Sacramento Kings: Backcourt of the future set in stone

With two young studs having taken massive leaps this season, the Sacramento Kings appear to have their backcourt of the future in the present day.

Since the beginning of this decade, the Sacramento Kings have made plenty of questionable decisions when it comes to the makeup of their roster.

They’ve drafted Player X when they should’ve gone with Y. They’ve let certain guys sign elsewhere and let others stay for far too long. It’s been a real mess in Sacramento, a big reason the team has failed to make the playoffs since 2006 — the longest postseason drought in the NBA today.

So far, the 2018-19 campaign appears to be a renaissance of sorts for the Kings, who have gone a surprising 24-22 over halfway through the season, just half a game out of the eighth and final postseason spot out West.

When it comes to successful teams, everyone tries to pinpoint even just a single factor that has played a major role in order to better understand why such teams are thriving. For the Kings, it’s been the play of their young guards: De’Aaron Fox and Buddy Hield.

Taken with the fifth overall pick in the 2017 NBA Draft, Fox had a ho-hum inaugural season of 11.6 points and 4.4 assists per game, but due to the play of some of his fellow rookie classmates, he vastly flew under the radar during both the good times and bad.

Hield’s career began similarly to that of his backcourt mate. As the sixth overall pick in the 2016 Draft, it was with the New Orleans Pelicans where Hield was tasked with making his mark on a team looking to ascend to postseason contention. With 8.6 points per game on 36.9 percent shooting from 3-point land, the former Oklahoma Sooner showed some promise.

Unfortunately, that promise wasn’t enough to keep him off the trading block, and during All-Star Weekend of that same season, he was shipped west to Sacramento in the deal that made DeMarcus Cousins a Pelican.

Fox had become the forgotten man of his draft class. Hield seemed like a laughable return for a multiple time All-Star. It didn’t help that Kings owner Vivek Ranadive believed his new shooting guard had Stephen Curry-like potential, adding immense and unnecessary pressure to the then 24-year-old.

And yet, here we are in 2019, with the duo having improved immensely in a relatively short period of time.

https://twitter.com/SacramentoKings/status/1086838226554220544

Fox’s numbers have improved across the board, to the tune of 17.6 points, 7.3 assists and 1.8 steals per game while shooting an efficient .466/.367/.728.

Hield’s jump may be even more surprising due to the sheer amount he’s seemed to improve. The third-year guard has increased his scoring average nearly seven points to 20.5 points per game with an uptick in outside shooting to the tune of 45.6 percent, fourth-best in the entire league.

Considering the team’s history of past blunders, this backcourt is a bright spot for the Sacramento faithful who have become so used to being on the wrong side of any and all transactions.

The Kings still have a ways to go before they can even make the playoffs, much less do anything once they get there, but having proven the ability to increase their level of productivity, there’s no telling what’s in store for this team moving forward with two young talents sharing a backcourt together for the foreseeable future.