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The news out of Sacramento this week that they’re open to dealing longtime point guard De’Aaron Fox wasn’t just a jolt in the lead-up to next week’s NBA trade deadline. It’s also the latest recognition from star players and the agents who represent them that the NBA’s new Collective Bargaining Agreement will change the way business gets done going forward, and how — and if — players can still throw their weight around.
The Fox news stems in part from his decision last summer not to sign an extension with the Kings. He’s set to make $37.1 million next season, the last year of his deal. But the news leak that Fox is now on the market was also, sources say, a strategic step by the Kings and Fox to navigate the NBA’s Brave New CBA World.
“In this league, I expect the unexpected,” Fox explained on Wednesday, after the news broke, to the Sacramento Bee’s Chris Biderman. “I think crazier things have happened.”
Reports also pointed to San Antonio as Fox’s preferred destination.
“For sure, I think everybody has a preferred destination,” Fox told Biderman. “I think everybody has a preferred destination if they’re not in the place that — or if they’re not going to be in the place where they are in the moment. I think it’s natural.”
It’s natural for players to have a preference for where they might land next, even when under contract. It’s rooted in recent history, too, where players’ preferred landing spots have often become de facto fiats.
But that instinct of relying on the player-empower-movement — and therefore springing their demands on their teams whenever they please — may very well be a part of the past, and, sources say, a factor in the timing of floating publicly that Fox could be moved.
One source said Fox and his agent, Rich Paul, had, in effect, given the Kings a courtesy heads up so they have the time to get a deal done that satisfies everyone. The source said that means the Kings could well trade Fox before Thursday’s deadline, but only if they get the right deal.
They also said it’s just as likely Sacramento waits until the summer if they think that allows them to get more for Fox.
But a league executive who’s had dealings with Paul, the founder and CEO of Klutch Sports, said that’s only part of what’s going on.
The larger reality, he said, is that Paul grasps how the new CBA will take away much of the power and my-way-or-the-highway thinking that NBA superstars have grown accustomed to wielding.
“It’s harder and harder to trade these big salaries, and the teams that have the apron room to take these big deals are limited,” the executive said. “So Rich is thinking, and saying [to the league], ‘Before you use up your apron room to get Jimmy Butler, make room for De’Aaron.'”
This executive pointed out, and several others later reinforced, that the landscape of the NBA has shifted so much that the old business-as-usual won’t be usual, or similar, anymore. And that many players, Fox notwithstanding, haven’t yet come to terms with the new reality.
CBS Sports’ Sam Quinn pointed out last summer that this was coming. Paul appears well aware of what’s happening, and has savvily begun adjusting accordingly.
But many players, and agents, are in for a rude awakening, sources say.
Prime example of the moment: Jimmy Butler.
“Rich doesn’t want to wake up next fall, and suddenly De’Aaron is ready to move, and there aren’t teams that can get him because of their apron status,” the executive said. “Or there aren’t teams that can do it that his client wants to go to. For him it’s, ‘If I’m going to get this for De’Aaron, even if it’s not today, I need to get us as much runway as possible.’
“The players used to have all the leverage to leave. Now they don’t. And the players association hasn’t done a good job explaining that to them, in part because the NBA players association doesn’t want to say, ‘We did a bad job negotiating, and the deal we agreed to has destroyed the leverage you were so accustomed to having.'”
The Fox chatter, then, was floated in part as a flare for the rest of the NBA, a message that says: Before you spend your very limited cap room on Butler, or anyone else, know Fox is here and can be had now, or down the road.
It’s simple supply and demand. There are just as many players out there who are going to want to move with big contracts in tow, but the new CBA means there will likely be fewer possible buyers.
“These players are used to saying, ‘I want to get moved,’ and they get moved,” a former GM said. “They don’t understand yet, or haven’t accepted, that with these new aprons we’ve basically created a hard cap. And the goal and the consequences is limiting player movement. Philly had to basically scrap its entire roster to get PG.”
Maybe Fox will be moved between now and next Thursday. Maybe he’ll find a new home in the summer.
But whatever happens, the news that the Kings are open to dealing De’Aaron Fox comes at, and reflects, an inflection point for the league.
In the past, all of this would have been an extension of NBA stars’ ability to dictate many of the terms of their exits.
Today, it’s the opposite.
The landscape now means moving the chess pieces across an altered board to try and navigate a vastly new way trades will get done, who will have the upper hand, and how best to utilize one’s advantages while, and if, you have them.
