
The Sacramento Kings have clinched a spot in the NBA playoffs for the first time since 2006... I don't think this has fully sunk in for me yet but it's a pretty amazing feat. My family had season tickets to Kings games in the late '90s - early 2000's when they were great, but the last 16 years or so have been quite the dark ages. The longest active playoff drought of any team in the 4 major sports... The Kings have had 12 different head coaches since 2006, but seem to have found something that works in Mike Brown! In just his first season clinching a playoff berth.
Having not lived in California since 2013, it has been near impossible to watch Kings games due to virtually no nationally televised games (or merely not worth the trouble to illegally stream a team with a habitual less than .400 record).


I did, however, participate in my fair share of showing up to support new draft picks at the airport, protesting when the Maloof's were ready to sell the Kings, and then celebrating when it didn't go through. Some photos here show some rather cringey moments from the drought...
But now! 2023 and the Kings have a brand new downtown arena helping to revitalize the city. Not to mention a purple laser (beam) they shoot into the sky whenever the Kings win. It's definitely a different energy at Sacramento Kings games now. I'm not sure how far the Kings can really make it in the playoffs, but either way, going from lottery picks to home court advantage in the playoffs in one year is pretty spectacular. Looking forward to seeing what comes next! LTB!
In the thick of playoff prep, I played around with some player-level stats for the Kings and Warriors from https://www.nbastuffer.com/2022-2023-nba-player-stats/. Unfortunately I could not get ahold of game-level data, so it's not super detailed but here's what I learned (full code here: https://rpubs.com/clairemo/kings_dubs):
The following three plots show points per game, turnovers per game and versatility index per game. Starters have a lot of points but also turnovers, likely due to handling the ball a lot. Versatility index measures a player’s ability to produce in points, assists, and rebounds. The average player will score around a five on the index, while top players score above 10. The third plot shows these two teams have 3 "top" players -- Sabonis, Steph and Fox. Could the Kings having 2 top players be the difference maker? Almost all have an above average VI, so not sure how reliable this is, or if it needs to be conditioned on something else.
Either way, Sabonis has the highest VI, which make make sense given the range of positions he plays and things he's being asked to do.



The below plot shows minutes per game plotted against "usage % per game." Both teams appear to have players on the court for a decent amount of the game but not being "used." That is an interesting stat that I'm not too sure what to make of. I am also not sure if usage factors in defense, or is just an offensive statistic.

This plot shows points per game by position per team. Not surprisingly again, guards are scoring most. However, this might expose some weakness at true center for both teams. I think forward play will be a huge key, and with Wiggins back it might be hard for the Kings to stop scoring down low.

Finally, I did a profile analysis of players on both teams, separately, which uses a machine learning algorithm to create profiles based on each player for the Kings and Warriors.
The analysis for the Kings shows two profiles (1 and 5) that include players who tend to get a lot of minutes per game. in cluster 1, those players get a lot of minutes (above average) and also have above average points per game, steals per game, assists per game and overall better offensive and defensive ratings. Cluster 5, on the other hand, has players with above average minutes per game, higher points, steals, assists and rebounds per game, but also lower defensive ratings per game.
there is also a cluster (2) of players who do not get many minutes per game but have a lot of turnovers. Cluster 6 shows players who seem to come off the bench and only shoot three pointers. Cluster 4 appears to be just overall solidly average players in almost every area – not hurting the team too much.

If we look at the chart that plots defensive rating by offensive rating per game, with size indicating minutes per game and color indicating cluster, we see the starters are almost all in cluster 1! Sabonis is in cluster 5, indicating he plays a bit worse of defense than the other starters. Alex Len is in cluster 2 (lots of TOs) and Dellavedova is our shooter off the bench. Interestingly, almost all the mid-level bench players are in cluster 4, meaning our bench doesn’t seem to hurt us too much, but aren’t necessarily playing above average offense. this is really well evidenced by seeing how our starters are mostly in the first quadrant (positive-positive), and the mid-level bench guys in cluster 4 mostly cluster around the origin.

The Warriors' clusters with higher minutes per game are 1 and 4. Cluster 1 is players with above average minutes who tend to have decent defense, higher points per game, steals per game, assists per game and rebounds. Whereas cluster 4 seems like people who are better rebounders and despite not scoring a ton (less than average points per game) they have a high offensive rating? They seem to never shoot threes, relative to the other warriors players.
The warriors also have a cluster with people who play few minutes but have a lot of turnovers. cluster 4 looks funny too– great defense, but lots of turnovers, and can only shoot 3s.

The starters all seem to be in cluster 1, and Kevon Looney is in cluster 4 (rebounder with high offensive rating). However, he’s the only person in cluster 4, just as Iguodala is the only person in cluster 2 (high turnover average but decent 2 point average), so this is probably a good lesson in having too little data.
The bubble plot with offensive and defensive rating is interesting in comparison to the plot for the kings. we know the warriors are a good team – but they don’t really seem to have players that are “standing out” above average in the first quadrant, as the kings do. instead, they have a lot of guys who cluster around the origin, which could be great for the longevity of the team and a playoff run, but might also get them into trouble.

Nonetheless, this should be a great series! I am so so stoked for the Kings and I hope they finally get some respect from the national media.
Mid-series update: Kings up 2-0
So the Kings are up 2-0 and this has been one of the best first round playoff series I can imagine in a while (ok I am obviously biased). The Kings seem to be proving they have what it takes to make a run, with a lot of different guys stepping up in the first two games. After game 1 I heard Alex Len had a defensive player rating of 115 (he won defensive player of the game), and I was shocked given his average during the season that I plotted above (mid 90s?!!)
I downloaded the advanced stats for the first two games and here's what we see:
Efficiency field goal percentage takes into account 3-point shots, such that three-point shots are worth 50% more than two-point shots made. eFG% Formula=(FGM+ (0.5 x 3PM))/FGA.
At least for the Kings the efficiency % isn’t too surprising to me, given our starters hadn’t been shooting great from 3. Steph and Klay have been still shooting at a pretty high clip, not so surprising either.

I was curious to see who was being used most or least throughout 2 games. The most interesting is perhaps Keegan, as we’ve noticed his minutes/production fall. Throughout the season his usage % was around 16%, and has fallen below 10 through two games. That’s not to say he can’t still make an impact– but perhaps isn’t as ready for the playoffs.

Offensive and defensive ratings through 2 games:
The Kings don’t have as a high of a defensive rating average as I might have expected given how many points they had off steals. The average defensive rating for the Warriors was 116.8 through 2 games, and only 113.2 for the Kings. Similarly, the Warriors have had a higher offensive rating per game (116.8 vs 101.7). Compared to the bubble plot from the full season, the Kings don’t have any starters in the first quadrant (above average defense and offense). Our starters are mostly all in the 4th quadrant meaning they have above average offense but lower than average defense.

The Warriors, on the other hand, have most of their starters in quadrant 2 (above average defense but below average offense). This is interesting! I am curious what is really predicting the Kings’ wins if the Warriors have statistically better offensive and defensive ratings compared to the Kings through 2 games. Maybe it is really that their best players (starters) just aren’t performing as well as they should be.

Mid-series update: A race to 2
After a rough 2 game stretch in San Francisco, the series is tied 2-2, effectively refreshing with a race to 2. The two away games were not necessarily rough in the sense of blowouts, but were definitely winnable games for the Kings. It would have been seemingly almost everything to steal a game at the Chase center (and we still could!) but are going to need to win essentially win out at home as well.
Either way, it’s still been an amazing series and the Kings have still accomplished so much this season .
For this update, I’m going to look at the “basic” statistics through 4 games. Specifically, I want to see who is over/under performing based on shooting percentages etc averaged during the season. I've looked at points per game, three-point percentage, assists per game and turnovers per game, and what stands out (obviously with a very small sample size for the series), is most players are not playing up to their season averages.
For both teams, almost all players are scoring below their season averages, likely due to better defense in the playoffs and, again, smaller sample size.

Warriors:

The plots for three-point percentages and assists per games reflect very similar trends. As do the below plots for turnovers per games, again, demonstrating most likely higher octane defenses in the playoffs. However, the turnover numbers are really quick shocking in this series. Maybe if one team can just take care of the ball they'll have a real advantage... although a fast pace seems to be something both teams favor, perhaps over and above ball security.
Kings:

Warriors:

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