The Whiteboard: De’Aaron Fox needs to show improvement this season

The Sacramento Kings seem to love De’Aaron Fox, but their sophomore point guard has a lot he needs to improve on for the coming season.

The 2017-18 NBA season saw a group of rookies take the league by storm and included an intense and fun Rookie of the Year award race. Unfortunately for Sacramento Kings fans, De’Aaron Fox was not part of that particular race.

Fox was a rookie, yes, and he did play NBA basketball last season, but Fox wasn’t exactly up there with Ben Simmons, Donovan Mitchell, and Jayson Tatum after his debut season. Fox averaged 11.6 points and 4.4 assists in 27.8 minutes per game, and functioned as the Kings’ starting point guard for most of the year.

He did not score those points efficiently, needing 10.9 shots per game to get those scoring totals. Fox shot 41.2 percent from the field and 30.7 percent from 3-point territory. According to Cleaning the Glass, Fox scored 95.1 points per 100 shot attempts, which put him in the 17th percentile of point guards last season.

The Kings, already a bottom-five NBA defense, were even worse when Fox was on the floor. To sum it up, De’Aaron Fox didn’t do much to prove that he belongs in the NBA in his rookie year, much less that he should be a starter or franchise player.

All hope is not lost, mostly because point guard is probably the hardest NBA position for young players to learn. Fox shouldn’t be written off quite yet, especially considering he’s in Sacramento, which is not a franchise that’s done well at cultivating and growing young talent lately. He could end up being quite the player before all is said and done.

Still, if Fox has another ineffective season the Kings will have to make some tough choices regarding their fifth overall pick in 2017 — especially considering Sacramento reportedly passed on Luka Doncic in part because they didn’t want Fox to lose touches.

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