De’Aaron Fox Wants Out. Does Anyone Want in?
The Sacramento Kings are exploring a De’Aaron Fox trade, they might not find what they’re looking for
The Sacramento Kings are expected to explore a trade of De’Aaron Fox ahead of the NBA’s February 6th trade deadline, according to a report from ESPN. In a hilarious, and perhaps not-so-coincidental twist of fate, Fox, a Klutch Sports client, saw the news break exactly six years to the date, January 28th, when Anthony Davis, another Klutch client, asked out of New Orleans. So, mark your calendars, January 28th will forever be Klutchmas. The report of Fox’s availability will cycle through the content mill for weeks, perhaps even months, and his impending trade will feed families. After all, star players change the balance of power in the NBA.
The fan and media excitement over De’Aaron Fox’s trade request would suggest the Kings are in for a godfather-type offer. Over the past five seasons, Fox has averaged 25.1 points per game, won the Clutch Player of the Year, was selected as an All-Star (with another potentially on the way), and made an All-NBA team. Players who can score the ball like Fox are few and far between, and teams have done silly things to acquire players with his skill set, but I think there is a disconnect between how fans and the media value Fox and how front offices will.
The first bit of relevant information is that all of Fox’s accolades came in one season– 2022-23. At age 25, Fox had the best season of his career, leading the Kings to their only playoff appearance in the past 18 seasons and the league’s most efficient offense. However, Fox has been on the Kings for seven seasons, not including this year, which means he has only led his team to the playoffs once and that includes a single top-ten offense in that span.
Judging a player by their team’s success is generally the lowest form of analysis, but, in this case, I find it informative. Fox is clearly a good player, but he is far from transformative. As much as the Kings franchise is routinely panned, they haven’t surrounded Fox with abysmal offensive rosters. He entered the league with Bogdan Bogdanovic and Buddy Hield, got Harrison Barnes prime years, and then couldn’t work with Tyrese Haliburton leading to the Domantas Sabonis trade. Through it all, he managed to lead one top-third offense. The Kings’ front office might be dysfunctional, but they have surrounded Fox with competent offensive players throughout his career. If he was a true-blue star, chances are the Kings would have been better.
Furthering the notion that Fox is a less-than-elite offensive creator are his actual metrics. Offensive box plus/minus (OBPM) takes a player’s box score stats and calculates how many points per 100 possessions that player is better than a league-average player. It isn’t a perfect metric, but it is publicly available through Basketball Reference and, in my opinion, is an excellent reference point for a player’s true offensive impact. Fox’s career-best OBPM of 3.4 came in 2022-23 and only ranked 26th in the league. In fact, he has never had a top-20 OBPM season in his career, and his OBPM of 2.8 over the past three seasons pegs him as around the 30th most impactful offensive player in the league.
While fans are enamored with points per game, front offices have evolved beyond judging players solely by back-of-the-card statistics. The simple truth is points don’t mean all that much. The Orlando Magic, the league’s lowest-scoring team, averages 104.1 points per game. Those points have to come from somewhere, and simply being the guy who scores them doesn’t mean you’re an effective offensive player. While De’Aaron Fox isn’t chucking with reckless abandon, he also isn’t scoring at such a level that he’s dragging an offense to new heights.
Fox has exactly one season (2022-23) with an above-league-average effective field goal percentage (eFG) and true shooting percentage (TS%). While that’s fine for a high-usage player, so long as it’s close to league average, it puts pressure on the rest of his offensive game to raise him into the elite. And unfortunately, Fox isn’t all that elite at anything else.
Since 2021-22, Fox has averaged 5.9 assists and 2.7 turnovers per game. Those are solid numbers, but there are 33 players this season averaging over five assists and fewer than three turnovers per game. In that same span, Fox has shot 33.7% from 3-point range on a below-league-average 3-point attempt rate, a telltale sign he doesn’t provide significant shooting gravity. And, on top of all that, his isolation points per possession of 0.85 this season is an average figure. Yes, he can score and create, but the only thing approaching special is the volume.
Now, Fox doesn’t score 25 points per game just by checking into the game. He has been excellent as a pick-and-roll ball handler this season, averaging 1.09 points per possession, a figure in the 92nd percentile, a trend he has maintained for an extended stretch. So, perhaps there is more juice to squeeze with a heavier pick-and-roll volume. In addition, he is also one of the better players at scoring from drives. Among players who average over ten drives per game, his points per drive of 0.683 ranks 11th out of 48, but when you factor in assists and turnovers he drops to 23rd at 0.715 estimated points per drive*.
*Estimated points per drive calculation: points + (assists x 2.4) - (turnovers x 2.355) / drives
The problem Fox faces is simple. He’s a good scorer, as in he can maintain average-ish efficiency on a high volume, but that doesn’t raise a team’s ceiling, just their floor. If he was an elite playmaker, his scoring would be fine (think Trae Young and Ja Morant), but in a league where teams either want to be excellent or atrocious to chase championships or ping-pong balls, floor raisers are left in an awkward position. Yes, they’re good players and deserve to be compensated appropriately, but they don’t pull a team in the direction they actually want to head.
Making matters worse for Fox, is he’s a lead ball handler. On a real title contender, Fox ought to be your third-best player, but how many title contenders’ third-best player is their offensive engine? Not many, if any. For most teams, Fox does nothing for their title odds, which isn’t something you want to say about a player who you’re supposed to send out a bunch of assets for.
If you find my analysis of Fox’s game unconvincing, I have one more trick up my sleeve– his contract. Whoever trades for De’Aaron Fox is almost certainly going to give him a max contract. A move that has the potential to be a franchise-altering disaster. This season, Fox is making $34.8 million and is owed $37.1 million in 2025-26 before reaching free agency. While those figures are completely palatable, his next deal could see some scary dollar figures attached to his decline phase.
In 2026-27, the salary cap is projected to be $170.1 million. A standard 30% max contract would net Fox a $51 million salary in 2026-27, and with 8% raises, the deal would total $295.9 million over five years covering his age 29 through 33 seasons.
I don’t know about you, but paying the 30th-best offensive player of 2024-25 $67.3 million for their age 33 season in 2030-31 seems like it could backfire. But the situation has the potential to get even worse.
Fox is slated to enter free agency with nine years of service time. Barring a surprise All-NBA nod over the next two seasons, he’ll only be eligible for a 30% max in 2026-27. However, once a player reaches ten years of service time, they’re eligible to receive a 35% max contract. It wouldn’t be a surprise if Fox opted for a one-plus-one max contract in 2026-27 so he could reenter free agency in 2027-28 and land a 35% max. If that were to happen, he’d instantly be on a Bradley Beal level of bad contract.
The salary cap in 2027-28 is projected to be $187.1 million. On a 35% max contract, Fox’s starting salary would be $65.5 million, and with 8% raises, he’d see his salary balloon to $86.5 million by 2031-32 for his age 34 season. All told, if this scenario were to unfold, a team would be signing up to pay Fox $430.9 million over six seasons for his age 29 through 34 seasons.
The NBA’s new television rights deal would help offset Fox’s massive contract to a degree, but you’d have to be out of your mind to not see the tremendous risk in extending Fox that far out, for that dollar figure. He’s a smaller point guard who is a lost step away from being an average offensive player, and you’re locking him up for his early 30s when players slow down.
The realities of Fox’s production, impact on winning, and potential future salary will almost certainly dampen his trade market. In no uncertain terms, I would never trade for him and I’d pray my enemies do. He is a good player who wants to be paid like a great player, and chances are, we already saw his best season. NBA front offices are sophisticated enough to see the potential hazard in acquiring a player like Fox, and as such, I don’t think there will be a robust market for his services. Call me a hater, but this isn’t the Fantastic Mr. Fox.
For any inquiries about work, discussion, and the like you can email me at nevin.l.brown@gmail.com.