Scouting one-pager: Sacramento Kings (SAC)
2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 7,299 FGA. Auto-generated by scouting/build_onepager.py from public data; every number traceable to a gated pipeline in this repo. Shot pricing uses the 2023-24 shot-quality model, whose season-out transfer was validated in the backtest; shot-making is empirical-Bayes shrunk before it is allowed to drive a conclusion.
Terms
- PPS: Points per shot: total points on field-goal attempts divided by attempts. Free throws excluded.
- xPPS: Expected points per shot - the model's fair price of a shot diet: what an average shooter would score on the same attempts, judged from location and shot type alone, before knowing what went in.
- shot-making: Actual minus expected points per 100 shots: conversion above or below what the shot diet itself explains. Positive means making shots the model prices as hard.
- EB making: A player's shot-making after empirical-Bayes shrinkage: the observed number pulled toward the league mean in proportion to its sampling noise. The number to trust for projection.
- FGA: Field-goal attempts.
- RAPM: Regularized adjusted plus-minus: a ridge regression crediting each player with net points per 100 possessions while adjusting for the other nine players on the floor.
- net_100: Net points per 100 possessions: 100 x plus-minus / possessions; sits on the same scale as the NBA's published net rating.
- rush: Shots in the final four seconds of a period - the desperation window where both shot selection and execution collapse.
- empirical Bayes: Estimate the spread of true skill across the league from the data, then pull each individual's noisy estimate toward the league mean in proportion to its noise.
- shrinkage weight: The fraction of an observed number that survives empirical-Bayes regression: 1 means fully trusted, 0 means replaced by the league mean.
- CI: Confidence interval.
Keys
- Mid-range reliant: 16.0% from mid-range vs league 10.0%; live with contested twos over open threes.
- Maxime Raynaud is a genuine shot-maker: +9.5 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
- Best shot diet: Precious Achiuwa (1.13 xPPS on 598 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
- Their most-used five that wins its minutes: R. Westbrook - D. DeRozan - P. Achiuwa - N. Clifford - M. Raynaud (+0.8/100 over 260 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
| SAC | League | Δ |
|---|
| PPS (points per shot) | 1.049 | 1.091 | -0.042 |
| xPPS, the shot-diet price* | 1.043 | 1.097 | -0.054 |
| Shot-making, pts/100 vs model | +0.6 | -0.5 | +1.2 |
| Rim share | 22.6% | 28.4% | -5.8 pp |
| Mid-range share | 16.0% | 10.0% | +6.0 pp |
| Three share | 33.9% | 41.5% | -7.6 pp |
| Corner share of threes | 24.5% | 25.9% | -1.4 pp |
| Final-4s (rush) shot share | 1.9% | 1.8% | +0.1 pp |
* xPPS prices where they shoot from, independent of whether shots fell: the stable, scoutable part of the profile (year-over-year r ≈ .9).
Personnel (top 8 by volume)
| Player | FGA | PPS | xPPS (diet) | Making/100 | EB making | RAPM/100 |
|---|
| DeMar DeRozan | 1,005 | 1.040 | 0.928 | +11.1 | +8.9 | -3.2 |
| Russell Westbrook | 839 | 1.006 | 1.021 | -1.5 | -1.3 | -2.2 |
| Maxime Raynaud | 671 | 1.177 | 1.048 | +12.9 | +9.5 | -2.9 |
| Malik Monk | 632 | 1.073 | 1.034 | +3.8 | +2.3 | -1.1 |
| Precious Achiuwa | 598 | 1.102 | 1.133 | -3.1 | -2.5 | +0.1 |
| Nique Clifford | 596 | 0.965 | 1.032 | -6.7 | -4.7 | +0.8 |
| Zach LaVine | 547 | 1.139 | 1.048 | +9.1 | +5.5 | -1.8 |
| Dennis Schröder | 422 | 0.950 | 0.982 | -3.1 | -2.1 | -1.7 |
EB making = shot-making regressed to league mean by reliability: the number to trust. RAPM from the opponent-adjusted 2025-26 lineup model (±≈3/100 CI at a season of minutes; treat as descriptive).
Most-used lineups
| Lineup | Min | Poss | Net/100 |
|---|
| R. Westbrook - D. DeRozan - P. Achiuwa - K. Murray - M. Raynaud | 130 | 275 | -22.5 |
| R. Westbrook - D. DeRozan - P. Achiuwa - N. Clifford - M. Raynaud | 118 | 260 | +0.8 |
| R. Westbrook - D. DeRozan - Z. LaVine - P. Achiuwa - M. Raynaud | 122 | 252 | -10.7 |