Since being selected by the Kings with the 5th pick in the first round in 2017, Darlon Fox has been playing for the young rebuilding team for those five years. In the rookie season, he sat firmly in the king's starting point guard position, averaging 11.6 points, 2.8 rebounds and 4.4 assists per game, for a short point guard who is only 1 meter 9 tall, it is really rare to play such a good stat in the rookie season in the king, known as the "rookie grave".
In the next three seasons, Fox also sat firmly in the team's unyielding starting No. 1 position, and last season he played a career-best 25.2 points, 3.5 rebounds and 7.2 assists, if it were not for the King's poor record, Fox would probably usher in the first All-Star trip of his career.
Even with Fox, a quasi-all-star point guard, the Kings have been obsessed with the choice of defenders in the draft for the past two years. Last year,he picked a Halliburton pick, and this year he used his No. 9 pick to intercept The Picks in advance of Davien Mitchell, who was at the bottom of the lotto district, which made the Kings' originally tight No. 1 position instantly overstaffed.
"Three monks have no water to drink", with the addition of these two potential new stars, Fox has also encountered serious challenges this season. Although he scored 27 points, 5 rebounds and 8 assists in the opener against the Blazers, as the season progressed, Fox fell into an unstable state on the offensive end, and even his best organizational tandem was also affected, after Walton's class, Fox did not have the previous talent for assists.
Moving into December, Fox improved his scoring to 24.5 points, averaging 3.3 assists per game, well below the 6.3 in October and 5.3 in November. On December 14, Beijing time, in the game between the Kings and the Raptors, fox, who is obsessed with offense, scored 29 points on 11-of-20 shooting, but only delivered 3 assists, and the plus-minus of -18 is also the worst of the starting five tigers. It is enough to see that Fox did not connect well with the team in the case of excessive attention to his scoring data, but from the bench end, this year's No. 9 coach Mitchell scored 8 points, 4 rebounds and 6 assists, becoming the King's number one organizing officer.
So far, Fox has averaged 20.7 points, 3.7 rebounds and 5.1 assists per game, including one assist that is the lowest since the rookie season. As the core of this well-deserved organization before the Kings, Fox's assists this season are actually inferior to Halliburton's (5.6 times), which is really regrettable. According to the NBA's shams earlier, the Kings are still interested in Ben Simmons, and if they really want to break the embarrassing record of not making the playoffs for 16 consecutive years this season, I am afraid that they will really have to break the big stand.
Fox has been with the Kings for 5 years and has not been particularly prominent. Management would rather choose to put him on the trading shelf (reluctant to give him away before), and use him plus a number of draft picks to try to ask Philadelphia management for the possibility of trading Simmons again. The latter is much better than Fox in terms of organizational tandem and defense, and if the King really wants to break through the bottleneck, it is time to move this once non-selling product.
(Luo Treasurer)