The San Antonio Spurs have long had one of the NBA's best front offices, but they may have made a key mistake.
Amid an incredibly successful season, it's hard to find fault with the San Antonio Spurs' front office. They traded for a co-star for Victor Wembanyama, adding De'Aaron Fox. They signed a quality backup center in Luke Kornet. They drafted the best player (by far) in both the 2023 and 2024 NBA Drafts, and Dylan Harper seems to be a star on the rise, too.
On top of that, Devin Vassell, Keldon Johnson, and Julian Champagnie are all signed to value contracts, and all three players have fully bought into their roles as supporting players.
However, it's not all perfect for the Silver and Black. A recent grading revealed that they boast one of the worst contracts in the NBA.
Spurs Boast One Of the NBA's Worst Contracts
Julian Champanie, currently on a two-year, $12 million deal, is one of the best contracts in the NBA.
De'Aaron Fox's four-year, $229 million maximum contract signed last summer? Not so much.
"San Antonio didn't know Dylan Harper was coming when it got Fox," wrote CBS's Sam Quinn, ranking Fox as the 15th worst contract in the league. "Would it take a mulligan on the trade if it knew? These are unanswerable questions, but in a vacuum, Fox is only a borderline max player today and almost certainly won't remain at this level as the contract progresses into his 30s."
Quin believes that a combination of Fox's inevitable decline, coupled with the young guard talent the Spurs recently added, will make his deal regrettable in the future.
For now, Fox is averaging 18.9 points, 6.3 assists, and 1.2 steals, and was named to his second All-Star Game, admidaly as a replacement player.
Would the Spurs be the second seed in the West with a rookie point guard like Harper running the show? Probably not. Was signing Fox to a long-term deal necessary to open their contention window sooner? Odds point to yes. However, is he a long-term centerpiece? Not with the way Harper and Castle have played this year.
According to an NBA Salary Model that only takes player production into consideration, not the roster around them, Fox is overpaid by $9 million per year.
That's far from the 15th-worst salary in the league, but depending on how he ages, it's not impossible to see how one might arrive at a negative conclusion.