Spurs’ late surge led by Fox
De’Aaron Fox put up an all‑around 25 points, 5 rebounds, 7 assists and 3 steals to keep the Spurs rolling — a stretch that’s helped San Antonio go 18–2 in their last 20 games and turn heads. (x.com) That kind of balanced production — scoring, playmaking and defense — is exactly why teams hitting long hot runs start looking like legitimate threats in playoff seeding talks. (x.com)
San Antonio just won again without Victor Wembanyama and Stephon Castle, and the result still looked comfortable: 112-101 over Portland on April 8, with De’Aaron Fox finishing with 25 points, 7 assists, 5 rebounds and 3 steals. That matters because this was not a one-night spike. By April 9, San Antonio was 61-19 and locked into the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference after Oklahoma City clinched No. 1. A 61-win Spurs season would have sounded unrealistic a year ago because this franchise had missed the playoffs every year since 2019. Now it is San Antonio’s first 60-win season since 2016-17, and it came in the second full season of the Victor Wembanyama era. Fox is the piece that changed the geometry of the team. The Spurs traded for him on February 3, 2025, sending out Tre Jones, Zach Collins, Sidy Cissoko, two conditional first-round picks, two unprotected first-round picks and two second-round picks in a three-team deal with Sacramento and Chicago. San Antonio paid that price because Fox is one of the few guards who can bend a defense with pure speed. When he turns the corner, the first defender is already behind the play, which forces help and opens the floor for shooters and bigs. The Spurs then made the bet permanent. On August 4, 2025, they signed Fox to a multi-year extension after his first 17 games in San Antonio produced 19.7 points, 6.8 assists, 4.3 rebounds and 1.47 steals a night. This year’s roster shows why the fit works. Wembanyama is averaging 24.8 points and 11.5 rebounds, Castle is at 16.8 points and 7.4 assists, Devin Vassell is at 14.0 points, and Fox is at 18.5 points with 6.1 assists, so San Antonio can attack with more than one ballhandler. That depth showed up again against Portland. The Associated Press noted San Antonio was missing Wembanyama and Castle, but Fox still steered the offense and the Spurs still extended their winning stretch with defense and control rather than panic. The playoff picture is now simple. As the No. 2 seed, San Antonio gets home court in the first round and would face the winner of the No. 7 versus No. 8 play-in game, which is a very different entry point than scraping through the play-in itself. What Fox keeps proving is that San Antonio is no longer built around one giant solution. On a night when the 7-foot-4 star sat, the point guard still gave them scoring, setup, ball pressure and late-game calm, and a 61-win team looked exactly like a 61-win team.
