The Spurs' NBA Finals run against the Knicks wasn't the coronation people were picturing when Victor Wembanyama and De'Aaron Fox first got paired up. Fox spent the series playing on a right high ankle sprain that first flared up back in the Western Conference semis against Minnesota, then got reaggravated in the West Finals when Thunder forward Lu Dort dove for a loose ball and caught his leg. He still finished that game. That's been the pattern all postseason: get hurt, sit, come back anyway.
None of that made his Finals numbers pretty. Fox shot 2-for-11 from three across the series and never found the scoring rhythm San Antonio needed outside of Wembanyama's shadow. But according to ESPN's Michael C. Wright, Spurs sources aren't holding the shooting slump against him — they're pointing at the fact that the team might not have even gotten to the Finals without Fox grinding through the injury in the first place.
It's worth remembering what Fox gave up to be out there at all. He missed the first two games of the West Finals against Oklahoma City, then came back hobbled and still logged real minutes. He wasn't just a body in the lineup, either — Fox hit what's been described as the biggest clutch shot of his career in Game 3 at Madison Square Garden and dropped 20 points in Game 2. That's the version of Fox the Spurs are betting stays healthy going forward, not the one limping through a Finals loss.
San Antonio has real financial skin in this game, too. Fox signed a 4-year, $229 million max extension with the Spurs that kicks in for the 2026-27 season and runs through 2029-30. There's no easy out in that deal, which makes the front office's public vote of confidence less about optics and more about necessity — they're committed to Fox as the long-term backcourt piece next to Wembanyama whether this Finals run ended cleanly or not.
The bigger question for San Antonio is how much of this injury lingers into next season. Fox has now aggravated the same high ankle sprain twice in the same playoff run, first against Minnesota and again against Oklahoma City, which isn't the kind of thing that just disappears with an offseason of rest. If he shows up to training camp fully healthy, the Finals slump reads like a footnote. If the ankle is still an issue, the Spurs' patience gets tested a lot sooner than they'd like.
For now, the front office is choosing to frame this as a superstar who played hurt and got them further than expected, not a guard who shrank in the biggest moment. Given the contract and the timeline, that's really the only stance they could take.