Stability is a mf. And it is crucial. I know this. Let’s go straight to Fox's quote:
"There was no f---ing list. I wanted to go to San Antonio. A lot of people are mad, saying I handcuffed the team. Well, this is my career. It's not my job to help build your team. I'm not about to just go where they want me to go."
via ESPN -> https://t.co/zD71BC4cWm pic.twitter.com/R13cEJye7l
— Josh Paredes (@Josh810) March 7, 2025
If it were those words alone, then I end at appreciating the honesty. If that were the only context to go by, then my final response is, “I get it. No one deserves to be miserable. If you have the opportunity to take charge of your own joy from a place that feels uncontrolled or unreliable, I cannot fault you for an attempted pursuit of it.”
Okay. I take one thing back. Some people deserve to be miserable, and many of them already are. But De’Aaron Fox shouldn't be one of them.
Sacramento Kings fans shouldn’t qualify for Official Conscripted Misery Bearers either. For the last 15 years or so, that feels like the expectation. But I’ve been around the Lions for a long time. Repeated exposure to getting punched in the gut will have an effect on your emotional digestive system. Being a fan of a bad team, like a really big fan of a really bad team, does not do good things to one’s psyche.
A quote from the ESPN article linked in the tweet has Fox saying the following: "I was like, 'Yo, I've been here for going on my eighth year. If Mike gets fired, I'll be going on my fifth coach, and I told them, 'I'm not going to play for another coach. I'm going to play for another team.'"
Seems straightforward. Oh well. 31 games into the season, then coach Mike Brown was fired. Critically, this came almost directly after Brown called attention to a De’Aaron Fox mistake, which led to the latest Kings loss. Fox must have been upset, right?
Subscribe to The Whiteboard, FanSided’s daily email newsletter on everything basketball. If you like The Whiteboard, share it with a friend! If you don’t like it, share it with an enemy!
De'Aaron Fox was not upset then. He’s upset now
The article states otherwise: “Fox, who says he still talks to Brown every week, even had to dispel rumors about tension with his former coach among the Spurs' staffers upon arriving in San Antonio.” The reputation of a coach killer didn’t just touch his reputation according to those outside of league circles; the reputation followed him to the team that had already traded for him.
The Kings' choice to not dispel rumors of Fox’s purported involvement in Brown’s firing was an… let’s go with… “odd” choice. Maybe malicious or stupid. They just kind of didn’t say anything.
To quote Fox again, “Did it weigh on me? No. I don't give a f---.” That’s a very relatable, very human quote in that it’s intensely untrue. It's the kind of lie that eventually forms a pulse, position, and personality.
The people who don’t care are not the ones who say they don’t care. The people who don’t care are the ones you don’t touch. The ones who don’t say anything. That's an entirely different level of dangerous. Those who proclaim their disinterest tend to be the ones who just straight-up need some sort of sustained support. Some kind of basic balance. Some direction. From someone. Something.
The “Shut up. I don’t care” people are extremely cognizant that what they are doing and have been doing is everything they think they’re supposed to be doing, but the process isn’t paying off. As a defense mechanism, they state they have been abandoning the process all along in order to avoid association with the notion that they are in some way trying their best but still coming up short of some standard.
For the vast majority of people, you have to be trained not to try. You have to be convinced not to care. And you know what? The people who would try to impress upon you that what you do doesn’t matter and what you feel is inappropriate are very, very convincing. The world itself will do half the work for them if you let it. Unfortunately, beginning to believe them doesn’t serve you. It only serves them.
Cynicism is a sin. Once you give into it, you’re already in hell.
But here cynicism is declared by De’Aaron himself. And I get how he got there. Support, balance, and direction are three words quite difficult to associate with the Sacramento Kings. Per the article, “Since the Kings drafted Fox in 2017, Fox had played under Dave Joerger, Luke Walton, Alvin Gentry and Brown. Joerger's three seasons were the most of any Kings coach Fox played for in his 7½ seasons.” Fox, Brown, and Domantas Sabonis led the Kings to the playoffs for the first time in a generation of NBA players. Two of those people are gone now.
If De’Aaron Fox wanted to go to the Spurs, I err on the side of the idea that the dude earned the chance to go to the Spurs.
Thanks. I’m sad now.
I’m sorry that this has gone down a depressing path, but the only way I can clarify the situation in my own head is by diving into its drive on an emotional level. The fact is, this entire situation was predicated on plentiful periods of pain. I empathize with Kings fans as much as I do any other fanbase. De’Aaron Fox was the brightest spot for the Kings since the Chris Webber era.
And frankly, the organization was probably lucky to have him committed for as long as they did. Once Fox stated, “Yo, don’t do this one thing,” and then the Kings did that one thing… I don’t see how the situation is recovered. I say this as a slight to the organization rather than a slight to the fans of the team, but it’s virtuous that he held on as long as he did. There would be no beam without him.
This Sacramento Kings era, if it qualifies as an era, probably goes down as a footnote in broad NBA history, but time and place matters so much more on a smaller scale. That 2023 Kings team was an irrepressible joy to watch for people inside and outside of Sacramento. Those who had a basic knowledge of their history an any inclination toward vicarious joy were eating good that year. Not only were the Kings a better-than-average basketball team, they were the best at something. That offense was a masterpiece. I truly thought, truly hoped that it would last longer than one year.
Pandora was a jerk.
Nothing you just said made me any less sad in any way. Thanks, Mat
“The organization still holds Fox in high regard for all of his contributions to the franchise and the city.” Wow. Cool. Neat. Thanks.
This is how the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a small collection of assets and faith against reason that just maybe this next iteration of Kings basketball can defy odds and improve on the standard set in the couple years before it was prematurely birthed to existence.
Yo, if the Rapture happens because the Kings won a championship, that would be pretty dope. I won't just hold the L; I'll paint it on my wall.
Everything happens so much
— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) June 28, 2012
And maybe Fox will have support now. The ESPN piece is full of jabs and air-clearing, but one quote from Chris Paul particularly stands out in that it's not difficult to hear: "I've played against him. I've guarded Fox. I know what it's like. I'll live and die with whatever shot he shoots."
If there is one team in the NBA that models stability, it is the San Antonio Spurs. When they’re bad, they don’t freak out and clean house; they regroup, reassess, and sell high on players who perform well in a way that doesn’t fit a long-term vision in order to set the stage for a future plan (probably).
When they’re good, they don’t dominate; they play a solid 95/100 and baffle the opposing team by repeatedly bludgeoning them with solid basketball (probably). That’s their pedigree, anyway. There are very few teams in the NBA nowadays that actually have any semblance of continuity. In a good way, at least. The opposite is much easier to achieve.
Speaking of, the Sacramento Kings buy day-old bread from Jimmy Johns and try to sell it to ducks at local parks. Ducks don’t have money, and bread isn’t good for them. Don’t do this.