A 29-point lead, gone, in Game 4, the largest collapse in NBA Finals history. A 16-point lead, gone again, in Game 5, with the championship sitting right there. By the numbers, the San Antonio Spurs were the better team for 72% of the minutes played in this series. They still lost 4-1. That gap between dominance and the final scoreline is where Reggie Miller starts looking for answers and the first place he looks isn’t at Victor Wembanyama. It’s at the empty seat on the end of San Antonio’s bench, the one he believes should have belonged to Chris Paul.

“You know what I would have liked? When the Clippers let Chris Paul go, Chris Paul had played a season with the San Antonio Spurs. I wish that they would have picked up Chris Paul just as an insurance vet on that bench for moments like the finals,” Miller said on the Dan Patrick Show. “Because there’s certain things that went down in the finals. If Chris Paul had been at the end of that bench. I love Bismack Biyombo, I love Kelly Olynyk, great vets to have on your team, but if you would have had Chris Paul at the end of that bench as a point guard.

I think that would have helped De’Aaron Fox. That would have helped Stephon Castle. To me, Dylan Harper was the best, most consistent Spurs player in that series, in those five games. Wemby got all the attention, but to me, Dylan Harper was the most consistent player. I Just think Chris Paul would have helped.”

He concluded, “This is why vets matter. Youth got the best of the Spurs.”

High turnovers and the absence of clutch shooting from De’Aaron Fox raised questions about his leadership ability. Throughout the regular season, Fox’s influence was considered positive, but in the Finals, it apparently fell apart. Miller doesn’t pin that collapse on Fox alone, though. His argument on the Dan Patrick Show was less about what Fox did wrong and more about what was missing behind him, a Hall of Fame point guard who’d already lived through these moments and could talk a young core through them in real time.

That’s the piece worth sitting with: how, exactly, a 41-year-old reserve changes what a 28-year-old starter does in the fourth quarter of a closeout game. Paul himself never solved the “closer” question. Two decades of deep playoff runs without ever lifting the trophy.

But almost no point guard alive has logged more fourth-quarter possessions managing a one- or two-point game, and that’s precisely the instinct Fox was missing when he chose to attack the rim with a one-point lead in Game 4 instead of forcing the Knicks to foul. That’s the specific kind of decision Miller believes a steady voice on the bench exists to talk a young point guard out of.

Paul mentored Victor Wembanyama and Stephon Castle for one full season. He wasn’t particularly effective that season, but he could have been a valuable voice for the young Spurs in the playoffs. The core that includes Wemby, Castle, and Dylan Harper. We have seen Bismack Biyombo take on a similar role, but Miller argued that a future Hall of Famer as a vocal leader carried more weight.

There’s a wrinkle in Miller’s scenario worth naming – Chris Paul isn’t sitting around as a free agent anyone could still sign. The Clippers moved on from him in December, the Raptors took him on in a deadline deal in early February, and Toronto waived him almost immediately. At which point Paul retired rather than test the market again.

So the real window for the Spurs to add him as bench insurance was that narrow stretch in December and early January, before he changed hands twice and walked away from the league entirely.

Miller’s “vets matter” line isn’t just nostalgia, there’s precedent for it. The clearest case is the 2008 Celtics, who pulled 38-year-old P.J. Brown out of semi-retirement in late February purely as bench insurance for a title run, and got a series-altering performance from him in the Eastern Conference Finals before Boston won it all.

It’s worth being honest that this kind of move usually doesn’t pay off- Boston’s own front office later conceded that most of its later veteran reclamation projects flopped. But the ones that do work tend to come from exactly the low-mileage, high-IQ veteran type Miller is describing for San Antonio.

Fox finished Game 5 shooting just 3-for-15 from the field and scoring only seven points in 37 minutes – in a must-win game at home. Questions were raised about Mitch Johnson’s decision not to give Harper the closeout opportunity. Overall, Fox averaged 12.8 points in this series in over 36 minutes, while Harper averaged 18 points per game against the Knicks in just 31 minutes.

Social media activity suggests trouble in paradise for De’Aaron Fox

The Spurs acquired Fox at the 2025 trade deadline specifically to accelerate Wembanyama’s championship timeline. Months later, they doubled down on that commitment by signing him to a four-year extension worth approximately $229 million. Clearly, San Antonio viewed Fox not as a short-term experiment, but as a foundational piece of its long-term vision.

That’s the backdrop that makes this loss sting differently than a normal Finals defeat – San Antonio isn’t just nursing a tough series, it’s $229 million into betting Fox is the right voice to lead this group.

But recently, social media was filled with question if Fox is done with the Silver and Black.

An X post claimed De’Aaron Fox had unfollowed the San Antonio Spurs on Instagram. It’s true that Fox is not currently following the team’s official account. But there are no sources confirming whether he ever followed the Spurs in the first place. Yet, that one post was enough to fuel speculation that a trade for De’Aaron Fox could be on the horizon.

Apart from this, even Dylan Harper reposted a TikTok video mocking Fox’s Game 1 shooting, comparing him to a struggling James Harden. It was shortly deleted. But again, it added tension to Fox’s mentorship role. After the Game 5 loss, even Devin Vassell revealed that Harper had been frustrated with both his playing time and role throughout the season. After his performance, many believe he is ready to be a starter, which could force Fox to accept a bench role.

None of this guarantees Chris Paul would have fixed San Antonio’s Finals and there’s no telling whether a player who’d already decided to walk away would have delayed that exit for a bench role in San Antonio anyway.

But Miller’s case was never that one veteran wins a title by himself. It’s that this young core needed someone in the room who’d already survived the moments that broke them. The Spurs had a real shot at that in December. They let it pass.