Spurs to Acquire Harrison Barnes in 3-Team Trade with Kings and Bulls

The San Antonio Spurs will acquire forward Harrison Barnes in a 3-team trade with the Sacramento Kings and Chicago Bulls.

According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, the San Antonio Spurs will acquire forward Harrison Barnes and a 2031 pick swap from the Sacramento Kings, as part of a 3-team trade that lands DeMar DeRozan in Sacramento, and Chris Duarte, plus future picks in Chicago.

How the Spurs acquire Barnes and still have enough cap space to sign free agent Chris Paul will be interesting to watch.

As Yossi Gozlan pointed out, Barnes has a 10% trade kicker in his contract, so his contract will increase to the following amounts:

• 2024-2025: $19.85 million

• 2025-2026: $20.85 million

Barnes will be an unrestricted free agent in the 2026-2027 offseason.

Here’s what will happen if the Spurs order their transactions in the following order:

1. Renouncing cap holds to Cedi Osman and Dominick Barlow will open $21.1 million in cap space, allowing for Barnes to be traded into that cap space. That would leave the Spurs with $1.2 million in cap space, not enough to sign Chris Paul to his reported $11 million plus salary.

2. By pulling qualifying offers for Sandro Mamukelashvili and David Duke Jr., the Spurs would only have $5.8 million in cap space to offer Paul.

3. By waiving or trading Charles Bassey and Julian Champagnie, who are both on non-guaranteed contracts until August, the Spurs will have $10.2 million to offer Paul.

4. If the Spurs want to get over $11 million in cap space for Paul, they have to look at trading Malaki Branham or Blake Wesley without taking salary back.

Once the Spurs figure out how much cap space they’ll be working with, then they’ll have the room mid-level exception of $7.9 million to sign or trade for players, plus veteran minimum contracts.

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How did Barnes play this past season?

Barnes will be 32 when next season begins. He played 93% of his minutes at the 4, per CleaningTheGlass.com.

Here were his base numbers:

Barnes was a durable player on the court, playing in ALL of the Kings’ games last season. He has the versatility defensively to switch between the 3 and the 4. On offense, he spaces first, but he can score as well within the paint, though that’s not his go-to option.

Here is his shooting breakdown:

One of the shots the Spurs will need Barnes to hit is the open corner three and the wide open three. He was very efficient on those two shots last season, making 41% of his corner 3s and 44% of his wide open 3s.

As mentioned above, 41% of his shots came in the paint, and when he did shoot right at the rim or a little further out, he was efficient from both areas. Only 7% of his shots came from mid-range, but even there, he was efficient as well.

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How will Barnes fit with the Spurs and what could lineups look like?