Satchel Price

I think there is an important misconception about Acuff that needs to be cleared up. The critics talk about Acuff and the Kings as if the Kings are running a 2017 James Harden Rockets style of offense: dribble, dribble, high screen, iso, shot, rinse, repeat. They are not. If you watched even five minutes of any Kings game you would know the Kings offense runs through Domantas Sabonis in the high post. In terms of sets and actions, it's similar to Mike Brown's Beam Team offense from 2023 (they're obviously much worse at running it, which is an indictment of Doug Christie: great coaching shows up in *how* a team runs their offense, not in *what* offense they run, but that's a different topic) Again, just watch 5 minutes of any Kings game and you'll see it right away. But if you're too lazy to even do that, the tracking stats all back this up. Among all centers, Sabonis is: -2nd in touches per game -3rd in front court touches -3rd in time of possession -1st in elbow touches -1st in paint touches nba.com/stats/players/touche… That's the profile of an offensive hub, not a guy standing around watching Acuff dribble. The Kings are trying to get Acuff off the ball: he's screening for others, spotting up, and a lot of his on-ball actions are coming off DHOs, pistol, chase actions. He's not perfect, he's still learning how he's getting covered, what are his sweet spots on the floor, when he should shoot/pass/probe the defense more. But this is not a bad learning environment for Acuff. He's being asked to process a metric ton as the only creative ballhandler on a shit team at 19 years old. Is it ideal? No, in a perfect world there'd be another perimeter creator on the court with him to relieve some of the pressure. (another aside—Christie played Acuff next to Monk for a few minutes last game, which i think would be good for both since Malik has always been more comfortable at SG). But it is not the disastrous development environment some would have you believe. I remember what that actually looks like. The 2009/2010 Kings season became all about the Tyreke Evan's ROY race and the chase for 20/5/5. A lot of it was a sham, with the Kings leaning so far into isoball he never developed off-ball skills. It was a different era, but that's not happening here.