Who is the best player on the Sacramento Kings?

The Sacramento Kings are a fascinating team for many reasons. One of which is that it is hard to discern who their best player is. Last season, De'Aaron Fox was the one who led the team in scoring (26.6 PPG). However, Domantas Sabonis was the one who got the most MVP votes. Plus, you have to factor in where the newly-acquired DeMar DeRozan falls into this equation.

So, who is the Kings' best player heading into 2024-25?

Our Methodology

To truly answer a question like this, we would need hours of film and data analysis. And while I have watched all of these players a fair bit (last season, I watched 261 full NBA games), such a deep dive may require more words to explain than you wonderful people are willing to consume. Chances are, if you are clicking on a quick article like this, you want an instant answer.

That's the beauty of one-number catch-all metrics. They allow you to learn a lot about a player very quickly, as they seek to (as the name implies) attach a single number to explain someone's impact on winning and losing.

Now, they aren't perfect. For instance, these metrics can only tell you how good a player is on their specific team in the specific role the team asks them to carry out. Still, as time has gone on, these one-number metrics have become more and more accurate.

That is particularly true of the one offered by Dunks & Threes which I cite very frequently on this website: Estimated Plus-Minus (EPM). EPM is great because unlike most one-number measures, which only include box score/play-by-play data, it also blends in the information from tracking data (which became publicly available in 2013-14).

So, in the interest of time/your attention spans, we will be using EPM to try to answer our question.

Who Is The Kings Best Player?

Since all of the Kings players we mentioned are in the heart /near the end of their primes, it is okay to use last season's EPM data to project this season's hierarchy, as it is unlikely that Fox, Sabonis, or DeRozan will see a drastic increase/dip in their outputs.

[Sidebar #1: There is a chance DeRozan could see a dip given his age [35 at the start of next season], but considering the fact that he's aged pretty gracefully up to this point, I don't see that being the case.]

Now, without further ado, here are all the EPM outputs for every non-rookie (as they weren't playing in the NBA last year) that is currently on the Kings roster (again, this is all provided by the website Dunks & Threes):

Based on EPM, Fox is the Kings' best player heading into next season. The reason for this is likely due to defense. While Fox and Sabonis are pretty even on offense (Fox had a +3.1 OFF EPM while Sabonis had a +2.9), Fox is clearly a much better guard defender than Sabonis is a defensive anchor (Fox had +1.4 DEF EPM while Sabonis had a -0.2).

[Sidebar #2: I don't always agree with EPM, but in the case of the Fox/Sabonis debate, I'm on their side here. Fox gives you more two-way balance, and Sabonis isn't good enough on offense to make up for the lack of flexibility he gives you on defense. This became pretty apparent when we watched them both in the 2023 NBA Playoffs.]

Interestingly enough, Keegan Murray ranks ahead of DeRozan in EPM. This is a perfect example of how one-number metrics are intended to measure a player's performance in their specific team context.

If you were ranking the top 100 players in the NBA last season, DeRozan would probably finish higher on that list. However, Murray was better at being a role player on a pretty good Kings team than DeRozan was at being an over-burdened number-one option on a mediocre Chicago Bulls team. I will say, though, that it wouldn't surprise me if Murray had a leap and outright surpassed DeRozan as a basketball player next season.

The role/team context weakness of one-number metrics also presents itself in Jordan McLaughlin's place on this list. No one would say he is a better player than Malik Monk or Kevin Huerter. But since he had a super consolidated role on a championship-contending team, it juiced his EPM output.  

One last thing I want to note. I find it interesting that the top five players in EPM (Fox, Sabonis, Murray, DeRozan, and Keon Ellis) are also the five players I prescribed to be the Kings' starters next season!