The Kings are fun. No, not fun in a weird ironic way. No, they’re not fun just because they’re typically one of the final league pass options late at night. The 2018-19 Sacramento Kings are a legitimately entertaining basketball team to watch.
They are the second fastest team in the NBA according to pace. They have a young core that is proving it can work well together. De’Aaron Fox is a speedy pinball that can blow by defenders or pull up on a dime and not lose control. Perhaps more importantly than all of that, the Kings are winning.
It’s smart to remain cautious about early season upstarts outperforming expectations to a dramatic degree. There’s always the potential for an injury, unexpected front office move, or a regression to normalcy to put the Kings back in the basement. But even if that turns out to be the case, the basketball itself will remain fun. The personnel and style of play Sacramento is rolling out a nightly basis lends itself to a fun brand of basketball. Willie Cauley-Stein could probably jump over the entire backboard if he wanted to. Bogdan Bogdanovic can and will shoot from absolutely anywhere. Fox? His control is otherworldly for a second-year player.
https://twitter.com/SacramentoKings/status/1062202318525935616
This move by Fox alone isn’t anything special or amazing. It’s just him pulling up from midrange and hitting a shot, but it’s the entire process before the shot that makes him fascinating to watch. He catches the ball behind the 3-point arc and uses a lightning quick first step to force the defense to rotate over. This is where the average guard will step into their shot and fire up a shot, or maybe even kick out to the weak side in order to catch the rotating defense napping. Fox decided to just pull up from where he was, at that very spot, and shoot. Even the NBA’s best ball handlers and athletes can’t do this. They have to gather or they will lose control. Fox breaks this. He stops, pulls, and shoots before the defense even has time to set itself.
Is Fox the cog that makes the Kings work? Not entirely, but he’s certainly providing an energy to them that was never seen before. It’s only his second year as a pro and he’s already shown so much growth from last year. The game is too fast for every rookie, but once it starts to slow down is when a young player will truly learn. The game appears to have slowed down for Fox, but he doesn’t need to slow himself down. He is always moving at 100 MPH along with everybody else on the Kings.
To pair with a player like Fox you need guys that can move up the floor fast. Someone like a Willie Cauley-Stein. When the Kings put a dagger into the Spurs on Monday, it was in a way that perfectly defined how fun they are. Cauley-Stein was arguing with a referee mid-play, something you should never do, and it accidentally gave him the perfect lane to leak out in transition. The Spurs didn’t have a body on him. Fox threw up a lob to Caley-Stein and he somehow handled a pass in a tough spot and threw down an emphatic slam in one motion.
https://twitter.com/TheRenderNBA/status/1062211561614438401
The Kings style lends itself to plays like this. They want to find lob runners. They want to get Fox moving because the Spurs will send three players at him to make sure he can’t run free to the rim, inevitably leaving guys open. In this case, it was Cauley-Stein.
It was insane. It was unexpected. It was fun. The Kings can be defined by all of that, which is a delightful departure from years past.
Is all of this legitimate? Yes. The Kings are a threat and should be taken seriously every night. They’ve proven that early in the season. They’re going to make you run and if you don’t run with them they’ll get you off the floor in a hurry. Can the Kings manage to turn this all into a playoff run? That part feels a little more doubtful.
Speed is what Sacramento has going for it best right now, but there are still problems. They’re extremely young. Which is great for entertainment, but most young teams have a hard time winning over the course of an 82 game season. Youth lacks consistency, and, unsurprisingly, that’s the Kings biggest issue right now. Statistically, they are a very average team. Speed is their defining trait, but it only gets them to a middle of the road offense. Their defense has moments of brilliance that can befuddle even the best offenses, but work them enough and looks will open up. Sacramento is very aggressive on that end which is both a strength and a weakness, as they will chase the ball to the point of getting out of position against crisp ball and player movement. They’re a horrid rebounding team and they shoot a low amount of 3-pointers compared to the rest of the NBA.
Does any of this matter? No. Not even a little. The Kings just need building blocks to grow on and something for their fans to enjoy. They’ve given them that and the goal should be to continue that through the entire season. Don’t skip steps in the process. Sacramento needs to let everything play out with what it has and then use the offseason to build more. Do that, and this could finally be the start of growth for the Kings. Something their fans have been desperate to see for years.
