The San Antonio Spurs are being urged to give up on their former All-Star point guard and trade him to the Los Angeles Clippers.
According to NBA analyst Bill Simmons, the Spurs should trade away De’Aaron Fox to the Clippers in exchange for Darius Garland. Simmons said Fox should come with draft assets, considering his poor performance in the 2026 NBA Playoffs, where the Spurs lost in five games in the NBA Finals against the eventual NBA champions New York Knicks.
“If I’m the Clippers, I’m at least calling the Spurs and being like, yo, we have Garland, we love them. But if you want to talk about flipping four years of Fox for two years of Garland and throwing some of your stuff at us, we’re happy to have the conversation,” Simmons said in his podcast.
“And then if you’re the Spurs, you’re like, well, we, we messed up this Fox thing. We didn’t realize we’re going to get Harper when we did the, you know, the wink-wink with the Fox extension, we’re going to have to have money to pay Wemby and Castle. And eventually, Harper could Garland be a two-year stopgap now instead of four.”
(Via @ringer )
Why Would The Spurs And Clippers Do This Trade?
Garland will be in the fourth year of his contract, which has an average annual value of $39,446,090 and runs through the 2027-2028 season.
Fox is locked into a four-year, $221 million contract with the Spurs that carries a much higher value of $55,426,896 every year and keeps him under contract until 2030.
To Simmons’ point, having Garland’s contract, instead of Fox’s, would allow the Spurs to have a shorter runway before ultimately pulling the trigger on Dylan Harper as the starting point guard of the team.
Harper was a revelation in the playoffs, holding down the fort for the Spurs, especially in games where Fox was not available to play or was struggling.
Last regular season, Fox slightly edged out Garland in scoring by averaging 18.6 points per game while showcasing strong efficiency inside the arc with a 48.6% field goal percentage across 72 games.
On the other side, Garland finished just behind in the scoring department at 18.8 points per game but acted as the more traditional playmaker, facilitating his offense with 6.7 assists per game compared to Fox’s 6.2 assists.
The Trade Is Especially Valuable For The Clippers
Trading Garland for Fox could raise the team’s ceiling, as the latter had once been a franchise player with the Sacramento Kings. They could also get valuable picks from the Spurs to offset the first-round picks they lost from the NBA’s punishments for their salary circumvention for Kawhi Leonard.
Simply put, every draft pick is valuable for the Clippers because the franchise is facing an unprecedented draft capital deficit.
Because draft picks function as the essential currency required to execute blockbuster trades or inject cheap, young talent into an aging roster under the NBA’s restrictive collective bargaining agreement, the team’s remaining assets are stretched paper-thin.
Nevertheless, Fox is expected to continue his career with the Spurs, at least for the next year, and be the team’s secondary star behind superstar Victor Wembanyama.
Spurs Urged To Trade All-Star For Clippers’ Starting Point Guard