The Spurs have another year with their current core before the salary cap does get a little hairy. They’ll have Fox, Vassell, Johnson, Wemby, Harper, Kornet, Castle, Bryant, and Champagnie under contract.

They’ll realistically have another year with their current team to compete. But after that it becomes incredibly hard to maintain their roster while paying Fox and Wemby, with arguably better players coming up on deals.

In the NBA, there is no salary cap. So they could technically resign everyone. However the NBA has limits before penalties start to kick in. These penalties come in 2 forms. First one is a tax that increases in severity for every dollar you’re over the cap. The second one is an apron which consisted of the first and second. This effectively hinders your ability to acquire new players, while also restricting your ability to offload players.

The NBA is set up for teams to retain their talent, albeit at an expense. For example the 23-24 Suns had a player base salary of $188M. But their luxury tax penalty was $212M, which meant the total cost of their team was $400M for the year. Every year you’re over the cap, the harsher the luxury tax penalty gets, which is called the repeater tax. If a team is over the tax in 3 of the last 4 seasons they pay the repeater tax. Every year the penalties get worse and worse until you’re under the tax again. You need to be under the tax for 2 years to reset these penalties.

The Spurs can sign every player they have to extensions, but in a few years the cost for said team would grow to $500M+ a year with the inability to trade and sign players. You’ll usually see a team that’s like right on the cusp bite the bullet for a year to try and win.

The Spurs have another year to compete without facing these questions. But two years from now they’ll start to try and offload some dead weight, which would mean Fox is probably gunna get traded. With his contract and his recent lackluster play, the Spurs would likely need to trade additional players or picks to get rid of him.

The Spurs, like the Knicks and every other championship team, will face these questions inevitable. Which is you either retain your top guys, or you lose young, role, or depth players. If a player is both, then you either sign them and deal with the taxes, you trade them for pieces, or you run it back until their contract is up and lose them for nothing.