Dylan Harper didn’t need a long pause when he was asked which NBA players gave him the most trouble this season. The San Antonio Spurs rookie went straight to the two Oklahoma City Thunder stars who made life hardest on him: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams.
“SGA and JDub. We beat them, but… damn… them two kinda hard,” Harper said.
That answer came after Harper had helped San Antonio through a postseason run that ended with the Spurs reaching the NBA Finals for the first time in a decade. He was one of the team’s key contributors along the way, even though the run finished without a title.
The toughest test came in the Western Conference Finals, where San Antonio and Oklahoma City went seven games before the Spurs pulled out a 4-3 win. The matchup was a different animal from the regular season, when the Spurs had success against the Thunder. This time, the series stretched to the limit.
Gilgeous-Alexander, fresh off an MVP-winning regular season, showed exactly why he sits among the league’s top scorers. Williams was right there beside him as Oklahoma City’s other star, and even with injuries late in the series, he kept affecting the game with his rebounding and overall impact.
Harper had his own job to do in San Antonio’s rotation throughout that seven-game fight. The Spurs got past Oklahoma City and into the Finals, but they couldn’t close the deal, falling to the New York Knicks in the championship series.
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SGA And Jalen Williams Just Earned More League-Wide Respect
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For San Antonio, it is another reminder of how steep the climb is in the West and how much those Oklahoma City meetings now matter for a group trying to grow together. Harper is expected to keep seeing Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams for years, and if his first impressions are any indication, those matchups will keep testing the Spurs in ways that should only sharpen them. [Read more 🡒]