The Spurs’ early-season tinkering is paying a price against the West’s best.
San Antonio’s search for the right mix has been front and center from the start, and the biggest curiosity has been the three-guard setup featuring Dylan Harper, De’Aaron Fox, and Stephon Castle. It’s been a major offseason talking point, and the question of how Mitch Johnson would make that trio work together has only gotten louder. The alignment has had flashes, but it has also come with a cost: some of the wins the Spurs might have liked to bank early are slipping away.
That showed up most clearly in the matchups with the Oklahoma City Thunder and Houston Rockets. The Spurs were chasing the game right away in both, falling behind in the first quarter each time.
The offense was a big part of that slow start, with Harper, Fox, and Castle needing time to settle in and find a flow together. The fit makes sense on paper, but in the opening minutes it has brought some hesitation and a little too much caution.
There’s a reason that kind of adjustment is expected. Fox and Castle are used to a different starting group, having played alongside Julian Champagnie and Devin Vassell last season, so there’s real chemistry work still to be done.
But elite opponents don’t wait around for that process to sort itself out. Oklahoma City and Houston made San Antonio pay for the sluggish starts, forcing the Spurs into catch-up mode earlier than they wanted.
The ripple effects have gone beyond the guards. Carter Bryant has been caught in a tougher environment because the Spurs have had so little margin for error in those games. He remains a work-in-progress, still learning as he goes, and when San Antonio is already digging out of a hole, every missed shot or defensive lapse becomes harder to absorb.
Devin Vassell has had his own adjustment as well. In that starting look, he’s playing power forward, which has put him into more battles with bigger bodies and helped lead to foul trouble. He picked up four personal fouls across the two games against the Rockets and Thunder.
None of this looks permanent. The issues are the kind that can be smoothed out with more time. But if the Spurs keep using these lineups to figure themselves out, they may have to accept that some big wins against elite teams will be the price of that experiment.
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