San Antonio Spurs guard De’Aaron Fox says he played most of last season’s playoff run on a right high ankle sprain, and he would make the same call again with a first trip to the conference finals and NBA Finals on the line.

Fox told Marc J. Spears of Andscape that he is healthy heading into the 2026-27 season.

“This is my first time in the conference finals and the Finals. There is no way I can’t play right now,” Fox said Monday at the Spurs’ shootaround in Salt Lake City. “If it were the regular season, I definitely wouldn’t have played.”

Fox suffered the high ankle sprain in Game 4 of the second-round series against Minnesota, an injury that typically sidelines NBA players for four to six weeks, according to Andscape.

He played the final two games of that series, missed the first two games of the Western Conference finals against Oklahoma City, then played the last five as San Antonio won in seven.

The ankle clearly limited him.

Fox averaged 11.2 points on 36.5% shooting and 22.7% from 3-point range against the Thunder, and he scored seven points on 3-of-13 shooting in the Finals opener against the Knicks. “I played more games in the playoffs hurt than I did healthy,” he said. “It is what it is.

It happened.”

Fox pointed to Tyrese Haliburton, who played through a calf strain in Game 7 of the 2025 Finals before tearing his Achilles tendon, as an example of a player choosing to compete knowing the risk. “Why did I play? I felt like I could help the team,” Fox said.

Coach Mitch Johnson said keeping Fox on the floor was a collective decision inside the organization. “There is a lot of conversation that happens within our walls that we keep within our walls,” Johnson said, adding that the player and the people supporting him all want what is best for him and the team, “and that doesn’t always mean it’s the same answer.”

Johnson also defended Fox’s durability. “De’Aaron Fox has proven throughout his career, before he got to us and with us, that he is a tough, durable player,” he said.

Fox said the ankle healed over the summer, which he spent mostly in Houston, and that it took him about two months to move on mentally from the Finals.

He said he thought about his Game 4 fast-break layup, blocked by OG Anunoby late in New York’s comeback, over the summer but not in the past month. He brushed off the outside criticism: “I don’t have basketball on my timeline. … Everybody has a podcast.

Everyone thinks their opinion matters.”

The Spurs are expected to open with a three-guard lineup of Fox, Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper around Victor Wembanyama.

The WhyNBA Sports Desk writes basketball explainers and dated news briefs. Official references stay with each guide.

File photo (August 2024): Fox in Sacramento, California. NewishIdeas · CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped and resized.

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