BBNBA Season in Review: De'Aaron Fox

(Photo by Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

De’Aaron Fox improves from year to year while his team wades in the waters of an NBA abyss. The Sacramento Kings are bad, broken and forgotten. Their starlet, De’Aaron Fox, had a career year and eclipsed 25 points per game. It’s time to win or bolt for Fox heading into year five.

Numbers 

Season averages (per game): 25.2 points, 7.2 assists, 3.5 rebounds, 1.5 steals

Shooting splits: 47.7% FG, 71.9% FT, 32.2% 3p on 5.5 attempts per game

More (extra & interesting) stats:

• Broke career-high in points/game by 4
• One of only six guys to average 25.2 points and 7.2 assists
• First Sacramento King to average those numbers
• Kings extend Playoff drought to 15 years, longest in NBA

This past season…

Like many talented young players on crappy teams…De’Aaron Fox flew under the radar in 2021. His raw numbers were outstanding yet again and he shattered his previous career mark of 21 points a game, elevating to score over 25 per contest in 2021.

However, the question with Fox has never been his ability to score in bunches or carry an offense over the course of an entire season. Like Booker before the ’21 season, we know he’s a super-talent that is capable of developing into the best player on a good team. We just need to see it happen.

Fox is as fast as he’s ever been, he’s getting better from the mid-range year by year, especially on pull-ups. The hole in his game is the lack of a reliable three-point shot. He barely crept above 30% from deep during his rookie season, then jumped to 37% on 3 attempts per game as a second-year guy. But in year three, he shot the ball more often from deep and dipped back under 30% over the course of a season for the first time since college.

In 2021, he had hot shooting months and freezing cold-shooting months, eventually settling at a 32.2% clip over the whole season. Essentially, he’s still unreliable from the three-point line.

Fox has polished off other areas of his game. He’s developed as a pull-up shooter from inside the arc, he’s improved as a passer and lead playmaker every year and now he’s scoring like most of the top guards in the NBA. It’s just that three-point stroke that needs major work.

If he can improve just by a few percentage points from deep while his franchise finally surrounds him with surrounding talent…then Fox and the Kings could be an emerging story to watch in 2021-22…

Looking ahead…

Fox just finished an NBA season scoring 25.2 points per game. I thought he’d be a surefire star out of college but I’m not sure I would have foreseen a 25-point scorer out of the wiry lightning bolt version of D-Fox we got to see in Lexington, but I guess you could say he’s exceeding expectations.

As a scorer, I’m not sure he needs to progress any further for his team to win. Whether he scores 35 points or 15, my questions about Fox’s shooting efficiency and the level of talent surrounding him still remain.

I think the next step for Fox is team success. He’s reached that next level of success where the only way to impress is to win more games, not score more points. I’d love to see a De’Aaron Fox that averages roughly a 21-point, 9-assist stat line on a regular basis while playing lead guard on an up-and-comer in the West.

Basically, I want what just happened to Phoenix to happen to Sacramento. You know, they add a veteran superstar, sign a future coach of the year and have Marvin Bagley turn into Hakeem Olajuwon. That would be a nice fix for the Kings.

Overall, De’Aaron Fox is a supreme talent that is stranded on the worst NBA Franchise of the last decade and a half. Major structural alterations need to be made to the front office and roster in order for these Kings to finally climb out of the basement.

Instead, I fear that Fox is in for another few years of playing spectacular basketball in the armpit of the Northwest. Just send the Kings to Louisville, please.