De’Aaron Fox’s bad Finals just made Spurs’ backcourt problem harder to ignore

De’Aaron Fox’s bad Finals just made Spurs’ backcourt problem harder to ignore originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

>After the Spurs traded for De’Aaron Fox, they got exactly what they wanted for most of the season. They got a proven point guard who could settle the offense, push the pace and take pressure off Victor Wembanyama.

>Fox helped San Antonio win 62 games, make the Finals and look far ahead of schedule. That is why the reaction to his rough Finals has to start from the right place.

>Fox was bad against the Knicks. There is no point pretending otherwise. He shot 24-for-70 in the series, averaged 13 points and became the easy target after San Antonio’s collapse in Games 4 and 5.

>That much is fair. What is harder is figuring out what exactly the Spurs are supposed to do with that information now that the season is over.

>That is the part of the conversation that matters more than the box score. The Spurs did not just trade for Fox. They signed him to a four-year, $229 million extension, then watched Dylan Harper explode into a much bigger problem than anyone expected.

>Harper’s Finals run did not simply expose Fox. It exposed the shape of San Antonio’s roster, and specifically how difficult it may be to keep Fox, Harper and Stephon Castle all in the same backcourt hierarchy moving forward.

>Recent reporting out of San Antonio has framed Harper’s rise as one of the defining questions of the offseason, not just because of how well he played, but because of how much larger a role he may already be ready to demand.

>That still does not make a Fox trade the obvious answer. He was one of the reasons the Spurs got this far, and there has also been injury context around his playoff drop-off, including reporting that he dealt with a high-ankle issue late in the run.

>If San Antonio eventually moves him, it should be because Harper’s timeline forces a bigger roster decision around Wembanyama, not because five ugly Finals games suddenly erased everything Fox gave them before that.

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