If you want to understand what makes De'Aaron Fox's game so effective and cool, the most important thing to understand is something of a signature Fox play: the surprise fast break. Several times per game, while the opposing team is in the process of setting up its halfcourt defense with obvious spatial and manpower advantages, Fox will see an opening and sprint with the ball directly into the heart of that defense, creating either a layup for himself or a wide open shot for a teammate. The sorts of gaps he pries open are not available to any other ball-handler on any other team, because nobody else in the NBA is as demon-quick as Fox, or as insistent on applying pressure in seemingly disadvantageous situations.
You can apply the logic of the surprise fast break forward to explain the rest of his game, and as he showed over a historic weekend, the highest level of that game is startling.
Fox just put together 24 of the best hours of basketball you will see all season, torching the Minnesota Timberwolves for 60 points during the Sacramento Kings' near-comeback on Friday then following that performance up the very next day with 49 more points in a successful comeback against the Utah Jazz. Fox's previous career-high for points in a game was 44; the 109-point explosion is the most an NBA player has scored over a pair of back-to-back games since Kobe Bryant notched 110 in 2007. Each game's outburst had a slightly different hue to it:—against the Wolves, Fox was quicker on the trigger, taking 10 three-pointers and nailing six of them, whereas he so easily shredded Utah's point-of-attack defenders that he attempted only four threes but shot 19 free throws—though each of the 109 points arrived downstream of Fox's fundamental ability to get wherever he wants with the basketball.
Of all the signature traits that make any of today's great players great, Fox's turbo speed is a bit of an outlier: It's a cool distinguishing skill, something physical like Giannis Antetokounmpo's grace or Joel Embiid's height, but only obvious in motion. Every other guard who's made an All-NBA team over the past few years has been a more accomplished shooter than Fox, and most are less physically dominant, though, again, the modes of the few exceptions are familiar ones (e.g.: Luka Doncic is a big bully, Ja Morant and Russell Westbrook are spring-loaded). Fox's closest predecessor, in terms of all-star–level guy whose primary weapon is speed, is probably John Wall, though Fox is a far more advanced ball-handler and player than Wall ever was. His development into one of the best and most unique point guards in the NBA has been extremely satisfying to watch closely, as it was foremost a process of learning to leverage his physical gifts in increasingly sophisticated ways without ever compromising them.
The Wolves tape is the nastier of the two, and it shows perfectly how Fox uses that tearaway speed as a weapon on every play, even when he's not zipping to the basket in transition. When Sacramento traded for Domantas Sabonis a few seasons ago, many saw the obvious pick-and-roll synergy between Fox and Sabonis and posited a tremendous partnership. Instead, the Kings don't run a ton of traditional pick-and-roll stuff, instead creating advantages with their quick-passing dribble handoff game, or by simply having Fox go touch the paint. And he can just do that! They don't really even need to give him a runway—though when they do, Fox is one of the most efficient volume scorers in the league—because he is so fast and crafty with the ball that he can get inside against most on-ball defenders in the league. That cohort includes Minnesota's Jaden McDaniels, who guarded Fox a lot and played what could fairly be called good defense that didn't much matter.
Fox's newfound ability to pop threes grants him an essentially infinite runway, as defenders are forced to stay close enough to him to make any one-on-one possession a foot race. That's the basic gambit of any lightning-quick guy, but the genius of Fox can be seen in the in-between spaces. It's not just that he'll can open threes and midrangers now; he is extremely comfortable at floater range, too, in positions where his defender is overstretched, or simply behind him, but the help can't come without exposing a wide-open dunk or three for a teammate. He is taking a career-low 12.8 percent of his shots at the rim, but a career-high 29.4 percent between three and 10 feet and hitting 58.8 percent of them. The step-back threes and howling transition layups are cooler here; they are simply more direct applications of the speed he uses to turn otherwise difficult shots into open five-footers.
A funny contradiction about the Sabonis-era Kings is that while Fox is the face of the franchise, both the numbers and the day-to-day experience of watching every Kings game say that Sabonis is the most important player on the team. His combination of fine-textured skill (his passing is famous, but he's improved a ton as a ball-handler this year and has gotten really smart about selectively traveling to prolong cool moves) and ruthless physicality (in the most traditional sense possible; he just beats the shit out of guys) ensure a super-high performance floor during his minutes (the Kings also have atrocious front-court depth and yet continue to draft point guards). But as Sabonis himself or Mike Brown or anyone who watched the 2022-23 first-round series against the Warriors would tell you, the team reaches its highest level when oriented around Fox as its best player. Sabonis is tremendous but, because he isn't a reliable one-on-one player absent some sort of advantage, also basically solvable.
Fox is not solvable. A number of super long wing defenders (notably, McDaniels was awesome against him last year) have consistently given him problems throughout his career, though when he is on his game, you can count on every Kings possession truly starting when the defense has to scramble around to account for the Fox paint touch with 15 seconds left on the shot-clock. The only thing that he modulates is his aggression level, which is currently at an all-time high, and which brings us to the Utah 49-pointer.
Playing one day after losing an overtime heartbreaker has to be one of the most demanding situations on an NBA schedule, and the Kings were even more up against it than they anticipated. Not only were DeMar DeRozan and Malik Monk still out, Sabonis had to miss the game with a back issue. The Jazz are less talented than the Kings—though not necessarily when three of the Kings' four best players are out, the fourth played 44 minutes the night prior, and their available front court so thin that 24-year-old undrafted rookie Isaac Jones had to play his first real minutes of the season.
It did not matter that Keegan Murray played his worst game of the season, or that Utah's jumbo front court of John Collins, Lauri Markkanen, and Kyle Filipowski built up an 11-point third quarter lead. Fox just decided to win the game, and did. The tenor of this highlight tape is far less confrontational than the Wolves highlights. Despite tired legs and a taped-together rotation, Fox patiently got to his spots whenever he wanted, and outthought the Jazz back-court. It didn't look easy so much as casual.
What I also liked about both games was the balance of Fox's attack. He is now and always has been a willing, decently creative passer, and even when he was scorching hot, he'd find guys in the lane and on the perimeter with consistent ease. The same principle applies: He is so fast that he is the one forcing the shape of the game to change, so he knows what passes are available before others do. You can think of his tremendous defense the same way, as Fox knows he can recover against anyone so he gets right in ball-handlers' grills and forces them to make their own space. It all comes back to speed. The theory of the surprise fast break is widely applicable if you are willing to be brave.
This is the part of the story where I am supposed to look forward to the remaining five-sixths of the Kings' schedule and offer a hedged "If X, then Y" diagnosis of the team, taking into consideration what a fully activated Fox could do for them. That's not super interesting to me. Fox's scoring explosion doesn't need the burden of the future to make sense or be fully appreciated. It works on its own terms. Seeing any player come into the height of their powers is a treat, especially when they do so in a comparatively novel way. Fox announced himself as a superstar two seasons ago, so while this is not exactly new, this is a new high, an ecstatic resolution of speed and control.
