A national analyst floated the idea that it is worth taking apart from both sides.
Trade ideas involving the Los Angeles Clippers usually die on the fact that the team has almost nothing left to offer, which is what makes the one floating around this month different, because it starts with a player the Clippers already have.
CBS Sports analyst Sam Quinn, appearing on the Third Apron Podcast with Yossi Gozlan, sketched a deal that would send point guard Darius Garland to San Antonio for point guard De'Aaron Fox and a first-round pick.
The Pitch Itself
Quinn framed it as a question about what the Clippers should value most after losing their own drafts.
"Would you trade Darius Garland and/or Brandon Ingram for worse contracts and get some picks attached?" Quinn asked, in remarks first transcribed this month.
His logic runs through Fox's situation in San Antonio, where the Spurs went 62-20, won the Western Conference and lost the Finals to New York, and where Fox's scoring fell from 18.6 points a game in the regular season to 12.8 in that series, per the reports around the rumor.
That Finals slide next to center Victor Wembanyama is the reason his name keeps surfacing in ideas like this one, though general manager Brian Wright said back in June that the organization's faith in Fox has not wavered at all.
Why It Makes Sense
The Clippers' biggest long-term problem is draft capital, since the league stripped a first-round pick in each draft from 2029 through 2033, leaving the team its own picks in the next two drafts plus the incoming Toronto selections and a 2027 swap to build a future around.
Any deal that returns a first-round pick while swapping one starting point guard for another attacks that exact wound.
Fox is also 28, younger than the typical star a team without picks can realistically chase, and pairing his speed with forward Brandon Ingram as the offense's centerpiece is at least interesting.
Why It Doesn't
The case against is stronger.
Quinn's own framing admits the Clippers would be taking back the worse contract, which cuts against the flexibility that is currently their only real asset.
Garland fits cleanly next to guard Kris Dunn and guard Bradley Beal, and the roster already has a settled shape up front, so swapping guards sideways solves nothing the team actually struggles with.
There is also no evidence San Antonio wants any of this, since a 62-win Finals team rarely breaks up its backcourt in September, and Wright's June comments read like a door being closed rather than opened.
The pick is tempting, and the Clippers should chase picks wherever they can, but not by taking on a bigger contract for a similar player.
There is a version of a Garland trade worth doing someday, and it looks nothing like this one.
That version involves a shorter contract coming back and more than one pick attached, because the one advantage the Clippers still hold is that they are not forced to do anything at all.
Patience costs this team nothing, and the roster as built deserves a chance to show what it is before anyone starts splitting it up.
This one makes sense on a podcast and falls apart on a cap sheet.
