Cold hard De'Aaron Fox truth Spurs fans are praying they don't face

Take this with a grain of salt, considering who it's coming from, but Griffin Liffmann, a former Hawks front office executive, believes that trading De'Aaron Fox, if it came to that, wouldn't be as easy as some may believe, particularly if it's a lead guard. Part of his reasoning is how much teams would need to change their offense to suit a new floor general.

"The new CBA has changed things. You can't just have money bloated on your books... In terms of the idea that you can just trade a guy, it doesn't work like that anymore... If you're bringing in a lead guard, you're revamping the system," - Liffmann via The Kevin O'Connor Show

The Atlanta VP makes a good point about what it means to acquire a point guard like De'Aaron Fox. Everything is going to run through him. But that's not a bad thing. Fox is one of the best in the league at his position, and there are plenty of teams who would move things around on their roster to acquire him if he were up for grabs, but the thing is... he's not.

This scenario is an imaginary problem

I'd like to remind people that after Dylan Harper was drafted, a Spurs executive was quoted as saying that they were excited to extend Fox, hoping for a long-term relationship with the speedy guard. You might believe that he had to say that, but it was an anonymous quote. He absolutely did not have to put that narrative out there if it wasn't true.

San Antonio didn't dump the treasure chest out to acquire Swipa, but that's because they didn't have to. He named the Spurs as the one team he wanted to play for. But it's not like they didn't commit anything to him. Besides the fat contract they just gave him, they traded three draft picks away.

That doesn't really sound like an organization already looking for a way to pivot from the embarrassment of riches they now sit on. Liffman comes from the Atlanta Hawks, where they've struggled with Trae Young and what to do with him. The trade speculation surrounding Ice Trae has been bubbling for years.

Yeah, it's much harder to trade an undersized point guard with a 15% trade kicker who's mostly been a liability on defense in a league where the primary ball handlers are getting larger. It was not that hard to trade Kevin Durant, DeMar DeRozan, Michael Porter Jr, etc. If a team wants you, they'll figure out a way to make it work.

But again, this is an imaginary scenario. The Spurs are not looking to trade De'Aaron Fox, so this is all a moot point. The doomsday predictors continue to look at San Antonio's guard depth as some sort of negative. They're wrong to do so. Fox isn't going anywhere, and by the time they're ready to move on, if that time comes, the cap will have risen, and there will be plenty of suitors for a dynamic guard.