47. De’Aaron Fox
For a few months there, it felt like we had less of an idea as to the NBA player Fox was likely to become than we did before the draft. Was anyone talking about him? Of course not…that’s what happens when you play for a team that is not only bad but unwatchable on most nights.
Recently though, he’s been doing stuff like this:
So…yeah. Looks like the kid is figuring some things out.
The advanced stats still aren’t kind, but how can we trust any numbers coming from Sacramento’s hodgepodge of a situation? If we plopped Fox into, say, Terry Rozier’s role tomorrow, are we sure that he wouldn’t be getting some Jason Tatum-level buzz?
Probably not…but who knows? What we do know is that unlike fellow rookie guard Donovan Mitchell, shooting in the pros became harder, not easier, for Fox. As a result, his true shooting percentage is a ghastly 46 percent.
That number has propped up of late though (50 percent in January). He’s also doubled the amount of 3s he’s taking per game since the start of 2018, and his shot doesn’t look nearly as broken as some predicted when he was entering the draft.
Are there still some red flags? Of course. Overall, the Kings have played like a historically bad team when he’s on the court and just a plain old stinky bunch when he’s off. Fox – a player pegged to have an All-NBA caliber defensive ceiling – also has the second-worst defensive rating among regulars on the team, but those numbers are noisy given some of the lineups Sacramento is trotting out there surrounding their rookie.
All of this is to say that learning to play point guard in the pros is hard, and it often takes time. After less than 50 games in the NBA, the Kings are already starting to see positive results. More goodies figure to be on the way very soon.