In July, the San Antonio Spurs, Chicago Bulls and Sacramento Kings got together for a three-team trade. In that deal, the Kings made a questionable move for a big-name guard (DeMar DeRozan), the Bulls focused primarily on saving money (by not taking on the contract of Harrison Barnes), and the Spurs walked away with the best overall asset in the deal (unprotected swap rights on Sacramento’s 2031 first-round pick).
If that basic deal construction sounds familiar to you, well, it should. On Sunday, the Spurs, Bulls and Kings once again got together for a trade. Once again, the Kings added a big-name guard: Zach LaVine. Once again, the Bulls focused primarily on saving money. They no longer have to worry about getting stuck with LaVine’s max contract for the next two years, instead taking on the smaller contracts of Zach Collins, Tre Jones and Kevin Huerter. For the second time in a year, the Spurs have come away with the best overall asset in the deal.
This time, that asset is an All-Star. In De’Aaron Fox, the Spurs have landed a 27-year-old point guard capable of serving as Victor Wembanyama’s sidekick as he attempts to lead the Spurs back into championship contention. When we graded the last three-team trade between the Spurs, Bulls and Kings, San Antonio led the pack with an “A+.” Spoiler alert, they’re not far off this time around.
San Antonio Spurs: A
Forget about Fox, himself for a moment. Think about what the Spurs still have right now:
- All eight players that have played at least 500 minutes for them this season.
- All seven of their first-round picks since 2019 that were still on the roster entering this season: Stephon Castle, Victor Wembanyama, Jeremy Sochan, Malaki Branham, Blake Wesley, Devin Vassell and Keldon Johnson.
- All three of the unprotected Atlanta Hawks first-round picks they controlled (two outright, one via swap).
- All but one of their own tradable first-round picks.
- Every single first-round swap they’d accumulated through previous trades.
So right now, the Spurs not only have Wembanyama, the future face of the league, and Fox, a worthy All-Star sidekick for him, but they basically still have everything else they need to build a dynasty. All of their young talent. All of their cap flexibility while those young players are on below-market rookie-scale deals. Most of their draft capital.
Literally any roster-building path is available to San Antonio right now. If the Spurs want to trade for a third star, they can do so. If the Spurs want to emphasize depth around the Wembanyama-Fox duo, they can do so. If the Spurs want to simply remain opportunistic and grab players they like when the opportunity arises, they can do so. And if they want to ride out Fox’s prime and then replace him with a different, younger star down the line, they can do so. Everything is available to them. There was no real opportunity cost here. They added Fox and subtracted nothing especially important.
Really think about the picks that they traded. That 2025 Hornets pick? It’s fake. It’s lottery protected and the Hornets aren’t making the playoffs. How about that 2025 Bulls pick? Not quite as fake, but with a top-8 protection, it was right on the bubble of not conveying, and since the Bulls themselves control that pick, they could have tipped the scales towards keeping it by just tanking more aggressively. The 2027 pick of their own they sent out is going to be at the end of the first round if Wembanyama and Fox are as good together as we assume they will be. These are mostly weak picks.
The 2031 Minnesota pick is interesting. Who knows where the Timberwolves will be by then? Anthony Edwards could be long gone. So, yes, that is a very high-upside asset. Here’s the catch: San Antonio also controls top-1 protected swap rights with the Timberwolves in 2030. So it’s basically a win-win for them. Either the Spurs sent out a fairly weak Timberwolves pick in this deal, or the Timberwolves do indeed crater, in which case San Antonio still benefits through those swap rights.
So, why an “A” and not an “A+?” Because the fit is far from perfect. For starters, Fox is 27 and has a playing style that’s based largely on his speed and athleticism. That’s fine for right now. It’s not likely to age especially well. Wembanyama is only 21. There is a real chance that Fox is out of his prime before Wembanyama reaches his. Is that a huge deal? Not necessarily, no. Even pre-prime Wembanyama might be the NBA’s best player. He’s ready to compete for titles right now, and as we’ve covered, the Spurs have the assets to go replace him when the time comes.
In the interim, they’ll have to contend with the potentially awkward fit between Fox and the players they already have. The Spurs shoot only 35.1% on 3-pointers. Arguably their two most important young non-Wemby players, Sochan and Castle, are both below 30% from 3-point range this season. Keldon Johnson is at 30.8% and has been below league-average since his outlier 2021-22 campaign. Even Devin Vassell, the best shooter of the bunch, is only at 36% this season and is much more comfortable operating in the mid-range, much as Fox often does.
Having a center that shoots like Wembanyama does changes the equation a bit, but not to the degree this current Spurs roster suggests he will. He and Fox need space to operate that they’re not going to have right away. This isn’t a problem that they need to solve tomorrow. Maybe the young guys develop, or maybe they just get better playing with another high-end shot-creator. But whether it’s through internal development or trading, they have to find more shooting.
That’s a long-term problem. It wouldn’t be hard to trade Stephon Castle or Jeremy Sochan if the need presented itself. Heck, if the Spurs really aren’t happy with their offense, maybe they’ll just let Fox go and try to sign Luka Doncic in 2026 free agency (yes, Lakers fans, he’s available until he signs an extension). These are tomorrow problems for a team built around a 21-year-old. Today, the Spurs have improved significantly without giving up anything essential to do so. They found their centerpiece on lottery night back in 2023. Now, they have his first true sidekick as well.
Sacramento Kings: D
In fairness to the Kings, Fox put them a difficult position. The whole league knew he wanted to go to San Antonio. That limited the offers other teams were willing to make. Getting fair value back for Fox may not have been plausible. Fine.
But, Kings, what are we doing here? What’s the actual goal? Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan played parts of three seasons together in Chicago. The Bulls went 81-75 with both on the court. That’s a bit less than a 43-win pace over a full season. Yes, I understand that 43 wins would be the third-best Kings season since 2006, but that doesn’t make it something to aspire towards.
Sacramento would likely argue that just pairing LaVine and DeRozan together does not mean they are recreating those mediocre Bulls teams. I suppose there are a few cosmetic differences. Domantas Sabonis is younger and better than Nikola Vucevic. They are extremely similar players stylistically. Keon Ellis is a not quite Alex Caruso. The Bulls didn’t have a Keegan Murray. The Kings don’t have a Lonzo Ball, who was secretly perhaps the most important player to Chicago’s early success with that roster. From a talent perspective, the rosters are eerily similar. The biggest differences are that LaVine and DeRozan are now several years older and that the Kings play in the much harder Western Conference. LaVine is a better shooter than Fox, but he’s far more injury-prone. He was untradeable over the summer. He’s one injury away from regaining that status.
LaVine’s best statistical season, by far, was the 2020-21 campaign, which was the year before DeRozan’s arrival in Chicago. His second best statistical season is happening right now, a year after DeRozan left. That’s not a coincidence. Two high-usage stars that play at different paces and don’t defend are rarely fits together. Speaking of defense, even if Fox was inconsistent in that regard, he has far better tools on that end of the floor than LaVine does. This is a downgrade there. Maybe a proven defensive-minded head coach like Mike Brown could’ve figured this out, but the Kings fired him.
As we’ve covered, the picks they got here weren’t especially valuable. The first-rounder from the Hornets will revert to two second-round picks. That Spurs pick is probably coming at the end of the first round. The Minnesota pick in 2031 is a mystery box. Maybe it’s something. Maybe it’s nothing. The mystery holds value. Perception is reality when it comes to trading picks. Even if 2031 rolls around and the Timberwolves are good, there will likely be a moment between now and then in which things look shaky and that pick holds immense trade value.
But you know what pick the Kings should have valued more? Their own in 2031. As we covered, the Kings gave the Spurs swap rights on that pick last summer. Getting control of those rights back should have been a priority here. That pick is as much a mystery as the Timberwolves pick is, but the difference is it’s one Sacramento actually could have controlled. Nothing is more valuable from a trade perspective than your own first-round picks because you can’t force another team to tank. Had Sacramento regained control of that 2031 pick, they could have ensured that its value was maximized. They can’t do that to Minnesota. They swung and missed on one of the most important elements of this trade.
So yes, the Kings turned a low-end All-Star ball-handler into a low-end All-Star ball-handler and several first-round picks. It’s just that the low-end All-Star ball-handler they got is far riskier than the one they had, the picks they got back weren’t especially valuable, and more than anything, this trade shows a complete and utter lack of direction and ambition in Sacramento. Even if Fox’s value was compromised by his desire to land in San Antonio, moving a player of his caliber was a chance for the Kings to reimagine their team in some significant way. Instead, they chose to recreate an Eastern Conference Play-In team. The Spurs just fleeced them for the second time in less than a year.
Chicago Bulls: D
Remember how we just covered why your own first-round picks are important in trades? Well… that doesn’t exactly apply to protected picks. Yes, the Bulls got their own 2025 first-round pick back from the Spurs, but that pick was top-eight protected. All it would have taken to keep that pick was more losing. The Bulls are in danger of giving that pick up, but mostly due to their own incompetence. This team can’t even tank properly.
That’s what’s so frustrating here from Chicago’s perspective. They didn’t materially gain anything out of LaVine’s comeback season. They didn’t have to trade for this pick back. If they’d done a better job of gutting the roster before this point, they wouldn’t have been in danger of giving the pick away in the first place. They could have turned LaVine into an asset that they might not otherwise have had. The Bulls have been stuck in purgatory because they keep half-measuring these rebuilds. If they’d traded LaVine a month ago we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
So what did the Bulls accomplish here, aside from covering up their own botched rebuild? Well, they did save some money. In getting Zach Collins, Tre Jones and Kevin Huerter, they did manage to split one big contract into three smaller ones. None of those players are owed salary in the 2026-27 season. LaVine is, so they’ve effectively wiped away nearly $49 million in obligations for that season. However, of the three, only Jones has an expiring contract. They’re still on the hook for around $18 million apiece to Huerter and Collins next season, so it’s not as though they escaped the LaVine deal completely.
The last nine months represented a real chance for the Bulls to reset and build this thing properly. In that span, they failed to net a single first-round pick for Caruso, DeRozan or LaVine aside from one they could’ve kept by simply losing more games. Josh Giddey has been a disappointment in Chicago. Cheapness prevented them from securing those valuable 2031 Kings swap rights over the summer. LaVine could have gotten them a significant asset for their rebuild. Instead, the Bulls have very little to show for the teardown that began last summer. They’re basically starting from scratch now. That’s better than where they were with LaVine and DeRozan, but it’s far worse off than where they could be right now.
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