De’Aaron Fox’s Offensive Challenges

De’Aaron Fox did not quite have a storybook rookie season. What can the second-year guard do to make the 2018-19 campaign one worth talking about?

Being a rookie point guard in the NBA isn’t easy, just ask Sacramento’s De’Aaron Fox. After leading the Wildcats to an Elite Eight appearance (eventually falling in one of the NCAA tournament’s most exciting games to eventual-champion North Carolina) Fox went from one of the most exciting, hyped freshmen in the Class of 2017 to nearly an afterthought a season later.

What happened?

Fox built his game on his ability to score and create for others in the pick-and-roll, a skill set which on paper translates nicely to the NBA. But he wasn’t able to make the smooth transition and soon many personalities believed he wasn’t a great fit as a point guard in the NBA. Too often the 6’3″180-pound guard found himself settling for 18-foot contested jumpers, or relying on fall away moves around the rim. While he was till quick enough to put defenders back on their heels, the separation he was getting in the NBA wasn’t quite what he was used to as he blew by college defenders. All of this made for a messy first season at the helm of the Kings offense. But now he is back for year two, armed with the understanding that quickness and ball handling aren’t enough to survive on.  

Can he recover that electricity which made him so exciting to watch at Kentucky? Can he make the necessary adjustments to his offensive game to supply meaningful minutes at the one? These are not easy questions to answer and we will need a much larger sample size than five preseason games to determine how much growth Fox has managed in his first professional off season, but let’s take a look at some film anyway.

Successes in College Lead to a Rocky Rookie Road

After a single season in Lexington, the electrifying freshman was known for his elite quickness and his tenacious defense. He flashed a million-watt smile, said all the right things in interviews, and even cried on camera after a particularly devastating exit from the NCAA Tournament against North Carolina. If nothing else, Fox’s love of the game and dedication to win were evident. What wasn’t so evident, however, was how he fits into a modern NBA offense.

The league has shifted towards placing a premium on spacing the floor and the point guard position had changed drastically as a result. The days of the lead guard who beat the leather off the ball, probing the defense over and over looking for a weakness are gone, replaced by uptempo side-to-side ball movement where the ball handler is used as a spot-up shooter as often as he warps the defense through penetration.

Fox attacks the game in a more traditional (read: older) way. He utilized prodigious quickness coupled with the ability to stop on a dime to create mid-range and three-point looks off of pick-and-roll opportunities. But the phrase “mid-range jumper” has become a curse in the wake of the analytics movement, followed often by utterances like “it’s the worst shot in basketball”.

And that is where De’Aaron Fox has made his living.

Much of Fox’s game was predicated on using these mid-range jumpers to create offense and then using the spacing he created through his gravity to create for teammates.

Watch here:

Thomas Welch doesn’t hedge to help on a jump shot and Lonzo Ball doesn’t recover fast enough to challenge the shot.

Jaylen Barford comes over the top of the screen and is left trailing the play and Jordan Harris is hesitant to close out on the much quicker Fox, getting caught in no man’s land and leading to the easy lob.

At the NCAA level, he could pull lower-quality defenders out of the lane and force them to contest. If the defender was too slow-footed for a contest, he would use the cleared airspace to knock down an elbow jumper (or even a three at times) and if the challenge came to quickly, we would attack the close our or find a teammate cutting into the seam left by the help defense.

But at the next level, the differences in spacing are evident:

Watch how much quicker Dante Exum recovers to force a bad shot. Better, quicker defenders lead to more crowded airspace a problem which plagued De’Aaron Fox for much of his rookie season in Sacramento. According to Cleaning the Glass, he shot 35 percent on mid-range jumpers (in the 29th percentile among guards) but attempted 51 percent of his shots from those areas (87th percentile).

Citing Synergy’s point per possessions stats (especially taking into account a shift from NCAA to NBA) usually is a bad idea, but looking at the dramatic drop off in Fox’s efficiency scoring in pick-and-roll situations allows for the small comparison to stand.

When you run the numbers (as Sactown Royalty’s Bryant West did expertly hereyou can see a marked improvement in shooting off the dribble from his freshman season at Kentucky to his rookie season in Sacramento. But converting mid-range looks isn’t the most critical improvement Fox needed to make this offseason. He needed to lower his reliance on scoring in the mid-range by increasing his three-point shooting output AND find a way to get to the rim (and thus to the line) more effectively.

Improvement in Year 2

(Before we even get into the improvements please allow me to attach a caveat to the following section: I understand this is preseason and everything that happens should be taken with a grain of salt. That being said, I still noted a shift in Fox’s perception when attacking defenses, something I have outlined below. Sorry, I had to put that in so my editors didn’t edit this piece into dust.)

So what has De’Aaron Fox done in the offseason to address these problem areas?

One area where he has advanced (though not as far as Kings’ fans would like) is in improving his aggressiveness when looking to score. He has been much more active in seeking his own shot, something which will pay off in dividends as defensive adjust to this newfound attack.

Finishing around the rim was a problem for Fox last season because of his small, lean frame. However, he has focused on improving his strength since last season. Kings’ assistant coach Larry Lewis said, “[Fox] is more physical than I have seen him … He’s not going to sit back and take punches, he’d rather give them.”

Watch here how Fox gives a punch to Suns’ rookie De’Andre Ayton:

Ayton is a monster of a man at 7’1”, 260 pounds and Fox initiates contact, absorbs the blow and converts the basket. While it is far cry from Russell Westbrook’s explosiveness in attacking the rim, improvement in his mentality will be a huge factor for De’Aaron Fox going into the season. If he can continue to attack and create contact at a higher rate, he will be able to get to the line more often, a safe way to generate offense and boost true shooting percentages.

The other major improvement in his game has come from behind the arc. Last season, Fox shot 30.7 percent on 2.1 three-point attempts (47-for-153) per game but in the preseason he jumped dramatically to 35 percent on 4 attempts (7-for-20).

While the sample size is small, the improvement to the shot selection is worth noting. Watch how Fox diagnoses the underplay and immediately steps into his shot:

Look how his feet are immediately in position to take the shot, a half second adjustment which he was forced to make off the dribble last season. Teams will continue to underplay him until he shows more consistency behind the line, but as long as he goes into pick-and-roll situations with a scoring mindset he can continue to make

How must he continue to improve?

One of the major factors working in Fox’s favor this season is the improvement in talent on the offensive end. Last season, the Kings ran with a trio of bigs (Willie Cauley-Stein, Skal Labissiere, and Zach Randolph) who had trouble using their gravity to create space for Fox to operate. While Marvin Bagley is supremely unpolished talent, he is still very much a talent. He is good at attacking the offensive boards, can pull defenders while rolling and will be able to convert his sizable vertical gravity into points.

Equally exciting is redshirt freshman Harry Giles. Giles has shown a penchant as a secondary distributor as well as a polished mid-range game and some nice bounce. Adding these two into the rotation along with Yogi Ferrell who may share initiation duties with Fox from time to time, will give the Kings a noticeable shot in the arm.   

But De’Aaron Fox must also continue his improvement in attacking the rim and his three-point shooting. If he can establish himself as a legitimate threat to score (something he didn’t do in the preseason despite all his improvement), he will open up avenues to create for others, an all-around benefit to a team in desperate need of offense.

The Kings are without a first-round selection this season and will need to improve the talent they have on the roster significantly if they want to compete over the next few seasons in the loaded Western Conference. On the offensive end, that improvement starts with De’Aaron Fox.

Let’s see if he can rise to the challenge.

 

 

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Thanks to Akshay Ram (@ByAkshayRam) for the header graphic

Edited by Jacob Goldstein (@JacobEGoldstein)

Stats courtesy of Cleaning the Glass, NBA.com, Synergy Sports Technologies, and Basketball Reference. 

Follow Alex on Twitter (@AlexWestNBA)

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