With the offseason nearly wrapped up in San Antonio, the real conversation has shifted to Dylan Harper and where he fits when the games start counting again. Plenty of people are assuming he belongs in the starting five right away. The Spurs, though, may be better off resisting that move.
Mitch Johnson already showed last season that Harper’s role can grow without forcing a lineup change. Harper’s minutes went up by four per game in the playoffs compared with the regular season, and that matters here: there is clearly room to give him more responsibility without touching a starting group that was already working.
The clearest evidence came after February 1. From that point through the end of the regular season, San Antonio was nearly impossible to beat, and the biggest change was the switch from Harrison Barnes to Julian Champagnie in the starting lineup.
That move helped open everything up. Champagnie brought shooting, defense, and rebounding, and he carried that into the playoffs by hitting 39.6% of his 6.7 3-point attempts per game.
Devin Vassell was just as important. In the playoffs, he drilled 37.8% of his 6.4 3-point attempts per game, giving the Spurs another reliable piece in a lineup that clearly found its rhythm. Between Champagnie and Vassell, San Antonio had the kind of balance that made the group hard to mess with.
That’s why a starting five built around De’Aaron Fox, Stephon Castle, and Harper together feels like the wrong call. Johnson did test that three-guard look more in the playoffs when closing games, and it worked well enough as a finishing unit alongside Vassell and Victor Wembanyama. But a strong closing lineup is not the same thing as a starting lineup.
The better path is to keep Fox, Castle, Vassell, Champagnie, and Wembanyama together. That group posted a plus 17.6 net rating in the regular season and was plus 22.4 in the playoffs. Those are the numbers of a lineup that already knows how to function.
There’s also a case that it could get even better. Fox is expected to have a bounce-back season and may handle the ball more.
Castle and Wembanyama should keep improving internally. Put that together, and the Spurs may already have a starting five that can do serious damage without needing Harper in it.
That doesn’t mean Harper gets pushed aside. Far from it. He can still be a major weapon off the bench, and Johnson could use a three-guard rotation that gets Fox, Castle, and Harper each to at least 30 minutes a night while keeping Harper in a reserve role.
That setup might be the best version of all worlds for San Antonio. Harper’s playoff per-36 numbers were eye-catching: 19.0 points, 3.6 assists, and 7.5 rebounds. Stretch that kind of production across a full season, and it becomes easy to see why he could wreck second units.
He could even chase Sixth Man of the Year and help push the Spurs toward a title run. For now, though, the smartest move is to leave him coming off the bench and let an already elite starting five stay intact.
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Champagnies case is rooted in how well the Spurs looked with him in the first unit, where the group around De'Aaron Fox, Stephon Castle, Devin Vassell and Victor Wembanyama clicked at a high level. Harris still has value, especially as a scorer who could change the tone of a second unit, but the bigger question for San Antonio is whether it keeps the chemistry it found or makes room for experience at the expense of continuity. [Read more 🡒]