The news that De’Aaron Fox would miss the rest of the season with an injury didn’t exactly catch his Spurs teammates off guard. Maybe the official announcement came a couple of days earlier than expected, but no one was shocked—especially not Devin Vassell.
After a game against the Kings in early March—his first matchup against his old team since being traded—Fox was open about the lingering issue with his finger. He told reporters that he and the Spurs had already planned to have his injured pinky, on his dominant hand, checked out when they were in Los Angeles in mid-March, since the specialist he needed to see was based there. He even hinted that surgery could happen right then and there.
The day before the news broke, one of his teammates had already acknowledged the possibility.
“I just want De’Aaron to do whatever’s best for him in the long run,” Vassell said when asked if he thought the 27-year-old star would have the procedure before the season wrapped up.
The Spurs were set to land in L.A. on March 16, ahead of their matchup with the Lakers. Three games earlier, after a win over the Mavericks, Fox had once again hinted that fixing his finger was inevitable.
“It’ll get taken care of soon enough,” he said.
He admitted he had been dealing with the injury all season, often just brushing it off. “I mean, I scored 60 with it. Then I dropped 49 the next night. You just try to push through,” he added.
Shortly after that, the Spurs made it official: Fox would undergo surgery on March 17 in Los Angeles.
For Vassell, who had been San Antonio’s second-leading scorer for much of the last three seasons before Fox’s arrival, the bigger picture was clear. With the announcement looming, the 24-year-old reflected on what the decision meant.
“Obviously, we all know this is something he needs to get taken care of,” Vassell said. “I’m not here to say what he should or shouldn’t do. I just want to make sure he’s good, because when he’s healthy, he’s going to help this team in a big way.”
The timing of Fox’s season-ending surgery comes not long after Victor Wembanyama was also sidelined due to blood clots.
Fox, for his part, didn’t dwell too much on the injury publicly. “Of course, I’d love to have all five fingers fully functioning instead of taping them together,” he said. “But it happened on the second day of training camp, so at that point, you just have to play through it.”
With the Spurs slipping further from the Western Conference Play-In race, shutting Fox down made sense. Even though he didn’t talk about it much with his teammates, the decision was the right one.
“He hasn’t really explained the injury to me, so I don’t totally get how it affects him during games,” Vassell admitted.
But at the end of the day, his concern was simple: “I just want to make sure he’s good and healthy.”
And now, that’s exactly what Fox is focusing on—not for the spring of 2025, but for the fall.
