The Sacramento Kings start the 2016-17 NBA season on Wednesday, October 26th against the Phoenix Suns. In the meantime, Coach Dave Joerger needs to figure out how the minutes get split up amongst the players.
Will Ty Lawson get the bulk of minutes at point guard if Darren Collison is suspended? Will Ben McLemore regain his starting spot? Who starts at center? You get the point.
Right now, we’ll be looking at the small forward position and how it’ll most likely shake out during the year. Who are the small forwards on the team and what will their job descriptions entail?
To be fair, the position of small forward varies nowadays. The emphasis of the “stretch four” position allows Rudy Gay and Omri Casspi to see time at power forward. Along those same lines you may also see Ben McLemore and Arron Afflalo get minutes at small forward when the team goes small. However, in this example we’ll be looking at the players whose main position is small forward.
//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
Last year, the small forward position was comprised of three people: Rudy Gay, Omri Casspi and Caron Butler.
Gay was the starter and, statistically, the second best player on the team. He was third on the team in minutes and second in points scored.
Casspi was the Swiss army knife of the team. He averaged nearly 12 points per game, grabbed nearly six rebounds per game, made the most three-pointers on the team (112) and played the fifth most minutes of anyone all season.
Butler only played in 17 games last year so his role was to be the wise veteran on the team that kept the team in line. Every team needs the player that everyone respects in the locker room when the season starts to go sideways.
Here’s a quick statistical breakdown of how Gay, Casspi and Butler did last year. (2015-16 season)
Rudy Gay 17.2 PPG 1.7 APG 6.5 RPG 34.0 MPG
Omri Casspi 11.8 PPG 1.4 APG 5.9 RPG 27.2 MPG
Caron Butler 3.7 PPG 0.6 APG 1.3 RPG 10.4 MPG
Moving on to this year and things look to, mostly, remain the same.
Gay is still, statistically, in his prime (30 years old as of August 17th) and will be asked to score around 20 points per game. Casspi is coming off of the best year of his career and the team brought in another veteran who will be the locker room peacemaker of the team now that Butler is gone.
Instead of Butler the team brought in Matt Barnes from Memphis.
//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
The difference between Barnes and Butler is that Barnes was still used as an integral player in the year before he came to Sacramento. The year before Butler came to Sacramento his number dipped. Here’s a look at the numbers both Barnes and Butler had in the year before playing in Sacramento.
Caron Butler (2014-15) 5.9 PPG 1.0 APG 2.5 RPG 20.8 MPG 21 Games Started
Matt Barnes (2015-16) 10.0 PPG 2.1 APG 5.5 RPG 28.8 MPG 45 Games Started
Even though Barnes and Butler were both drafted in the 2002 NBA Draft and are only four days apart in age, Barnes looks to be a better player than Butler. One of the best thing going for Barnes is that he and head coach Dave Joerger are familiar with each other.
Joerger just got to Sacramento and knows he needs to have someone on the team who will support his decisions. Barnes is the perfect person for that. It’s a domino effect for Barnes and Joerger. Barnes respect Joerger and the players respect Barnes. Therefore, the players will respect Joerger’s decisions.
That alone should help get the team get off to a better start than they were last year. Considering the number of coaches the team has fired recently, Barnes may be one of the most important players on the team going forward. The rest of the team may be a mystery but at least you know what you’re getting on the team when it comes to the small forwards.
Barring any injury or trade this is my small forward depth chart:
1: Rudy Gay
2: Omri Casspi
3: Matt Barnes
I want to know how your depth chart looks.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
