The Spurs’ De’Aaron Fox problem only has 1 good solution, and it’s not trading him

The San Antonio Spurs fell short of their first title since 2014, and one player everyone wants to blame is De’Aaron Fox. After all, he was supposed to be the veteran presence that steadied the ship when things got dicey, and yet, he was the one who faltered when the lights got brightest.

In five games, the former two-time All-Star averaged just 12.8 points and six assists per game on 43 percent true shooting. The Spurs were a -3 in his minutes for the series, and his clutch time blunders may have cost them a couple of games, which is especially disappointing, considering his supposed affinity for those situations (this is the part where I’m obligated to mention he was soldiering through an ankle injury in the last two rounds).

Now, as the Spurs, who are going to spend the offseason making sure this type of disappointment never happens again, have to ask themselves: what do we do with our Southpaw starting point guard?

The Fox Problem

Fox is what I like to call a “flawed star.” Why I say this is that he is someone getting paid star money who does not produce at the level you would expect him to, given his dollar figure.

This season, Fox was “worth” 9.3 wins (per Dunks & Threes). When you multiply that by the average value of a win (3.8 million dollars), Fox was worth $35.3 million this season. That is roughly $14.2 million less than what he set to be paid on his upcoming extension, making his contract a soon-to-be negative-value deal (to learn more about my formula for estimating player production, check here).

The reason for this is that Fox is an on-ball-centric guard (6th percentile in assisted field goal percentage) who isn’t as good at being on the ball as other high-usage players. Compare Fox to the marks of other high-profile guards:

It also doesn’t help that Fox’s skill set is kind of redundant with the Spurs’ past two top five picks, who are progressing at an unexpected clip. Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper are both rim hunters who struggle shooting from the outside. Fox has only had two seasons in his nine-year career shooting over 34% from beyond the arc, and this year was not one of them. On top of that, Fox no longer gets to the basket the way he did in his early days.

Why it doesn’t need to be resolved just yet

Overpaid players who are redundant to other key players tend to be a death sentence to title hopefuls. To win titles, you need guys outperforming their base salaries and synergizing with other key players.

Fox’s aforementioned extension starts this upcoming season, meaning he is set to eat up between 30-32% of the Spurs’ salary cap all the way through the 2029-30 season. In normal circumstances, the team would need to package some draft capital to get off this contract and free up space as soon as possible. But as is the case with nearly everything involving this Victor Wembanyama-led team, these are not normal circumstances.

The Spurs got so good so fast that three (Harper, Castle, Wembanyama) of their (we’ll call it) five best players are still on their rookie scale contracts in 2026-27. In Harper’s case, he’ll be getting less than ten percent of the team’s cap until 2029.

All three of these guys are well-outperforming their salaries, which makes overpaying Fox tenable for at least a little while longer (Wembanyama’s rookie extension will kick in after next season).

That is, at least from a financial perspective. What happens in the books and on the hardwood, while tied together to a certain degree, aren’t always the same thing. There is some speculation out there that Harper may not be cool with coming off the bench for much longer. And how could you blame him after the postseason he just put together?

Given how much younger and higher his upside is, the Spurs should side with Harper in this instance. But maybe there is a way to work this out cordially.

What if, wait for it, the Spurs have Fox come off the bench? I know, Fox likely fancies himself one of the best guards in the association, and this relegation would be a huge hit to his ego.

But what if we spin it this way: you’ve already gotten paid, so you don’t need to worry about playing for another contract any time soon. Why not just juice your stats by beating up on weaker bench units en route to a Sixth Man of the Year Award? You like Jamal Crawford? He’s got a couple of those.

If Fox isn’t cool with that idea, then yeah, you probably need to trade him, which, by the way, will likely be easier considering the new anti-tanking rules are incentivizing teams to forfeit their championship or bust mentality.

And even if he is cool with it, a day will come when the rest of the team is too expensive to have a luxury like Fox. But thanks to how fast their youngsters got good, that day is not today.