San Antonio Spurs rookie guard Dylan Harper, having a breakout game in his first-ever playoff start, had the Gil’s Arena crew debating whether Spurs head coach Mitch Johnson should start Harper over De’Aaron Fox permanently moving forward.
Because Fox was a late scratch for the Spurs, Harper got the start in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals, and he went on to torch the Oklahoma City Thunder with 24 points, 11 rebounds, six assists and seven steals in a double-overtime win for San Antonio.
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With that effort on both sides of the ball, Rashad McCants thinks the Spurs should keep Harper in the starting lineup and bring Fox off the bench.
“D-Fox can’t guard like Harper,” explained McCants. “You keep Harper in because they can switch between those 3 guards. The scramble, the effort, the energy on the defensive side, Fox doesn’t have the same thing that Dylan Harper has. He’s fast, but he doesn’t have the defensive prowess, the prowess that he got from his daddy, shout out to Ron Harper, one of the greatest to do it.”
“That mentality of getting out of that scramble, ball goes over your head, turn, sprint to the corner, close out…you know where it’s going,” he added.
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Start Dylan or give him the Manu role
Fox has started all 82 regular-season games he’s played for the Spurs since joining in February 2025. This postseason, he’s also started all 11 games he’s played and is averaging a solid 18.8 points, 3.5 rebounds, 5.8 assists, and 1.1 steals per game in 33.3 minutes of action.
Meanwhile, Harper averaged just 11.8 points, 3.4 rebounds, and 3.9 assists per game in 69 regular-season games played in his rookie season, coming off the bench in all but four games. Dylan’s numbers have improved with five more minutes of postseason play, averaging 14.6 points, 5.6 rebounds, 2.5 assists, and 1.7 steals per game. However, it’s clear as day that he is the better defender than Fox.
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“I don’t mind bringing Fox off the bench. I don’t mind it. But if you do bring Fox in the starter role, you play Harper like Ginobili. He can give us s–t. But at the end of the day, what Dylan Harper displayed was magnificent to me, especially on the defensive. To get those steals, to be able to rebound the ball, 11 boards, come on man, as a point guard,” McCants added.
But Mitch Johnson says Fox is the catalyst of the Spurs’ offense
However, while McCants makes a good argument for putting Harper ahead of Fox in the Spurs’ rotation, San Antonio head coach Mitch Johnson recently explained the importance of Fox in the Spurs’ offense, including to Harper himself, when he praised the “Slash Brothers” duo of Dylan and Stephon Castle.
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“We’re probably at our best when he’s in attack mode. He has probably the strongest ripple effect on our team in terms of when he’s in attack mode, pushing the pace because you have Steph and Dylan that follow suit with that. Then our shooters get shots in transition, Victor plays in space, and so on and so forth. When he does that, he’s the catalyst for us,”said Johnson.
Catalyst is a very strong word to use when describing a player. It speaks of how highly the coach thinks of Fox. Maybe Mitch is right, maybe he is wrong. But that’s what he believes in right now. Because of that, it looks like Fox is going to keep his starting spot, even though it wasn’t threatened.
But yeah, Rashad is also right about giving Dylan the Manu role and letting him finish games for the Spurs, because he is a legit difference-maker.
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This story was originally published by Basketball Network on May 20, 2026, where it first appeared in the Latest News section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.