When the San Antonio Spurs completed a three-team deal with the Chicago Bulls and Sacramento Kings, many people viewed it as thievery on their part.
In theory, the Spurs gave their prodigious big man an All-Star sidekick without giving up too much draft capital or surrendering highly-regarded 2024 first round pick, Stephon Castle. That sounds like the best of both worlds.
However, in practice, the deal has not been nearly as lopsided as many people initially thought.
Has Zach LaVine been better than De'Aaron Fox?
Along with draft compensation, the Kings also got their own former All-Star from the Bulls in the form of Zach LaVine. After a few down seasons, LaVine did a wonderful job of rehabbing his value in the first part of the 2024-25 regular season – so much so that one could argue that LaVine has been the better player between the two.
One area where this is certainly the case has been shooting. On Friday, Kirk Goldsberry fired off a post on Instagram regarding the least efficient jump shooters in the NBA. And according to that data, De'Aaron Fox is the fourth-least efficient shooter in the league since January 1 (0.97 points per jump shot).
This runs in complete contrast to the kind of player LaVine has been this year. A few days ago, we had a post discussing how LaVine has been one of the best shooters in the league based on a metric created by "Automatic" on Twitter (I refuse to call it "X").
Updated top 30 shooters this season!
— Automatic (@automaticnba) February 28, 2025
Malik Beasley 📈📈 https://t.co/Tgig3JEujO pic.twitter.com/bZfuDStjmt
Obviously, there is more to basketball than just shooting. However, given they are similar positions, shooting does play a big part in scoring. On the season, LaVine is in the 93rd percentile in scoring volume (24.1 points per 75 possessions) and 90th percentile in scoring efficiency (63.6% true shooting, per Dunks & Threes). Meanwhile, Fox is in the 91st percentile in scoring volume (23.3 points per 75) and 42nd percentile in scoring efficiency (55.8% true shooting).
When you factor that in with how much Fox's defense has declined this season (going from the 88th percentile in Defensive Estimated Plus-Minus to the 44th percentile), you have a serious argument that LaVine is the best player involved in this deal.
If that is the case and the Kings got him along with multiple first/second round picks, then maybe we should re-think who won the the Fox trade after all.