The San Antonio Spurs are heading into the offseason with one big trade candidate already drawing a line through his future: De’Aaron Fox.
Fox and Keldon Johnson have both floated through trade rumors all summer, but the way things look now, the Spurs are far more likely to move in a different direction first. Johnson may still have a path to sticking around long term. Fox, meanwhile, feels like the eventual odd man out.
That idea has only grown stronger after the Spurs drafted Dylan Harper and watched him emerge as one of the team’s better players. Fox’s maximum four-year extension, which begins this season, suddenly looks a lot less appealing. There isn’t much of a market for him right now, but once the Spurs feel ready to hand Harper the offense, Fox is as good as gone.
Luke Kornet is also on the radar, though for very different reasons.
In his first regular season in San Antonio, Kornet gave the Spurs 6.5 points and 6.1 rebounds per game, and the team was a plus-4.3 with him on the floor. For a backup center, that’s about as much as a team could hope for. He wasn’t a scoring threat, but San Antonio actually performed better when he played, which was the first time the Spurs could say that about any of Victor Wembanyama’s backups.
Then came the playoffs, where Kornet’s value dropped fast. By the end of the postseason, he was borderline unplayable, and in the Finals he averaged only eight ineffective minutes per game.
Still, the Spurs couldn’t really have moved him before. More than anything, the roster didn’t give them another option. Last season, even in the playoffs, Kornet was the only other playable center behind Wembanyama.
That picture has changed.
Tarris Reed looked like a steady NBA player in Summer League, and Jayden Quaintance has not yet played in front of fans, but the expectation is that he can hold his own inside. Johnson, Carter Bryant, and Tobias Harris can also slide into small-ball center minutes, and with Bryant breaking out, Mitch Johnson is expected to lean on him.
So while the Spurs didn’t go into the offseason expecting to shop Kornet, that has shifted now that the frontcourt has been reinforced.
At $10.4 million next season, Kornet is a much easier player to move than Fox, whose salary sits at $49.8 million. If Reed continues to develop, the Spurs are expected to at least explore what a Kornet trade could look like.
In Other News...
Spurs Face A Brutal Stretch That Could Reshape Their Rotation
November is about to test the Spurs in a way that goes beyond wins and losses. San Antonio is staring at a stretch of 16 games in 30 days with no two-day breaks, and even if only a handful of those matchups come against top conference opponents, the grind alone figures to push Mitch Johnson into some interesting decisions about how he uses his roster.
For Johnson, the month looks like more than a survival exercise. It should be a chance to mix and match lineups that have barely shared the floor, give young players a longer runway, and keep workload management at the center of the plan as the season wears on. The upside for San Antonio is that a brutal schedule can also become a laboratory, and the next few weeks may tell the staff a lot about which combinations are worth carrying forward. [Read more 🡒]
Spurs Could Face A Tough Keldon Johnson Decision Around Wembanyama
The Spurs have already been linked to plenty of roster tinkering around Victor Wembanyama, with DeAaron Fox and Luke Kornet both part of the broader conversation as the front office weighs how to keep sharpening the fit around its young star. In that kind of setup, Keldon Johnson naturally becomes one of the more interesting names to watch because he has been part of the teams core for years and still represents real value in any discussion about reshaping the roster.
What makes Johnson especially tricky is that he sits at the center of a larger balancing act for San Antonio, one that involves present-day usefulness, future upside and the kind of defensive versatility that matters next to Wembanyama. A recent mock proposal imagines the Spurs moving him for a younger wing package, a reminder that the organization may have to decide whether Johnson is better kept as a proven piece or used as the sort of trade chip that can bring back a cleaner long-term fit. [Read more 🡒]
Spurs Raised The Bar And Now Expectations Are Getting Real
After a season that showed just how quickly the Spurs can turn promise into wins, the conversation around San Antonio is no longer about patience. The roster is young, the chemistry is real, and there is enough depth on hand to make a jump feel less like a dream and more like the next logical step. Add in a schedule that looks manageable and both ends of the floor carrying room for growth, and it is easy to see why expectations have started to shift.
Victor Wembanyama and the rest of the core have given the organization a foundation that already feels sturdier than outsiders expected, and player development could push it further. Still, the leap from a strong season to elite territory is where the caution comes in, because projection and reality are rarely the same thing. The idea of a 70-win season hangs out there as a bold marker, but for now it remains exactly that, a bold marker, with plenty left to prove before San Antonio gets anywhere close to it. [Read more 🡒]