Q&A: Kings’ De’Aaron Fox on love, basketball, trade requests and will to win in Sacramento
Kings point guard De’Aaron Fox didn’t look like himself at times last season after the reality of another lost year began to set in.
He carried a dour demeanor into postgame press conferences, head down, shoulders sunk. His answers were short. His smile was gone.
Fox, 24, seemed much more at ease when he sat down in a quiet corner of the Rush Lounge at Golden 1 Center on Thursday afternoon for a one-on-one interview with The Sacramento Bee. That familiar smile has returned with the promise of a new year as the Kings prepare for their season opener against the Portland Trail Blazers on Oct. 19.
Fox believes in his coaches. He believes in his teammates. He believes in the roster general manager Monte McNair has assembled with Domantas Sabonis, rookie first-round draft pick Keegan Murray and a collection of long, athletic shooters around them.
Fox genuinely believes this could be the year the Kings finally end their NBA-record 16-year playoff drought. He bubbles with excitement when he thinks about someday recreating the magic of the fabled 2001-02 season, when Sacramento reached the Western Conference finals after winning 61 games in the regular season.
“Even in my second year, we were over .500 for most of the season, so towards the back half of the year, it was crazy,” Fox said. “Kings fans are ready to really have something to cheer for.”
Fox discussed a variety of subjects in a 15-minute Q&A with The Bee. Topics included his marriage to Recee Caldwell and their summer wedding; coach Mike Brown; his goals for the coming season; his allegiance to a city that has watched him grow up since he came out of Kentucky as the No. 5 pick in the 2017 NBA draft; and whether he has considered requesting a trade.
First of all, congratulations on your marriage. Mike Brown said it was probably the grandest wedding he’s ever been to.
“Man, the food — we had food trucks, like a taco truck and a Cane’s truck,” Fox said. “People were like, you don’t eat on your wedding day, and we had a hot dog at like 4 o’clock. That was the last time we really ate. Some of the stories that people say are definitely true and that’s one of them, but we had fun. It was great.”
Most importantly, was it everything Recee dreamed it would be?
“Yeah, yeah, she loved it,” Fox said. “She loved it. It was a great night. And everybody said they had fun, so we put on a good celebration.”
You two go together so well you once went to a costume party dressed up as peanut butter and jelly.
“Yeah,” Fox said. “It’s funny because our costumes came in, but they didn’t fit, so she ran to, like, Party City or something and we had to just try to get something that went together, because with us, if we’re going to do something like that, we’re going to match.”
She was a point guard at UCLA, Texas Tech and Cal. We’ve even seen her get in the gym with you. But how did she react when you said you wanted to take Kings assistant coach Luke Loucks on your honeymoon?
“Well, it was actually her idea,” Fox said. “She asked me if I was fine with it, and I’m like, yeah, that’s cool. We like Luke and she had obviously worked with him, so she knew him. First, we were going to take Jesse (Green), who was our strength coach, but they’re with the Pittsburgh Penguins now, so we ended up taking Zac (Howe), who’s now the head (strength and conditioning coach). So, these are people we like hanging out with and like being around, and we were working out with them all summer anyway, so we didn’t want to miss a beat. If it was at the beginning of the summer, then we would have went by ourselves, but being in August, it wasn’t a good time to take a two- or three-week break.”
You had a lot of people from the Kings organization at your wedding, from players and coaches to the front office and ownership. Why was it important to have so many members of your basketball family there to share that day with you?
“It was great, just that we all support each other, whether it’s in life or on the basketball court,” Fox said. “Sometimes they don’t go hand in hand, but at times they do go hand in hand, and we’re all here to support each other. It’s just a great feeling, knowing that your teammates are there for you on one of the most important — if not the most important — day of your life, so it was definitely great having Vivek, the owners and GMs down to the players and staff.”
You are entering your sixth season in the NBA. What kind of individual and team goals do you have?
“For me, individually, I think it always just goes back to shooting the ball,” Fox said. “It’s been good in practice, so now it’s really just taking it from the practice floor to the game floor. You have to do it in games because, at the end of the day, if you don’t do it in games, it doesn’t matter. If that happens, I think the sky’s the limit for myself individually and the sky’s the limit for the team to win games. Especially now, your point guard has to be able to shoot the ball. To win a championship, I don’t know the last time a team with a point guard who really didn’t shoot the ball well won a championship. We’re probably looking close to 10 years ago with San Antonio, where TP (Tony Parker) wasn’t really a good 3-point shooter. To win in this league, your point guard has to be able to shoot the ball, so that’s the most important thing for me right now.”
You’ve been part of this organization and the NBA long enough to recognize what works and what doesn’t. With the additions of Mike Brown, Domantas Sabonis, Malik Monk, Kevin Huerter and some of the other pieces the Kings have added, how confident are you that this team can take that step to become a legitimate playoff contender?
“I’m extremely confident,” Fox said. “We’ve added guys that can pass the ball, guys that can shoot the ball, guys who are athletic. Especially with a defensive-minded coach like Mike, who can scheme and do all this stuff, but obviously for us, we have to want to defend and that’s where I think our future lies. We’re going to be a team that can score the ball. I don’t think that will be a problem. Even if we’re not shooting well, we have guys that can touch the paint, get open shots, get offensive rebounds. We have guys who are athletic enough to do those things, but at the end of the day we have to be able to stop people. I think we have the personnel that can do it, and we also have a coach who’s going to demand it, so I think that’s great for us.”
There are stats out there showing you have elite defensive capabilities against the league’s top scorers , but poor numbers against everyone else. Have you seen those stats and what do you make of them?
“Yeah, I saw it,” Fox said. “I mean, really, just being a competitor, but to be an ultimate competitor, you have to be able to get up for every game, no matter who you’re guarding, no matter who you’re going out there to play against. So, for me, it’s just being ready to do that night in and night out, no matter if I’m guarding a guy who doesn’t shoot the ball much or if I’m guarding the best player on the team. You just have to always be locked in. To be where we want to be, I know I’m going to have to do that night in and night out.”
How tough is it to produce that kind of effort every night for 82 games?
“I think it’s tough, but the NBA is hard,” Fox said. “It’s hard to win in this league no matter who you’re going against, really. If you go out there and you’re lollygagging and you’re not ready to play, anybody can beat you by 20, so it’s just always being ready to play 82 games, and hopefully more after that.”
What is it going to take for this team to make the necessary improvement on defense?
“For us, it’s going to be, one, a communication thing and, two, I think it’s effort,” Fox said. “Most teams can make the first or second effort. Now, it’s the third or fourth or sometimes fifth effort that you’re either leaving a shooter open or a guy is getting a layup because maybe someone stopped. I think those are things that make really good defensive teams. Not too many teams have three or four guys who are just all-world defenders. That just doesn’t happen. Even Utah, besides Rudy (Gobert), they never really had guys who were necessarily lockdown defenders, but they were still a good defensive team. I think we have the personnel to where we can actually have multiple guys who are able to stay in front of someone from an individual standpoint, but it’s team defense that ultimately wins you games.”
Your demeanor and body language during media sessions seemed different at times last season. Was that just a culmination of all the frustration you’ve felt here or something else?
“Losing’s not fun,” Fox said. “I’ve said it before, I was never used to losing, so it happening again in Year 5 was definitely something that kind of took a toll, but now that we have new faces on the coaching staff, a lot of new faces on the team, it’s not on them, so this is an entirely new team. I feel like a lot of guys are kind of having a fresh start, so to speak, so it definitely feels good.”
In recent years, we’ve seen the “player empowerment era” with more players forcing trades to find more desirable situations for themselves. Is that something you have or would ever consider?
“I’ve never really considered requesting a trade or anything, even through the really bad (times) that we’ve had here,” Fox said. “For me, if they wanted a change and I was traded, then that’s the way the business works. Guys who get paid more than me have been traded. Guys who don’t make a lot of money have been traded as well, so just knowing that you could be traded at any second anyway, I’m not really thinking about that, but I want to win. I want to win here and I’ve said that many times, but I think now we have the team to do that. I think this is the most talented team that I’ve been a part of since I’ve been in the NBA. Probably not even close.”
You lit a fire under Kings fans when you made the Players Tribune video expressing your feelings about Sacramento and the team’s fanbase. Have your feelings changed at all or do you still have that same fire inside of you?
“No, my feelings haven’t changed at all,” Fox said. “I want to win just as bad or even more than Kings fans want to win. Any time you speak to a Kings fan, nine times out of 10 they’re going to bring up 2001-02, and I want to be able to give them those type of memories as well. I want to win for myself, too, but to have that many people who are Kings fans around the world and here in Sacramento that want to get back to that level of winning, and even having DC (Doug Christie) in the gym and Bobby (Jackson) in the gym still, for myself and for them and for all the fans, I want to get back to that level of winning.”
OK. Lightning round. What’s the first thing you think when I mention … Mike Brown?
“Details, details, details,” Fox said. “We can do something good, but he will nitpick because it could always be better, so definitely details.”
Keegan Murray?
“Efficient. Everything he does is efficient,” Fox said. “It was funny, I just told Draymond (Green), if Keegan had a beard, I would think he was in his 30s. His demeanor, his game, everything.”
Malik Monk?
“Exciting,” Fox said. “Someone I’ve grown up seeing play and playing with in college, just knowing that he could explode at any time.”
Kevin Huerter?
“I would say stable,” Fox said. “Kevin, from the moment he’s come in and once we put our offense in, he’s been able to play point, come off pin-downs, be used as a cutter, and, obviously, shoot the ball. I feel like Kevin is that steady presence that you kind of know you’re always going to have, and then he’s a good defender. He’s a solid defender, so definitely steady.”
Is the team’s connective tissue better this season with more size, length and positional versatility? It seems like you have more players who can legitimately slide between positions.
“That’s something that every team wants,” Fox said. “You want length and size, and I think this is the longest and biggest team that we’ve had, but alongside of that, we have a lot of guys who can shoot the ball, so I think we have a really good balance, for sure.”
Is this the best you’ve ever felt going into a season?
“Yeah,” Fox said. “For me personally, physically and as a team, this is the best I’ve ever felt.”
This story was originally published October 7, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
