How De’Aaron Fox hopes to move on from Finals disappointment

For two months after a disappointing end to the NBA Finals, Spurs guard De’Aaron Fox allowed himself to stew.

He allowed himself to wallow. He let the loss sting.

Then Fox did what he has become pretty good at doing over the course of his nine-year NBA career.

“I feel like I have a gift in being able to move on,” Fox said on the cusp of his first healthy Spurs training camp. “I reflect, but it’s a new season. It’s a new day.”

For Fox, moving on didn’t mean forgetting. It meant taking an honest look at what had gone wrong for him — and the Spurs — in their five-game loss to New York on the NBA’s brightest stage.

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There was plenty to reflect upon.                         

Take the final seconds of Game 4, when Fox had the ball in his hands with the Spurs leading by one and the Knicks needing to foul. Instead of running out the clock, he raced toward the basket, convinced he could beat New York’s OG Anunoby to the rim.

Anunoby blocked the shot, who then moments later tipped in the game-winning basket. It was the kind of decision Fox spent the summer replaying in his head.

“It definitely stuck with me for a bit,” Fox said. “Obviously you think about it. It’s in the back of your mind. But you don’t want to dwell on that for the rest of the time that you play basketball, for the rest of the time that you live.”

With a new season on the horizon, the 28-year-old Fox is eager to put the last one behind him.

His first full campaign in San Antonio went well, right up until its deflating ending.

In August of 2025, Fox signed a four-year, $223-million extension that at the time ranked as the most lucrative single contract in franchise history.

Fox made good on the team’s investment with his second career All-Star campaign, one in which he averaged 18.6 points and proved himself a valuable veteran leader for young backcourt mates Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper.

It was a role that required Fox to know when to take over and when to take a step back. Spurs coach Mitch Johnson saw the value in that balancing act.

“For someone who has put up the production that he has in his career, at this stage in his career to be able to be complimentary and nurture whoever’s night it is while also having the pulse of, ‘I will take this over at any moment,’ is probably not discussed enough or not given enough value,” Johnson said.

That tightrope isn’t going anywhere.

Fox can expect to walk it again the season to come, as Johnson said he expects his three star guards to spend more time sharing the court — and the ball.

A week into training camp, Fox had no doubts about the plan. He said he believed his coach “1,000 percent.”

“We know we’re going to play together this year,” Fox said.

Aiding Fox’s bid at a big season ahead: He at least arrived at training camp ambulatory.

Fox didn’t make it to camp last year. A hamstring injury suffered during a summertime workout sidelined him for the first eight games of the regular season, postponing his Spurs debut until November.

And he ended the season hurt, too.

Fox suffered a high ankle sprain in the Spurs’ Western Conference semifinal series against Minnesota, an injury that sidelined him for Games 1 and 2 against Oklahoma City in the conference finals.

Even when he returned to the postseason lineup, the typically fleet-footed Fox wasn’t quite up to full speed. In retrospect, that might help explain why Fox was unable to win that ill-fated footrace with Anunoby in Game 4 at New York.

“Injuries happen,” Fox said. “I was able to play through it. I wish I played better, but I didn’t.”

Fox’s determination to push through his playoff injuries did not result in a championship. It did, however, earn him the respect of the Spurs’ locker room.

“It’s kind of hard to push through injuries, especially in the biggest games of basketball at that point in the season,” Castle said. “Obviously he’s a leader for us and without him we wouldn’t have been in the positions that we were. We were all super grateful to know that he would do that for his team.”

Now Fox gets something he didn’t have a year ago — a clean bill of health and a full offseason to prepare for what comes next.

So far in camp, Fox’s teammates have been heartened by what they have seen.

“To have him fully back healthy and have him back on the court,” Castle said. “Obviously he didn’t miss a step. I think it will be a great year for him.”

Perhaps the best way for Fox to wipe clean last season is to make his teammates’ prediction for this one come true.

Fox understands there is no way to completely erase the heartbreak of the NBA Finals. But there is something he can do about what comes next.

“You don’t want to live with that regret,” Fox said. “But someone has to win, someone has to lose. And at the end of the day, you have to try to be able to move past it.”