OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) \u2014 Once again, San Antonio All-Star guard De’Aaron Fox tried to go through a pregame workout. And once again, his right ankle remained a problem.<\/p>\n
Fox was ruled out of Game 2 of the Spurs’ Western Conference finals series against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday night, the second consecutive game he has missed because of the ankle issue. The Spurs kept Dylan Harper in the starting lineup in his place.<\/p>\n
The Spurs held out hope until about an hour before game time Wednesday that Fox could play, and coach Mitch Johnson \u2014 just as he did Monday \u2014 indicated that Fox’s status will be a series of game-time decisions for the rest of the season. The team has not revealed what is causing the ankle soreness.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019ll be pretty status quo moving forward, I believe, regardless of if he plays in games or not,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cThis\u2019ll be just kind of the world we live in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fox was an All-Star this season for the Spurs, averaging 18.6 points per game in the regular season \u2014 second on the team behind only Victor Wembanyama’s 25 points per game.<\/p>\n
Harper \u2014 who was named to the NBA’s All-Rookie first team earlier Wednesday \u2014 was brilliant in the Spurs’ Game 1 win, with 24 points, 11 rebounds, six assists and a team playoff record seven steals.<\/p>\n
Harper, who turned 20 on March 2, is the second-youngest player to have appeared in this season’s playoffs, behind only Minnesota’s Joan Beringer and Phoenix’s Khaman Maluach \u2014 both still just 19. Beringer and Maluach combined to score 24 points in this season’s playoffs, matching the total that Harper had in Game 1 against the Thunder alone.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe didn’t just get this talented or this good,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cFor him to buy into the role that was in front of him, for him to do what was asked and be held accountable and learn what it took and what we needed to win games and be a part of it \u2014 while probably suppressing some of his individual capabilities \u2014 is hard to do for a 19- to 20-year-old.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor him to be able to do that and grow as a winning team player and then have his individual talent pop as well \u2014 it’s hard to do in this league at any time. Doing it as a rookie in the playoffs is ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/nba<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) \u2014 Once again, San Antonio All-Star guard De’Aaron Fox tried to go through a pregame…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[133884,6643,49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-683225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ap-sports","tag-associated-press","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}