» KINGS’ WALTON PLANS TIGHT ROTATION
Kings coach Luke Walton has said little to confirm common assumptions about his lineup and rotation plans, but he shared something revealing just before the team departed for India late Monday night.
The Kings have assembled one of the deeper teams in the league with no fewer than 12 players capable of contributing in one way or another. Walton believes each will play a part in the team’s success, but he indicated some might not get consistent minutes when asked if a 12-man rotation is a realistic option during the regular season.
“I don’t think so, not on a night-to-night basis,” Walton said. “I think one of our biggest strengths is how deep our team is. It’s going to be a wild (Western Conference) and there are a lot of good teams in it, and I think our depth will help us. We’ll be able to play guys. We’ll be able to play at the pace we want to play. As the season goes and people get banged up like they always do, we’ll have people at every position ready to step up and fill in.”
Walton was later asked if he would be comfortable with a 10-man rotation.
“Yeah, I mean, 10 works,” Walton said. “Eight works. Nine works, but whoever’s playing well will play.”
The competition for minutes has been waged behind closed doors in training camp until now, but fans will get their first glimpses of it when the Kings play preseason games against the Indiana Pacers on Friday and Saturday in Mumbai. Walton said he kept certain groups together over the first three days of practice “to start building some chemistry,” but he plans to experiment with different combinations in India.
“We’re going to start mixing groups and seeing what different lineups look like,” Walton said.
Kings backups hunt for minutes — The starting lineup on opening night will likely feature De’Aaron Fox and Buddy Hield in the backcourt with Harrison Barnes at small forward, Marvin Bagley III at power forward and Dewayne Dedmon at center. Bogdan Bogdanovic said he expects to get about 28 minutes per game off the bench.
If Fox, Hield, Barnes and Bagley all average 32 minutes per game, Bogdanovic averages 28 and Dedmon averages 25, that will leave 59 available minutes for a talented group of backups that includes Cory Joseph, Yogi Ferrell, Trevor Ariza, Nemanja Bjelica, Harry Giles III and Richaun Holmes. That could result in a considerable reduction in playing time for Joseph, who averaged over 25 minutes each of the past four seasons; Ariza, who has averaged 29.8 minutes over a 15-year career; and Bjelica who averaged 23.2 minutes as a starter for the Kings last season.
Bogdanovic will be first off the bench and could emerge as a Sixth Man of the Year candidate following a sensational summer for Serbia in the FIBA World Cup. Joseph will likely get most of the backup minutes at point guard after signing a three-year, $37-million deal with the Kings in July. Ariza will back up Barnes at small forward, but one or both will see time at power forward in small-ball lineups. That will cut further into the available minutes for Bjelica, Giles and Holmes, at least one of whom would not be a part of a 10-man rotation.
“It goes back to having that healthy competition and earning minutes,” Walton said. “Everyone’s going to see everyday who’s playing well, who’s going at who, so in my head, yeah, I have ideas of who’s going to play and what rotations and groupings I want to see on the court together. I have all that in my head ... but at the end of the day it’s going to come down to who’s going to earn those minutes.”
Ferrell, Joseph working for minutes — Ferrell averaged 15 minutes per game for the Kings last season, but he’ll probably be used sparingly as an emergency scoring option this season.
“We know whenever we get minutes, we’re going to go out there and play the hardest,” Ferrell said. “The main thing we want to do is win, and I feel like, regardless of the minutes, if we make the playoffs, everybody’s going to be happy.”
Joseph, who went to the playoffs each of the past seven seasons with the San Antonio Spurs and Pacers, said he is impressed with Sacramento’s depth.
“We have a lot of talent,” he said. “Whoever gets their name called, I think there won’t be too much of a drop off. We have guys that are dogs, go out there and play extremely hard ... and I think we’ll be able to do good on both units, which is key in this league.”
Walton understands that as well as anyone. He served as interim head coach of the Golden State Warriors for 43 games in 2015-16, the year they went 73-9 with the “Strength in Numbers” mantra. That team was deep, too. The top seven players logged a vast majority of the minutes, but everyone played an important role.
“Everyone contributes,” Walton said. “I’m a firm believer in, whether you’re top five or bottom five or you’re not in the rotation, you contribute. I know what it’s like in practice, and a big part of success is why I keep bringing up this healthy competition of having a deep team is, when you have guys who push players that are in the rotation every single day, the team gets better. It sharpens the team. So whether guys are playing minutes or not, they’re going to be impactful on who we are as a group, how much better we get as a group (and) what our culture is like.”