Teams Love to Shoot Against the Sacramento Kings

February 8, 2024

We’ve all noticed it with the eye test; teams get up to face the Kings and feast from beyond the arc. The Kings Opponents are shooting 39.7% from 3 against the Kings, the 4th highest clip in NBA history. It doesn’t seem to matter what their percentage on the season is, they all come in with the confidence that they are going to have a great night from deep.

What’s odd is that Sacramento does a decent job at limiting teams great looks. They give up 18.1 Wide-Open 3’s per game, tied for 17th most in the NBA. That’s a great number and below the league average, but what hurts the Kings is that opponents are shooting at a 42.8% clip on those looks, the highest in the NBA.

The fact that teams are hitting at such a high percentage puts so much pressure on the Kings offense to be great every single game. They were able to keep up last season, but the offense doesn’t seem to have the same firepower this year.

I don’t know if it’s scheme with focusing on protecting the paint or a lack of closing out hard on shooters, but the Kings will have to try and figure out how to reverse this trend that keeps getting worse. Adding lengthy wings would have helped, but the trade deadline has come and gone, and unless they hit gold on the buyout market, this team and rotations are here to stay.

When a team like the Magic, who have shot 33.7% against the rest of the league, shoot 56.8% Sacramento, you can chalk it up to a night of bad luck. When it happens over and over again, with different poor shooting teams doing the same thing? That’s not bad luck. That’s a problem.