De'Aaron Fox reportedly agrees to 4-year, $229 million max contract extension with San Antonio Spurs

Yahoo

16 hours ago

De'Aaron Fox has agreed to a four-year, $229 million contract extension with the Spurs, according to ESPN's Shams Charania, as San Antonio continues to revamp its roster with sights set on building a bona fide contender around ascendant superstar big man Victor Wembanyama.
Fox, 27, averaged 23.5 points, 6.3 assists, 4.8 rebounds and 1.5 steals in 36.1 minutes per game last season, shooting 46.3% from the field, 31% from 3-point range and 82.7% from the free-throw line across 62 total appearances for the Spurs and Kings. He had the second-highest individual scoring performance of the season, pouring in a career-high and Kings franchise record 60 points in a November win over the Timberwolves:
Aug. 3 made it six months since Fox landed in San Antonio in a three-team trade that ended his tenure with the Kings, seven and a half seasons after Sacramento drafted him out of Kentucky with the fifth overall pick in the 2017 NBA Draft. Fox agreeing to a multi-year deal seemed all but assured from the moment he arrived, given the clear preference for being in San Antonio that he publicly confirmed to ESPN's Michael C. Wright after the trade …
Once his agent, Klutch Sports CEO Rich Paul, informed Sacramento of Fox's desire to join the Spurs, reports surfaced of the guard telling the club he had a list of preferred teams.
"There was no f***ing list," Fox said. "There was one team. I wanted to go to San Antonio. So, a lot of people are mad at me, saying I handcuffed the team by giving them a destination. Well, this is my career. If anybody else is in my position, you'd do the same thing. It's not my job to help build your team. I'm not about to just go where [the Kings] want me to go. I wanted to have a destination."
Even after reaching that destination, though, hitting the six-month mark was key. Because while Fox was eligible to sign an extension with the Spurs as soon as the 2025 NBA Finals ended, he had to wait a bit longer to be able to ink the most lucrative deal available — one that signals the Spurs' belief that the former All-Star and All-NBA point guard can serve as a championship-caliber running buddy and table-setter for Wembanyama for years to come.
Fox is one of the NBA's quickest, most explosive and most prolific scoring guards — a three-level scorer who can break opposing defenses down off the dribble, get into the teeth of the coverage, and punish opponents by either pulling up from midrange, finishing at the cup, or drawing contact to get to the foul line. He has averaged 24.3 points and 6.2 assists per game on 47.8% shooting over the past six seasons. The only other players to hit those numbers over that span? Nikola Jokić, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Dončić and LeBron James.
That's pretty decent company — and a pretty surprising peer group, considering the relative lack of success that Fox was met with for the bulk of his time in Sacramento, as Vivek Ranadivé's Kings bounced from coach to coach, executive to executive, vision to vision and, largely, loss to loss throughout Fox's first five professional seasons.
And then the Kings hired Mike Brown, and suddenly, Sacramento got serious. An overhauled motion offense built around the dribble-handoff chemistry of Fox and playmaking center Domantas Sabonis surged to the top of the NBA in offensive efficiency, rocketing the club back to relevance. 'Light the Beam' became a joyous meme, a rallying cry, an article of faith.
Both Fox and Sabonis earned All-Star and All-NBA berths. Fox's remarkable late-game shooting and playmaking earned him the NBA's inaugural Clutch Player of the Year award. For the first time in 16 years, the Kings made the playoffs, taking the Bay Area big-brother Warriors all the way to seven games in the first round of the 2023 postseason; it took Fox breaking a finger on his shooting hand in Game 4, and Stephen Curry exploding for 50 points in Game 7, to end the Kings' breathtaking run.
That, it turns out, was as good as it would get. Despite continued stellar play from Fox, Sabonis and sixth man Malik Monk, the Kings took a slight step back in 2023-24, dropping from 48 wins and third place in the West to 46 wins and the ninth seed as the rest of the conference rose up around them. They'd exact a measure of revenge by eliminating Golden State in their first play-in tournament game, but would lose to the Pelicans in their second, preventing them from returning to the playoffs proper for the second straight season — and setting the stage for things to get uncomfortable if the next campaign got off to a rocky start.
Fast forward to December 2024, and … well, things got rocky:
Already under .500 30 games into the season, the Kings had a chance to end a four-game losing streak by knocking off the upstart Pistons the night after Christmas. But Fox fouled Detroit guard Jaden Ivey in the act of shooting a 3-pointer with 3.1 seconds to go, resulting in a four-point play and a fifth straight loss.
Afterward, Brown was critical of, among other things, Fox's defense on that decisive final play. One day later, the Kings fired Brown — a sudden, sharp decision that led some to speculate, especially in the absence of any press conference by the front office to clarify the rationale for the move, that Fox had gone to Sacramento's brass to call for a change. Fox vehemently denied that, and as the Kings' decision-makers continued to leave the circumstances surrounding Brown's firing unclear, the All-Star point guard grew increasingly dissatisfied with the state of affairs in California's capital.
"I was like, 'Yo, I've been here for going on my eighth year. If Mike gets fired, I'll be going on my fifth coach,'" Fox told ESPN. "And I told them, 'I'm not going to play for another coach. I'm going to play for another team.' … You fire the coach, and you don't do an interview? So, all the blame was on me. Did it weigh on me? No. I don't give a f—. But the fact y'all are supposed to be protecting your player and y'all let that happen. ... I felt at the time the organization didn't have my back."
Frustrated by that lack of support, and reportedly fearful of 'the prospect of wasting his best years on a team that was mired in mediocrity,' Fox and Paul made it clear that he felt his future lay outside of Sacramento. Specifically, in San Antonio — just a couple hours west of Katy, Texas, where Fox played his high school ball; where his wife, Recee, grew up; and where a certain 7-foot-3 Frenchman seems poised to take over the sport.
'It's like playing with Steph,' Fox told ESPN. 'Everybody can't play with Steph because you always have to look for him. But at the end of the day, that motherf—er can win championships. And I think Vic can win championships.'
The Spurs barely got to see Fox and Wembanyama together, with a pair of ailments — Wembanyama's deep vein thrombosis and Fox's fractured left pinky finger — limiting them to just 120 shared minutes across five games, with San Antonio getting outscored by five points with them sharing the floor. The new agreement represents a vote of confidence that, with a clean bill of health and a lot more reps, the pairing can produce significantly more positive results. It also allows San Antonio to give Dylan Harper — whom the Spurs drafted No. 2 overall in June's 2025 NBA draft after a surprise rise in the lottery — a longer developmental runway, affording him the opportunity to come along slowly behind a high-level pro playmaker rather than being pressed into immediate duty and expected to provide elite service to Wembanyama, Devin Vassell, reigning Rookie of the Year Stephon Castle, and the rest of a Spurs roster expected by many to make a leap this season.
Just how significant a leap depends primarily on Wembanyama, who's been cleared to return in time for training camp and could well be ticketed for MVP consideration in his third season. Just how significant a leap Wembanyama makes, though, could depend a lot on Fox — the kind of offensive engine who could make his life a lot easier, and who could give San Antonio the sort of inside-out one-two punch that makes Western Conference opponents' lives much, much tougher.