De’Aaron Fox will miss Monday’s sequence opener towards the Thunder on account of proper ankle soreness.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — San Antonio guard De’Aaron Fox was dominated out of Sport 1 of the Western Convention Finals with proper ankle soreness, an enormous blow to the Spurs going into the sequence opener towards the defending NBA champion Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder.
The announcement got here roughly an hour earlier than tip-off. San Antonio dominated beginning guard De’Aaron Fox out of Monday night time’s Western Convention Finals opener towards the Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder due to proper ankle soreness, which means adversity hit the Spurs within the much-anticipated sequence earlier than it even began.
The Thunder, in the meantime, received Jalen Williams again of their lineup after he missed six video games with a left hamstring pressure.
Fox spoke on the Spurs’ morning shootaround session Monday — “making an attempt to check it out,” he mentioned — and was on the courtroom once more in Oklahoma Metropolis about 90 minutes earlier than tip-off of Sport 1 (8:30 ET, NBC/Peacock). That second exercise clearly didn’t go as hoped, and the choice was made that he wouldn’t play.
Rookie Dylan Harper, the 2025 No. 2 general decide, will begin.
Fox was averaging 18.8 factors and 5.8 assists in a team-leading 33.3 minutes per recreation for the Spurs in these playoffs coming into Monday. The Spurs haven’t revealed any specifics on the character of the ankle difficulty, merely calling it soreness.
“It’s a type of offers the place it’s not going away for so long as we’re enjoying, I don’t consider,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson mentioned.
Fox missed the primary eight Spurs video games of the season — and missed solely three video games since. The Spurs entered Monday with a 7-3 file with out Fox this season.