The San Antonio Spurs altered the direction of their franchise when they selected Victor Wembanyama with the first overall pick in 2023. Now, they’ve taken the next logical step in their desire to return to their dynastic run from yesteryear (five titles in a 16-season stretch that saw them clear a 70% win rate 11 times) — get him a running mate.
Chris Paul was a nice appetizer, but 27-year-old De’Aaron Fox gives this team the ability to win today, tomorrow, and for the foreseeable future. Every dynamic duo seems to be a bit different in today’s game, but this Fox/Wemby pairing has the potential to be awfully similar to something we’ve seen in the past. If it plays out that way, the city of San Antonio is in for an exciting stretch.
De’Aaron Fox/Victor Wembanyama: We’ve Seen This Skill Set Match Work Before
Wembanyama is unlike any player that has graced this planet, so the comparisons to past generations need to be hedged to a degree. But when it comes to uniquely gifted pieces that were special by themselves but could be transcendent when paired, the current Spurs could remind NBA fans of the Amare’ Stoudemire/Steve Nash Suns of the early 2000s.
Let’s explore.
From a timeline standpoint, we’ve got a near identical starting point. Nash joined Phoenix following his eighth season and Stoudemire’s second, putting this newly formed problem half-a-season ahead of pace.
I’m going to pause here. If this tandem is going to be as successful as I think they have the potential to be, they are going to need a nickname. A good one. I’m a lot of things, but a master in the arts of creativity is not one of them. That said, this is where I’m at:
- S-squared (Swipa and Slenderman)
- The Louvre of Lobs
- Slick and Roll
Like I said, I need help.
Back to the comparison. In addition to the career points being nearly identical, we have seemingly perfect fits joining forces. Nash was an established threat in the league prior to being moved back to Phoenix (he came to town off of the best assist-to-turnover ratio of his career and that was on the heels of consecutive All-Star appearances), a box Fox certainly checks (third-team All-NBA in addition to “Clutch Player of the Year” honors in 2023).
What happened when Nash’s penetrating style met an elite rim threat?
Magic.
In Year 1, Nash not only saw his assist average rise by 30.7%, something that was very much expected, but his scoring efficiency also benefited in a significant way (+3.2 percentage points in FG% and +2.6 points in 3P% from his last season as a Maverick).
After proving how lethal his connection with Stoudemire was, things opened up for the veteran point guard — he won back-to-back MVPs, the second of which was highlighted with a 50-40-90 season (the fifth such season in NBA history at that point, he currently owns four of the 14 all-time occurrences) .
Is Fox that level of a player? I’m not going to go that far just yet, but prior to this deal, his effective field goal percentage in pick-and-roll situations as the ball handler was up to 57.8% from 52.4% a season ago.
The breadcrumbs have been laid (remember when he had 109 points across eight quarters earlier this season? In the middle of a run that saw him hand out 7+ assists in five straight?) and leveling up mid-career is certainly possible at the point guard position, especially when getting an Alien to run with.
Victor Wembanyama is the only player in the entire league making this block. 🤯
— Hoop Central (@TheHoopCentral) February 1, 2025
Speaking of Wembanyama, he’s unique. He’s one-of-a-kind. He doesn’t love the “unicorn” label, but I think you get the idea. Well, it was over 20 years ago, but Stoudemire was nightmare fuel for coaches early in his career as well.
Year 2
- 20.6 PPG
- 9.0 RPG
- 1.6 blocks
- 1.2 steals
It was him and a grizzled nine-year veteran named Kevin Garnett as the only players to reach those thresholds that season. Maybe he wasn’t threatening to change the course of basketball history the way Wemby seems to be, but the league didn’t have an answer for him prior to teaming up with a member of the Point God tier — and they certainly didn’t after.
Since the turn of the millennium, there have been five instances in which a player shot at least 55% from the field and 73% from the line on 1,000+ shot attempts and 550 free throws …
- Amar’e Stoudemire – 2005 (Year 1 with Nash)
- Amar’e Stoudemire – 2007
- Amar’e Stoudemire – 2008
- Amar’e Stoudemire – 2010
- LeBron James – 2014
They might be completely arbitrary end points, but the larger point remains — an exceptional talent taking his production to an unheard of level.
That’s a sentence we hear once a week following a Wembanyama game (prior to this trade, he had 111 career games on his NBA résumé and had accounted for 28.6% of the all-time 125-3PM, 150-block seasons) and this move is only going to make using creative words to describe his excellence more difficult.
The Suns won 72% of their games during the first three seasons of the run-n-gun era, and we might be looking at expectations like that sooner than later for the Spurs. When this trade was made, the Spurs were a 21-25 team that was two games out of the play-in tournament — there’s probably too much ground to make up this season for them to be taken seriously.
That said, they get a 35+ game runway to gel and hit the ground running next season.
How many teams in the West, at this moment, would you pick over the Spurs in the 2025-26 season? It’s not a long list — heck, I’m not even sure it’s technically “a list.”
