Social media can be a toxic place, even if you stick to sports like me. Facebook doesn\u2019t police propaganda or fake news, and I can\u2019t tell you how many people in the Spurs Facebook group fall for these fake posts. Twitter X is a tad bit better at rooting that stuff out, but the attitude can be worse, especially if you\u2019re on the \u201cFor You\u201d timeline instead of \u201cFollowing\u201d, and you get a bunch of extra stuff. For me, if I stray away from \u201cFollowing\u201d, my timeline gets flooded with Longhorn, Thunder and Canadian (?) fans who are just out to troll. I\u2019m also willing to bet 60% of the Thunder accounts are bots. So many of them use anime as their profile photos, strange font and usernames that make zero sense, and they post similar or identical stuff, especially hating on Victor Wembanyama.<\/p>\n
However, even if I stick to just my \u201cFollowing\u201d timeline, which is primarily Spurs and Texas A&M stuff, it\u2019s not always sunshine and roses, even during these happy times. One characteristic of the Spurs fanbase (and every other, to be fair) is there always needs to be a fall guy when things aren\u2019t perfect, and this season, that has largely been De\u2019Aaron Fox. Of course, I knew this would be the case the instant he signed a max contract extension this offseason, which to be sure will make fans expect the best from you each and every night and bring more scrutiny.<\/p>\n
That being said, sometimes I\u2019m not sure fans consider the role he\u2019s playing. Despite being their highest paid player (for now), he\u2019s not the Spurs\u2019 number one option, and yet some fans still seem to expect him to put up numbers like he is. I see posts of his Sacramento days asking, \u201cwhat happened to this version of Fox?\u201d The answer is simple: NOTHING! He\u2019s right here, doing exactly what he did there, just in a smaller sample size because he\u2019s usually playing next to a certain generational talent that has GOAT potential, as well as two other young guards with ceilings at least as high as his. Wouldn\u2019t you be mad if he was hogging the ball from Wemby, Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper? Of course, you would, so you can\u2019t have it both ways.<\/p>\n
When Wemby is playing or someone else is hot, Fox rightfully plays the role of facilitator while picking his spots within the flow of the offense, as well as stepping up in crunch time. He has been perfect in that role for the Spurs, filling the gap of play-making point guard and clutch time player they had been missing in recent years. When Wemby doesn\u2019t play is when Sacramento Fox shows up, averaging about 7 more points per game and carrying the team on his back, just like he did last night against the Portland Trail Blazers, where the Spurs were also missing Castle, and Harper wasn\u2019t having his finest night.<\/p>\n
Fox finished with 25 points on 10-20 shooting, including 3-6 from three, as well as 7 assists and 5 rebounds. Sure, he had a case of butter fingers with 4 turnovers, but so did seemingly everyone else on both teams, who combined for 31 of them. It was just one of those nights in the turnover department, but tell me honestly, did you have a great feeling coming into this game? The Spurs with nothing to play for and down two of their three best players against a Blazers team with everything on the line that had already beaten them once without Wemby this season felt iffy. I knew a win was certainly possible, but it ended up being easier than expected, and that was in no small part thanks to Fox stepping up into that role when called upon. There\u2019s a reason he\u2019s a nominee for Teammate of the Year: he has not only filled his role perfectly, but has also been an amazing mentor to the Spurs young guards while sacrificing stats and status in the process.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t exactly come in here expecting to write a Fox Appreciation post, but this is the beauty of What we Learned: you just start writing what the game made you think about, and it becomes something entirely unique from the normal game coverage I\u2019m used to writing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Social media can be a toxic place, even if you stick to sports like me. Facebook doesn\u2019t police…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":706799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3797],"tags":[7,6,969,474,4075,4074,534,37729,8184],"class_list":{"0":"post-706798","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio-spurs","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-san-antonio","11":"tag-san-antonio-spurs","12":"tag-sanantonio","13":"tag-sanantoniospurs","14":"tag-spurs","15":"tag-spurs-analysis","16":"tag-what-we-learned"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116376246903956911","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=706798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/706799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}