Outrageous ranking disrespects De’Aaron Fox for easily explained reasons

Bleacher Report's Zach Buckley crafted a list of players he considers overrated, and De'Aaron Fox was listed at number five. I have a huge problem with that. Buckley starts his criticism by claiming the "public perception tends to regard him as a first- or second-tier floor general," but states that "he's more like a 6'3" scoring guard."

He then went on to basically blame Fox for the Kings' inability to make playoff pushes during his eight-year tenure in Sacramento before using box plus/minus to label him as "closer to being a good player than a great one." There are several flaws with this logic, and I'll start with one key, indisputable argument: the Kings are and have for a long time been a trainwreck.

Even great players can struggle to uplift poor franchises

Let's address that first point. I strongly disagree that the perception of Fox is that he's some top-tier floor general. He's 100% a scoring guard, and everyone knows that. If you discount his decreased output after joining the Spurs, D. Fox averaged at least 25 points per game in four of his last five seasons. Nobody claimed he was going to orchestrate an offense like prime Chris Paul.

There's nothing wrong with being a scoring guard, though. You have to put points on the board to win the game, and if the guy tasked with handling the ball the most is elite at that, it's a benefit, not a knock against him. Ja Morant, Luka Doncic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, etc., are all scoring guards, but nobody views that as a negative.

Perhaps Buckley also forgot where Fox is playing now. He's in San Antonio, where the point guard of the Big 3 era, Tony Parker, was also a scoring guard. It would have been sacrilegious to claim that TP was overrated because he didn't pass the ball like Steve Nash. There are several ways to make an impact from every position. Point guard is not exempt from that.

As far as not making several playoff pushes with that front office running things, you gotta be kidding me. They had the wrong coach in Dave Joerger when he was drafted. They went from Joerger to Luke Walton and Alvin Gentry, before finally landing on a good coach in Mike Brown. They immediately win 48 games, finish third in the Western Conference, and make the playoffs.

There were only two teams to notch 50 wins that year; the next season, there were five. The Kings won 46 games, and that was only good enough for a ninth seed because the West is a battlefield. But what we're not going to do is blame him for the team not being better when he averaged 27 points, six assists, two steals, and shot a career high 37% from three.

Calling a player like this overrated is blasphemous. If you're going to look at how he performed in San Antonio and form an opinion off that, you're still doing it wrong. He was trying to fit into a new system, the best player wasn't around long, and he was fighting through an injury. Fox is a bona fide hooper. His career says so. His 60-point game in November says so. I won't hear anything different.