San Antonio Spurs front office receives dire warning on Rich Paul originally appeared on The Sporting News

The San Antonio Spurs have finally made it to the other side of their rebuild, which has been going on since the 2019-20 season. While the team didn’t make the postseason in 2025, Victor Wembanyama’s season-ending deep vein thrombosis was mainly to blame.

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After taking Dylan Harper with the No. 2 pick of the 2025 NBA draft, the Spurs have a high ceiling with ascending youth and a mix of helpful veterans. Their backcourt is admittedly overfilled and could use a trade to alleviate things.

CBS Sports’ Sam Quinn warns that trading De’Aaron Fox from it, so soon after landing him, can upset superagent Rich Paul, who represents over 40 NBA players, including many of the game’s up-and-coming stars.

“Last season, the Spurs were the rare team for whom it absolutely made sense to trade for a guard in this tier. They nabbed De’Aaron Fox. He wanted to be there. It was an easy win. And then they jumped in the lottery and got Dylan Harper. Right now, the Spurs have three guards for two long-term slots in Harper, Fox and Stephon Castle. Inevitably, one of those guards will be gone in two or three years as San Antonio figures out its true core. Plenty called for the Spurs to move Fox preemptively this offseason and focus on the youth. That’d be much more politically fraught than it sounds. Fox stuck his neck out for a San Antonio team that typically doesn’t recruit stars. Moving him right away sends a message to other players about how they might be treated if they also try to get to San Antonio. If nothing else, you don’t want to piss off an agent as powerful as Rich Paul. San Antonio has to let this play out for the time being. But sooner or later, one of those guards is moving. So it will be a storyline until it’s settled,” Quinn wrote.

Paul represents Lindy Waters III, Fox’s teammate, and Dejounte Murray, whom the Spurs traded in 2022. The team did right by the latter, who was handed a four-year extension from his rookie-scale contract and traded during his contract year.

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Getting on his wrong side means getting on the wrong side of LeBron James, the most influential player in the history of the game behind the scenes. That has far-reaching consequences that’ll last long past his retirement.

Fox hasn’t gotten the chance to play more than five games with Wembanyama, so his statistical regression can’t be held against him too much.

Besides, it’ll be held against the franchise by the most powerful agent in NBA history if they did.