Spurs, De’Aaron Fox Agree to 4-Year, $229M Extension | What’s Next For San Antonio?

Spurs, De’Aaron Fox Agree to 4-Year, $229M Extension | What’s Next For San Antonio?

We continue to follow breaking news out of the NBA where the Spurs and Dearan Fox have agreed to a 4-year $229 million extension. That’s coming from ESPN. Keeps the Fox in San Antonio through 2029/30. Back in February, the King sent Fox to the Spurs in a three-team trade involving the Bulls and the former All-Star averaging 23 and a half points per game for San Antonio last season. I’m Tommy Train with Sam Quinn. So, four more years for number four, Sam. And you and I were just talking about before we came here on air. It took a whole day to be announced. Yeah, it’s a it’s it’s just a little bit of a surprise. You figured it would have been done on Sunday since the trade came 6 months ago. You would have thought that they would have had, you know, an idea of what this deal was going to take and we might get the early announcement like you got with Luca, but they got it done. It’s it’s now in the books. It’s one of the more interesting contracts in the NBA now, right? Darren Fox is not Luca Donis. He’s not this surefire allNNBA candidate every year. He’s 27. He’s very reliant on speed. How is this contract going to age as it takes him into his 30s? His three-point shot pretty inconsistent. Is that going to be able to hold up? And then, of course, you have these two young guards on the team, Stfan Castle, Dylan Harper, are they going to be able to play together? Are all three of them going to be on the team long term? I’ve got a lot of questions here moving forward, but I look back at the trade. Remember, De’aran Fox forced his way to San Antonio specifically. That’s pretty rare. How often do players say, “I don’t want to play in New York. I don’t want to play in LA. I want to play in San Antonio.” He helped them get him for a discount and now they’re paying him back on the other side of that. The max contract might have been a little bit shaky if they also paid fair trade value, but they didn’t. So now they pay a fair a bigger price to keep him on this extension. All right. So you brought up a couple things which I think are like the big talking points on social media right now, Sam. And let’s sort of like talk through each of them first, okay? Cuz you’re also our salary cap guy and you know all the numbers. Let’s just start with the camp that says this is a good move that reupping De’Arren Fox works in part because of the contracts of the other guys like Stefan Castle and Dylan Harper. The math will still math is basically what I’ve been told. Sam, is that still possible? Yeah, you still have two cheap years for Victor Webbyama who’s still on his rookie deal. You have three cheap years for Stefan Castle. You have four for Dylan Harper. So, they do have a little bit of cap flexibility here. They’re going to be at around the cap next year. You could get back below it by offloading another salary. You know, maybe you know a Calvin Johnson, a Devin Vel. You could operate above the cap, still use that mid level. If you want to make a big trade, you have the numbers to do that with as well. Everything is still kind of on the table for San Antonio. They haven’t made a big enough commitment yet where they’re not going to worry about the aprons. They’re not going to worry about the tax for the foreseeable future. As long as Wemmenyama is on that rookie deal, you’ve got two more years there. I think they’re going to be just fine financially. After that is when things start to get a little bit tougher. Once you have two max players, that’s when you have to start making some harder decisions. And then eventually when Castle and Harper come up, that’s when you have to really decide on a core. You’re not going to keep four players at around the max, something close to that. That’s when you’re going to have to decide who among those three guards is our priority. And he will be 32 Fox at the end of the extension. And again, everyone math and the math and you’re saying it’s doable. But then there’s the other camp which you brought up here and others are just worried about the log jam at that particular position with so many guards here. How do you anticipate that’s going to work with those that are a little bit cautious of today’s news? Yeah, I would expect at some point in the next, let’s say, two years, maybe three, that one of these guards is not on the team, right? I think that’s just the reality. All three of these guys are going to want to be long-term starters. I don’t think San Antonio is going to want to start them together. You could maybe get away with three guards depending on who they are just because Victor Wanyama is so transformational defensively, but Fox not a great shooter. Castle a total non-shooter and we don’t know what kind of shooter Harper’s going to be. These aren’t three guards that can really play together. So, what’s it going to be, right? Maybe you trade for another star. Maybe it’s Giannis. Maybe it’s somebody else and Fox or Castle or Harper or two of them are in that trade. Or maybe you just keep the three of them together for a year or two. You bring one of the younger guys off the bench and you see how it works. And at that point you go, “Okay, we think Castle is the weak link. Let’s trade him.” Or Castle and Harper are both really good. Let’s trade Fox to a win now team. Really devote ourselves to our young guys. It’s going to play out over the next year or two. I don’t think they’re in any rush to find out, but ideally, you want to get this solved within the next two years because that’s when you have to start thinking about a castle extension. And that’s when Fox’s age is going to start showing, right? You want to trade him before his value starts to decline. Right now, he’s still a star, but given the shooting issues and given how reliant he is on athleticism, you just don’t know how much longer that’s going to be the case. Yeah, percentages will tell. It’s not all will pan out or be excellent players. So, it’ll perhaps play it all self out when it the contract times come to pass. You mentioned Luca Donuch here. So, let’s end on that here. What do we make of his what was it 365? Yeah, it was a great deal all around for the Lakers at least, right? You secure Luca six months after you get him. That was not or at least should not have been the given that I think Laker fans thought. It’s very hard to develop a relationship to develop trust in 6 months. Luca would have been very justified in saying, “I want to keep my options open. I want to see if there’s a better team out there for me in free agency.” But he put his faith in the Lakers. And now we look ahead to next year and we look ahead to 2027. The Lakers are going to be a max cap space team for the next couple of offseasons, right? Or at least they have the ability to get there if they want to. 2026 not looking too enticing. Case in point, the Aaron Fox just resigned. Jiren Jackson resigns earlier in the offseason. Not really many great free agents for them to chase. But 2027, that’s when Nicole Joic and Jiannis Antennampo are currently set to become free agents. Their bet right now is that with Luca locked up, they can signal to the rest of the league, “Come to Los Angeles. You’ll be able to compete here. You don’t have to worry about Luca leaving. Can he recruit the next guy?” I suspect he’ll be able to because all of Laker history tells us that once you get the first star, you get the second. You get LeBron, Anthony Davis follows. You trade for Kareem. Look at that. You draft Magic Johnson. I don’t know who the co-star is going to be, but I suspect they’re going to be able to find that next guy. and you get Luca on a discount, it’ll make it a little bit easier to fit. Remember, he couldn’t get the super max with the Lakers because they didn’t draft him. They didn’t trade for him within the first four years of his career. He’s at a 30% max instead of a 35% max. This is a bargain for the Lakers. It was a boon for them to get him to sign rather than testing free agency. Now, they look ahead to getting a sidekick. Yeah, it’s crazy to think you’re getting value on Luca Donuch, but it’s seemingly that the reception that we’ve seen, especially even with the Fox News that we’ve had today, Sam, certainly appreciate it, my man. Thanks for breaking it all down. When you need your sports news all the time, we’ve got breaking news to bring to you. CBS Sports HQ gives you a snapshot of all the sports that matter to you. Big news coming out of the NFL. 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Sam Quinn joins CBS Sports HQ to break down the news regarding Spurs guard De’Aaron Fox.

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