It’s easy to get lost in what De’Aaron Fox isn’t and miss the very specific, valuable ways he can help NBA teams.
But be sure of this: Fox, who announced on Monday that he’ll be entering the NBA Draft, is no mystery to league talent evaluators, and don’t be surprised to hear his name any time after the top five picks.
Why scouts are skeptical
The 3-point shooting. Fox shot 24.6 percent from deep this year for Kentucky, and when defenders can sag off a player who will need to make his living via dribble penetration, that next level of quickness in the league could present a serious bottleneck on Fox’s effectiveness at the offensive end.
There are some reasons for optimism here, but they mostly reflect a need to project from small sample sizes. For instance, while he got off to a dreadful start from deep, Fox shot 37.5 percent over his last 15 games of the year from 3, and a gaudy 47.4 percent in his last 10. Between this trend and his reasonably strong 73 percent from the free throw line, there’s reason to think that Fox can be one of the rare, but not unprecedented, point guards to find his long-range stroke after draft day.
And if that happens, look out, because Fox does absolutely everything else you want in a point guard.
Big game player
Guarded by Lonzo Ball in the Sweet 16, he had little trouble getting to the basket against his future NBA counterpart, scoring 39 points and taking 15 free throw attempts in the process. Fox also hit a pair of threes over UNC point guard Joel Berry in the Elite Eight. So whether facing size or speed at the position, Fox imposes his will -- he had just a single turnover in each of the two biggest games of his young career.
The decision-making is excellent, something reflected in his overall offensive game. He was at his most efficient, per Synergy, in transition and isolation, so the speed of the NBA game isn’t going to bother him, and he’s an excellent fit into whatever team drafts him from a tactical standpoint.
Game-changing defense
All of this is prologue to why Fox should be drafted so high: his defense. Fox’s ability to limit opposing point guards in both their overall game and production was on greatest display during Kentucky’s Sweet 16 win over Ball and UCLA. But this is what he does, and what he did all season. His steal percentage is just under three percent, but that only tells part of the story. He’s a 6-foot-3 guard capable of the chase-down block. He’s a virtual wall defending off screens (0.415 PPP, per Synergy), while also strong in isolation (0.671), which is a fancy way of saying teams who tried to solve him one-on-one, through bigs coming over and knocking him down or by trying to bully him with a taller player, all found out: they can’t.
In a league with a seemingly bottomless well of point guard facilitators capable of hitting the 3, Fox’s NBA-ready closeout speed and ability to bother 3-point shooters matters when teams are evaluating if he can start for them on day one. That’s an easy one. He can. This isn’t the kind of point guard you need to find ways to hide at the defensive end. He’s the kind of point guard who allows you to focus on maximizing your shooting out of the two spot. He’s a real easy fit for virtually any of the lottery teams, most of which you will find at the bottom of the league rankings defensively.
Entering the draft had to be an easy call for Fox to make. And on draft night, he’s going to make it an easy call for an NBA team soon after Adam Silver starts delivering players to their future destinations.