Sacramento leads in percentage of minutes played by youngsters

The youth experiment is real in Sacramento folks, which was the plan for quite some time. According to John Schuhmann of NBA.com, the Sacramento Kings rank first in percentage of minutes played by rookies or second-year players.

As we know, De’Aaron Fox, Bogdan Bogdanovic and Justin Jackson have been the usual starters for a while, and Skal Labissiere has been in and out of the starting lineup depending on whether Zach Randolph plays or not. The starting lineup definitely owns a significant chunk of that percentage.

Off the bench, the Kings have Frank Mason III and Buddy Hield who also contribute a good amount to the percentage.

Schuhmann also says that the stat includes two-way players and players on ten-day contracts, so Jack Cooley also plays a role in the 51%, but not a big one of course. #FreeCooley

However, the stat does not indicate how many of these young players are on a given roster. The Chicago Bulls, who are second with 47%, do have a plethora of youngsters on their team, but compared to the Kings, they don’t involve them as heavily. They also don’t include the games after March 21st, but it doesn’t matter.

It is unclear whether or not Malachi Richardson and Georgios Papagiannis count at all to this statistic as they were once Kings this season (I totally forgot).

Hopefully, the high involvement of these youngsters translate to brighter seasons in Sacramento.