The Kings are scoring a ton of...

The Sacramento Kings made two discrete decisions during the offseason aimed at ending what has become the longest postseason drought the NBA has ever seen. First, general manager Monte McNair plucked Mike Brown off the Warriors’ bench, entrusting the former Cavaliers and Lakers head coach-turned-longtime Steve Kerr lieutenant with finding a way to drag a franchise that has not finished with a league-average defense since 2006 toward something approaching respectability on that end of the floor. Then, McNair targeted a pair of wings — Malik Monk in free agency and Kevin Huerter in trade — with the intent of adding shooting and shot-creating dynamism to a team desperate to create enough space for bookend playmakers De’Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis to cook.

Sacramento’s defense remains … well, let’s say it’s a work in progress. The Kings enter Wednesday’s action ranked 27th in the NBA in points allowed per possession outside of garbage time, according to Cleaning the Glass. But while Brown has his work cut out for him in coaxing Sacramento toward stops, he’s making those offseason investments on the offensive end pay off pretty handsomely. Just ask the Nets.

It makes sense to emphasize transition play when you’ve got a rocket-fueled point guard like Fox, one of the fastest players in the NBA with the ball in his hands, plus a number of other players — Huerter, Monk, Harrison Barnes, rookie Keegan Murray, reserve guards Davion Mitchell and Terence Davis, even the rumbling Sabonis — that you can trust to grab the ball off the rim and dribble end-to-end. What’s separated this Kings team from some of the more uptempo iterations of years gone by, though, is how effective it’s been when the opponent gets back, things settle down, and it has to go work against a set defense: Sacramento ranks third in points scored per possession in the half-court, behind only the Jayson Tatum-led Celtics and Luka Doncic’s Mavericks, thanks largely to just how big the Kings’ offseason bets on shooting have paid off.

Huerter has been sensational since coming over from Atlanta: Only Stephen Curry and Keldon Johnson have made more 3-pointers than Huerter’s 50, and only Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is shooting a higher percentage than Huerter’s torrid 52.6% clip. Monk hasn’t shot it quite as well as he did for the Lakers last season, but at just under 37% on nearly nine attempts per 36 minutes, he’s a bonafide threat to launch that defenses must honor on the perimeter. Murray, whose selection at No. 4 in the 2022 draft over Jaden Ivey arched some eyebrows around the league, has hit the ground running, shooting 37.5 percent from deep on six attempts per game.

“One thing I know we can do: We can shoot that ball,” Brown told reporters after lighting up Brooklyn.

That infusion of accuracy and volume, plus Brown’s insistence on firing away, has helped transform Sacramento’s offense. Nearly 41 percent of the Kings’ shot attempts this season have come from beyond the arc, the NBA’s fifth-highest rate — last season, it was just under 35 percent, 21st in the league — and they’re drilling a crisp 38.1 percent of those long balls, which trails only Denver, Cleveland, Portland and Boston. Tuesday’s win over the Nets marked the sixth time in 13 games that the Kings have put up at least 40 3-point attempts; they did it just 10 times in 82 contests last season.

When defenses have to worry about multiple perimeter threats on every possession, it becomes easier to find space to maneuver on the interior. The Kings are moving their bodies more on offense and throwing nearly 28 more passes per game than they did last season — a big reason why they’re in the top five in assists per game and assist rate after bottom-10 finishes in both categories last season.