Data suggests that De'Aaron Fox is one of the best of his generation at this skill

De'Aaron Fox is an All-Star and an All-NBA guard, and last season, he led the league in total steals and finished 17th in the NBA in Estimated Plus-Minus (EPM), per Dunks & Threes. All told, Fox is a great player (and the best player on the Sacramento Kings).

When you are a great player, you tend to have a lot of skills that you are good/great at. Fox is no different. He is great at dribble handoffs, floaters, defending at the point of attack, etc. But when it comes to this specific skill, he may be more than just great. Fox may be generational.

Fox Can Finish Around The Rim

The website BBall Index (one of my favorite websites for researching articles) has a tool known as "Rim Shot Making Efficiency," and according to that metric, Fox owns the two best rim-finishing seasons since 2014.

That's right, our guy Fox's 2022-23 and 2020-21 regular seasons rank ahead of the likes of famous interior scorers like Derrick Rose, LeBron James, Tyrese Maxey, and Zion Williamson.

What Is Rim Shot Making Efficiency?

I know what many of you are probably thinking. It's cool that Fox fares so well in this statistic, but what the heck does it even mean?

Great question, and to answer it, here is a quote from BBall Index's Taylor Wyman explaining how the metric works:

"This metric measures how much a player over or under-performs relative to expectation," Wyman wrote in an article for BBall Index. "It does this by looking at the difficulty of a shot, creating an expected eFG%, and then comparing it to the player’s actual eFG% on that shot. This metric is also padded with a specific number of league average attempts to enable higher predictiveness by combating the problem of small sample sizes."

Basically, "Rim Shot Making Efficiency" is a version of rim percentage that adjusts for the difficulty of shots a player is taking around the rim. As you all know, not all shots around the rim are created equal. Some are completely uncontested, while others are being impeded by all-time rim protectors like Rudy Gobert. This metric accounts for those different variables.

Now, this doesn't mean that Fox is the best at creating easy opportunities around the rim. It just means that he is one of the best at converting on shots around the rim, even the really tough ones. That is likely why he's put together better seasons based on this statistic than human freight trains like James and Williamson (who excel at creating easy shots around the rim).

And considering that the sample size dates back a decade, it is safe to say that Fox is one of the great rim finishers of his era. Now, let's see if he can put together another historic season in 2024-25.