Just over a year after landing the top prize of the 2015 free agent class, could the San Antonio Spurs already be considering throwing in the towel on him?
In an appearance on CSNNE.com’s Early Edition on Tuesday, ESPN’s Jackie MacMullan said that there’s a chance LaMarcus Aldridge may not finish out the 2016-17 season with the Spurs:
For instance, sources were telling me the other day that LaMarcus Aldridge may not even finish the year with the Spurs. That experiment hasn’t quite worked out the way they hoped.
Such a revelation is something of a head-scratcher after San Antonio won 67 games last season with Aldridge averaging 18.0 points and 8.5 rebounds per game on a career-high 51.3 percent shooting from the field. It’s also especially so considering how important the Aldridge signing seemed to be to them and how Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich supposedly promised Aldridge that he would coach out the entirety of his contract.
That contract of Aldridge’s runs through 2019 and has nearly $65 million left on it as well as a 15 percent trade kicker, which could make it difficult to move the 31-year-old big man. Aldridge does have some overlap offensively with Kawhi Leonard, and he sometimes hampers the team’s overall flow in halfcourt sets by holding onto the ball for too long with his isolationist tendencies. But given all the contextual evidence, it’s hard to see the five-time All-Star actually being dealt by the Spurs.
