Keon Ellis and the NBA’s Blind Spot
There is a difference between not knowing and not realizing what you have.
For two seasons, the Kings have watched Keon Ellis mix elite shooting with defensive intensity they rarely sustain without him—yet Sacramento still treats him like a luxury rather than a necessity.
Ellis is not an All-Star; however, he is a player who represents an archetype that every great team has. A player who can provide a positive impact on both ends of the court, whether they’re involved in the primary action or not. Yet the Kings—like many other teams—keep mistaking this quiet (passive) impact as inconsequential.
Keon Ellis may represent the NBA's widest gap between the analytical profile of a player archetype and how much coaches actually value it. But why is that? Why does this particular oversight seem to perturb Kings fans so intensely? And what does a situation like this say about the state of the entire NBA?
"We want Keon" chants break out as Drew Eubanks shoots FTs with the Kings down 25.
— Hot Hand Theory (@HotHandTheory) November 10, 2025
Unfortunately there's no place in the Kings rotation for their best wing defender who happens to be a 40%+ 3-point shooter because Doug Christie is "coaching for his job."pic.twitter.com/tpxglNObMh
Not a star, but a star in his role
Some may be wondering: what’s all the fuss about? Keon Ellis is, at best, a role player with severe limitations. What is it about him that had Sacramento Kings fans chanting his name after he was left out of the rotation for the second straight game against the Minnesota Timberwolves?
Let’s start with the basic evaluation. The last two seasons, Ellis has shot 41.7% and 43.3% from 3 on above-average volume. He’s also paired that elite shooting with incredibly impactful defense. Both Dunks & Threes and BBall Index’s top-down metrics had Ellis above the 90th percentile in defensive impact in one of the last two seasons. The list of players to shoot over 40% from 3 the last two seasons, while grading out near Ellis defensively, is incredibly small.
But this is only the beginning. Because what makes Ellis truly impactful—a big part of why these metrics like him so much—is the effect his presence has on his teammates. Most basketball fans trust their eyes, but this is an area where our eyes deceive us. It is human nature to follow the ball, but so much of a player’s time is spent away from it.
So how can you help your team without touching the ball? There are active ways, like cutting or screening, either for the ball-handler directly or for another player off the ball. But some players, like Ellis, help their team simply by existing. When you’re a certain level of shooter, defenses are hesitant to leave you alone. To them, ceding an open 3-pointer to one of these players is the worst possible outcome.
This level of attention has compounding effects on teammates. Occupying a defender’s attention off the ball means there is one less defender to disrupt the primary action. All of a sudden, Zach LaVine’s jump shots get a little bit cleaner, or the lane is slightly less congested for Domantas Sabonis. It may not seem like much, but these are microtransactions that add up over hundreds of possessions.
And Ellis has the same effect on the team defense. It’s not just that he’s a menace guarding opponents’ best ball handlers over and over again. But also, Ellis doing that means one of his teammates doesn’t have to. All of a sudden, a guy like Dennis Schroder has a bit more energy for his offense, or Keegan Murray slides to an off-ball role where he can help the defense a different way. Or, perhaps most importantly, opponents getting into the paint with an advantage less often mitigates Sabonis’ biggest weakness: a lack of rim protection.
In summary, Ellis is a player who not only helps you directly in tangible ways but also whose mere presence is a boost to lineups in which he plays in ways that are difficult to see. And even if you are one of the few with eyes sharp enough to catch such things, how would you quantify them? What is a good screen navigation worth to a team defense relative to a poor one? This is why we need data to help us understand.
And the best data all agree: Keon Ellis helps you win basketball games.
Sacramento’s Appalling Lack of Self-Awareness
So we’ve established who Keon Ellis, the player, is. But what about the team build? After all, they’re not exactly lacking in guard depth. Isn’t it possible Doug Christie is doing what is in the team’s best interest?
It is extremely unlikely.
It’s not just that Ellis is good enough on merit alone to have a place in this mediocre team’s (they fell to 3-7 last night) rotation. But with Keegan Murray out, Ellis represents the one semblance of purely additive impact they have.
Look at a recent starting lineup of theirs: Schroder, LaVine, Westbrook, DeRozan, Sabonis.
This is in any discussion for the worst-fitting lineup in the league. It’s five guys who can only reach their ceilings by initiating offense a reasonable percentage of the time. Three of them do their best scoring inside the arc. It is somehow undersized defensively AND cramped offensively. A rare “small-ball” lineup that receives none of the benefits of going small. Impressive.
Modern NBA basketball is not a game of NBA 2K. You can’t just throw a bunch of ill-fitting, talented players together and expect them to figure it out. More than ever, roles that leverage correlating skill sets are essential.
In our debut article, we listed what we thought was each team’s most synergistic lineup. For Sacramento, we chose Schroder, Ellis, LaVine, Murray, and Sabonis. That lineup thrusts two elite offensive engines—LaVine and Sabonis—into their ideal roles and surrounds them with as much shooting and defense as the Kings can offer. It is a lineup with balance.
The Kings can’t do anything about Keegan Murray being out with an injury. Nor can they do anything about an imperfect roster. No team can. The Pistons also have roster issues. But they objectively analyzed their roster and devised rotations and strategies that sought to leverage their strengths and mask their weaknesses.
The Kings took a roster that already had too many mouths to feed, added Schroder and Russell Westbrook to the equation, and decided the best short-term replacement for Murray was to play Precious Achiuwa out of position, all while deciding Ellis’ skill set was superfluous.
The cherry on top? This is a bad team. One whose preseason over/under was 35.5 wins. Aside from Murray, Ellis, along with Nique Clifford, former lottery pick Devin Carter, and rookie Maxime Raynaud represent the only semblance of youth on the roster. Even if it were close to a neutral decision, this is a team that should be weighing its decisions in favor of its younger players. Worst-case scenario, they lose a couple of extra games, which only serves to help their potential draft pick.
Instead, the Kings bury the 25-year-old Ellis on the bench so he can watch a “win-now” team that is unlikely to win anything. One that would have a better chance at achieving their stated goals if he were on the court.
The lack of self-awareness is astounding.
The Leaguewide Indictment
This is hardly the first time a franchise has potentially fumbled its own asset. Is this just about the Sacramento Kings? Or is Keon Ellis exposing a leaguewide blind spot? He fits with anyone, stabilizes any lineup, and never hijacks possessions — yet still finds himself on the margins. Why is that?
Here you have a guy who is clearly undervalued and about to hit the prime of his career. Better yet, he’s a guy who theoretically fits seamlessly on almost any team trying to contend. What team couldn’t use a 40% 3-point shooter who plays elite defense?
Look around the league and you start to notice a trend. While he’s the most extreme case, it’s not just Ellis with a potential gripe. Doc Rivers carousels between AJ Green and Gary Trent Jr. to close games while seemingly making Kyle Kuzma a staple of all closing lineups. The Knicks don’t seem to know what they have in Miles McBride. I could go on.
It seems as though coaches find the skills these additive players bring (namely, shooting and defense) to be the most replaceable. So maybe the story isn’t that Keon Ellis is underappreciated. Maybe the real story is that the NBA still hasn’t learned how to properly appreciate additive value.
A player who enhances everyone around him without demanding touches — the kind of player who fits in an abundance of lineups and maintains their positive impact. The goal of a team is for the whole to approach, or exceed, the sum of its parts. That requires balance and malleability, two things the Keon Ellis archetype represents.
The Kings should already know what they have. The rest of the league should be trying to figure out why they don’t know. And the longer this goes on unresolved, the more it begs the question:
What are we missing?
