By Zach KramFeb. 3, 2:55 pm UTC • 5 min

What, you thought the NBA would take a breath after the Luka Doncic–for–Anthony Davis blockbuster? Not a chance; this is trade deadline week! And if Luka can be traded, then anyone can—particularly two stars who have been agitating for a move.

Sunday night’s deal isn’t quite the most stunning trade in NBA history, but it’s a scorcher in its own right, sending De’Aaron Fox to the San Antonio Spurs, Zach LaVine to the Sacramento Kings, and an assortment of picks across the country. Here are the full terms:

To the Spurs: De’Aaron Fox, Jordan McLaughlin

To the Kings: Zach LaVine, Sidy Cissoko, three first-round picks (all via San Antonio), three second-round picks

To the Bulls: Kevin Huerter, Tre Jones, Zach Collins, their own 2025 pick (via the Spurs)

The most important component is Fox’s trade to San Antonio, which signifies the Spurs’ first big win-now move of the Wemby era. They’re not rashly rushing their young star’s timeline; instead, Victor Wembanyama is rushing theirs, as he’s already contending for a spot on the All-NBA first team just halfway through his second season. 

At 21-25, in 12th place in the West, the Spurs are just hanging on to the periphery of the play-in race, but this move is more about the future: They needed to supply Wembanyama with a costar in order to make further strides as a budding contender. Wemby ranks sixth in The Ringer’s Top 100 rankings, but the next-best Spur—Devin Vassell—is all the way down at no. 72, and 39-year-old Chris Paul is the only other teammate in the top 100. 

Enter Fox, who has averaged at least 25 points per game in four of the past five seasons and plays with superb speed, a potent pick-and-roll game, and commendably clutch cojones. But Fox is only a one-time All-Star, and he was slightly overextended as a no. 1 option on a winning team. His Kings always had a losing record before Domantas Sabonis arrived to give Fox some help, and it’s unclear which member of that duo deserved more credit for lifting the team to the playoffs. Even we at The Ringer have regularly flip-flopped Fox and Sabonis around the no. 20 spot on our Top 100 rankings.

But Fox makes a lot more sense as a second scorer in support of a superior superstar. And give the 27-year-old guard this much credit, after he, er, lightly suggested his amenability to a Spurs trade: Like the visionaries who bought Apple stock in the 1980s, Fox recognized a massive growth opportunity and seized it early, thereby getting in on the ground floor of Wemby’s ascendant career. Think about how much better, say, Tony Parker’s career looks because he—another slithery, lightning-fast point guard with an iffy jumper—played next to Tim Duncan for 15 seasons, instead of toiling away on any other NBA team. Fox hopes to follow that same path to fame and trophies with Wembanyama.

That’s not to say he’s a perfect fit in San Antonio In particular, the stagnation of Fox’s 3-point shot now becomes one of the most important story lines in the NBA. He’s shot better than 32 percent from distance just once in the past six seasons, and his accuracy has dropped back down to his career norm after an apparently fluky spike in 2023-24.

Elsewhere in the Spurs rotation, building blocks Stephon Castle and Jeremy Sochan are both below 30 percent from 3 in their careers. Surrounding Wemby with three subpar shooters isn’t ideal roster construction.

But it’s still too early in the Wemby era to pick such nits. And it’s hard to overstate how much of an upgrade Wemby has experienced at point guard, from an overmatched, out-of-position Sochan to Paul to Fox in the span of 10 months.

Perhaps most importantly, the Spurs didn’t have to trade any of their top eight players to add a running mate for Wembanyama, meaning the entirety of their young core remains intact. Nor did they have to dig deep into their pick stash for this deal. The only 2025 picks San Antonio surrendered were both protected and therefore couldn’t have landed the Spurs a top talent in a loaded draft; one of those selections, originally from the Hornets, is lottery protected and will almost certainly turn into two second-rounders instead.

Meanwhile, the Spurs still have control of almost all of their own picks, two unprotected Hawks picks (in 2025 and 2027), an unprotected Hawks swap (in 2026), and multiple other future swaps—including a particularly juicy one with the Luka-less Mavericks. Thus, they will have ample opportunity in the coming years to add more high-upside youngsters in Wemby’s age range or find further boosts in the trade market. 

In other words, if Fox sticks around for the long haul by signing the four-year extension for which he’s eligible this summer, then he might not even need to be the no. 2 behind Wemby. The Spurs have enough roster-building options that Fox might slot in as the no. 3 by the time San Antonio’s ready to compete for a title.

If the Spurs have a seemingly limitless ceiling, the Bulls and Kings seem content, for the time being, to remain in the middle. The Bulls finally shed LaVine’s max contract, after at least a year of shopping, and their main return is … their own protected first-round pick, which they’d originally sent to the Spurs in the DeMar DeRozan sign-and-trade back in 2021. The Bulls also traded a second-round pick back to Sacramento, after initially acquiring it in the 2024 DeRozan sign-and-trade; their involvement in this three-team deal basically completes two circles. At least the Bulls acted, after three consecutive deadlines of inactivity; expect a Nikola Vucevic trade before Thursday’s deadline, as well.

For Sacramento, this move fills in another set of circles. The Kings initially signed LaVine to an offer sheet in 2018, before the Bulls matched it to keep LaVine on their roster. And now, the Kings are reuniting LaVine with DeRozan, his former Bulls partner, although the duo never won a playoff series—and now they’re in a harder conference, albeit with Sabonis in Vucevic’s place.

Sacramento wasn’t a title contender with Fox, and it’s not a title contender without him, either—nor should the team fall apart without its leading scorer. LaVine is a downgrade from Fox, but he’s one of the NBA’s most efficient high-volume scorers; over the past half decade, he ranks 11th in true shooting percentage out of 58 players with a 25 percent usage rate or higher, sandwiched between Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Damian Lillard. 

Between LaVine, DeRozan, Malik Monk, and Sabonis as point center, the Kings should still have enough shot creation to compete on a nightly basis. If Fox was destined to go, then the Kings did well to find a strong return for their point guard—LaVine plus more picks than the Mavericks landed for Luka!—without making a fuss or drawing out the inevitable.

Because once Fox decided he wanted to become Wembanyama’s first elite sidekick, their team-up was inevitable. He had a good, fun run in Sacramento, but he could be part of something truly special with the Spurs.

Zach Kram

Zach writes about basketball, baseball, and assorted pop culture topics.