good idea if you using sprite dma, personally i don't have enough sprites to make worth while (i'm using other mehtod) and loading them in via loop so address only written once i might be able to fit data and variables all in zero page - not quite sure at moment
p.s was your nametable setup hard to squash down, I managed to get it to around 150 bytes (noticed that there was loop i could use) would't managed 1k otherwise
btw that's a 12x9 grid in middle of screen (frogger style game)