De’Aaron Fox had scored or assisted on 12 of the Kings’ last 14 points when Draymond Green ended any hopes of a comeback by blocking his layup in transition. It probably wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the game had Fox somehow managed to score over Green’s long arms, but it served as the knockout punch in what turned out to be a surprisingly competitive fourth quarter between the best and second-worst team in the Western Conference at the time.
Following the game, Green revealed that his block sparked a verbal back-and-forth with Fox. Unprompted, Green then transitioned into praising the Kings rookie in front of the media, saying Fox has the potential to be a special player in the years to come and that he’s looking forward to watching his development. Telling him to "keep that s— down" aside, it was quite the endorsement from the reigning Defensive Player of the Year.
"He’s a good player," Green said. "He’s going to be really good. He got some stuff to him that you can’t teach. I think he’s going to be a great pro. I think [the Kings] did a great job of drafting him."
NBA PLAYOFFS 2018: Postseason odds for tight races in East, West
To those who haven’t followed the Kings this season, Green’s comments may have come as a surprise. Despite being the fifth overall pick in the 2017 NBA Draft, Fox has been one of the least valuable rookies with averages of 11.6 points, 4.4 assists, 2.6 rebounds and 1.0 steals per game on 41.8 percent shooting from the field. The Kings have actually been more competitive with him on the bench, going from being outscored by 11.1 points per 100 possessions with him on the court to being outscored by 5.7 points per 100 possessions with him off the court.
To those who have followed the Kings this season, Green’s comments confirmed what they already knew: Fox isn’t a great player right now — as is the case with most rookies — but there’s a clear path to him becoming a star in the NBA. To understand why, let’s take a look at what he’s displayed on both ends of the court this season, starting with his greatest strength.
A speed demon
The first thing that jumps out about Fox is his speed. Not only is he a blur from one end of the court to the other — Stack.com called him "basketball’s Usain Bolt" — Fox already has the ball-handling skills to weave around defenders and the athleticism to finish above the rim while operating at full speed. The combination makes him a one-man wrecking crew in the open court, where he has generated almost a quarter of his own offense this season.
Fox only ranks in the 28.1 percentile with 1.00 points per transition possession, but it’s hard to believe someone who is capable of doing this...
... and this...
... won’t become one of the most feared transition scorers in the league.
Part of the reason Fox has struggled to score at a decent rate in transition this season is because he tends to force the issue by pushing the pace and attempting to make plays for himself at the rim, even when he doesn’t have an advantage. Rather than kicking the ball out to open shooters or keeping his dribble alive when the defense collapses, he’ll try to take on multiple defenders at the basket.
That fearlessness will certainly help him reach his potential as a transition scorer, but he’ll have to be smarter with how he approaches those situations.If Fox does learn how to rein it in, it will have a tremendous impact on a Kings team that consistently ranks near the bottom of the league in pace and transition scoring.
With Fox on the court this season, the Kings are averaging 99.4 possessions per 48 minutes. That number drops to 95.2 possessions per 48 minutes when he’s on the bench, which is the difference between the Kings ranking last in the league and being in the middle of the pack in terms of pace. Even though it hasn’t translated into them being a better team with Fox on the court, it adds an element to their offense that they’ve been missing in recent years.
Fox’s speed and athleticism helps him just as much in the half court. A lot of his success as a half-court scorer hinges on the development of his jump shot because he can already blow by defenders at the NBA level and finish strong at the basket, giving him the makings of a dynamic isolation scorer. He has only attempted 45 shots out of isolation this season, but the early results have been encouraging: Fox has scored 53 points on 54 isolation possessions, ranking him in the 73.7 percentile with 0.98 points per possession.
If Fox can improve his jump shot to the point where players can’t simply back off him when forced to guard him on an island, these are the sort of plays that could happen more frequently:
Fox uses those drives to create shots for his teammates as well. He has improved as a playmaker as the season has progressed, going from averaging 4.1 assists and 2.4 turnovers per game in November to 5.2 assists and 2.6 turnovers per game in February. His assist numbers are down slightly in March, but he had a pair of standout games against the Nuggets and Thunder in which he combined for 19 assists and only two turnovers.
Fox might not have the court vision of Lonzo Ball or Ben Simmons, but he can break teams down off the dribble and find open teammates when they collapse. It’s resulted in 69.5 percent of his assists coming at the basket and the 3-point line this season, a healthy distribution for a point guard in today’s NBA.
The more comfortable he becomes as a scorer, the more opportunities he should get creating for others in those situations, especially if he’s surrounded with players who can run with him in transition and space the floor for him in the half court.
An inconsistent shooter
If there’s one thing holding Fox back from becoming a star, it’s his jump shot. He’s been around league average from 3-point range, but those looks have represented less than a fifth of his shot attempts on the season. He much prefers to pull up from midrange, where he has made 35.9 percent of his opportunities.
Fox’s volume and inefficiency on those 2-point pull-ups is a big reason why he has struggled to score consistently out of the pick-and-roll. While he is near the top of the league in pick-and-roll frequency, Fox ranks near the bottom of the league with an average 0.69 points per pick-and-roll possession.
Until he proves he can make those pull-ups more consistently, teams will continue to go under screens and have their bigs drop back to the paint to prevent Fox from getting all the way to the basket, where he does his best work as a scorer and facilitator.
Fox’s jump shot isn’t broken, though. There are some small things he probably needs to iron out to become a more consistent shooter — the most noticeable being that there is still a slingshot element to his form — but he gets good elevation on pull-up attempts, and he has a smooth release.
It’s not as though he’s incapable of making jump shots, either. Fox has made more 2-point pull-ups than all but one rookie this season, and some of those have come in big moments.
This one over Robert Covington, for example, helped the Kings take down the 76ers on Nov. 9:
Fox faces similar problems with his floater. As comfortable as he looks taking them, he has made only 28 of his 72 floater attempts this season. It’ll be an important shot for him to develop considering there is more finesse to his game than other athletic guards like Russell Westbrook and John Wall, both of whom Fox has been compared to in the past.
If he’s able to improve in both of those areas, his efficiency as a pick-and-roll scorer should improve tremendously.
For Fox to become to become an elite pick-and-roll scorer, however, he will need to become more comfortable pulling up from the perimeter.
It’s not something Fox has done frequently this season. He’s made 18 of his 52 pull-up attempts from 3-point range, which accounts for only 6.6 percent of his made shots and 8.8 percent of attempted shots. There are starting-level guards who have made less pull-up 3s than Fox on the season, but most of them are either spot-up shooters such as Nicolas Batum and Danny Green or non-shooters from outside the paint such as Simmons and Andre Roberson.
Fox isn’t the only player from his draft class who would benefit from developing into a three-level scorer, and it will go a long way in determining his ceiling because he has the physical tools needed to be an All-Star point guard. At his height with his speed and his athleticism, Fox will be almost unguardable if defenses have to respect his ability to shoot off the dribble because it doesn’t take much for him to create space for himself away from the basket.
Fox has been slightly more efficient on catch-and-shoot 3-pointers on similar volume. It isn’t as important for his long-term development, but it would open the door for him to spend more time off ball when sharing the court with a combo guard like Bogdanovic. Fox is already a dangerous cutter, so being able to make a catch-and-shoot 3-pointer semi-regularly would be the icing on the cake.
A work in progress on defense
According to ESPN’s Real Plus-Minus, Fox has been one of the worst defenders in the NBA this season. The only point guards who currently have a lower defensive real plus-minus than him are Emmanuel Mudiay, Isaiah Thomas, Dennis Schroder, D’Angelo Russell and Jameer Nelson. Fox doesn’t rank as low in defensive win shares and defensive box plus-minus, but he’s only a slight positive in one and below league average in the other.
When you watch sequences like this, it’s easy to see why:
Fox makes three mistakes you’d expect to see from a rookie.
First, he gets out of his defensive stance when Klay Thompson makes the pass to Kevin Durant, paving the way for Thompson to blow by Fox when Durant passes the ball back to him. Fox then reacts to Zaza Pachulia’s pass when it’s halfway to its destination and chooses to leave Stephen Curry wide open in the corner to close out on Thompson. Finally, Fox gets caught ball-watching and gives up another wide open 3-pointer, this time to Thompson in the opposite corner.
That’s three straight mistakes leading to a layup and a pair of 3-pointers from two of the best scorers in the league.
The second clip, however, points to a bigger issue. Fox didn’t necessarily make the wrong decision to leave Curry in the corner as long as the plan was for Fox to rotate onto Thompson while Justin Jackson rotated onto Curry. It doesn’t excuse his slow reaction, but he wasn’t the only one to blame for Curry getting a wide open catch-and-shoot 3-pointer.
Something similar happened earlier in the same game, when Fox and JaKarr Sampson failed to communicate on a Curry-Durant pick-and-roll that led to an uncontested layup from Curry. Sampson is one of four players on the Kings with a positive defensive real plus-minus this season — the others being Vince Carter, Kosta Koufos and Willie Cauley-Stein — but Fox isn’t surrounded by many defensive-minded players in Sacramento.
While the Kings have been worse defensively with Fox on the court, it’s telling that they still surrender 108.7 points per 100 possessions with him on the bench.
Those are the types of mistakes you’d expect to see from a rookie point guard anyway. Fox plays the most loaded position in the NBA, having to match up with the likes of Curry, Westbrook, Damian Lillard and Chris Paul on a nightly basis. He’s not the type of player who can switch across the board — Fox doesn’t provide much resistance against bigger players because of his slight frame — but he at least has the tools to defend his position.
Take the game against the Heat on Jan. 25 as an example. After Goran Dragic scored 16 points on 6-for-9 shooting from the field in the first half, Fox helped the Kings mount a comeback late by holding the All-Star to two points in the fourth quarter.
Fox was at his best in the final two minutes when he picked Dragic up full court twice, generating a steal once and almost drawing an offensive foul a second time. He followed it up by drawing an offensive foul on Hassan Whiteside with 21.9 seconds remaining, setting him up for the game-winning putback.
Fox also did a decent job of defending Westbrook on March 12, limiting him to 17 points on 19 shot attempts. Westbrook overpowered Fox at times, but Fox used his speed and length to force him into taking several tough shots.
Fox has looked better defensively in those one-on-one situations. He has the foot speed to harass even the quickest point guards in the league, and his 6-6 wingspan helps him contest shots and pick off errant passes (although the Kings would like to see him live up to his nickname by doing more of the latter).
As bad as the advanced stats make Fox’s defense look, he has the potential to be an impact defender in the NBA.
What to watch for next
Fox’s jump shot is always going to be something to monitor. Even developing into a consistent threat from midrange would open up his game tremendously.
The hope is that he will eventually extend his range out to the 3-point line, but it will probably be the last thing he adds to his game considering it was his greatest weakness coming into the NBA. If teams do have to respect him from midrange and 3-point range, it’s scary to think of how good Fox could be on offense.
Other than the shooting, it will be interesting to see how Fox progresses on defense. The Kings play a handful of teams in the playoff race over the next three weeks, including the Warriors, Jazz, Celtics, Pacers, Spurs and Rockets. Unless the likes of Curry, Paul and Kyrie Irving are unable to play in those games due to rest or injury, those games will provide Fox with an opportunity to match up with some of the best players at his position.
Those are obviously two big obstacles standing in Fox’s way — players can spend their entire careers trying to get their jump shots and defense to the level they need in order to reach their full potential — but he’s shown enough this season to believe he’ll overcome them in time. Pair that with the "stuff to him that you can’t teach," and the Kings have a unique talent.
