About a week ago, Henry Abbott – at TrueHoop – posted The NBA Story No One’s Talking About About. Essentially, the Sacramento Kings are losing money and it is possible this franchise – which has stopped in Rochester, Cincinnati, Kansas City, and Omaha – might be moving again.
The problem for Sacramento – according to the team – is that the Kings are losing money. Although it’s difficult to know how much (owners in sports are not always honest about their finances), one issue for the Kings is declining attendance. Currently the team ranks last in the NBA at the gate.
One reason for this decline could be the economy. Today’s economic problems – which began in the housing sector – hit Sacramento and California especially hard. But the economy is not the only problem for the Kings. Let’s face it. This team is bad.
The Bad Kings
To see how bad, let’s look at Table One.
Table One: The Sacramento Kings in 2008-09 after 57 games
An average player posts a WP48 [Wins Produced per 48 minutes] of 0.100. As Table One note, only one player employed by the Kings this year has surpassed the mark of an average player. That player – Brad Miller – is currently with the Chicago Bulls. And the same story can be told about John Salmons, the second most productive player on the roster. He is also in Chicago.
Of the remaining players, Kevin Martin is easily the best, although he is offering less than last year. Even if he was as productive as last year, though, the Kings would still be a very bad team.
Once we move past Martin, this roster looks extremely bleak. The rest of this team has only produced 0.2 wins this year. Yes, Drew Gooden will help some when he is healthy. But we should not be mistaken. This team is built for the lottery. In other words, the choices the Kings made in building this roster have led to this outcome.
More for Moore
Perhaps no player exemplifies this point more than Mikki Moore. For most of his career, Moore was the quintessential journeyman. He was good enough to make an NBA roster. But never good enough to last or make much of a contribution. Then two years ago he was in the right place at the right time. The New Jersey Nets lost Nenad Krstic for the season and Moore was suddenly given the gift of playing time. Although his per-minute performance was essentially unchanged – a point I made in July of 2007 – Moore’s increased playing time led to an increase in his per-game numbers. Consequently, the Kings decided to give Moore – a player who has labored under a 10-day contract in the NBA — $18 million.
In the first year of this deal, Moore produced 1.2 wins in 2,385 minutes. Moore’s WP48 of 0.024 was a below his career mark of 0.047, but not that far below. Essentially, Moore did what he always did. He just got paid much better.
This year Moore – who is now 33 years old – saw his productivity decline further. As a consequence, the Kings put him the trade market. But after no one stepped forward to take on this contract, the Kings simply cut Moore from the team. Yes this move saves money. But the Kings could have saved even more money if they hadn’t agreed to give Moore this contract in the first place.
Torturing Kings
Free agent signings aren’t the only problem for this team. In the past four years the Kings have added the following in the first round: Francisco Garcia, Quincy Douby, Spencer Hawes, and Jason Thompson. These four players have combined to produce 0.2 wins this season.
When we put the whole picture together, it’s easy to see that Sacramento’s problems are largely self-inflicted. The team is simply a product of its past decisions. And these decisions were less than optimal.
As a result of these decisions, the Kings are not performing on the court and the team’s fans are staying away. To solve this problem, some are suggesting the Kings move to another town and another set of fans. Certainly this can lead to an increase in attendance in the short-run. But if this team keeps choosing the wrong players, eventually the Kings will wear out their welcome in a new town.
The good news for the Kings is that there are many cities that might be able to support an NBA team. So there may be no shortage of people in this country who could be tortured by bad basketball. Although hopefully there aren’t many cities that will give the Kings extra money for this privilege (unfortunately, though, there probably is).
– DJ
The WoW Journal Comments Policy
Our research on the NBA was summarized HERE.
The Technical Notes at wagesofwins.com provides substantially more information on the published research behind Wins Produced and Win Score
Wins Produced, Win Score, and PAWSmin are also discussed in the following posts:
Simple Models of Player Performance
What Wins Produced Says and What It Does Not Say
Introducing PAWSmin — and a Defense of Box Score Statistics
Finally, A Guide to Evaluating Models contains useful hints on how to interpret and evaluate statistical models.
Wages of Wins Journal 
Tball
February 23, 2009
This post is the necessary evil of choosing to write about each team twice this season. The Kings roster is devoid of hope and light on wishes of hope. The team is littered with bad draft picks and bad contracts. How much did they give Udrih in the offseason? And then they have to give away what little they have in NBA talent. NBA teams do not recover from these predicaments quickly.
Rob O'Malley
February 23, 2009
What’s perplexing is the about face they’ve done on talent evaluation since the beginning of the century. Assembling a teams with Chris Webber, Vlade, Peja, Gerald Wallace, Mike Bibby, Hedo Turkaglu, Brad Miller. They were considered championship contenders and sometimes favorites almost every year until about 2004. I don’t see how you can go from evaluating and acquiring talent so well to not doing either at all. It doesn’t seem like any of these teams, especially the Kings have any consistent reasoning behind their evaluation process. This franchise went down with Chris Webbers knees.
As a side note this post does nothing but makes me less optimistic about my Wizards chances in the Blake Griffin sweepstakes. C’mon Wiz, you have no skill in building a championship team , let’s try getting lucky.
Michael
February 23, 2009
Its amazing to think that Chris Paul,
Dwight Howard, LeBron James, Marcus Camby Jason Kidd, Rajon Rondo and Dwayne Wade have all produced more wins by themselves than this entire team.
To-Tball
February 23, 2009
Bad Contracts Yes. Bad Draft Picks? No. Douby is the only one on the roster(not anymore) that should be considered a bad draft pick. One of the only few things Petrie’s done right is consistantly select quality draft picks, regardless of where he’s picked. However, with with the Maloofs desire to remain competitive we’ve yet to finish inside the top 10 picks. We keep using the MLE to sign talent to try to compete, then trade off another productive player as we’ve slowly been dwindling from playoff contention while tying up salary. Sacramento isn’t a huge free agent attraction and we haven’t had a legit star since Webber. The team has been treading water for awhile, and its about time it sank to the bottom of the standings to finally have a shot at a top 5 pick in the draft to get a star we can build a team around. As good as Kevin Martin is he will always be a great #2 not a #1 option. Horrible management Yes, Bad Signings Yes, Bad Contracts Yes, but bad Draft picks? Thats a joke. Its not like we’ve been picking in the top 5 for multiple years and keep getting it wrong.
Peter
February 23, 2009
From the productivity standpoint, trading Mike Bibby didn’t exactly help the issue. Neither was Bibby recovering from missing 36 games due to thumb surgery.
That definitely helped trigger the transition into lottery mode for Sacramento. And with the benefit of an extra offseason in Atlanta, the Hawks have gone from not making the playoffs since Bibby was a Vancouver Grizzlies rookie, to an 8th seed giving the Celtics a challenge for seven games, to the highest seed in the Eastern Conference not belonging to Boston, Orlando, or Cleveland.
Tball
February 24, 2009
To To-Tball
I do like Martin. I’m not a big fan of Hawes or Thompson, although they deserve more time to sink or swim. Garcia and Douby have revealed who they are, and I don’t think either is a starting player on a .500.
Drafting outside the top ten is not a reason to forgive unsuccessful drafting. I’ve been a Celtics fan since banner 15. In the past five years, Ainge has picked up Rondo at 21, Jefferson at 13, Perkins at 29, Tony Allen in the 20s, Powe at 49, and Delonte West in the 20s, (as well as Marcus Banks at 13 and Gerald Green at 18). Players like Mario Chambers, Granger, Marc Gasol, Carl Landry, and Rudy Fernandez have made it well past the 10th pick. Heck, from 2001-2004, Sacramento picked up Turkoglu at 16, Gerald Wallace at 25, and Kevin Martin at 28. Good players, generally not franchise players, but good players are available after the 10th pick. Sacramento has not found them the last few years.
It would also help if Sacramento would grab a first round pick from teams as they trade away their good players.