For the past few months, there have been rumblings coming out of Sacramento that De’Aaron Fox was considering his options for the future outside of northern California. The Kings fired Mike Brown as head coach early in the season in an apparent effort to appease Fox and change things up to save their season and chances of keeping their All-Star point guard long-term.
While the Kings have turned things around since then and are firmly in the Play-In mix in the West, that seemingly is not enough in the eyes of Fox. On Tuesday, multiple reporters (including Shams Charania and Sam Amick) brought word that the Kings were open to trade talks on Fox as the deadline approaches, and that the star guard has a particular destination in mind. Immediately, there were a handful of teams that made sense as potential landing spots. The Heat and the Lakers regularly find their ways onto these lists for unsurprising reasons, while the Magic and Rockets are young teams on the rise that look to be an All-Star point guard away from being real threats.
However, the team that Fox apparently has his eye on is San Antonio, as the Texas-native is keen on uniting forces with Victor Wembanyama on the Spurs, according to James Ham of The Kings Beat and ESPN 1320 in Sacramento and Marc Stein. This summer, Wembanyama indicated that there were stars that had already reached out to him about wanting to play with him in San Antonio, and the Spurs are very well-positioned to make a big trade. San Antonio has a ton of first round picks stashed away from past trades and can put together packages with young players, picks, and veterans to fill out salary.
The question for the Kings becomes what their priorities become without Fox. They still have some veteran talent on the roster, headlined by Domantas Sabonis and the recently signed DeMar DeRozan. That makes a full scale rebuild difficult — and that hasn’t seemed like something ownership is interested in — so they might prefer a combination of players and picks rather than a full-on asset heavy package. A potential deal could send Chris Paul, Keldon Johnson, and multiple first round picks to Sacramento for Fox, or the Kings could push for rookie Stephon Castle to be the centerpiece of a deal, as he wants to play point guard and would certainly not be the point guard of the future in San Antonio if Fox were to arrive.
The “star player pushing out of a smaller market” routine has become a seemingly annual tradition in the NBA, but I’ll give Fox credit for not just looking to head to a big market but having a destination in mind with long-term on-court success on his mind in trying to pair with Wembanyama in San Antonio.
