With the Sacramento Kings’ 2024–25 campaign now officially in the books—thanks to a playoff exit at the hands of the Dallas Mavericks—the team’s attention has shifted squarely to the offseason.
Several players from this past season’s roster are heading into free agency, and over the coming days, we’ll be breaking down the pros and cons of re-signing each of them.
One such player is Markelle Fultz. After spending five seasons with the Orlando Magic, Fultz began this past year unsigned before the Kings brought him in on a veteran minimum deal in mid-February. The question now: did his performance during that brief stint do enough to convince Sacramento to bring him back for another run?
Should the Kings bring back Markelle Fultz?
The Sacramento Kings were active at the 2025 Trade Deadline, dealing five players—including franchise cornerstone De’Aaron Fox—in exchange for Zach LaVine, Jonas Valanciunas, and Jake LaRavia. While the trades drastically altered their roster, they also left the team with even more defensive holes to address.
Enter Markelle Fultz. After a tumultuous start to his career, going from the No. 1 overall pick in the stacked 2017 draft to struggling with a rare injury that robbed him of his shooting ability, Fultz reinvented himself as one of the league’s top guard defenders.
In the 2024-25 season, Fultz ranked in the 88th percentile for steal rate and was a steady presence (when healthy) on an Orlando Magic team that finished second in the league in defensive rating. The Kings brought him in with hopes that he could help shore up their bottom-tier defense, which has been a persistent issue for the franchise over the past two decades.
The results were promising. With Fultz on the floor, the Kings improved by 6.6 points per 100 possessions defensively (92nd percentile, per Cleaning the Glass), and their overall defensive rating rose to the 65th percentile. However, his impact was limited, as Fultz only played 21 games and averaged just 8.8 minutes per contest. The reason for this? While he bolstered the defense, his presence on the floor caused a significant dip in the Kings’ offensive rating, dropping by 5.1 points per 100 possessions (20th percentile). This shift turned their top-ten offense into a middle-of-the-pack attack.
As we noted in our analysis of Jae Crowder, it’s tough to quantify the value of a player’s leadership and intangibles in the locker room. While Fultz’s defensive contributions were noticeable, his overall on-court impact wasn’t enough to warrant the Kings committing resources to bring him back for the 2025–26 season.