Is Spine-leaf overkill for 140 drops and 70 staff?

Hi,

We have 10yo nortel switches (in a stack) I need to update. I keep seeing "spine-leaf" being a thing now, but lt looks like it's just a "double-star" and if I just do a star with the servers and printers at the center won't that do the same thing? Very few client-client connections occur; mostly it's to the WAN and servers. Of course, netgear suggests I buy $5k M4300 switches but it seems to be the XS748Ts would accomplish the same thing for a fraction the cost. What am I missing? Is spine-leaf overkill unless you're a data center with hundreds or thousands of clients?

My thought is to have three 48 port switches all connected to a 24 or 28 port one in the middle. Am I setting myself up for congestion?

Thanks,

Jeff