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I thought it'd be worth checking out how the Kings figure in the general offensive and defensive categories through the early going.

OFFENSIVE

Overall: 20th -- 101.1 points per 100 possessions, 4.4 points worse than league average.

Shooting: 25th -- .438 eFG%. Current league average is .491. God, I hope this improves.

Turnover rate: 14th -- 13.4%. League average is currently 14.1%. Expect league average to improve, and the Kings' mark to get worse as the big men come back to Earth.

Offensive rebounding: 4th -- 31.4%. League average is 25.8%. Credit Jason Thompson and Jon Brockman with this. I have no idea if the Kings can keep it up. The team was in the league's bottom third in this category last season.

Free throw rate: 21st -- .229 FTM/FGA. The Kings finished 5th in the league last year. The N.O. game (one FTA for JT and Kevin Martin combined) really skews this, I think. The team should finish top 10, barring catastrophic injury.

DEFENSIVE

Overall: 30th -- 114.8 points per 100 possessions. Surprise!

Shooting defense: 29th -- .563 eFG%. Again, league average is .491. Guh. The Warriors are the only team worse.

Opponent turnover rate: 14th -- 14.1%. If you had told me the Kings would force more turnovers than they'd make during any span of this season -- even through one quarter of play -- I would have accused you of insanity. But there it is: the Kings force more turnovers than they give up. I have no idea how this is happening, although somehow the data says the Kings have 23 steals through three games. I must have missed all but the floor-burn Tyreke Evans one.

Defensive rebounding: 11th -- 76.4%. I can't imagine this will last. I expect a low 20s finish. Big ups to Brockman, Spencer Hawes and ... Desmond Mason on the defensive glass early on.

Opponent free throw rate: 20th -- .274 oFTM/oFGA.

***

In conclusion: offense mediocre, defense atrocious. The Kings are still giving up too many open threes and too many easy layups while taking too many tough shots. But the rebounding has been much better and the turnover situation has been surprisingly good. We'll see how it plays out.

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I have very little subjective observation of Desmond Mason's defense to fall back on. I was not a particularly devout connosseiur of Milwaukee Bucks basketball much of this decade, and I only got a few non-Kings Thunder games in 2008-09. Mason does have a solid defensive reputation, though.

What do the numbers tell us? If Mason will get a) minutes, or b) potentially starter's minutes on the basis that he brings something the team lacks, and it sure as Hades isn't individual offense because his individual offense is pretty terrible, then it must be defense, right? Has Mason been an objectively good defender lately?

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J.K. Rowling's got some new steez, futhermuckas! It's name is Tyreke Evans, and he seeks the Chalice of Point Guard Purity.

Because, you see, only by obtaining and grasping a completely mythical artifact will he convince the world that he holds some semblance of point guardness.

Requisite disclosure: John Hollinger is handsome and saintly. Who has two thumbs and likes John Hollinger? This guy. <<points at everyone>> Everyone likes Hollinger's work, including me, because Hollinger's work is very valuable. It's awesome.

But everyone makes mistakes. Even John Hollinger!

The Kings drafted Evans as a point guard, hoping he'd replace the ineffective Udrih, but on paper he looks a lot more like a shooting guard. He's a slasher who had low assist rates in college and stands 6-5; historically players of that ilk migrate to shooting guard within two years of entering the league.

Low assist rates ... low assist rates ... hmm. <<looks up Tyreke Evans's assist rates in college>> Hmm, an assist rate of 30.0. Hmm, is that low for a future NBA point guard?

<<looks up Derrick Rose's assist rates in college>> Hmm, an assist rate of ... 30.4. Hmm ... seems pretty similar to that of Evans. <<looks up college assist rate current, unquestioned NBA point guards D.J. Augustin, Russell Westbrook, George Hill and Mario Chalmers, the last of which was a starting point guard on a playoff team>> Hmm, 30.5, 24.4, 24.2, 24.5.

<<reaches conclusion>> If Tyreke Evans had low assist rates in college, then Derrick Rose, D.J. Augustin, Russell Westbrook, George Hill and Mario Chalmers had low assist rates in college. And if Tyreke Evans's low college assist rates mean he'll be a shooting guard in two years, then I suppose we can infer that Derrick Rose, D.J. Augustin, Russell Westbrook, George Hill and Mario Chalmers will be shooting guards in two years.

***

The specific reason this bugs me is that Hollinger attributes the myth of Tyreke Evans's shooting guardness to paper, when paper actually says something completely different. So when Tyreke Evans busts out a triple-double in November, people are going to think the paper lied to them, when really it was just translated poorly.

In conclusion, paper does not say Tyreke Evans is a two-guard unless paper also says Derrick Rose is a two-guard.

More photos » by David Zalubowski - AP

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Going back to Paul Westphal's comments last weekend regarding our favorite center, Spencer Hawes: the coach said he'd like to set up Hawes in the post more. We saw this inconsistently last season -- Kenny Natt basically decreed Hawes as a post player for, like, two games, and otherwise the coaches tried to force Hawes (a slender shooter with some good footwork but flawed touch at the rim) to play like Shaq. It didn't really work. Hawes was best last season when playing his game -- shooting, passing out of the high post, filling the lane on the pick-and-roll.

Little is ever made about Jason Thompson's offense, perhaps because he had a successful rookie season. He scored well, and efficiently, and he hasn't been billed as the next great Kings center as Hawes has. There's less attention paid. But by my count, he counts every bit as much on the court as Hawes, and every time we wonder how the staff can best use Hawes, we ought to wonder the same about Thompson.

The first step in that is understanding how they were used last season.

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Our friend section214 section215 talked Rorschach ice cream tests with Paul Westphal on Friday, and one of the takeaways was that the coach wants to find ways to get Spencer Hawes to the line more. Why? Free throws are among the most efficient ways to score. Five trips to the line will almost always result in more points than five field goal attempts ... for almost every player in the league. Further, foul trouble can eliminate opponent defenders, and the more fouls a team draws the quick the opponent is in the penalty, begetting further free throws.

So yes, Coach Westphal is right on in calling for better foul-drawing from Hawes. This is an area where Jason Thompson is much further ahead. To wit:

We'll look at shot types for the pair later this week. Of course, the frequency with which a player shoots from the lane is part of it. Westphal discussed that, commenting that the staff would seek to get Hawes more paint touches. But that's not the entirety of the issue.

Offensive rebounding is a big driver of free throws -- when you pull down an offensive board, you're in great position (near the rim, most likely) to get fouled. (The numbers bear this out: league-wide, free throw frequency and offensive rebounds per minute have a 0.44 correlation coefficient.) Getting back on defense is important, but hitting the offensive glass is a huge boon for offensive efficiency. The staff will have to decide how to balance the issues, and Hawes himself will have to make strides in fighting for contested rebounds. That will help brings these free throw numbers up, and make the Kings more potent on offense.

Dave Berri, winsome econ professor at the delightful Southern Utah University, co-writer of The Wages of Wins and author of the Wages of Wins Journal, looks into his crystal ball and predicts a King might take the mantle as the league's most overpaid player in 2011.

Beyond 2010, though, a new name will emerge.  O’Neal will probably take a pay cut after this season.  This means a player like Andrea Bargnani, Al Thornton, or Spencer Hawes could rise up and take a future MOP title.  Once again, though, that probably won’t happen until 2011. 

This is a Berri who has just spent some 1,400 words spreading the revolutionary message that Chris Paul is bargain on the rookie scale (what!) and Jermaine O'Neal is substantially overpaid (what! what!). More than a thousand words capably building those incredibly obvious judgments ... and, like, less than a sentence telling us why oh why Sir Spencer Hawes will be making too much money in 2011.

Bethlehem Shoals has properly adjudicated Berri on the matters of Paul and O'Neal. (By "properly adjudicated" I mean "butchered with a sharp hatchet.") So let's turn to Hawes.

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I promised to communicate why I use advanced metrics more clearly, and this is my first project toward that goal. A game is made up of possessions. Each team ends up with roughly the same number of possessions, because possessions can't end until the other team has the ball. This diagram shows what can happen in a possession, and what ends a possession.

The possession-ending plays are in green and red polygons. Other plays do not end possessions, and progress to one of the next steps. Later, we'll look at how often possessions end for the Kings, Kings' opponents and the league at large. But for now ...

Shot creation is a funny thing. That term -- "shot creation" implies something positive. Shots are the only way to score in basketball (whether from the field or the line), and the idea that they are "created" is one that would seem to boost the perceived value of the creators. This would be shooters/scorers and assist men.

The Kings do not have any assist men, per se. Beno Udrih, the top assister, ranks No. 36 in the league in per-minute assists. Udrih (as we told you before he arrived) is a shooting point guard. He's a minor (and not nearly as good) Bibby -- not the pass-first cat Petrie and the local media made him out to be. I think the last two seasons of games have beared that out.

Also, the team traded Brad Miller, the best passing big man and a fulcrum of the offense, at midseason. Spencer Hawes has been kneaded into the Next Brad, but he's not there. He averages roughly half the assists Miller did, even in a down-assist, down-minute season for Miller.

This team, much as Natt and Carril and Sactown Royalty and Reynolds hates it, is a poor passing team.

So shot creation comes down to the shooters, the scorers. The assumption would be that this hurts the team's offense -- that more and better passing would result in easier shots and higher efficiency levels. So I watched the Memphis game with a pen and a pad, and I charted each shot attempt with a mind on assists and potential assists.

An assist, as we all know, is a pass that leads directly to a basket. There are two inherent problems with the assist as a statistic ... beyond alleged home cookin' by loosy goosy statisticians. The first problem: passes that directly lead to free throws aren't registered as assists. This deflates the assist totals for passers on high-FT teams. (For what it's worth, Sacramento is a high FT team.) This could be fixed easily, if the league would just add 0.5 assists for a pass resulting in one made FT and 1 assist for a pass resulting in two made FTs.

The second problem: what about those would-be assists in which the resulting shot is missed? This is a trickier problem, but would help settle questions of whether certain point guards rack up easy assists because they have a team of great shooters or whether others are penalized statistically because of bad shooters around them. Frankly, counting potential assists on a leaguewide basis would solve a ton of problems in how we see and deal with assists.

Without leaguwide data, counting up Beno's potential assists isn't terribly helpful -- there'd be no reference. But on a team basis there is value at looking at all shots coming off a potential assist and those created entirely by the shooter. So that's what I did this morning.

You'll find below a chart detailed what lead to each of the team's shot attempts, broken down by player. Again, in the case of the potential assists, I didn't break down who offered the pass -- just the shooter. Even with just one game of data, I think it shows us something interesting about our team. (Note: when someone goes two-for-two from the line, it counts as 1/1 [just like a made FG] here. If someone goes 1/2 from the line, it's 0.5/1. Miss both and it's 0/1 [just like a missed FG]. There are no signifiers for three-pointers and I left technical free throws out.)

Of the Kings' roughly 79 shot attempts (FGAs and "act-of-shooting" trips to the line), 49 were created by the shooter and 30 were created by a pass. In this game, the shooter-created attempts were more efficient than the passer-created attempts. That is owed almost completely to Kevin Martin, who relied almost exclusively on ... himself. Twenty-four shot attempts ... and only three of them came off a pass. That tells me that a) the Kings do not pass well and b) Martin is not doing enough to get into scoring position when he doesn't have the ball. No one tweak fixes this -- it's a hydra of a problem.

That said, Martin does well creating on his own. The 12.5/21 figure is 60% ... and one of the makes was a three. (Creating a three off the dribble is a notoriously inefficient shot, something I want to delve into at some point.) Thompson, on the other hand, he really excelled when set up. We know he has had trouble creating cleanly; nearly all his turnovers come on broken spin moves, whether in the form of offensive fouls or travels. But set him up and HOLY! LORD! he can finish. Six-of-six off potential assists.

Hawes didn't take enough shots to judge; his game really got thrown out of whack thanks to foul trouble. But I think we've seen a glimpse that indicates Thompson can get off gloriously if someone delivers the ball to him in scoring position, and we see that Martin can be really effective creating his own shots. I'll keep an eye on stuff like this, and I really hope to do more charting the last 11 games of the season.