Fox Watch 2025-26

ockingsfan

ockingsfan

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Tetsujin said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1972709754888753521

(De’Aaron’s body quitting on him saving the Spurs from having to figure out how to play all their guards together)
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The issue with Fox is that his super power is tied to his speed. If you take that away, he’s a very ordinary player. He doesn’t have elite court vision or good 3 point shooting for a starting PG.

If that hamstring becomes a lingering problem, Spurs fans will turn on Fox super fast with that max contract of his.
 
dude12 said:
Castle had 14 assists
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13, as far as I can tell. I watched last night's game on Prime. He was loose with the ball. 5 turnovers. Bricked a few ill-advised threes. I think the Spurs are really going to benefit from Fox returning. They need a ballhandler of his capability, and a consistent means of punishing the defense for crowding Wemby. A Fox/Castle rotation is going to be pretty lethal, though. Dunno how they deal with Harper's development. He looked great before his injury. Good problem to have, as long as one of their PGs is injured, but they've essentially got three starters at the position. All talented. All deserving of minutes. Fox is the odd man out if they're thinking long-term. But I'm not sure they're thinking long-term anymore.
 
Mr. S£im Citrus said:
Wembanyama looks like he's ready now; why should they be thinking long-term? It's not like OKC is going to age-out anytime soon, so what are they waiting for?
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To be clear, I'm not suggesting they should be thinking long-term. I'm just looking at the age and make-up of their roster, which suggests a team that's thinking about the future more than the present. But then there's Wemby, and that changes everything. It's just rare to see a team that shouldn't be ready for competition at the highest levels in the West all of a sudden look ready, and I'm curious what it means for their PG logjam in the near-term. No urgency to clean that up if the playoffs aren't a huge concern for your franchise just yet, but there's probably some urgency to clean that up if you're trying to make a run right now.
 
Mr. S£im Citrus said:
Wembanyama looks like he's ready now; why should they be thinking long-term? It's not like OKC is going to age-out anytime soon, so what are they waiting for?
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Yeah and when a team has a talent like that you can do the LeBron thing where you build now and for the future. They have plenty of young players and can actually try and go for it now without really destroying their franchise.
 
The smallest of sample sizes (and it was the Pelicans), but Fox looked good in his first game back, even did his clutch thing in the fourth quarter after New Orleans got it close.

If I was a Spurs fan, though, there is one thing that I'd be concerned about: Fox and Wembanyama didn't really link up at all. Wemby had eight field goals in the game, seven of those were assisted. None of those assists came from De'Aaron Fox. Like, Fox looked for him a couple of times, but it never paid off, and it was usually off a pick-and-pop action, which I would consider to be a suboptimal usage of Victor Wembanyama.
 
SacTownKid said:
Yeah and when a team has a talent like that you can do the LeBron thing where you build now and for the future. They have plenty of young players and can actually try and go for it now without really destroying their franchise.
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They can make win now trades without cutting the future.. a trade for Lauri Markkennen (whoever you spell it) shouldn’t involve any of the key players probably Schoan, vassell, and picks since they have prime picks.
 
Fox complementing the triple doubles from Wemby and Castle with a 13/5/5 line with 6 turnovers and 1-5 from 3. Didn’t think his 3pt shooting could get worse, but he’s following up for 31% last year with 27% this year. Must still be his hand
 
Conspicuously absent the first two games when he averaged 22 on 60 percent shooting, but okay.

If I were a Spurs fan, my concerns about Fox would be the same as I expressed the other day: like, Fox appears to be getting more comfortable with looking for Wembanyama, which would suggest that he's willing to accept his role in San Antonio, but I still have yet to see any of his assists to Wemby coming off of action going towards the rim. Every time he gets the ball to Wemby, it looks like it's on some pick-and-pop mess; that's not going to work in the long term, I don't think.
 
Mr. S£im Citrus said:
Conspicuously absent the first two games when he averaged 22 on 60 percent shooting, but okay.

If I were a Spurs fan, my concerns about Fox would be the same as I expressed the other day: like, Fox appears to be getting more comfortable with looking for Wembanyama, which would suggest that he's willing to accept his role in San Antonio, but I still have yet to see any of his assists to Wemby coming off of action going towards the rim. Every time he gets the ball to Wemby, it looks like it's on some pick-and-pop mess; that's not going to work in the long term, I don't think.
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To be fair, this was also an issue with Domas in Sacramento, where the Malik and Domas two man pick and roll game would constantly look like the Lob City Clippers in sheer efficiency but the second we ran the same actions with De’Aaron they would largely turn into mid-range pull-ups with Domas sorta stuck in the middle of nowhere.
 
Yeah, you can tell that Wembanyama gets more of his shots at the rim off of action from Castle than from any other teammate, so maybe it can work, especially if they're both starting. My concern would be if knowing that Wemby's not going to attack the rim when Fox has the ball would make their offense too predictable?
 
Mr. S£im Citrus said:
Yeah, you can tell that Wembanyama gets more of his shots at the rim off of action from Castle than from any other teammate, so maybe it can work, especially if they're both starting. My concern would be if knowing that Wemby's not going to attack the rim when Fox has the ball would make their offense too predictable?
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I think everything pretty much just comes down to the fact that the Spurs wouldn’t have made the Fox trade had they known they were also going to get Dylan Harper a couple of months later. Harper and Castle really worked well together (and with Wemby) at the beginning of the season in a way that Fox hasn’t necessarily been able to match despite clearly being the better player than those two at this point in their respective journeys. I don’t know where that leaves everybody longterm and this isn’t to say that Fox will never learn how to really work with Wemby but that big shiny new 50 million dollar a year deal might not be looking so great in a couple of years when Wemby and Castle and everyone are all also looking at max rookie extensions.
 
The thing that has to affect their decision making is, I think that Fox makes San Antonio ready right now. Like, the only team in the west I would bet money on beating them in a seven game series is Oklahoma City and, if Wembanyama is rolling, who knows? I think they're one piece away from a championship, but acquiring that piece might cost them Harper.

And also, OKC is super-young and has a ton of picks themselves, so it's not like San Antonio can rely on a strategy of just keep with a core of kids, and hope to be peaking when OKC is on the way down, a) because OKC may not be on the way down for a long time, and b) Wemby might not be willing to wait that long.
 
Tetsujin said:
I think everything pretty much just comes down to the fact that the Spurs wouldn’t have made the Fox trade had they known they were also going to get Dylan Harper a couple of months later. Harper and Castle really worked well together (and with Wemby) at the beginning of the season in a way that Fox hasn’t necessarily been able to match despite clearly being the better player than those two at this point in their respective journeys. I don’t know where that leaves everybody longterm and this isn’t to say that Fox will never learn how to really work with Wemby but that big shiny new 50 million dollar a year deal might not be looking so great in a couple of years when Wemby and Castle and everyone are all also looking at max rookie extensions.
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It's not like they gave up much to get him though. I guess the only real question is his contract extension kicks in next year and he might be 6th man. But there are far worse problems to have.
 
Mr. S£im Citrus said:
The thing that has to affect their decision making is, I think that Fox makes San Antonio ready right now. Like, the only team in the west I would bet money on beating them in a seven game series is Oklahoma City and, if Wembanyama is rolling, who knows? I think they're one piece away from a championship, but acquiring that piece might cost them Harper.

And also, OKC is super-young and has a ton of picks themselves, so it's not like San Antonio can rely on a strategy of just keep with a core of kids, and hope to be peaking when OKC is on the way down, a) because OKC may not be on the way down for a long time, and b) Wemby might not be willing to wait that long.
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The other thing going unsaid is that 7’3”+ big men built like stick figures aren’t generally known for sticking around in the league for a long time so they may as well try to win now rather than wait and have Wemby get struck by the “human beings aren’t meant to be this big” curse.
 
Mr. S£im Citrus said:
The thing that has to affect their decision making is, I think that Fox makes San Antonio ready right now. Like, the only team in the west I would bet money on beating them in a seven game series is Oklahoma City and, if Wembanyama is rolling, who knows? I think they're one piece away from a championship, but acquiring that piece might cost them Harper.

And also, OKC is super-young and has a ton of picks themselves, so it's not like San Antonio can rely on a strategy of just keep with a core of kids, and hope to be peaking when OKC is on the way down, a) because OKC may not be on the way down for a long time, and b) Wemby might not be willing to wait that long.
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Indeed. It's also really challenging to win back-to-back championships in the modern NBA, especially for Western Conference teams that have a gnarlier gauntlet to get through just to reach the conference finals. I could envision a near future in which OKC and SA are trading off title years as they attempt to outgun each other.
 
Tetsujin said:
The other thing going unsaid is that 7’3”+ big men built like stick figures aren’t generally known for sticking around in the league for a long time so they may as well try to win now rather than wait and have Wemby get struck by the “human beings aren’t meant to be this big” curse.
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It'll be like Looney Toons. The second after Wembanyama's body has its "Wait a minute, coyotes can't fly!" moment, everything goes straight to hell.
 
Sherds said:
Castle and Wemby seem to have great chemistry... In the limited game time I've seen, Fox almost takes a back seat to those 2.

It reminds me a bit of when he played with Hali and didn't really know how to inject himself consistently when he's not handling the ball.
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That is the 50 million dollar question isn't it? And will he get a second future all-NBA player displaced while on their rookie deal if he sulks because he didn't get the role he thought he deserved.

I am just grateful that it isn't our problem.
 
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