Despite Harper breaking out in the postseason, it’s likely Fox gets the nod considering his experience, ability to direct traffic and consistently facilitate the offense. Fox did that throughout the regular season, despite missing most of last offseason and the start of the regular season due to a hamstring injury.
After Fox’s rough showing in the NBA Finals, team sources said the Spurs remain committed to the veteran, pointing out that San Antonio might have never reached the Finals without the point guard’s contributions while playing on a high right ankle sprain.
Ultimately, though, sources said the decision between Fox and Harper will belong to Johnson and will be decided solely by what happens on the floor. Johnson mentioned wanting to experiment with playing all three guards together in some lineups. San Antonio did that in 18 games last season with disastrous results (minus-26.9 net rating). Still, the trio could improve with an entire offseason together
No way they are benching their man on max contract. It would kill whatever is left of his trade value.
Yeah I would love to see Fox playing well through to the trade deadline to boost his value, and then get off that contract and spend it on a high level power forward. But SAS has always valued continuity very highly, and considering last season’s performance I think will probably keep Fox for the rest of next season.
Yes, but the new CBA really is set up against teams that overpay. I think that going forward teams will try to have one player on the max, and other vets will either take team-friendly deals or risk being traded even if deserving of a bigger bag. Take a look at my Celtics: for all the talk about Jaylen Brown, it is clear that they got rid of him because of his huge contract.
Yeah we’ll see how that plays out for SAS but they’ve at least got a decent window until Harper’s rookie contract ends. There’ll be tough decisions to make at that point with their big 3.