A few days before the 2025 NBA trade deadline, the Sacramento Kings sent long-time point guard De’Aaron Fox to the San Antonio Spurs in a blockbuster three-team deal with the Chicago Bulls that brought back Zach LaVine. On Friday, Fox played in Sacramento for the first time since joining the Spurs.
Ahead of that contest, Fox made some explosive comments about the trade in an interview with ESPN. Fox said that he “really did” want to play for the Kings for his entire career, but that all changed when the team decided to fire coach Mike Brown just after Christmas.
“I was like, ‘Yo, I’ve been here for going on my eighth year. If Mike gets fired, I’ll be going on my fifth coach,'” said Fox, who scored a team-high 16 points but shot 0-for-6 from 3-point range in the Kings’ 127-109 win. “And I told them, ‘I’m not going to play for another coach. I’m going to play for another team.'”
Fox, who was drafted No. 5 overall in the 2017 draft, had played for Dave Joerger, Luke Walton, Alvin Gentry and Brown during his seven-plus seasons with the Kings. While Fox helped the team end its lengthy playoff drought during the 2023 season, his tenure with the club was plagued by dysfunction and mismanagement.
Ultimately, it was not surprising that Fox wanted a change of scenery, especially considering that he wanted Brown to remain as coach and didn’t appreciate how the organization handled the coaching change.
“You fire the coach, and you don’t do an interview?” Fox said. “So, all the blame was on me. Did it weigh on me? No. I don’t give a f—. But the fact y’all are supposed to be protecting your player and y’all let that happen. … I felt at the time the organization didn’t have my back.”
Once Fox decided that he wanted a trade, he told the Kings that the Spurs were his preferred landing spot. In his conversation with ESPN, he pushed back against the idea that he had a list of destinations and explained why he wanted to control his future.
“There was no f—ing list,” Fox said. “There was one team. I wanted to go to San Antonio. So, a lot of people are mad at me, saying I handcuffed the team by giving them a destination. Well, this is my career. If anybody else is in my position, you’d do the same thing. It’s not my job to help build your team. I’m not about to just go where they want me to go. I wanted to have a destination.”
While the Spurs are not as good on the court as the Kings this season, that is expected to change in the coming years, assuming that Victor Wembanyama is able to make a full recovery from his deep vein thrombosis. From an organizational standpoint, the Spurs have been much more stable than the Kings, though Gregg Popovich’s health situation after his stroke does raise some questions.
Even with the Spurs’ health concerns, it’s easy to see why Fox wanted to return to Texas, where he played high school basketball.
The nature of Fox’s interview is really the only surprise with this entire situation. Players usually aren’t this candid about what happened behind the scenes or how they feel. Whatever anyone might think about how Fox handled his exit from Sacramento, you certainly know where he stands.