Important non-stars in the NBA's best division

A division whose reigning champions are the handsomest boys.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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El Baile de San Antonio de la Florida; Francisco Goya; 1791-2

We turn now to the most important non-stars of the Pacific Division. We’ve already done the Northwest and Southwest. I have a lot to say about the Pacific. Let’s go.

Sacramento Kings: Keegan Murray

As a rookie, Murray was slotted into a position where success was clearly attainable. Mike Brown gave him a defined role that played to his strengths, and the rest of the team — who all genuinely seems to like Murray — helped him succeed.

The playoffs are always a different beast, and Murray had the misfortune of coming up against the defending champions. What I found most exciting about the Kings’ first round loss to the Warriors — beyond De’Aaron Fox proving without a doubt that he belongs on that stage — is that Murray started the series real shaky, but Brown kept the faith, didn’t change or decrease Murray’s role … and Keegan broke out and ended up availing himself real well.

Fast forward to this year. Brown and Murray both clearly want to increase his role by making him a threat to attack the rim off of close-outs and getting him into more movement. It will not go entirely smoothly. Nothing ever does! But that Brown has shown a willingness to build Murray’s confidence and comfort over time speaks well to the Kings’ ability to improve, and I can’t wait to see what this unlocks for what is already an all-time offense.

Golden State Warriors: Jonathan Kuminga

Kuminga is seen by many as a swing player in determining where the Warriors go from here, two seasons removed from a championship but pushed to the brink by the Kings last season before getting knocked out by the Lakers. What’s interesting is that Kuminga didn’t really change much from his rookie to sophomore seasons: he shot a little better across the board and tallied more assists, but otherwise there wasn’t much difference between Rookie Kuminga and Sophomore Kuminga.

The biggest gut punch for Kuminga’s development is really that Steve Kerr didn’t trust him enough to give him a major role in the playoffs. In 13 games, he had three DNPs and averaged six minutes. That’s a pretty major indictment.

I think he has the tools to be a plus contributor on a good team (which the Warriors are, at minimum). But this is obviously a critical season in determining whether those tools can be put to use in a way that rewards the Warriors’ time investment in Kuminga and leads to financial reward as he approaches becoming extension eligible.

Los Angeles Lakers: Rui Hachimura

On one hand, the Hachimura arc seems pretty straightforward. Rui arrived from D.C. midseason and fit in well, taking a smaller offensive role than he’d be used to on the Wizards, doing some dirty work, playing hard. In the playoffs, he suddenly caught fire — the career 35% three-point shooter (who had been under 30% in his time with the Lakers in the regular season) went 11/21 from deep against the Grizzlies and 5/9 against the Warriors while starting every playoff game. Things washed out against the Nuggets (as they tend to do). But he’d done enough to get paid, and the Lakers rewarded him in the offseason, glad to have a quality player’s Bird rights.

Then Rui spent the summer working out with LeBron. A genius personal PR move, and probably also a pretty good basketball and vibes decision.

Darvin Ham has declared he knows his fifth starter — to go with LeBron, Anthony Davis, D’Angelo Russell and Austin Reaves — but hasn’t revealed it. The options are believed to be Taurean Prince, Jarred Vanderbilt and Hachimura. The answer to me is clearly Hachimura. And I mean “clearly” not in the sense that he’s obviously the best choice (I might lean on Vando there to help force Davis to shoot more). I mean that all other signs point to Hachimura in the starting five: the contract, the offseason with LeBron, the fact that as Ham was searching for answers against Denver (no one has answers) he ended up on Hachimura (it didn’t really work).

How the fifth starter on the Lakers fares is not one of the seven most important factors in the Lakers’ fate. Health, health, health lead the way on that tip, and how well the non-LeBron/AD players shoot and defend this season matters a lot. That includes Hachimura, and I think he’ll be put in a position to see lots of chances to play off of and support the big two fellas. How he does could be the difference in some very tight expected situations.

Los Angeles Clippers: Bones Hyland

We should not overlook the fact that Bones Hyland attituded himself off of an NBA championship team. The Nuggets traded Hyland (who had been averaging about 20 minutes per game and was Denver’s fifth leading scorer) and a second for Thomas Bryant, who played a grand total of 205 minutes and 29 seconds for the Nuggets after the trade. The 29 seconds constituted his only playoff burn: that blink of time came in Game 3 of the NBA Finals. Bryant did not register any box score stats during that 29 seconds.

Let’s repeat: the Nuggets traded their young bench scorer and a second-round pick to a conference rival for a player the Nuggets only felt comfortable giving 29 seconds of playoff playing time. And the Nuggets still won the championship.

It’s just an amazing indictment of Hyland’s actual impact on the Nuggets that they salary-dumped a 22-year-old midseason and still won the title (fairly easily, I might add). It speaks to how off the vibes were with Hyland in town, where he’d been agitating for a bigger role. He ended up with basically an identical role in L.A. on a worse team; be careful what you wish for.

But roster changes have made Hyland more central to the concept of the Clippers being great. Eric Gordon is gone, so Hyland moves up the chart in importance as a bench scorer and playmaker. On this team, reserves get lots of opportunity. Hyland has actually been really consistent on a per-minute basis (20-5 on low efficiency) but under Ty Lue, how much energy he commits to defense will be critical to maintaining his role.

This is also where we note that Hyland is in a contract year.

This is one of those scenarios where we have a pretty good idea of how this is going to go, but if it goes a different way — especially a good way — then it’s pretty intriguing for the Clippers. (Yes, I do know that was an extremely soft sentence.)

Phoenix Suns: Jusuf Nurkic