How Good Will the Wembanyama-Fox Duo Be?
The San Antonio Spurs have paired second year wunderkind Victor Wembanyama with De'Aaron Fox to form what they hope will be a championship-winning duo. The Spurs acquired Fox--who earned one All-Star selection in seven and a half seasons with the Sacramento Kings--in a three team deal that sent two-time All-Star Zach LaVine from Chicago to Sacramento along with Sidy Cissoko, three first round draft picks, and three second round draft picks. Jordan McLaughlin will join Fox in San Antonio, and Chicago will receive Zach Collins, Kevin Huerter, Tre Jones, and their own 2025 first round draft pick that they had previously traded.
As I noted in my articles about the Jimmy Butler trade and the blockbuster Luka Doncic-Anthony Davis trade, the general rule of thumb when evaluating an NBA trade is that the team that received the best player "won," although size matters in the NBA, and age is also a factor worth considering.
Fox is the best player in this deal; he is a 27 year old 6-3 point guard with career averages of 21.5 ppg, 6.1 apg, 3.9 rpg, and 1.4 spg. He led the NBA in steals last season (2.0 spg), and he ranks eighth in steals (1.6 spg) this season. He has ranked in the top 10 in assists twice (eighth in 2019, ninth in 2021), and he has ranked in the top 10 in scoring once (eighth in 2024 with a career-high 26.6 ppg). Fox has averaged at least 23.2 ppg each season since 2021-22, including 24.9 ppg this season. Fox has made the All-NBA Team once (Third Team selection in 2023). He is a very good player, but he is not a great player; he is not a perennial All-Star, he has never come close to making the All-NBA First Team, and he has an 0-1 career playoff series record that demonstrates that he has yet to lift his team to high level postseason success.
LaVine is an often injured 6-5 swingman who will soon turn 30 years old, and who last made the All-Star team in 2022. His career averages are 20.7 ppg, 4.7 rpg, and 4.3 apg. He is not a good defensive player and, like Fox, he has an 0-1 career playoff series record.
The other players in this deal, like the other players in the Butler trade and the Doncic-Davis trade, were included to facilitate the deal more so than for the direct impact they are expected to have on the court. The multiple draft picks are like stock futures: they may prove to be extremely valuable, and they may prove to be worthless. Much like a smart investor maintains a diverse portfolio, a smart team does not rely too heavily on just the draft, just free agency, or just trades, but instead keeps open as many options as possible to improve the roster in terms of talent, depth, and salary cap flexibility.
Will Wembanyama and Fox win at least one championship together in San Antonio? There are many reasons to be skeptical.
The Spurs tanked to acquire the draft rights to Wembanyama, even though it has been proven over a long period of time and a large sample size that tanking does not work. "Stat guru" executives and delusional writers have made a lot of money touting the notion that the Philadelphia 76ers "tanked to the top" despite the fact that the much-praised "Process" has not yielded more than a string of second round losses--and this season, despite having a "Big Three" featuring Joel "The Process" Embiid, Paul "Playoff P" George, and promising young guard Tyrese Maxey, the 76ers are struggling just to qualify for the playoffs. Tanking teams tend to not ever win big for a variety of reasons, including the fact that tanking promotes bad habits and creates a culture where losing is acceptable (or even desirable); bad habits and a negative culture are a lot more difficult to change than "stat gurus" are willing to admit. Embiid has been in the NBA since 2014, and he still has not developed proper training habits off of the court or a winning mentality on the court, demonstrated every time we see his out of shape body lumbering back on defense. As Jeff Van Gundy used to say during his TV commentating days: horses trot, players run.
The Spurs went 22-60 in their tanking season and then, after drafting Wembanyama, they went 22-60 in his rookie season. They added veterans Chris Paul and Harrison Barnes prior to this season, and they are currently 22-27--a significant improvement, but hardly even close to championship contention. Building a championship team is not like microwaving a packaged meal; "stat gurus" keep acting as if they can just throw talent together to win instantly and they keep being slapped in the face by the hard reality that great teams are not built that way. Great teams are built from the ground up by developing chemistry and by inculcating the right habits. Wembanyama is a highly productive young player who does not have a clue what it takes to win at the NBA level. Fox is a productive player entering his prime who has yet to win at the NBA level. Why should we believe that throwing those two players together is going to produce anything other that some regular season wins followed by, at best, early playoff exits? Wembanyama may be the best defensive player in the NBA, but the Spurs rank 13th in defensive field goal percentage and 19th in points allowed. It takes a well put together team to win at a high level, not just a bunch of individually talented players.
Fox may be talented enough to push the Spurs above .500 this season, but it will be very surprising if the Spurs win a playoff series in 2025, and it will be interesting to see how long it takes for Wembanyama to notch his first playoff series win. Embiid missed his first two seasons due to injury, and did not win a playoff series until four years after he was drafted. He has reached the second round just five times, and he is 0-5 in those series.
This is not a bad trade for the Spurs. The Spurs clearly "won" this trade and they are better now than they were before. The point is that it will take more than one good trade to undo the damage done by tanking. It is interesting to contrast Pat Riley's Miami Heat--a team that refuses to tank--with the Spurs (and other tanking teams). Since LeBron James left the Heat in 2014, the Heat have reached the NBA Finals twice, participated in the playoffs in seven out of 10 seasons, and had a losing record just twice. After Tim Duncan retired in 2016, the Spurs reached the Western Conference Finals once, lost in the second round twice, and have not participated in the playoffs since 2020. The Spurs have had a losing record in each of the past five seasons, and will have to scramble to not have a losing record this season. They may not have been losing on purpose that whole time, but they also did not build a foundation for success; they just hoped to hit the Draft Lottery jackpot--and even after "winning" the Draft Lottery they are still a losing team. Gregg Popovich used to quip that he had nothing to do with the Spurs' success and that he was just lucky to have had Tim Duncan for so long, but that joke probably seems less funny to Spurs' fans now than it did during their championship-winning glory days. Which fan base has had more fun and received more value in the past decade or so--Miami or San Antonio? Tanking is just awful for the league, for its fans, and for its media partners. At any give time, it seems that at least five or six of the NBA's 30 teams are losing on purpose, and that makes the product almost unwatchable. It was hilarious to hear J.J. Redick lambasting Charles Barkley for telling the truth that is plain for anyone to see: the NBA has a lot of bad teams playing bad basketball.
The other two teams in this trade seem to be adrift, at best. Mike Brown brought some stability to the Kings--leading the team to the playoffs in 2023, their first postseason appearance since 2006--but now that the Kings fired him and traded their leading scorer (Fox) they seem to be heading back toward their comfort zone of dysfunction. The Kings enjoyed a brief 11-4 honeymoon under new Coach Doug Christie before losing four of their last five games. LaVine has never been part of an NBA team that won at a high level, and that is unlikely to change now.
As for the Bulls, it is not clear if they are intentionally tanking or just perpetually clueless, but they have reached the playoffs just once since 2017 and they have not won a playoff series since 2015. Unloading LaVine's burdensome contract is good from a salary cap flexibility standpoint, but in the short run (and for the foreseeable future) they have less talent and will have to scrap and claw just to get into the Play-In Tournament.
Labels: Chicago Bulls, De'Aaron Fox, Jordan McLaughlin, Kevin Huerter, Sacramento Kings, San Antonio Spurs, Sidy Cissoko, tanking, Tre Jones, Zach Collins, Zach LaVine
posted by David Friedman @ 12:56 PM
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