Is there still a chance?

Bogdan Bogdanovic hits a game winning shot to beat the Lakers.

When the Kings entered January 1st with their first over .500 record since 2005, Kings fans knew this season was crazier than anyone expected. And when the trend continued, Kings fans naturally began to eye their first playoff appearance in 12 seasons, because sports fandom revolves around hope (sometimes, irrational hope). On February 11th they entered the 8th seed of playoffs, and exactly 1 day later Sactown Royalty launched their playoff tracker.

But after going 2–6 over their last 8 games, highlighted by 4 heart breaking losses by a combined 7 points to some of the league’s best teams and further worsened by a crucial loss to the Clippers, the playoff hopes are in jeopardy… Actually, it’s more accurate to say it’s on life support right now: 538’s Elo forecast gives the Kings just a 4% chance of making the playoffs. Basketball Reference is willing to go as high as 5.7%, while ESPN’s BPI forecast goes as low as 1.6%.

To help analyze the remainder of the season, I built a program that runs 1,000 simulations for each remaining game of the season for both the Kings and the Spurs, who are 4 games ahead of the Kings and the likely only remaining team the Kings can catch due to tiebreakers. To assign win probability I factored in home court/travel and back-to-back rest advantages, and then I took a big picture approach and divided the league into 3 tiers: Playoff teams well above .500 records, Fringe Playoff teams at .500 or worse, and Tanking teams consisting of the bottom 8 teams in the lottery. The idea is that at the end of the season, a playoff team usually gets most of the wins from teams they’re supposed to beat while struggling against better teams. Disclaimer that these are rough estimates as teams may be better or worse than others in their tier, and there are a lot of factors that go into each individual match up, but I’m willing to accept a reasonable margin of error that comes with trying to forecast forward.

Right off the bat, the remaining schedule is not kind to Sacramento with 11 road games, including 6 road games against playoff teams. On the other hand, the Spurs have a home-favored schedule and play the same amount of Playoff games (6) as they do against tanking teams.

There are four different broad strokes for how the rest of the season plays out: The Kings perform at roughly the same level, the Kings get worse, the Kings get better, or the Kings get a lot better while the Spurs struggle. Here’s a brief look at how each of these scenarios could play out.

Kings continue down the current path:

We can use implied win probability odds from recent Vegas lines such as Kings -3 at home vs the Clippers, Kings +6.5 at home vs the Bucks, and Kings -4.5 at the Knicks tomorrow to evaluate our strength in the league. After analyzing the last month of lines, on a neutral court (i.e before including home court/b2b rest advantages), the Kings should win about 30% of their games against average playoff teams, 50% against similar strength playoff contenders, and 70% of their games against tanking teams.

While these numbers indicate a decent and respectable team, unfortunately the Spurs are even better: Lines like Spurs -1.5 at home vs the Nuggets and Spurs -6 at Hawks indicate the team is just better right now, and they are expected to win on a neutral court about 40% of their playoff games, 60% of their fringe games, and 80% of their games against tanking teams.

With these numbers, across 1000 season simulations the Kings end the season on average with 40.2 wins, which is on par with 538’s Elo and ESPN’s BPI forecasts which also have the Kings at 40 wins. I have the Spurs averaging 46.8 end of season wins, also on par with 46-win projections from 538 and ESPN. The playoff hopes becomes more clear through the distribution of season outcomes across 1,000 simulations as seen below:

Current Forecasts for Kings and Spurs

Holding the tiebreaker, the Kings only need to match or beat the Spurs record in order to make the playoffs. Realistically, being .500 isn’t enough on its own. Not only do the Kings need to win at least 44 games, but they also need the Spurs to fall below expectations and win 44 or less. By my forecast the Kings only win more 44 or more games around 3.6% of the time while the Spurs only hit 44 or less around 7.4% of the time. These numbers, of course, are not ideal for the Kings to make the playoffs.

Kings Get Better:

However, there’s potential that either Vegas is underestimating the Kings or (more likely) that the Kings can still get meaningfully better this year, particularly if Marvin Bagley returns from injury soon and shines.

Forecast if the games improve towards equal strength with the Spurs.

Should the Kings find themselves with a similar strength to the Spurs and other playoff caliber teams, the Kings win total shoots up to 41.6 average wins, winning 44 games or more in at least 17% of the simulations. However, this still leaves the Kings at over a 90% chance at missing the playoffs. A four game lead combined with the Kings playing the Spurs on the road in the second game of a back to back is simply going to take a lot to overcome, so below is my attempt at seeing it might actually take.

Best Case Scenario

If the Kings take a reasonable step forward by take care of business against tanking teams and the Spurs take a reasonable step back by losing to more playoff teams, and the Kings perform even better at home and the Spurs struggle on road games, and the Kings win their game against the Spurs, then the Kings should make the playoffs about 40% of the time! Hooray?

Each of these scenarios have a metric to indicate the possibility of each factor happening independently: Kings are 21–8 against below .500 teams and have a 20–14 record overall at home while the Spurs have a losing record (17–18) against above .500 teams and are 12–22 on the road this season. While the Spurs will be favorites in their head to head match up, the Kings will have the narrative advantage as they will be playing for their season.

Of course, counting on all of these things happening at once this season would be foolhardy. There are enough different factors above taken for granted that the 40% stat doesn’t really tell us a lot except that, even in a best case scenario, things aren’t looking good for playoff hopes this season.

Kings Miss the Playoffs:

To save you time, analytics show that if the Kings get worse, they will probably not make the playoffs. I’m waiting on my invite to headline Sloan Sports Analytic Conference as we speak.

Conclusion:

In any case, there’s an obligation to circle around to the fact that most people expected the Kings to be awful this season. Per Vegas last summer, the Kings had the second lowest expected win total in the league at 25.5; a point they crossed January 30th with 31 games left on the schedule. This team is young, as De’Aaron Fox is only 21 years old, Marvin Bagley turns 20 this week, and Harry Giles is only 20: the best basketball of their lives remains ahead of them.

The Kings will very likely miss the playoffs this year, and that’s okay. When the sting of it wears off, Kings fans will be back to daydreaming about what this team looks like with more experience and perhaps a free agent signing or two. Make no mistake, playoff dreams will come alive again in Sacramento and soon; they’ll just be on hold for now.