De’Aaron Fox sat out Game 1. The Spurs won anyway. Now the Spurs are about to get Fox back, and the rest of the Western Conference should be worried.
ESPN’s Marc J. Spears reported that there is optimism Fox will play in Game 2 against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday. Fox had been dealing with a right ankle injury that he originally tweaked in Game 4 of the Spurs’ second-round series against the Minnesota Timberwolves and aggravated again in the Game 6 closeout win.
Sitting out Game 1 was the right call. There was no point in pushing him onto the floor when the ankle was still sore and the team had Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper ready to handle the starting backcourt. Castle and Harper did exactly that, combining to control the tempo and let Victor Wembanyama do Victor Wembanyama things in a 122-115 double overtime win.
Here is what makes the Fox update so dangerous for Oklahoma City. The Spurs just won a Conference Finals game on the road, in double overtime, against the defending champions, with their All-Star point guard in street clothes. Now they get to add a two-time All-Star to a team that already won.
Fox is an entirely different problem than Castle and Harper. He gets to the rim with a kind of speed that breaks rotations. He pulls up in the mid-range with a confidence that pulls help away from Wembanyama. He defends the ball-handler at a level the Spurs’ younger guards cannot quite match yet. When he plays, the offense unlocks an entire layer it does not have without him.
The Thunder are going to need a different game plan. They held the Spurs to one point in two overtimes’ worth of basketball and still lost. Their offense was strong enough to put 115 on the board, but they could not get the rebounds or the stops they needed when it mattered. Now they have to make all the same adjustments AND figure out how to slow down Fox.
The flip side is that Fox is not 100 percent. He is playing through a real ankle injury. Even if he is on the floor Wednesday, he might not have the explosive first step that makes him so hard to guard. The Spurs will need to manage his minutes carefully, especially with Game 3 coming Friday in San Antonio.
That is where Harper and Castle staying ready becomes important. The Spurs cannot ask Fox to play 40 minutes against a Thunder team that pushes pace like nobody else. They need their depth, and Game 1 proved the depth is real.
Wembanyama just put up 41 and 24 in a double-overtime win. Harper joined Larry Bird and Julius Erving in the box score history books. Castle has been the steady veteran presence even though he is only in his second year. The Spurs are a problem even without Fox.
Adding him back to that group, even at 80 percent, tips the series further in San Antonio’s direction. The Thunder went into Game 1 as the favorites. They are not anymore.
Game 2 tips Wednesday night in Oklahoma City. Watch the Spurs’ starting lineup announcement. If Fox is in it, the Thunder have a much bigger problem than they had Monday night.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
