The Sacramento Kings need a fifth starter

The Sacramento Kings have a Harrison Barnes problem.

For nearly half of a decade, Barnes has been one of the stalwarts of Sacramento’s lineups. He’s been the grown up in the room when the roster was full of kids. He brought championship experience when he came over from the Dallas Mavericks. He could shoot and score and made few mistakes. He’s never been a superstar, but he’s always been reliable and needed.

Until now.

As Barnes has aged and lost a step, and as the Kings have gotten younger and better and faster, his place and importance to the team, at least on the court, has never been more muddled. Over the last few years, Barnes played two critical offensive roles for Sacramento: reliable sharpshooter and occasional bucket-getter in the post, especially when the Kings were struggling to score. However, with the addition of Kevin Huerter’s more dynamic shooting and passing, Keegan Murray’s significantly increased offensive role, and De’Aaron Fox’s jump in usage, Barnes’ offensive output has become much less of a fixture and much more of an afterthought within the offensive scheme this season. To put it bluntly, the Kings have begun to evolve past the need for his contributions on that end of the floor. 

Such a reduction in both usage and production isn’t necessarily concerning in and of itself, as the Kings employing better starters around Barnes now than they did five years ago is actually a good thing, but his offensive decline and slower first step is only part of the frustrating equation beginning to emerge in Sacramento. 

Defensively, Harrison has never been a one-on-one stopper, and the Kings actually haven’t been a better defensive team with him on the floor since the 2018-2019 season; however his ability to slow opposing players has itself slowed this year. Sacramento is allowing 4.1 more points per 100 possessions to be scored with Barnes on the floor, the third-worst mark on the team, trailing only Chris Duarte, who has not looked like a rotational NBA player, and Domantas Sabonis, which should come as no surprise, especially to Kevin O’Connor. Screen navigation has been especially poor for Barnes, which seems to stem from both effort and ability, as he’s allowing opposing players to score 1.21 points per possession off of screens, which ranks in just the 25th percentile in the league. The eye test also seems to align with most of Barnes’ defensive stats, as he just looks slow and ineffective on the court, especially when facing quicker, better wings.

These two dynamics create an incredibly awkward rotational situation for the Kings, especially Mile Brown. To be clear, Barnes isn’t a bad NBA player, nor is he completely washed, as some on social media like to describe him; he’s probably good enough to start on some roster around the league. The issue is that he’s not the right starter for this team – he was the right starter for the Kings of a half-decade ago.

With their current makeup, the team doesn’t need his offense, nor is it good enough to be regularly utilized considering the talent of the other starters, and Barnes’s defense is even less effective than his scoring output. On most nights, he’s an invisible afterthought offensively and a net negative on defense. Organizations that are serious about deep playoff runs don’t focus their energy on placating declining veterans who used to be key components of their success – a situation that’s a little reminiscent of what’s occurring with Klay Thompson and Draymond Green in Golden State. 

But the differences similarity between those situations begins and ends there. Steve Kerr has Moses Moody and Jonathan Kuminga and even Gary Payton II to shift to if he really wants to get serious about winning games. The Kings…don’t. As was much discussed after Barnes’ horrific playoff performance and what many considered to be a rather generous offseason re-signing, the Kings failed to make any significant upgrades to their roster over the summer. The two new contributors who could have maybe stolen some minutes at the wing spot, Chris Duarte (genuinely bad) and Sasha Vezenkov (meh) haven’t shown any proclivity toward inserting themselves into the starting lineup. Trey Lyles, the closest internal option that Sacramento has to an upgrade, is probably at or slightly below Barnes’ level of impact. Does the possible reward of swapping Barnes for Lyles in the starting lineup outweigh the potential chemistry issues of making such a change? To date, Mike Brown has decided not.

And this is really where the responsibility of the situation falls to Monte McNair. Everyone knew that the Kings needed to upgrade over Barnes in the offseason, but they chose to re-sign him to what will likely be an undesirable contract for most teams who might consider his services. And despite what some might say, upgrades were available, but the front office chose to run it back – a decision that isn’t necessarily indefensible but was and is disappointing.

The Kings aren’t a worse version of their last season selves, but they haven’t been markedly better either, and much of that comes down to the lackluster wing play of Harrison Barnes and his counterparts on the bench. Finding a starting-caliber upgrade would solve multiple problem for Sacramento’s rotation, as that would slide Barnes to a much better suited role as a backup, slow-footed stretch-four, reducing the need for Chris Duarte and Kessler Edwards, while also improving the starting lineup’s effectiveness.

With December 15th just around the corner, a date that will open up most of the league’s trade eligibility, the Kings must make a move if they want to improve on their first round exit from last season, and that upgrade must come in the form of Harrison Barnes moving out of the starting lineup.