Hours before De’Aaron Fox returned to Sacramento for his first game against his former club, he stated what most Kings fans probably didn’t want to hear. “I truly wanted to play for one team my whole career,” he told ESPN on Friday. “I really did.”
This is part of the reasons why the guard received a standing ovation during in his first match back at Golden 1 Center since the club traded him out to San Antonio on February 3. The exchange was part of a three-team deal which involved multiple players and draft picks.
Despite his wishes to stay put, he ended up landing with the Spurs, alongside superstars Victor Wembanyama and Chris Paul. Before their contest in Northern California, Fox insisted that he “never asked for a trade,” from the franchise that drafted him eight years ago.
“I loved it,” he said of his former club. “Everybody bled purple. It was always great just going to the grocery store, going out to a restaurant. Everybody there was extremely kind. And when we started winning, then it was ‘light the beam’ everywhere. You really felt it around the city. So, it was definitely a great place to be for as long as I was.”
The Kings started off the 2024-25 campaign on the wrong foot, with a poor 13-18 start which led to the firing of coach Mike Brown throughout his third season in Sacramento. Just seven months after his discharge, the tactician has been rewarded with a multiyear extension over last-year’s postseason.
De’Aaron, on the other hand, was set next season to ender his last campaign on his five-year contract. However, he had warned the organization that he wanted to play for coach Brown, and had declined to sign an extension last summer. After the team changed coaches, he felt his time was over.
“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,’” the guard told the press before Friday’s sentimental matchup. “And I told them, ‘I’m not going to play for another coach. I’m going to play for another team.’”
