For the third time this December, the San Antonio Spurs have beaten the otherwise barely beatable Oklahoma City Thunder. Each win showed off a different Spurs strength, with the first two being headlined by Victor Wembanyama's vertical pressure and the team's scoring depth, respectively. San Antonio's Christmas Day win was all about De'Aaron Fox, who has had a cool season for the league's coolest team.
Fox came into the season under the most pressure of any San Antonian this side of Mitch Johnson. The former All-NBA point guard is one of the Spurs who matters who's in his prime, which made him, in some ways, a curious fit on a team populated by youngsters. Clearly Wembanyama was going to make the Spurs too good to spend any more time losing after last season, though the Fox trade represented a sudden acceleration of the timeline. After playing five games together last year, Wemby was ruled out with a blood clot and Fox was shut down shortly after. Then, over the summer, Fox was given a max extension and the Spurs drafted another highly regarded lefty point guard in Dylan Harper, two moves that simultaneously secured Fox as the immediate future of the team and in theory made his skills somewhat redundant. The Fox skeptic might wonder whether a one-time all-star with exactly one good season of three-point shooting was really worth all that money, and the opportunity to expend the team's considerable arsenal of picks on a better player. That person might point out that the Harper pick would allow the Spurs to more comfortably prepare to compete during Wembanyama's prime.
The skeptic's position looked good for a while. Fox missed the first eight games of the season, a period in which his team went 6-2, exceeding expectations and ratcheting up the pressure on Fox even higher. Meanwhile, Harper looked like a polished, dangerous vet, not a rookie. Fox re-entered when Wemby missed a few weeks with a calf strain, putting him in a tough position. No matter. He got to work. San Antonio went 9-3 during the 12 games Wemby missed, with Fox leading the way, dropping 37 in Portland, tossing 12 assists in Denver, and posting four games with three steals.
What impressed more than the counting stats, however, was Fox's control of the game. In an NBA where 36 players currently average 20 or more points, you could look at Fox drop a cool 20 and four and think he had basically an average game. But watch him work, and you'll see a player whose speed and intelligence give him the ability to generate good shots more or less for free, every possession. Twenty and four is what he had against the Lakers two weeks ago, and he spent the game cooking poor Austin Reaves or Marcus Smart, then making the right play. Sometimes the right play was finishing at the rack, sometimes it was tossing it to a wide-open shooter, but whatever it was, he made it. San Antonio's offense was extremely efficient with Fox running the show, all without the team's best player.
Three days later, Wembanyama came back, and aside from the NBA Cup final, the Spurs have gone 6-0 with an average margin of victory of 17. The third Thunder game was the first in OKC, yet it was Fox who looked like he was at home. You could see in this game why he was worth bringing in to wrest the Spurs from methodical development into immediate contention. Lu Dort, Alex Caruso, and Jalen Williams were powerless to stop Fox from getting into the paint. The theory of the Thunder is that nobody is allowed to dribble the basketball without pressure, contact, and eventual submission, but there was Fox, springing into the lane at will. He scored 21 in the first half of Christmas basketball of his professional career, then steadily managed the second half as the Thunder mounted a pair of aborted comebacks. It was as if the Thunder's defense was ordinary.
As someone who's watched Fox's entire career, I find it extremely satisfying to see how under control he is now. Fox stepped onto the court as a rookie as the fastest player in the league, but he took a while to learn how to change speeds. Nine seasons later, he toggles between full, lung-bursting sprints, instant stops, herky-jerky acceleration-deceleration cycles, all with the ball, all while knowing exactly where all of his teammates are, often several times per possession. He has also developed as a defender, from a somewhat foul-prone ball-watcher into a terrifying ballhawk and positional perimeter defender. He will do this thing, and he pointedly did it several times on Christmas, where he will stick to a ballhandler with his hands pinned to his side, mirroring their movements and staying with them step-for-step without even trying to make the steal. It's arrogant, a reminder that whatever you try to do, you're not faster than Fox. He was straight-up better than Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, both in their matchups and in the aggregate.
It would be irresponsible to put a ceiling on a Victor Wembanyama team, just as it would be to continue to harbor any doubts about Fox as a worthy running mate. We have barely even seen the two play 10 games together, and since Wemby is still coming off the bench, there is a ton of growing left to do. I think it's time for everyone to start freaking out about these guys.
