He also had Manu-like scary falls.
That foul by the Mavs C on Harpers steal and transition dunk was dangerous and reckless. Legler played it off on commentary like it was a basketball play but players know not to wind up and swing through like that when the player is up at the rim and in a vulnerable position. That could have ended up a lot worse.
If that happens in the league guarantee you teammates are getting in the face of the Mavs guy.
I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking flagrant foul, but Legler really played it off like it was just a basketball play. It looked to me like he got his head and took him out of the air. It likely wasn't his intention, but I thought it looked dangerous when I saw it in real time.
Agree it should have been ruled a flagrant foul as he almost took his head off trying to get to the ball.
The real deal
He is fun to watch
Now that he's shut down for the rest of Summer League, my thoughts on his two games:
The good:
The ability to handle the ball and get penetration into the paint is an elite skill that will translate.
His finishing at the rim is awesome.
He's a compe or. He wants to win and you can see that effort and intensity in how he plays.
He has the physical tools to be a good defender.
Areas for improvement:
He needs a lot of work on all of his shots outside of 10 ft.
There is no pullup game or floaters or anything like that right now to balance his driving ability.
The offense generally ran better without him on the floor. He had more turnovers than assist. This may be a tunnel vision issue he has to work on, or just lack of familiarity with teamates and the Spurs offense, or both.
He didn't seem to do a good job of moving off-ball. Carter Bryant was bad at this as well and I'm not worried about it, but if we want Harper to start next to Fox he has to figure out how to do this and hit spot up jumpers. I think he can but we didn't see it yet.
Last edited by couchman; 07-16-2025 at 03:07 PM.
On his areas for improvement:
-I think he has a nice drive, contact, pull-up one hander.
-The offense did run better w/o him but I’d say it was lack of familiarity with both, teammates and system. Most of them look like headless chickens running around actually. Once Harper has multiple repe ions with the A Team he will look much better than SL.
Dylan Harper, thank you for your service.
I don't see him as a starter at the beginning of the season. He will really have to show a LOT in training camp for that to happen. Probably a similar developmental arc to Castle last season.
From the start of last season to this season our SL has improved and now our bench is far better. Excited to see Harper lead the 2nd unit, at least for a while.
One other thing is that his form on his jumper is a question mark for me.
The release is fairly low and the shot is somewhat flat.
He is a solid FT shooter that way but the further out you go the more that form will suffer.
I don't know if we let him keep doing that and just hope it gets to be a consistent weapon or if we try to rebuild it into a more traditional release.
My first inclination is to let him keep doing it and just see if he can get better at it.
With him shut down from SL perhaps he will jump in with the other guys who have been in Vegas doing runs/workouts.
Sure, there could be a game(s) here or there as availability dictates, but as a constant, I don't think we'll ever see a Fox-Harper starting back court.
As I've said since they lucked into Harper, my sense is if all goes according to plan with his development, we're looking at 2-3 seasons max before Fox is traded, with the Heat the probable favorites.
The only way Harper would be, is if it's for an MVP or All-NBA caliber player in their prime, who is a good theoretical fit.
For next season, unless Harper proves a credible enough spacer (doubtful obviously), I don't think we'll see as much of them paired together as most expect and want to see.
I think it’s decently likely Harper as a rookie is a better floor-spacer and shooter than Castle. Why can Castle start at the 2 and not Harper?
I do think it makes more sense to have Harper play more of a 6th man type role where the offense runs through him when Fox is sitting, and if I had to bet I’d say Castle gets the start over him…but I guess I’m not understanding why you think Fox/Harper is untenable when the alternative is Fox/Castle.
Because Castle is more of a secondary creator anyway and theoretically a POA defender in a starting lineup otherwise bereft (since we're presuming Castle over Sochan in this scenario) of one.
Harper is more of a primary creator and the only way to get him reps in that role is to have him play it in non Fox minutes.
Not so much untenable to me as it is my projecting what I think the Spurs will do.
I wonder if his mom may have screwed his jumpshot by not letting him shoot one for quite a while after he started learning to play. It seems like he developed a flat shot. Flat shots aren't as easy to get in the rim as you won't get any kind bounces off the rim when shooting it flat. The accuracy has to be dead on for it to go in if it's flatter.
I think Castle's offense will be better this season with all the work he's putting in, but also, I think he starts because I think his defense will be better than Harper's (hopefully Harper does improve a lot of his, though, as that first game he looked good defensively, but not at all in the second game). Taking away Castle already playing a year for the Spurs, all things being equal, I pretty much think Castle gets the starting nod because of defense. I think we'll see him a lot more consistent on defense this season. Edit : TD21 pretty much said the same thing in the post above.
We also don't know how Harper's defense will be against NBA players yet as he hasn't played against any regular players to see how he goes on that end (I'm hoping he improves quickly as Mike Noyes seem to think he's a good defender already, or has defensive potential).
Last edited by Ice009; 07-16-2025 at 05:01 PM.
his jumpshot is clearly too flat. He needs to put more arch on his shot for it to fall consistently.
If only we were able to reach a contract agreement with the best shooting coach
I remember someone saying or reading something about Pop didn't think shooting coaches are needed. Not sure if that was before Chip was signed, or sometime after, but if that is how he thought about it, he was wrong.If only we were able to reach a contract agreement with the best shooting coach
Well, the Alzheimer must have kicked in because who the fixed nephew’s jump shoot?
Or Tony’s. This sounds like utter bull to me.
To be fair we don't know how much run he had with the squad before playing those 2 Summer league games. Lack of chemistry and being rusty could have something to do with his performance. No need to make knee jerk assessments here. We are a long way from the next regular season.
harper and castle had roughly the same FT% in college though harper got to the line more, so take FT signals for what they're worth. with that said harper also shot 6% better from 3 despite much higher volume while not being the beneficiary of a loaded UConn squad letting him be uber-selective with his looks. there are more signs pointing to optimism with harper than there were for castle a year ago this time. will come down to work ethic, which castle seems to have in droves. by all accounts harper is the same way
harper's shot looked pretty flat in summer league and he doesnt have a particularly high release generally, so there are things to work on. if he can just be a reasonable catch and shoot player, i think i could see him in the manu role where he runs point for the bench unit but is still able to play SG alongside Fox, being a secondary creator on that unit who can also let it rip if left wide open
However good he might be eventually , there is a decent chance that Harper is ass his first 1-2 seasons. Not just neutral, but actually a bad player impact-wise.
The guy I hear him get comp'd to the most is Cade Cunningham. The guy I see the most in him is actually Fox. It's important to note that while both guys eventually became all-stars, both were terrible their first season (Fox epically bad) and Cade was pretty bad impact-wise up until this year. Harper's got a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses as Fox coming out - gets the the basket well, poor jumper, more combo guard than pure point. Harden came out of the gates a positive player but also finished his sop re year before coming out.
All this to say, I hope that Harper roars out the gates and becomes a positive player right away. But in the more likely scenario that he sucks (ok counting stats, inefficient, lots of mistakes, bad impact) his first 1-2 seasons, hopefully we won't see a ton of cliff jumping. That doesn't come for me unless he continues to suck into season 3-4.
I agree with the sentiment, but there’s a big difference in the situations of those guys. Harper isn’t being asked to carry the team or be the #1 (or even #2) option, and defenses won’t be able to sell out to stop him. I think he’s set up for success much better than Fox or Cunningham were coming into their rookie seasons.
A lot of what Harper will likely struggle with will be decision making and adjusting to the spend and length of the nba. He’s still a teenager and will be playing against men who’s been pros for years. There are very few PGs who hit the floor running. Magic, Chris Paul, Jason Kidd, Oscar Robertson and Mighty Mouse, I don’t remember many who were great as rookie PG. the first four were often cited as natural PGs while stoudemire was a high usage low efficiency chucker on an expansion team. You can maybe put mark jackson in there or even iverson (score first though) but amazing rookie PGs are few and far between.
Players like Stockton, mark price, Kevin Johnson, Deron Williams, Isiah Thomas, Jerry west, Steve nash and our own Tony Parker all took their lumps as rookies or even the first few years of their careers. , even castle, who won ROY last year, wasn’t all that good with impact stats.
Pop also thinks the 3-point shot is stupid. Thankfully he's not coaching this team anymore.
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