When the Sacramento Kings signed Ramon Sessions this past summer to be their backup Point Guard, Kings fans were pretty excited. Sessions had a track record of being a pretty good lead guard in other cities, although he's bounced around the league quite a few times.
To say Sessions' season to date has been a disappointment would be an incredible understatement. Sessions is shooting just 35.5% from the field and averaging just 2.6 assists a game. Moreover, Sacramento gets noticeably worse whenever he's on the floor; According to basketball-reference.com, Sacramento is 7.7 points per 100 possessions worse offensively 5.7 points per 100 possessions worse defensively with Sessions playing.
Sessions' greatest strength in past years has been his ability to get to the rim. This year, he seems to be settling for floaters in the paint instead of taking it all the way to the basket and it's hurting his efficiency by a lot. Per basketball-reference, Sessions has taken 41.1% of his career FGA from 0-3 feet of the hoop, and converted 55.3% of those shots. This year he's taking just 20.2% of his shots from 0-3 feet, a reduction by half. Sessions is making up the difference by shooting a lot more shots (38%, compared to a career rate of 21.8%) in the 3-10 foot range, but he's only converting on 32.7% of those shots, which isn't far from his career rate of 35.7% in that area. For whatever reason, Sessions isn't playing to his strengths.
Sessions is far from Sacramento's only bad bench player, but what makes matters worse is that the Kings have an alternate option available in Ray McCallum that is not being utilized. Ray has been far from impressive in his short stints this year, but he also has yet to be given as much of a chance to play as Sessions, with much of Ray's playing time being situational.
The Kings don't exactly need amazing things from their backup Point Guard. They simply need that guy not to hurt them so much that it leaves the starters scrambling to make up the difference when they get back into the game. So far Sessions has not been working out and it's time to try something different. McCallum either needs to be given the chance to prove himself, or the Kings need to go out and look for a different backup, because it doesn't look like Sessions is going to right the ship by himself anytime soon.