Why do the Kings keep losing? I was looking forward to them making the eighth seed and breaking their neverending pattern of badness that has persisted since I started really paying attention to the NBA about a decade ago. This loss puts them squarely at .500, but being squarely at .500 isn’t good enough in the West (it would be the eighth seed in the East though).
I could blame Bogdan Bogdanovic for regressing from his rookie year. I could blame Buddy Hield for not quite yet being a night-in, night-out 20-PPG scorer. I could blame Dave Joerger for distracting his team with that terrible fake spray-on tan of his. I could blame Willie Cauley-Stein for not trying, Harry Giles for trying too hard, Harrison Barnes for being overpaid bumsauce, or any other player for a myriad of reasons. But I am definitely not blaming De’Aaron Fox. In the Kings’ latest mini-slump, I consider him totally blameless.
When a guy goes from “net negative” his rookie year to “top 15 point guard league-wide” in his second year, nothing can be his fault. Improvement between rookie and sophomore years is expected, but not at this fantastic rate. If there is anybody blaming him for the Kings’ struggles, they need to take a good hard look in the mirror and ask themselves why they would blame a guy like Fox when they could just easily, and much more validly, blame Kosta Koufos’ unsettling baldness.