点击查看原文:Spurs outfox competition with superstar trade
Spurs outfox competition with superstar trade
Columnist Mike Finger and Spurs beat reporters Jeff McDonald and Nick Talbot discuss the Spurs’ trade for De’Aaron Fox and how they made out even better then expected in getting a second superstar to pair with Victor Wembanyama.
Suggested reading:
Spurs praise players shipped off in De’Aaron Fox trade
Spurs aren’t shying away from heightened expectations after adding Fox
In landing De’Aaron Fox, Spurs continue a master heist
Spurs’ Castle earns first Rookie of the Month
Spurs acquire De’Aaron Fox in blockbuster trade with Sacramento
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Here is the transcript of the podcast:
From a highly secure network of top secret locations across North America, this is the Spurs Insider, Post Trade Edition. I’m your host, Mike Finger, as always joined by Express News Spurs beat writer, Jeff McDonald, and Sports Editor, Nick Talbot. We are not graced with Tom Orsborn’s presence this week. Unfortunately, he’s flying to his next secure location, but the rest of us have lots to say about the newest Spur, Jordan McLaughlin, as well as De’Aaron Fox.
Jeff, after years and years of speculation that the Spurs were looking at a point guard of the future, guard of the future, that might have a point guard of the future in mind, they got their man and they did not pay that much for him. What what what are your thoughts?
Well, before we get to my thoughts, I just want to say I appreciate you being geographically accurate in the uh, in the intro there. It’s not, it’s not across South Texas, we’re across North America right now.
Correct, you’re still in Memphis.
Yeah. It’s all over the place.
I’m still walking in Memphis.
Anyway, De’Aaron Fox and Jordan McLaughlin, what a haul, what a haul. You’re right, they’ve been, he’ve been wondering and uh, Spurs fans have been pining and sometimes frustrated. When are the Spurs going to push all their chips to the center of the table and cash them in for, you know, a star, another star running mate for Victor Wembanyama? And they didn’t really have to push all their chips in or even the most important ones. They got Dero Fox and I don’t, you know, with no offense to Trey Jones and Zack Collins and Sydney Sisoko, but I don’t think they gave up anything that, that they really didn’t want to. I think they, they got their man, De’Aaron Fox, and they gave up, you know, players they could live with losing.
They didn’t give up any of their top eight core players, none of those young guys, not Devon Vassel, not Stefan Castle, not Keldon Johnson, not Jeremy Sohan. They were able to keep, keep their core intact. The ticks they gave up are, um, picks you can live with. The Charlotte one’s not even going to be a first rounder. The Bulls one, you know, the Bulls probably could have got their own pick back anyway just by being bad. So it’s almost they’re getting a, they’re getting a pick that probably wasn’t going to convey. The Minnesota pick will probably end up being something or could end up being something, but whatever.
And they gave up their own 2027, which they had Atlanta’s that year, which is probably going to be better than the one they gave up. So all the stuff they gave up, they got an All-Star caliber point guard and it was pretty good work by your Spurs front office, I would say.
It sounds like I wrote a column for the Express News, expressnews.com, Spurs Nation newsletter, all that stuff which you can. We appreciate all the, all the, um, readership that you guys have given us, always good. Don’t just listen to the podcast, check in on what we do at our day jobs. That’s, that’s great. I talked about what a heist this has been, and that’s overused, that’s tried when we talk about NBA trades. A lot of times, it’s not really accurate. Like this weekend also included a Luka Doncic, Anthony Davis trade, which got a lot more attention, had a lot more people calling that robbery. But really, the Lakers gave up a Hall of Famer to get Luca Doncic.
I know that’s a one-sided trade and I know why Maverick’s fans are so exasperated about that. The Spurs seriously gave up the two main players they gave up, they were going to have to get rid of at some point for salary reasons. Trey Jones was a free agent anyway. He had no role next year. Zack Collins, that contract that he had was something that the Spurs needed a way to get rid of. They weren’t playing him anymore. Jeff just broke down the picks. The Chicago, there was a good chance they were going to get that pick back anyway because it was protected for the next three years, as Jeff pointed out. That is basically nothing. The Charlotte pick cracks me up because to me that’s almost a way for Sacramento to say at the press conference, we got this extra first round pick.
In no universe is that a first round pick. The only way that Charlotte has to make the playoffs this year for that to be a first round. Charlotte has to make the playoffs. Charlotte has to start winning games at just an unprecedented rate to make the playoffs. They might have to run the table. Like there’s no way that’s a first round pick. That’s passed along just so Sacramento can say, we got three first round picks when in fact you just got two. Really all you gave up here were the Spurs’ own pick in 2027, when the Spurs expect to be contending, at least picking in the bottom third of the first round. I mean, what do we expect that pick to be? At best, 22, 23, something like that if things go well. And then that pick that they got for the second, first round pick they had this past year, that night when everyone was upset that they did not take Rob Dillingham or Dalton Connect or whatever, after they took Stefan Castle. That pick that everyone was up in arms saying, why did they, why did they not make their selection at the 2024 draft, and why did they take this pick that isn’t going to be able to be used for seven years? They used it seven months later to get the point guard that they have coveted for years and one that fits perfectly into their system, and the age fit might not be picture perfect, like De’Aaron Fox is 27, Victor Wembanyama’s 21, but it’s pretty close. You’re going to get, you would, you would, you would hope, four years of De’Aaron Fox’s peak, maybe.
That’s pretty good to have around Victor Wembanyama and Stefan Castle and Devin Vassel and Jeremy Sohan and the whole Spurs nucleus. It’s staggering to me how well they did in this deal. And it dates back to two and a half years ago when they traded Dejounte Murray to the Atlanta Hawks for what was then called four first round picks. One of those was that Charlotte pick, which obviously won’t become one. One of them is a swap, which probably will be swapped next year. Dejounte Murray wasn’t part of their future anyway. Trading Dejounte Murray allows you to get bad enough to get Victor Wembanyama. You get Victor Wembanyama, you get to keep all these Atlanta picks as Atlanta is sort of facing a time when they don’t know what their future is with Trey Young. On top of all that, you get a point guard that’s better for you than Dejounte Murray was, timeline wise, maybe talent wise, all that stuff. I’m not usually the sunshine pumper, the the the blue sky, the the optimist here, but it it’s just you sort of want to tip your hat to a job well done, a plan well executed, all that type of stuff. Now they have to start winning, now they have to start doing something with it. I can’t imagine a way they could have pulled this off better over the past two, three years.
If you had told me on Saturday, the Spurs are going to end up with De’Aaron Fox and they will not have to give up either Devin Vassel nor Stefan Castle, and they’d still get to keep everything they got from Atlanta, I wouldn’t even need to hear the rest of the details. I would have said good job. But I also would assume like there’d be a Keldon Johnson in there or something like that, and there wasn’t even that. So good work. Now, now you talk about winning, I guess we can talk about De’Aaron’s fit, we can talk about where they go from here, we can talk about what the expectations are, maybe for the final 30-some games of this season, and then beyond, there’s a lot, there’s a lot to break down. There’s a lot to talk about.
Here’s another just to put a bow on that heist type of deal. You said keeping Vassel and Castle was the biggest thing and that absolutely is, like those are the two. I thought for sure they would have to trade one or the other of them.
Well, I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t think that. I thought that they had leverage. I thought that the like Keldon Johnson was the, the guy that had to go. Like that’s the usable piece that you would have thought that Sacramento would have wanted there, and the one that the Spurs would be willing to give up. That didn’t happen. That’s what kind of blew me away.
I really thought would happen was the Kings would want either Vassel or Castle and the Spurs would say, we’re not going to do that right now and the deal wouldn’t get done. That’s what I really thought would happen. What the Spurs did obviously, the Kings want talent. They wanted it, they wanted talent, talent like when now talent, which was what Steph Castle would have been. The Spurs aren’t going to include that, so you rope in a third team to provide that piece of the deal in Zach LaVine.
The Kings did not do as poorly in this as the Bulls did. The Kings did okay considering they’re over a barrel.
The victim of this larceny here was not necessarily the Kings as much as it was the Chicago Bulls, who basically just got back what they, what they started with. It’s crazy.
They got out of a LaVine contract they’ve been trying to get out of for years since the ink was dry basically. Yeah, the only thing that really helped them is they, getting the pick back is, if they make more moves over here, they can actually tank now, they were kind of in that weird situation, but they still did not do very well in this deal. They might have done almost as bad as the Mavericks did in their deal. They just didn’t get anything back for it.
See that’s the misconception about that Bull’s pick is that the Bulls actually were incentivized to tank before they got the pick back, because if they were bad, it was the opposite of Atlanta. If they were bad, they kept the pick, because it was top 10 and then top eight protected. So now they in a weird way are free to not have to worry about that. If they, if they, um, if they start winning next year, they, they get to keep the pick, whereas when the Spurs had it, if they had been tanking, if they started winning the Spurs would have gotten like a top 11 pick, whatever.
What I was going to say before about what the Spurs kept, is when we were running through the idea of the Spurs acquiring De’Aaron Fox at this deadline, what they might have to get up, give up, and we were looking at the rest of this 2025 season, one thing I was thinking about is if the Spurs make this trade and may add De’Aaron Fox, well, then all of a sudden there’s a hole in the second unit where Keldon Johnson was, or there’s a hole, I didn’t think this would happen, but there was a hole in the starting lineup where Devin Vassel was, or if the Kings were insistent on continuing to compete for their play in spot, that they would even, hey, we’re giving up our point guard, you give us Chris Paul back. So the Spurs would have a hole where Chris Paul was. The Spurs basically added a, a former all-star, hugely impactful point guard to their rotation and gave no one from their rotation up. He’s replacing Trey Jones, but Zack Collins wasn’t playing anyway, Sydney Sako wasn’t playing anyway. They’re almost, well not almost, they’re better equipped now in every way to compete for the next few months. I know that’s not the priority here, but that sort of surprised me about the deal is I thought there would have been maybe a step back over the next few months as they retool and figure out what their future is. They can continue to try to win. They did not do that last night against the Grizzlies because the Grizzlies just kicked their tails every time they play them, and De’Aaron Fox wasn’t there yet.
They might not make the play in this year, but I think that’s not an unrealistic goal for the rest of the season to move up a couple spots and get into that play in. I’m, yeah. I agree to a point, but I also want to temper expectations for everybody, because I think there’s a tendency when you add a guy like De’Aaron Fox, everyone’s excited. For good reason, like he’s going to be great with Victor Wimber Goma. I don’t think it will happen immediately. I think there might actually be some growing pains towards the end of the year this year, in part because I don’t know what, in part because I don’t know what, what the lineups are going to look like.
In an ideal world you’re not going to start Chris Paul and De’Aaron Fox together. You’re not going to start that small, but you kind of have to for the end of the rest of this season. You’re not going to tell Chris Paul he’s got to go to the bench. You’re not going to bring De’Aaron Fox off the bench. You’re probably going to move Steph Castle back to the bench and just be really small and it’s not the best basketball lineup. Everybody knows that’s not the best basketball lineup to win games, but just for human reasons, that’s how you’re probably going to have to be how you finish the year. When Chris won’t be back next year, I think this trade probably did was kind of eliminate that dream scenario for us reporters that the Spurs don’t add a point guard, Chris Paul comes back for another year of this. Probably he’s not going to come back because he doesn’t want to come off the bench. He doesn’t want to be a sidelight, he wants to run the show and when you traded for De’Aaron Fox, that’s going to be your point guard. I think they finish the way, the season unless something happens before the deadline, if something else happens. I think they finish the season with Chris and De’Aaron playing together, Steph coming off the bench, and then they and then they kind of figure out what they really want to be over the summer and going into next year.
It wouldn’t surprise me if this isn’t just an automatic we’re making a run to the play in now. But I also, I would urge Spurs fans not to panic if it doesn’t look so pretty all at once, because they still have pieces to put together. That a De’Aaron Fox Wby pick and roll is going to be pretty ungudable and the Spurs are going to be super ungudable when you can put some shooting around that. Some really top shelf, the ball swings to that guy and it’s like, oh my god, he’s going to make it. That kind of shooting around it, and once they get that, that’s really going to be clicking. That’s going to be a hard thing to guard, but it’s still going to take some more doing, some more work from the, from the front office to get it where, to get the final product, you know.
Well, that that’s a lot of interesting stuff and I don’t necessarily disagree. I don’t necessarily disagree with a lot of it, but a couple of, I was taking mental notes here trying to keep up with a couple of things that I wanted to run past you. First of all, absolutely, there’s no guarantee that they’re going to make the play in this year, that the season’s just going to magically turn around and they’re going to start winning and punch us and get there like, but I think my point was they’re no worse off, there’s no reason to think that that’s not realistic. I think they’re going to, they have a run in them. They have at least one run in them over these next few months and I think that, you know, it might be close to a coin flip if they make the play. I think that their odds might be that high. I would not be surprised. Second on the starting lineup thing, I think that most of us tend to dwell too much on that and Jeff, you might have some, some Intel there, but I’m not, let’s just throw the starting lineup for aside for a second. I think one thing this trade does over the next few months is it puts the Spurs in a situation where for most of the meaningful minutes every night, by most, I mean, I’m going to say like 90%, either Chris Paul or De’Aaron Fox is running the show.
Whether that means that they’re both starting or whether that, I don’t think it would be. It wouldn’t knock my socks off if they brought Chris Paul off the bench. He’s not part of their future. He’s a good, he’s a good basketball guy, like, and here’s the other thing. I just think they respect too much. The reason he came to the Spurs in the first place is okay, partly Victor Wembanyama, partly Greg Popovich, but even at his introductory press conference, the first day he was in San Antonio, he said it wasn’t really that as much as this was the one place that allowed him to ball. They don’t, they’re very good to veteran players. They want to do right by Chris Paul. But it’s not like other places were offering Chris Paul the chance to start and it’s not like other places will offer Chris Paul the chance to start next year. Chris Paul came off the bench last year. Like he’s done it before.
But he hated it. He will tell you it’s the work of his life. Okay, like if you move him in there, it’s going to be against his will and you can do that. Mitch Johnson can go tell a point guard you’re older than him, yeah, we’re moving you to the bench. I just don’t think that’s happening. I think whether the last 30 games, realizing the play isn’t really the goal. That’s what I think they’re going to do.
I I think that you’re probably right. I question, that’s cool. The Spurs have come a long way with treating people right and showing respect to veterans, all that stuff.
I wonder though, if they wouldn’t be better served long-term as a franchise at getting geting a look at the starting lineup that they’re going to be using next year. If we’re sure that Chris Paul is gone. That’s why I think, and I think Chris Paul understands that, and I don’t think like Chris Paul was not a bad teammate last year. I think you’re sort of exaggerating how miserable he was.
He didn’t seem thrilled coming off the bench last year. Well, I mean, okay, that’s fine. This is me not saying what the Spurs are going to do. I would suggest that there would be benefit in looking at a De’Aaron Fox, Devin Vassel, Stefan Castle, Harrison Barnes, Victor Wembanyama starting lineup, because I think that’s going to be the starting lineup next year. I think Jeremy Sohan probably, okay, maybe he could replace Harrison Barnes at some point, but I think Jeremy Sohan might be evolving into a guy who might be a long-term bench piece. I think with Keldon Johnson, that’s a pretty good bench there.
If you move him to the bench, you bring him off the bench quickly, you get him a lot of Victor Wembanyama minutes, because that’s been the best two man lineup with the Spurs all year. I’m not sure I want to see 30 games of a lineup with De’Aaron Fox and Chris Paul together starting. Maybe this makes, this is the hot take podcast now. I don’t know.
The thing is, even though, as Victor says, these players can be treated like objects, they’re not objects. They’re human beings with feelings and that doesn’t always matter, but I do think the Spurs will give him some difference to Chris Paul.
I think you’re probably right. I think you’re probably right. So I wouldn’t be, that’s all I’m saying. I don’t, I don’t know nothing about nothing, but I wouldn’t be surprised. I wouldn’t either.
I’m not disputing that. The part you’re correct about is you can start the game however you want and then tweak your rotations where those guys aren’t playing together a whole, whole lot. Maybe that’s if you want to see that.
And if you want to see that starting lineup from next year, you can probably tweak your rotation where those five get good chunks of minutes together. That’s probably how we split the difference here. You get to, you let Chris Paul continue to start, where he gets introduced, and he, he holds on to that role as the starting guy, and then you make sure that there are a lot of minutes featuring your lineup in the future.
I think that adds a little extra layer of complicatedness. A thing was starting though is also closing, which is Chris Paul’s. That’s really it’s really good at. and when the starters think they’re starting, they also think they’re closing.
That’s absolutely true and that’s one thing that I was going to get to is that you want Chris Paul helping them close games. Generally, Jeff can speak to this having covered the NBA for 97 years. Teams tend to go smaller and it when, when, when the game’s on the line.
At the end of games, like having Chris Paul, De’Aaron Fox both as pick and roll options for Victor Wembanyama, like that’s pretty salty. That, that, that seems like a great thing to have as long as if you have two other shooters out there to keep defenses honest, that could be cool.
De’Aaron Fox is two years removed from winning that clutch player of the year award. There’s been years where he’s led the league in fourth quarter scoring. That’s another like, like you said, that’s another fourth quarter crunch time option, if the Spurs can ever get a game to crunch time anymore. Right.
I think my issue with all this is they need to figure out a way, if it’s starting them both, if it’s bringing one off the bench. I don’t think there should be 12 minutes during every game when neither De’Aaron Fox or Chris Paul are out there. That would be a mistake. If you have those two guys, you want one of them out there at most times. I think Mitchell will figure that out. You were attempting a pretty good segue there that I ruined about how the Spurs never play close games anymore. Want to talk about that.
was that one against Miami that they lost the buzzer but other than that. That’s true. Blowout City. They can play a close game without Wby.
Maybe Wby’s the problem. I think I got, I’m starting to get what Wby had by the way. I’m, I’m dreading it. It’s that feeling at the back of your throat.
Wby came back from Paris. he sounded awful last night. He did the podium. We just got him in the locker room and he sounded worse than he did the other night. He sounded bad.
Memphis is one of the last places where we’re still on the floor, so I could see a lot better and he was sucking wind, man. I noticed that like he didn’t seem to have his energy. If you know them better, sometimes you think he’s dogging it. He missed a shot and just sort of be really sluggish getting back on defense. Then you talk to him after the game he’s like, oh he is sick as a dog.
He’s, he’s not feeling great. So I guess that’s something worth monitoring. That’s not a good way to start a road trip. He usually get that at the end. Hopefully he can shake it. Well, for your local cagers, a good way to start the road trip is not going to Memphis.
They just have that team. They also ended there in March. One thing I did see that I was surprised about, there’s a friend of the podcast called John Schuman, who works for NBA.com, who breaks down like schedule strength every month. This month where your local cagers are not local at all, where they go the entire month playing away from Frost Bank Center. The one, the one game on the first of February against Miami, the Spurs are projected to have the fourth easiest schedule in the league. That seems surprising to you? It’s just it’s a lot of the Charlottes and Washingtons just those two. A few, Atlanta is not playing well. Atlanta looks like a new Orleans is. That’s all thrown in there.
The point being that they’re on the road, but it’s not an intimidating road trip. They do have the two in Austin which are quote unquote home games. One against Detroit, one against the reeling Phoenix Suns, which may or may not have Jimmy Butler, may or may not have Kevin Durant. That would be wild if Kevin Durant goes back to Golden State. I don’t think players of that caliber get traded in mid season. This is not going to be the 967th Luka Doncic podcast of the weekend. We’re not going to talk about that too much.
We have to say that was pretty crazy though. That’s my take. It’s pretty crazy. You gave a giant F for the Maverick. That’s all you need to know. That’s all anyone can say. They gave a giant F for their fans. It’s, it’s true. We’re not going to get into it.
It’s wild to me how we’re just, like first ballot Hall of Famer is just being dismissed as nothing in this. I think it’s a bad trade for the Mavericks. I think people are underselling Anthony Davis a little bit, but the one thing I’m going to point out because it’s a point you’ve made about the Spurs, how the Spurs can do some of the moves that they make and collect some of the assets that they collect.
We’ll take a pick swap seven years from now. It’s because their front office guys are probably still going to be here seven years from now. Nicoh Harrison just said it in that press conference. I don’t care about 10 years from now because we’re not going to be here. All I care about is the next three to four years. So the Spurs are always dealing with people. They feel that way.
The Spurs are just stealing from the trade they just. They’re always dealing with people that are buying on credit. I don’t, you can have something seven years from now. That doesn’t matter to me. Whereas the Spurs know, seven years from now, if they make that pick, they’ll be able to make that pick probably these same guys making the picks. Having that kind of continuity and longevity and job security in the front office kind of allows you to do some things that you can’t if you’re always having to worry about the next year and the next year and the next year.
That’s a good point that we talked about before. It’s a good, it’s a good kind of close for this week’s podcast and it goes back to some of the frustration that our loyal listeners, that our loyal readers have occasionally voiced to us understandably about how sometimes those of us on this podcast have tended to be too reluctant to call the Spurs idiots for some of the stuff that they’ve done that the readers and listeners don’t understand. There’s been times when people have been pleading, especially during these down years that the Spurs have had. Why don’t you call them out for not making more big moves? Why don’t you call them out for not going after Trey Young when they have the chance? Why don’t you call them out for all this stuff that just doesn’t make any sense?
Trading this pick, they could have had Rob Dillingham, they could have had Dalton Connect. Why are they trading for this move in 2031 and Mike Finger and Jeff McDonald will never dare come out and say that Brian Wright’s an idiot because of making these terrible moves. It’s not that we think it’s they’re all going to work out and it’s not like we’re homers. I think most of the time we’re far from being homers. We understand that there’s a really good chance that if we do that, we’re the ones who are going to be looking like idiots seven months later when it turns out they’ve had the planned all along to get the guy they wanted.
The Spurs just have a really good track record of putting a plan in place and sticking to it and making it work. There’s still a lot of work to do, nothing was guaranteed this week. De’Aaron Fox has his flaws as a player. It would be great if he could shoot better than 33% from three.
Is he the type of player who ages well into his 30s? But Jeff’s right, the Spurs always have the long-term plan in mind. They have guys who know they’re going to be here for years and years, because they’re not afraid of getting fired. There’s ownership CEO, all down the line, they all understand that there’s long-term plans to stick to and that you can’t be firing guys.
If you want them to stick to that plan, I just think they’re in a really good place now moving forward. You still want them to show the steps. If they don’t show the improvement, if they don’t add the next guy, I think there’s another guy to add at some point. Maybe the the third best guy isn’t here yet after Victor and De’Aaron.
It’s just, like Jeff said, it’s, it’s they, they think ahead and this is another example of it. Do you think they have to add someone between now and Thursday, or they can be done for now? It wouldn’t hurt. During that game last night, Charles Bassey looked like his knee was bad again. I think he ended up being okay. But he’s not integral to the future or the next few months. That’s another reminder of how thin they are at that position. If he was going to be out, they were kind of in a bad place. They have a spot open now because they sent three guys out and brought two back. Could that be something that’s used after the deadline? Like they could go on the buyout market and add a big man, right? I was looking at just the type of guys who are out there available.
New Orleans has Daniel Tys who makes almost no money, just a veteran type of big man type backup. Mo Bamba was just waved by trading, yeah. He’s really interesting to me and the Spurs will not get him because there’s legitimate contenders interested in him. A guy making no money who would be amazing.
Vershon Yabusele, who I watched in Paris this summer playing with Victor. The sixers are probably going to trade him to a contending team, but putting him next to Victor again as a backup, would be really cool. I think it’s clear that the Spurs need more depth behind Victor, backup big men. Like everybody in the league, they need more shooting. I would just caution everybody that it’s not, it’s not we have to do this before Thursday, before the end of the year. They probably need to get those issues resolved before the beginning of next year though. If they come out of the off season without without shoring up their big man depth without adding at least some guy that can make a three, then that I would say that’s troublesome. But it doesn’t have to happen between now and Thursday.
The Spurs are still not saying we are going to make the play and we got to make the playoffs this year. That is not really the goal. It accidentally happens, that’s good. They’re two different, they’re two different discussions, two different priorities in terms of the rest of this year, when it would help either just as a, as a really, really minor trade or as a buyout type of pickup over the next month or so. That’s where you probably want to add another big man to fill out your 15 man roster. That’s completely different than the priorities for the off season when you want to add shooting, longer-term depth behind.