Mitch Johnson put Dylan Harper in the starting lineup for San Antonio’s preseason opener against Atlanta on Thursday. Harper came off the bench during the playoffs, so this is a change worth noticing.
The reported starting five was Victor Wembanyama, De’Aaron Fox, Stephon Castle, Devin Vassell and Harper. Atlanta won 123-116.
Johnson Refused to Explain It
Asked whether anyone should read into the group, Johnson said: “They’re still going to read into whatever they want to read into.”
That is a coach declining to commit, and it is the right answer in October. He did not say this group starts on October 20 against Oklahoma City. He said people will draw conclusions regardless, which is true and also not a promise.
Preseason lineups are laboratories. Teams try combinations in exhibitions specifically because the result does not matter, and the most aggressive experiments usually happen in the first game.
Three Guards Is a Real Bet
Fox, Castle and Harper on the floor together with Vassell and Wembanyama is a small, fast, ball-handling-heavy group. It creates a lot of players who can attack off the dribble and a lot of questions about who guards size on the other end.
San Antonio can survive that because of Wembanyama. He is the defensive answer to most lineup problems, and playing him with four quick perimeter players maximizes the thing that makes him special: covering ground behind an aggressive, gambling defense.
Offensively it is less clean. Three guards who all want the ball need a shot distribution agreement, and Castle and Harper are both young enough that figuring that out takes time.
What This Says About Harper
The more important signal is about development. San Antonio drafted Harper high and played him off the bench in the postseason, which is standard treatment for a rookie on a team trying to win.
Starting him in the opener suggests the staff wants to see his ceiling against starters rather than protect him against backups. That is a vote of confidence, whether Johnson will say so or not.
The Spurs host Oklahoma City on opening night, and that game will tell us what Johnson actually decided. Until then, this was a look rather than a lineup.
San Antonio is past the stage of asking whether it is good. The question now is which five players close games in May, and this is how a coaching staff starts answering that in October.
One more thing to keep in mind: Johnson has earned the benefit of the doubt on lineup decisions. San Antonio has developed young players well under this staff, and the choice to throw Harper into the deep end in game one of the preseason fits a pattern of trusting players earlier than most organizations would.
Atlanta winning 123-116 is irrelevant. What Johnson learned about those five players together is not.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.