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Score! Best Offensive Ratings in NBA history
Kings Living Up to their Name With Record Numbers
It seems like every season, the offenses in the NBA keep improving. This season, it has been even more dramatic. Three teams have been at the top of NBA predictions to finish with the all-time best offensive rating: the Sacramento Kings, Boston Celtics and Denver Nuggets.
At the moment, the Kings are leading the race, and it looks pretty likely that they will finish 2022-23 with the best offensive rating in league history at 119.9. Furthermore, there could be five teams cracking the top 10 this season, with the Celtics, Nuggets, Philadelphia 76ers and New York Knicks all breaking into the all-time list.
The Kings were 250-1 odds to win the Pacific Division in the preseason.
Now, they’re at the top for the first time since 2003 🙌 pic.twitter.com/3GCuTMQwaG
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) April 5, 2023
What makes this season so special, along with setting this record, is that the Kings will be in the playoffs for the first time since 2006, ending a 16-season drought. It spotlights an incredible turnaround led by head coach Mike Brown.
Sacramento did not even make the play-in tourney last season and now they will have home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs as the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference. The Kings also headlined NBA news by winning the Pacific Division for the first time since 2003.
However, when the playoffs start, can this offense boost their NBA title odds, or even do enough to get the Kings out of the first round?
How Kings Have Thrived
First, to have one of the best offenses in league history, the roster must feature a lot of talent. The Kings average a league-best 121.3 points, nearly three more than runner-up Golden State.
De’Aaron Fox is the leading scorer for Sacramento, averaging 25.1 points with 6.1 assists. Then there is Domantas Sabonis, who runs the offense despite being the center. Sabonis leads the team in assists with 7.2 while adding in 19.2 points per game. He also leads the NBA in rebounds (12.4), of which 3.2 are offensive, getting more possessions for his team.
While those two are the offense’s focal point, the rest of the lineup often consists of quality shooters. The spacing of the Kings is crucial to how the offense runs because neither Fox or Sabonis are efficient 3-point shooters. Sacramento’s starting lineup features Kevin Huerter, Keegan Murray and Harrison Barnes, who are taking and making threes at a high percentage. Furthermore, Malik Monk can keep the offense flowing, routinely being an offensive spark off the bench. The Kings as a team take the sixth most 3s per game, 37.2, making 37.1% of them.
Secondly, the Kings run a highly intricate offensive scheme that works for this team. Sabonis runs the offense, mainly from the post, with the other four players using back screens, dribble hand-offs, and cutting to get to the rim or find open shots. It creates organized chaos, opening space and driving lanes for the Kings.
The best people to explain it would be Sabonis and Fox, who broke down their offense on ESPN two months ago and detailed their main set, Pistol 5, which is built around getting the ball to Sabonis at the elbow.
Lastly, the Kings’ inability to play defense boosts their offense. Sacramento has one of the worst defenses in the NBA, giving up 118.1 points per game. That means the offense can nearly never take games off because no matter how many points they score, the opponent is always in lockstep.
Inadvertently, the offense can never take their foot off the gas and needs to score on most possessions, improving the offensive rating.
Offensive Ratings: Hit or Miss in Playoffs?
The biggest question for Sacramento is whether it can make a deep run in the playoffs. So far, the Kings NBA Finals odds are not great, with BetUS having them with the sixth-best odds to make it out of the West. Despite the offensive display, it is clear that sportsbooks do not have faith in this team. That could be due to the recent history of the teams that have broken the offensive rating record.
The 2020-21 Brooklyn Nets featured a stacked roster with Hall of Fame talent in Kevin Durant, James Harden, and Kyrie Irving. However, that team could not make it out of the second round in the East, losing to eventual NBA champion Milwaukee in seven games. The Bucks had the sixth-best offensive rating that season.
The team that held the record before the Nets were the 2019-20 Dallas Mavericks, who could not even make it out of the first round in the West. Before them was the stacked 2018-19 Golden State Warriors, who lost in six games in the NBA Finals.
The team that owned the best offensive rating in league history before the Warriors was the 1986-87 Los Angeles Lakers. That team, featuring Magic Johnson, James Worthy, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, won the NBA championship.
Having the best offensive rating in league history has not been a great marker when making NBA picks for the Finals. Two of the four teams made it to the Finals with amazing talent, but the others met abrupt ends in the postseason.
