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How does the presence of KD negatively affect Harper? I’m curious.
All depends on extension. Spurs need to build 3 year roster before draft. Durant can fit 1 year, but then he would have to be closer to 30 mil cap hit to make it all work.
How does the presence of KD negatively affect Harper? I’m curious.
You realize out of the guards you'd be shipping out, there will be 40-60 minutes missing in the lineup that will need to be filled right? Trading likely 2 or 3 players for KD, means you're making more time for for him to develop. He would not be prioritized over Keldon and Vassell on the team as it is now. Spurs proved that last year with Castle.
It doesn't. At all. People just make things up in their head without thinking through. KD would take 2 or 3 guys out of our rotation that him and harper would fill.
I'm a durantstan atm but hopefully they can keep vassell and Barnes too bc they are the only spurs who can shoot straight. Not a deal killer but still
That would be fine and dandy if the Spurs had a complete Starting lineup. They don't. You always prioritize the starting lineup before the bench. They have to be contending first, before you start filling the rotation players otherwise there's no point to be trying to draft for that.
Lots of people want to draft for the bench when we don't have a starting 5 yet. It doesn't work that way. You focus on the starting 5 first. If the 14 can improve the starting five, you use it to do so.
It’s a fever dream in Mrs. Body’s addled brain.
That’s exactly who has to go out to make the salaries work. Devin has to go to free guard minutes for Dylan, anyway.
Jesus Christ, just think things through.
You've got Fox, Wemby, and Durant. Those are your big mouths to feed. And if you extend Durant then this is the situation for the next three years or so.
How the are you getting Harper enough touches to get him going? If you want him to get to his ceiling, you'll need his usage rate to start going up.
This... y'all just being ing morons, to be honest. Durant isn't sitting in the corner on kick-outs. This is so academically clear, I'm not surprised it's not obvious to you. It's clearly a problem.
Yea I figured as much, wanted to hear what reasoning he has. KD has been playing the 4 for years now, Harper projects as a 1-2. I’m not the biggest fan of KD from a locker room/vibes perspective, but he is one of the most competent and capable players in the history of the league whose game should age like wine even with his injury history.
Wemby, Fox, and Durant all have around a 28-30% usage rate. You'll want Harper to pretty quickly get there too.
Tell me your magic idea of what math is.
Ok just looked at stats and vassell can go, woof
keep champ and mamu and they'll be fine
Kawhi Leonard’s USG% his first 3 seasons: 14.5,16.4,18.3
I would say with Durant in the hypothetical mix that Fox and KD need to see their usage ticking down (KD's minutes need to drop quite a bit too) while the ascending player (Wemby) mostly keeps his usage. Harper in a rookie season will get his opportunities but expecting big things out of him in year 1 isn't realistic. If his talent/trajectory is undeniable then adjust accordingly. I am very high on Harper but I am not expecting miracles in season 1 or 2, his shooting splits in college just don't indicate that.
I don't know why folks think it would hurt Harper or Castle to spend 2-3 years learning how to defend and shoot rather than being high-usage guys who focus on "creating" at the expense of those fundamental skills. scott once pointed out that Castle had much better defensive metrics before he took over as a main option. The Spurs should want to build on that version him way more than the one who played at the end of the year. Scouts talk about Harper's off-ball potential, but he wasn't able to show that as the only decent creator at Rutgers. So if he can evolve a screen-and-shooting game and learn to use his length to be a positive defender, how does that hurt him?
People keep fantasizing about having a 10-year window with Wemby, but you only get that by layering talent. I don't think the Spurs wit`h Durant would be full contenders, but I do think they'd be a dark-horse team, and if the West breaks the right way, that can mean a run. Then in a couple of years, you make the (W)right decision again and keep it going. That may mean that the Spurs have developed a new star or two. That might mean trading away some of the talent ac ulated for a star from another team. But the idea of drafting a handful of guys and have them play their whole careers together has been pretty thoroughly crushed by the new CBA. Long-term success in the new NBA requires sacrifice, both in terms of teams letting guys go and guys accepting less if they want to be on the best teams. Gone tomorrow, here today. It would be foolish for the Spurs not to take advantage of an opportunity to add a GOAT scorer candidate onto a team with four top-10 picks and an All-Star in his prime trying to fast-track guys you hope can be All-Star players in five years.
Why do you want Harper to get there pretty quickly? In terms of the team winning, they just want whomever is to do so efficiently and in a way that would be hard to game plan against. For Harper, there's nothing wrong with a more conservative usage rate as he detoxes from his year in college, learns the NBA game and develops new skills. For the rest of the players, it's probably best to not have to rely as much on a rookie PG setting them up.
One thing adding KD could facilitate, if you built the rest of the roster properly, is the ability to have 2-3 “alphas” on the court for a full 48 minutes if you stagger their minutes properly. That will mean higher USG minutes for guys like Castle and Harper while one or more of Wemby/Fox/KD are resting.
That feels like it would give the Spurs a pretty rare ability in terms of filling out a full 48 minutes. Obviously Castle and Harper aren’t quite the players the other three are yet (and maybe they never will be), but maybe you see where I’m going with this. Having 4 on the court at the same time, let alone all 5, may not be many minutes on a game in, game out basis (although… Castle is a SF… so you could start all 5)
Durant to spurs makes sense. When it's time to move on from Durant either through retirement or letting the contract expire, it might be time to move on from Fox if Harper is ready. And who knows what picks we get in the future.
Last edited by tbdog; 06-06-2025 at 08:55 PM.
He didn't want Fox either. He thinks we can just draft these guys and they magically turn into franchise players
Not only that. He doubled down and said Fox was worse than Chris Paul when Fox had a sample size of 3 games with us lol
I like Barnes but trading him and Vassell - whose contract nobody seems to like - plus the 14 pick and perhaps some of our surplus SRPs and one of our own unattached FRPs is a no brainer to get Durant.
Then we are running a potential lineup of:
Fox
Harper
Castle
Durant
Wemby
That stacks up well against any other starting lineup in the league and doesn’t even account for a potential PF free agent add or backup center upgrade with current draft 38 pick.
AND it still leaves us with Sochan, KJ, Champagnie off the bench.
Now may be the time to get your long shot bet down on Spurs winning it all next season.
I think most of us understand what kinds of players we need in order to compete for a championship. Focusing on minutes and touches is short-sighted. Having quality veterans like Fox and Durant are part of the process and not the end game. More than likely they will not be a part of the finished product. But having them here as part of the process is good for the young players...especially with a young coach. Quality veterans take the pressure off while teaching them how to be professionals. They will take the team to the playoffs and show the young guys what it's like to be there and compete there. If they catch lightning in a bottle, great. If it's just part of building then that is great too. Either way good comes from it when we were talking about what you want the finished product to look like.
Look at SGA and Halliburton. Time, development and team building done the right way. Durant is an all-time great player. Fox is one of the best point guards in the league. These guys are helping the team be good while giving the good young players important experience.
Too much smoke around this KD speculation for it not to happen. It’s very similar to the Fox situation before he was traded.
Agree with bene. We are seeing a young team and a young coach in OKC struggle against proven players like Jokic and then getting flustered by Rick Carlisle. Mitch can turn out to be a solid coach but he’s still very much unproven. Having vets around can only do good things. I don’t believe in that spurs fan “not in our timeline” nonsense that they like to spew especially on Reddit. This isn’t the Tim Duncan era NBA anymore.
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