The Kings Offense In A Post-Fox World

Like many of you, I was eager to watch the last couple of games to see how Zach LaVine would fit into the Kings’ offensive machine. At the time of the trade, the Kings had the 7th highest OFFRTG in the league and were putting up 1116.5 ppg on 47.3% shooting from the field. LaVine is a high-octane scorer who has been uber-efficient this year, so it was exciting to think about how he might add to an already powerful offense.

Now, it’s only been two games, but let’s just say things didn’t go as well as we all might have liked. Certainly, things like this can take time. The players need time to gel. They could probably all use a few practices together, and Zach LaVine may need a few games to find where he fits into all this. That said, while the defense was certainly an issue, over the last two contests, the Kings OFFRTG has dipped down to 21st in the league. De’Aaron Fox averaged a team-high 82 touches a game with a team-high 5.7 second time-of-possession. How best to move forward after removing that from the offensive equation seems like a challenging problem to solve. So far, though, we’ve seen what appears to be more iso and a lot less movement. Things have just appeared very clunky to me. So I was curious to know what we can probably expect from the Kings offense once they finally settle in.

In a fit of boredom, I dove into some offensive numbers, and eventually, something caught my eye: The Pick-and-Roll.

While it still plays an incredibly important role in most elite NBA offenses, a lot of teams have started to shift away from the Pick-and-Roll to limit the impact of a team’s ability to defend by switching. That said, the most efficient/effective offenses tend to be the teams that can run the Pick-and-Roll efficiently, albeit at a lesser frequency than in the past.

That’s exactly what the Kings did in 2022-23, what they didn’t do in 2023-24, and what they’d gotten back to doing again this season.

The Kings have actually been the best Pick-In Roll team in the NBA this year. That’s right, baby, 100th percentile! They are the most efficient team in the NBA when they run that action and score more points per possession than any other team when they run it. But as I mentioned before, teams aren’t relying on the PnR as much as in the past, and the Kings are no exception as they’ve only been running it on 15% of their possessions. While that places them at 21st in the NBA in terms of frequency, it still accounts for 17.7 of their points each game, which is 8th most in the league and good for roughly 15% of their entire offensive output.

Naturally, I was curious to see how Fox factored into all that and how LaVine might fit moving forward. The answer to the question seems… not great.

On a team that only ran the PnR 15% of the time but relied on it for a significant portion of their offensive output, Fox was the ball handler who ran it the most on the team (28.3% frequency), accounting for 7.8 ppg, making him 91.4 percentile.

The former Kings star was very effective at the PnR, but DeRozan was even better. DeMar DeRozan was the ball handler in the Pick and Roll at a lower frequency (23.5%), but he’s 94.2 percentile in the league, and it’s good for 5.2 ppg.

Behind Fox on the list in terms of frequency, however, has been Malik Monk, who runs the Pick-In Roll 27.6% frequency (which is like 2 fewer possessions per game than Fox), but he’s only 83.7 percentile. Now, that might not be a massive decline, but he’s still approximately 5% less effective at it than Fox, and I think it’s safe to presume that he’ll be taking over the majority of the ball handling responsibilities that De’Aaron previously handled.

So, okay, sure, maybe Monk and DeRozan run the Pick and Roll a little more, and that makes up for what we’re losing in frequency. And sure, there’s probably a slight drop in efficiency there, but here’s where LaVine comes in.

You could easily make the argument that LaVine’s addition more than compensates for what you lose in De’Aaron Fox on offense. And while this might prove to be true from an overall output standpoint, I think his presence is going to have a massive impact on the way the Kings offense works moving forward. You see, while the Kings had the most effective Pick and Roll in the league, the Chicago Bulls were solidly below average while remaining equally as likely to run the action. Despite running the PnR at around the same frequency as the Kings, they turned the ball over 5% more when they ran it and scored 10% less of the time, making them 41.4 percentile – 18th in the league. This isn’t a Kings vs Bulls debate though, so why does any of that matter? Because Zach LaVine was the Bulls’ ball handler who ran the Pick and Roll more often than anyone else in Chicago.

LaVine was the ball handler in the Bulls’ Pick and Roll 26.7% of the time (a similar rate to Malik Monk) but is just 78.6 percentile in effectiveness when doing so. A LaVine Pick and Roll has resulted in points just 41.9% of the time vs Fox at 50.5%. If you had added LaVine to the existing Kings roster, he’d have been the 6th most effective Pick and Roll ball handler behind DeRozan, Fox, Monk, Keon, and even Kevin Huerter.

There are a few things to consider. All of these numbers are a measurement of the efficacy and frequency with which the Pick and Roll is run with these players specifically playing the role of ball handler. It doesn’t take into account the players with whom they are running this action. For example, Sabonis is 78th percentile as the roll man and he plays that role on 23% of the Kings’ PnR actions, accounting for roughly 5 ppg. Conversely, Vucevic is the roll man 29.6% of the Bulls’ PnR’s (3rd highest rate in the league), accounting for 5.9 ppg, and he’s 60.7th percentile. A Domas PnR results in points 58.8% of the time, good for 5.3 ppg, and a turnover 6.4% of the time. A Vucevic PnR results in points 51.4% of the time, good for 5.9 ppg, and a turnover just 3.9% of the time. Vucevic is involved in the PnR at a greater frequency with much lower efficacy.

With all that in mind, you can look at the other primary players in the Bulls Pick and Roll game – Josh Giddey and Coby White are both awful at 30th and 34th percentile, respectively, and they are the Pick and Roll ball handler 47% of the time. However, the remaining 36% of the time, that duty belongs to Lonzo Ball or Ayo Dosunmu, who are 84.8th and 83.3rd percentile when running the play.

So really, is this comparison apples to apples? No it’s not. There are a lot of flaws, namely I can’t tell who the pick and roll partners are and how they fare with each other to compare. But also, how much of the team’s overall success in the Pick and Roll is due to the ball handler and how much is due to the roller?

How much of a factor is the rest of the personnel on the floor during this play? Chicago is a pretty average team with regards to catch and shoot effectiveness, and the Kings are one of the absolute worst.

If we consider the fact that across the board every ball handler on the Kings is generally much more effective in the Pick and Roll than their counterparts on the Bulls, you could easily attribute all of this to everyone but the ball handler, but I tend to think the ball handler plays the much more important part in the Pick and Roll action due not only to the amount of decision-making required but also ball handling, speed, floor navigation, vision, passing, shooting ability, etc. And while there are other factors at play here, if you were to examine the passing numbers, Zach LaVine’s 4.4 assists per game vs his 7.8 potential assists is a much smaller delta than either Fox (6.3 vs 11.8) or Monk (5.7 vs 10), which leads me to believe that when Zach attempted to make an assist to a Chicago Bulls teammate, they have been more likely to score.

I could be wrong and this is just my theory, but I tend to think all of this might result in the Kings making some fairly significant changes to their offensive approach, as a play they’d previously relied on for a not-insignificant percentage of their overall scoring output could seemingly take a hit in terms of its efficacy. But what will those changes look like? I’m not going to pretend I know how they’ll tackle this problem or exactly what we can expect the Kings offense to ultimately look like, but I do have ChatGPT.

So here is what I did…

Kevin:  Hello I was looking at some NBA statistics to see if I could come to any conclusions about how my favorite team might fare after trading De’Aaron Fox for Zach LaVine. I was hoping you could take my findings and draw a conclusion

CHATGPT: Sure! Share your findings, and I’ll help you analyze how the Kings might fare after trading De’Aaron Fox for Zach LaVine. We can look at offensive and defensive impact, playstyle fit, and overall team performance changes.

Kevin: My goal is to understand how these numbers might impact the overall offensive efficiency but also might change the style of offense the Kings might run.

CHATGPT: Got it! Share the numbers you’ve been looking at, and we’ll break down how they might influence the Kings’ offensive efficiency and overall playstyle.

Kevin: *Data dump*

CHATGPT:

Conclusion:

• One of the Kings’ best offensive weapons (PnR) is taking a hit in both efficiency and likely frequency with Fox gone.
• Monk and DeRozan may help, but LaVine’s drop-off in PnR effectiveness could mean the Kings are either forced to change their offensive focus or suffer a noticeable efficiency drop in what was their best play type.
• The offense will likely shift toward more iso-heavy and off-ball movement-based actions rather than being a top-tier PnR team.

The big question is: Will this version of the offense be as effective as what they had before? Right now, it doesn’t seem like a positive trade-off.

Kevin: You sure?

CHATGPT:

Yeah, based on the numbers, the Kings are trading away a PnR engine (Fox, 91.4 percentile) for a less efficient PnR ball-handler (LaVine, 78.6 percentile) while already underutilizing their most effective play type. That suggests a clear drop in PnR effectiveness.

Now, could the Kings’ offense still work? Sure, but it’ll likely look very different. Instead of relying on high-efficiency PnR actions, they might lean more on:

• Isolation plays (which DeRozan and LaVine are both good at but not as efficient as elite PnR play).
• Off-ball actions and movement shooting (Sabonis facilitating more, LaVine as a spot-up shooter).
• Faster tempo and transition scoring (but LaVine doesn’t push pace like Fox).

If the Kings double down on PnR without Fox, they’ll see a dip in efficiency. If they adjust their offense away from PnR, then the question becomes: is that new offense as good as what they had before? Based on LaVine’s strengths and weaknesses, it’s hard to say yes.

I’m open to counterpoints, though—what do you think?

So anyway… I guess I’m open to counterpoints and want to know what you think.