SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The sight of Rich Paul at a Lakers game is nothing new.
The Los Angeles-based founder and CEO of Klutch Sports is widely known as the long-time agent for LeBron James and Anthony Davis, two Lakers currently spending their weekend in California’s capital for a pair of games against the Kings. But when Paul spent his Thursday evening at Golden 1 Center for the opener, seated in that corner courtside chair across from the home team’s bench, it had nothing to do with James or Davis.
This visit was all about De’Aaron Fox — and the danger zone the Kings have entered regarding the uncertain future of their franchise guard.
League sources say Paul — who sat next to Fox’s wife, Recee, throughout the 113-100 loss that dropped the Kings to 13-15 and 12th in the West — was in Sacramento to meet with general manager Monte McNair and assistant general manager Wes Wilcox before the game. The discussion, league and team sources said, was focused on an existential question that needs to be answered if this partnership that began eight seasons ago between Fox and the Kings is going to continue long term.
What’s the plan here?
As Fox told The Athletic in October after declining the Kings’ three-year, $165 million extension offer, and reiterated this week during a podcast with another one of Paul’s clients, the Warriors’ Draymond Green, the notion of playing for a team that is perpetually grappling for a back-end playoff spot simply doesn’t match the vision he has for the rest of his career.
“I want to make sure that we’re in a position to try to win in the future, because that’s ultimately what I want to do,” Fox, who turned 27 on Friday, told Green and fellow former player Baron Davis. “For me, it’s ‘Are we looking like we’re continuing to get better year after year, and ‘Are we going to be able to compete at a high level?”
Yet for all the focus on the financial aspects of his contract decision — he can qualify for a five-year, $345-million supermax deal if he earns an All-NBA selection — his holistic view of it all has never been more clear. Annual contention is the aim.
While league sources say Fox has not asked for a trade, the former All-Star and his prominent agent are reading the room in Sacramento before deciding what comes next. Fox, who hired Paul in November 2022, has another season left on his current deal. He has long raved about the Sacramento experience, lauding the passion of the fans and saying that he wants to be one of the few NBA players who spends their entire career in one location. He spent part of this week donating money and toys to families in need at multiple events in the region.
But the Kings’ beam isn’t burning as bright as it was two seasons ago, when Fox and Domantas Sabonis led the group that broke the franchise’s league-record playoff drought. And now, the prospect of him declining an extension again this summer — or perhaps telling them ahead of time that he plans on doing so — would inevitably force the Kings to consider trading Fox rather than losing him for nothing in free agency two summers from now.
Meanwhile, rival executives are monitoring the Fox situation closely and league sources say one team in particular — the San Antonio Spurs — is positioning itself to pursue the Houston native as a possible partner for Victor Wembanyama, should Fox become available. Barring a significant Kings turnaround, others are surely close behind.
The irony of the Lakers being in the building in the Kings’ latest loss was impossible to miss: In 2019, it was a power play by Davis and Paul that pressured New Orleans into sending the big man to Laker Land. For small market teams that want to retain elite talent, that situation represents the nightmare scenario. The Kings’ charge now, with the Feb. 6 trade deadline looming large and so much season left ahead, is to avoid that fate and forge a future with Fox.
This reality, unwelcome though it might be, sits under the surface of an increasingly urgent moment for a win-now operation that hasn’t won enough to feel comfortable of late. Kings coach Mike Brown, who has routinely held detailed postgame news briefings to explain the nuanced gameplan mistakes his team repetitively makes, has admitted he is “searching” for the right message or adjustment that might turn this season around quickly.
After a particularly discouraging loss in Portland late last month, Brown ripped into his team’s competitive spirit and focus and, in the 24 hours that followed, finally decided to pull the trigger on a move his staff had been discussing for weeks, elevating Malik Monk into the starting lineup after 162 straight games as their super sub.
It was a sign of the dwindling time and decreasing patience. Brown might prefer to balance Monk’s rotation pattern out of a bench role, keeping the Kings better protected at certain subsections of the game, but he finally decided he needed to get all his best players out on the court immediately and with increased frequency. Their four other starters — Fox, Keegan Murray, DeMar DeRozan and Sabonis — are all top-20 in the NBA in minutes played per game. He essentially trimmed his rotation to eight players in the first Lakers game.
They’re attempting to hit the gas to climb up the crowded conference standings and, as Sabonis noted postgame on Thursday, there’s a clear path and 54 games left.
“Someone just told me we’re three games out of fifth (seed),” Sabonis said.
The Monk move did pay some early dividends. He’s upped his production to 18 points and 6.9 assists per game since the elevation and they have the league’s best offensive rating (120.0) in the eight games since he’s become a starter. That included a three-game win streak over the Spurs, Jazz and Pelicans that dragged them back to .500.
But they opened this seismic five-game homestand with a gut-punch 130-129 loss to the Nuggets that included a DeRozan fumble at the buzzer with a clear path for a game-winning dunk. This had several in the organization repeating a painful early-season stat in the aftermath. The Kings are 3-9 in games decided by five points or fewer this season, a surprising and destructive twist for a team that employs Fox and DeRozan, two of the league’s best fourth-quarter killers in recent seasons. These narrow losses are why they have the seventh-best net rating in the conference but the 12th-best record.
They are 11th in the NBA in net rating, yet are the only team in the top 17 with a losing record. The defense — 14th in the league — remains the primary problem. Even with all of their offensive imperfections, they have the league’s seventh-best rating on that end. There are reasons for optimism, to be sure, but the underwhelming results have sparked speculation someone within the Kings’ circle might pay the price.
For now, all indications are that Kings owner Vivek Ranadive will resist whatever urge(s) might arise to fire someone in the front office or on the bench. McNair signed a three-year extension in January 2023, and Brown signed a new three-year deal last summer that could be worth as much as $30 million.
The solutions, it seems, will need to come from other means. And their goal of fixing the lack of depth on the roster will be front and center in these next seven weeks.
As Oklahoma City and Dallas have shown in recent years with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Luka Dončić, respectively, the easiest way to convince a star player in his prime to stay is to build a roster with championship-level depth. It’s easier said than done, but it’s the most fool-proof way for the Kings to ensure that Fox recommits.
From McNair down, the Kings are well aware this roster needs an upgrade, if not multiple. More specifically, team sources say they’re prioritizing backup center and the wing spots.
There are some familiar names who appear to be back on their radar, league sources said. Among them: Portland’s Jerami Grant, Utah’s John Collins or Washington’s Jonas Valančiūnas and Kyle Kuzma. Brooklyn’s Cam Johnson is known to be of significant interest, as is — to a lesser degree — the Nets’ Dorian Finney-Smith. The notion of adding a high-profile player like Zach LaVine (Chicago) or Brandon Ingram (New Orleans) is believed to be very unlikely, but the Kings have made a habit during the McNair-Wilcox era of exploring any and all possibilities that might improve the team, even if they don’t appear to make sense at first glance.
The Kings’ lack of depth has been a major issue, which only spotlights the front office’s decision to use the 13th pick in June’s draft on the injured Devin Carter, a combo guard who tore his labrum in the draft process and arrived in need of surgery. Carter is nearing a return and, if he can deliver anything immediately, would be a welcome boost.
However unfair, his abbreviated rookie season will be pinned up against the paths not traveled. The Kings dangled the 13th pick in trade talks with Chicago for Alex Caruso, but the Bulls opted for Josh Giddey. They then selected Carter ahead of Dalton Knecht (50 made 3s in 27 games) and Jared McCain, a Sacramento native who impressed in his workout and had been excellent for the Sixers prior to a recent meniscus tear.
But those are the marginal areas of concern. The offensive decrease from Murray in his third season is of larger impact.
After making an NBA rookie-record 206 3s at a 41.1-percent clip, Murray’s percentage has dipped to 30.4 percent on a lessened volume two seasons later.
“When you add firepower like we have in our starting lineup this year, my role goes down a little bit,” Murray told The Athletic recently. “But I feel like I’m doing all the little stuff.”
Murray has evolved into the Kings’ best multi-positional defender. He’s bulked up and improved his lateral speed. Brown runs him out there for 36.3 minutes every night and trusts him with all the league’s difficult assignments. There remains such a strong belief in him at every level of the organization that he is considered protected in advance of the deadline.
But the upward mobility of these Kings could be largely dependent on the two-way leap they’re waiting on from Murray. He’s a barometer. Murray is making 48 percent of his shots in Kings’ wins this season and only 38 percent in their losses.
“I feel good about my shot,” Murray said. “They just haven’t gone in. I’ve shot better this month than November. It’ll even out.”
With Monk now in the starting lineup, Murray is fifth in the offensive pecking order to open halves, essentially bumped into a lower-usage role he watched Harrison Barnes navigate the last few seasons. The Kings basically signed DeRozan over the top of him offensively this offseason.
“My first couple years I got a lot (of shots) off (dribble hand-offs),” Murray said. “This year it’s more opportunistic. I don’t know where it’s going to come from. That’s a change. But I feel confident.”
DeRozan is averaging 22 points per game, but his integration has morphed their style. The dribble hand-offs for Murray and Kevin Huerter are way down, as is the team’s volume of 3s. They finished last season third in 3-point attempts. They’re currently 24th in attempts and 22nd in accuracy.
Huerter’s continued struggles have hurt there, though he’s had a mini surge lately as he settles into a bench role. Keon Ellis has been in and out of the rotation as his defensive impact has fluctuated. Trey Lyles has struggled with lingering calf issues. Huerter and Lyles (making a combined $24.8 million) profile as the likeliest to be moved in a mid-tier type trade.
In many ways, this is Fox’s finest season yet.
He’s averaging a team-high 26.2 points, 6.1 assists, five rebounds and 1.7 steals, making him one of just four players who are hitting those marks to this point. The other three — Dončić, Gilgeous-Alexander and Denver’s Nikola Jokić — are widely considered MVP candidates.
Fox, who has made a concerted effort to be a defensive leader in recent years, trails only the Thunder’s Alex Caruso in deflections per game (3.6 to Caruso’s 3.7). He had a 60-point game, setting a new career high against Minnesota on Nov. 15 in an overtime loss. He’s playing a career-high 37.2 minutes.
All in all, it’s All-Star/All-NBA-type stuff.
Yet two days after the Kings’ one-point loss to the Nuggets, Brown turned the attention to the ways that Fox can do even more.
“The reality is it starts with me and ends with me, but Fox has to step up,” Brown said. “He’s a great player — on the verge of being a superstar. There are those guys, and there are the superstars (who) win at a high level. …You have a lot of responsibility if you’re that guy, and he’s that guy. And he can’t be a part of not being locked in. And he damn sure can’t be a part of letting it go, if we’re not as a team. So the pressure is on me, and the pressure is on him, to go get it done.”
Mike Brown’s challenge to De’Aaron Fox when getting his Kings to embrace the details & lock in:
“Fox has to step up. He’s a great player, on the verge of being a superstar…you have a lot of responsibility if you’re that guy, and he’s that guy. And he can’t be a part of not… pic.twitter.com/YU9891LSit
— Sean Cunningham (@SeanCunningham) December 18, 2024
That purple coin has two sides, though. The pressure, quite clearly, is on the Kings too.
(Photo of Mike Brown and De’Aaron Fox: Sergio Estrada / USA Today via Imagn Images)