This statistic should give Sacramento Kings fans hope for next season

As we've discussed plenty on this website, there is a chance the Sacramento Kings look significantly different heading into next year. But even if they don't make a massive move and they justretain Malik Monk, there is still hope for improvement next season.

But how? Yes, there could be internal improvement from young stars like Keegan Murray, but it seems like the Western Conference just keeps getting tougher. If Sacramento doesn't make a drastic move, it feels like the rest of the conference could just pass them by. So, what is there to be hopeful about if they don't make any serious changes?

Two words: shooting luck.

You've surely heard the age-old maxim that the NBA is a "make-or-miss" league. Well, in the modern NBA, that has a lot to do with 3-point shooting, as the team that shoots better from beyond the arc is typically the team that wins the game.

The thing about 3-pointers is that certain types of threes are outside of even the best defense's control. The threes in question here are wide-open 3-pointers.

You see, no matter how hard you try, you are bound to give up somewhere between 15 to 20 wide open threes per game (14 to 22 this season). And when you give up those shots, you have no control over whether or not the opposition hits the shot.

This is where the luck component comes in. Throughout a single season, some teams are more fortunate when it comes to opponent wide-open 3-point conversion rate than others. This season, for instance, the team with the lowest opponent wide-open 3-point percentage was 37% (per NBA.com). Meanwhile, the highest was 42.3%. That's a 5.3% gap!

This isn't a good or bad thing. Luck is a part of all sports to some degree. We are highlighting this because it is a piece of context we need to factor into our conversation about teams.

Anyway, back to the Kings, this season, they had the worst opponent wide-open 3-point luck in the entire NBA. Yes, they were the team that surrendered the dreaded 42.3% mark we cited earlier.

Now, just because they had bad luck in 2023-24 doesn't mean they are immune to the same result in 2024-25 (in fact, the New Orleans Pelicans have had some of the best shooting luck two years in a row). However, if the Kings do experience some regression to the mean, that could lead to a couple more wins.

Let's say that, instead of 42.3%, teams shot 39% (closer to the league average) on their wide-open threes against Sacramento. Since the Kings gave up 17.6 wide-open threes per game, that would mean that teams would be making 0.7 fewer wide-open threes per game against them. That's 2.1 fewer points per game.

If that were the case, that would take their defensive rating of 115.2 (14th in the NBA) down to 114.1 (12th). More importantly, that would take their net rating of +1.7 (17th) up to +2.8 (12th). To put some color to that mark, a net rating of +2.8 equates to a 49-win pace over the course of an 82-game season. Remember, the Mavericks, the team currently representing the Western Conference in the NBA Finals, won 50 games this season.

Now, while it's impossible to tell how the Kings winning three more games changes the rest of the standings. There is a strong chance that going from 46 to 49 wins in the consistently competitive Western Conference would have lifted the Kings out of the play-in tournament and into the top six.

That means that the Kings would have been guaranteed a first round series, and after that, who knows what would have happened. Who knows how differently we would be discussing them heading into next season.

With all this in mind, citing luck as the main reason for why a season went the way it did is a lazy way to talk about sports. Luck doesn't explain everything that happens. But this year, it did cost the Kings a few wins. Maybe next season, it will do the opposite. When it comes to opponent shooting luck, one can only hope.