During the first quarter of Thursday's game between the equally winless Pelicans and Kings, Sacramento rookie Darius Acuff Jr. ran the length of the floor in transition and punched home a sweeping dunk past a late trail from Jeremiah Fears and a halfhearted contest from Trey Murphy III. It was an amazing play, which is why Acuff took a second to flex and mean-mug for the dozens of fans in New Orleans. It was also a live play, and as Acuff preened, the Pelicans ran back and Murphy got an easy dunk, after Acuff's absence forced Domantas Sabonis to abandon the paint.
This sequence serves as a useful Rorschach test for the Acuff observer: Do you see Acuff's smooth athleticism, and his ability to produce not only tough but beautiful buckets? Or do you see an undersized guard whose lack of interest in the floor game is matched only by his inability to affect it? Both are totally valid reads of the most (and only) fascinating player on the worst team in basketball, although I think partisans of both positions would agree that Acuff's first five NBA games have been remarkable.
Nobody in the league has attempted or missed more shots. No rookie has ever attempted as many shots in their first few games. Acuff sits snugly wedged between Steph Curry and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on the usage leaderboard, with the sixth-highest rate in the NBA. It's both fantastic theater and an irresistible new front in the Real Hooper Wars; the Kings, in the meantime, are so bad that the question of any of it mattering will be entirely theoretical for a while. This leaves us all free to enjoy Acuff's game and use it as a plank from which to mount arguments about how basketball should work.
As to the theatrical element: Acuff's performance against New Orleans was special. He dropped 34 points and 14 assists, and did so with heretofore novel efficiency. The rookie was killing anyone who switched onto him, pulling it from deep, nailing his little floater, and pushing it in transition. Coming out of Arkansas, the knocks on Acuff as an offensive engine had to do with his size and decision-making. I saw him as less of a ball hog and more of a player possessed of world-historic amounts of confidence. The 14 assists were all well-earned, and if Precious Achiuwa had softer hands, Acuff would have logged closer to 17. Acuff got one jumper blocked by Herb Jones, but otherwise had no issues getting to the spots he wanted.
In his NBA debut, a 121-96 loss to the Clippers, Acuff posted a 5-for-24 shooting line that I somehow found impressive. Ideally, yes, some of those 19 misses go in, but he was dribbling into clean looks against Derrick Jones Jr. and Kris Dunn in his first NBA game. Against the Pelicans, those shots went in.
The Kings lost on Thursday, of course, 132-120. This team is just as broken and poorly run as last year, except this season Zach LaVine is even more checked out; the interesting, deep center rotation is ravaged by injuries; and the rest of the league is trying. The stupidly mishandled tank-off games, in which the Kings banked wins last year, have disappeared. But in the loss to New Orleans, Acuff wasn't part of the problem. One of the more startling elements of the game was how much worse and less effective LaVine was than his 19-year-old teammate: lazily dribbling into contested pull-ups, drifting out toward the ballhandler on offense instead of spacing, and standing perfectly still with the basketball. LaVine finished with a game-worst minus-25 in 39 minutes; Acuff wound up plus-3 in 41.
Any Acuff true believer, however, has probably tried to avoid the quantitative mode. His shooting efficiency is bad, his on-ball defense is worse, and his team defense is functionally nonexistent. The Memphis Grizzlies mounted a comeback on Oct. 25 exclusively by targeting Acuff on the perimeter, and it worked every single time. When he doesn't sense a harvestable bucket, he stands like a statue. The Kings have yet to win an NBA game.
Instead, the true believer would ask you to believe your eyes. Acuff is the platonic ideal of a bucket-getter, an object of devotion for the cult of the Real Hooper, a player whom Instagram reels would have you thinking is 4K Allen Iverson. It's crazy what this guy can do with the ball. I can't look at anyone else when he's on the court. I saw someone wondering the other day how Acuff is something like a franchise cornerstone while Cam Thomas is out of the league. Thomas could never dribble like this, never ever passed the ball, and was five percent as smooth as Acuff. The Kings rookie is an offense unto himself.
One projected consequence of the NBA's anti-tanking reforms was flatter records across the league. The Kings offer a hilarious counterpoint: With everyone trying, rather than parity, we might see pronounced extremes on the lower end. This team is beyond hopeless, with zero good defenders, a cadre of useless veterans playing out the terminal ends of their contracts because nobody else in the league wants them—even if Ben Simmons hadn't torn his Achilles, he would've made about as big a difference as an air freshener in a gas station bathroom—and a head coach, Doug Christie, whose anachronistic schemes obscure his boneheaded rotations and odd decision-making. Somehow, they are also quite watchable. That's all Acuff.
You don't have to believe your eyes. Maybe he'll never turn into the superstar his adherents think he already is. The margins are thin for someone that small who can only play one side of the ball. There is no upper-middle class for that sort of player. You can be Damian Lillard or Jalen Brunson, or you can be worthless. What a thrill that is. Darius Acuff Jr. is either a problem, or he's a problem.
