The San Antonio Spurs and De’Aaron Fox have agreed to a four-year maximum contract extension worth $229 million. This deal will keep him under franchise control until the 2029-30 season with no player option and no trade kicker.
Fox was traded from the Kings to the Spurs shortly before the trade deadline this year in a three-team trade along with the Chicago Bulls. Zach LaVine and a collection of draft picks were the primary return for Sacramento, while the Spurs looked at Fox as a win-now upgrade and long-term pairing alongside Victor Wembanyama. Unfortunately, Wembanyama was shut down after playing just five games alongside Fox due to a blood clot issue.
San Antonio closed the season losing nine of their last 12 games and leaped up to the second overall pick in the NBA Draft lottery. They drafted Rutgers guard Dylan Harper and also have the reigning Rookie of the Year, Stephon Castle, still on the roster. Nonetheless, the Spurs are clearly comfortable seeing a larger sample size of the Fox and Wembanyama pairing and believe that all these pieces can fit together in the long haul.
What the Fox Extension Means for the Spurs:
There seemed to be an understanding at the time of the trade that the Spurs were willing to hand Fox this magnitude of extension. While the situation changed significantly during the second half of the season, San Antonio did not want to stray from the game plan and stepped up to make the deal. For his career, Fox averages 21.5 points, 6.1 assists, and 1.4 steals per game. Fox averaged 19.7 points, 6.8 assists, and 1.5 steals across the 17 games he played with the Spurs last season.
The clearest takeaway from this deal getting done is that the Spurs are not in a rush to decide on a timeline. Wembanyama is the clear franchise centerpiece and just turned 21 years old this season. He is ready to compete right now, but has plenty of years ahead of him, playing at a high level as long as his body allows.
Fox will get the first chance at being Wembanyama’s true co-star, and there is reason to believe this could be successful. The foundation of Sacramento’s offense was built upon dribble-handoffs and screens, with Fox as the ball-handler and Domantas Sabonis as the big man. Wembanyama is a better floor spacer, a more diverse overall scorer, and a miles better defender than what Sabonis brings to the table. Fox has a change of pace to get downhill that rivals any player in the NBA, and has also gotten more comfortable in the midrange as his career has progressed.
But while this contract extension guarantees Fox will be under team control through the 2029-30 season, it does not necessarily guarantee he will finish the contract in San Antonio. The Spurs can never outright say it, but they likely would have played their cards differently if they were able to predict Wembanyama’s health issue and leap in the lottery last season. Both second-overall pick Dylan Harper and Rookie of the Year Stephon Castle have flashed reason for belief in why they can be the guards of the future. With the pair being 19 and 20 years old, their timelines may end up being more in line with Wembanyama compared to 27-year-old Fox.
This is a great problem to have from San Antonio’s perspective. For the time being, they can sit back and evaluate if Fox is the type of pairing that will bring out the best in Wembanyama, as they saw at the deadline. The Spurs were once so limited in the guards they had surrounding Wembanyama that Jeremy Sochan served as their primary point guard for a stretch, and they now have a plethora of options.
If Harper and Castle turn out to be the players they have flashed to be, San Antonio should theoretically be able to flip Fox for a package of assets to add to this next era of Spurs basketball. It feels as if Fox will truly earn his place as Wembanyama’s co-star or eventually be traded to propel this team into another caliber.
For the time being, it should be celebrated that Fox has inked the most lucrative contract of his career on a franchise where the future is so bright. The Spurs will enter next season with -145 odds of making the playoffs and +3500 odds of winning the Western Conference on DraftKings Sportsbook, the ninth-best odds. Wembanyama opens as an impressive -175 favorite to win Defensive Player of the Year, which he was well on his way to winning last season before being shut down and missing the games requirement. De’Aaron Fox also opens as tied for the eighth-best odds of winning the Clutch Player of the Year Award on DraftKings, which he won back in the 2022-23 season.
