Kings star Fox admits he will likely play with a finger injury all season originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
Through four games so far, Kings star guard De’Aaron Fox hasn’t been 100 percent.
And it will likely be that way for the remainder of the 78 games of the 2024-25 NBA season.
The 26-year-old recently revealed more details on new finger injury to Kings radio play-by-play announcer Gary Gerould, who noticed Fox playing with his left shooting-hand fingers taped.
“For sure it’s on the dominant hand,” Fox said after Sacramento’s 113-96 win over the Utah Jazz on Tuesday night at Delta Center (h/t Sactown Sports 1140). “It happened on the second or third day of training camp, so at this point, I’ll be tapping my finger all season.
“Unless we get a month off sometime, it’s going to be here to stay.”
That’s relevant news for the Kings, granted Fox suffered an avulsion fracture of the index finger in his left shooting hand just two seasons ago during their first-round playoff series against the Golden State Warriors.
Fox still played through the seven-game series with the broken finger, but it was obvious how the injury affected him for the final three games.
In the first four games of the playoff series, Fox averaged 31.5 points on 44.7 percent shooting from the field and 34.2 percent from 3-point range, with 6.0 rebounds, 7.0 assists, 2.5 steals and 3.0 turnovers in 38.5 minutes. Over the final three, after sustaining the injury, he averaged 22 points on 38.7 percent shooting from the field and 32 percent from beyond the arc, with 4.7 rebounds, 8.7 assists, 1.7 steals and 5.3 steals in 38.6 minutes.
He’s now dealing with a similar injury — but doesn’t have an entire offseason to recover.
Through four games this season, though, you wouldn’t really have guessed he was playing with the injury.
It’s a fox an average of 21.5 points on 46.4 percent shooting with 4.5 rebounds, 7.5 assists and 1.5 steals in 36 minutes. His 3-point shooting is down, shooting at just a 29.2 percent clip from beyond the arc, and he’s averaging 3.5 turnovers.
The addition of DeMar DeRozan was expected to help take the load off Fox and Domantas Sabonis, and while the point guard hopes to avoid further aggravating his fingers, that’s likely to be exactly what he’ll do.
