that we can never fully know the answer to. However, this isn't one of those situations. We have a good idea of Len's abilities as a backup center because...he was one for the Kings last year.

When healthy (and when the Kings weren't using JaVale McGee as their backup center), Len logged 444 minutes in 48 games. In that time, he didn't wow you with gaudy box score numbers (2.5 PPG, 2.7 RPG, and 1.0 APG). But Len did put together a really nice defensive campaign.

According to the website Dunks & Threes, Len had a Defensive Estimated Plus-Minus that placed in the 75th percentile. He also finished in the 98th percentile in block rate. The Kings as a team were a much better defense when Len was on the floor than when he was on the bench (97th percentile in on/off defensive rating, per Cleaning the Glass).

Offensively, Len was nowhere near as productive (38th percentile Offensive Estimated Plus-Minus). But when you're only asked to play in a backup capacity, you don't need to be as well-rounded as you would when you're a starter.

The bottom line is that Len is a serviceable backup center in this league and that he will more than be able to fill in this spot with Robinson now injured. Heck, there is a really good chance that he will still have this position when Robinson does return from injury.