Training camp is still two months away, but Carter Bryant already has a real fight on his hands.
The San Antonio Spurs wing is projected to open the season third on the small forward depth chart, sitting behind Devin Vassell and Keldon Johnson. That puts Bryant in the kind of position plenty of young players know well: promising enough to matter, but still needing to pry minutes away from established names.
Johnson is the more interesting obstacle. He has been one of the Spurs’ longest-tenured players, but the source of the uncertainty is clear - this could be the final season of his long run in San Antonio.
After an awful playoff showing, he may be vulnerable when camp opens, even if he does not lose his spot right away. With his contract also in its final year, Bryant’s path to a bigger role could open faster than expected.
The Spurs appear to view Bryant as the future at small forward. That makes the next step pretty straightforward in theory, even if it gets messy in practice: it would not make much sense to keep leaning on Johnson at Bryant’s expense if the team is not planning to bring Johnson back beyond next season.
For now, though, Bryant still has to climb the chart. Vassell and Johnson are both ahead of him, and that likely keeps him in a smaller role to start. Even so, Coach Mitch Johnson could still give him steady minutes off the bench, and that kind of usage would give Bryant a real chance to force the issue.
The expectation here is that Bryant’s role grows as the season goes on. By the end of next season, the source suggests, he should be a regular in the Spurs rotation.
What happens with Keldon Johnson remains unsettled. A trade does not sound likely, at least not unless San Antonio gets an offer it cannot turn down. The more realistic possibility is that the Spurs keep him, use him sparingly through the rest of the regular season and into the playoffs, and let Bryant take on more of the load.
In the best-case version of that scenario, the Silver and Black finish the story with a championship for Johnson and a breakout stretch for Bryant.
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The Spurs Rivalries That Will Define This New Era
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What makes this next phase interesting is how many of those rivalries are being shaped by roster changes and recent team performance rather than tradition alone. The Spurs have a chance to define their own hierarchy in the 2026-27 season, but the real question is which opponent ends up becoming the one that best reflects how far this group has come, and which matchup might still have a chapter or two left to write. [Read more 🡒]