Why ending Rookie of the Year streak benefits Spurs, Dylan Harper

Looking again on it, Carter Bryant can pinpoint the actual second when Dylan Harper misplaced an award.

It occurred final June 25, a little bit after 8:15 p.m. in New York. NBA commissioner Adam Silver made an announcement, Harper picked up a Spurs hat on his solution to the stage, and a marketing campaign basically ended earlier than it began.

“It’s as simple as, if he would’ve been drafted by 28 other teams, he’d be the Rookie of the Year,” Bryant stated of his San Antonio draft classmate. “Other than here and OKC, maybe? He’d be running away with it.”

Heading into the remaining three video games of the common season, Harper isn’t operating away with it, of course. At some level in the subsequent month, the NBA will make one other announcement, and the Spurs’ streak of Rookie of the Year winners will finish at two, with Harper nearly definitely ending behind the likes of Charlotte’s Kon Knueppel and Dallas’ Cooper Flagg and perhaps Philadelphia’s V.J. Edgecombe in the voting.

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But right here’s the double-dose of upside: For the Spurs, the proven fact that Harper didn’t get the probability to build up the numbers wanted to win that award is definitely an excellent factor. And for Harper, it would work out simply as nicely in the long term.

“I know I kind of have a different goal in mind,” the 20-year-old level guard stated Monday evening.

To his immense credit score, Harper acknowledged the dynamics at play right here from the very starting. Last May, when one other lucky lottery-ball bounce landed the Spurs the No. 2 general choose in the 2025 draft, it grew to become clear that Harper was going to affix a San Antonio backcourt that already included De’Aaron Fox and Stephon Castle.

Rather than attempt to steer himself away from that vacation spot — a tactic that wouldn’t have been unthinkable — Harper and his household embraced the probability to affix an up-and-coming energy, even when all of it however assured he’d be relegated to a bench function for the foreseeable future.

To Bryant’s level, if Harper had ended up in Charlotte in Knueppel’s place, or in Philadelphia in Edgecomb’s spot, or in at the least two dozen different potential touchdown spots, his numbers and his Rookie of the Year résumé would look much more spectacular proper now.

“I could be somewhere else, and Dylan could be somewhere else, and we could be playing and getting a ton of bad reps and bad habits,” stated Bryant, who the Spurs took with the 14^th general choose final June. “The year would have progressed, and I look up and maybe I’m averaging 14 points, and Dylan’s averaging 20 to 25 points.

“But it wouldn’t be counting for anything, you know what I mean? We wouldn’t be learning how to win basketball games, and how to affect the game when you’re not scoring the ball.”

To be clear, Bryant’s claims about how Harper’s stat line would look with one other franchise aren’t merely the wild hypothesis of a 19-year-old. Any look past the primary numbers exhibits that Harper’s general manufacturing has been simply as spectacular as that the prime Rookie of the Year contenders.

For occasion, on a per-36 minutes foundation, Harper’s averages of 18.9 factors and 5.4 rebounds examine favorably with Knueppel (21.4 and 6.1), Flagg (22.4 and seven.0) and Edgecombe (16.5 and 5.7).

But past that, Harper’s assist-to-turnover ratio of 2.74 blows the different three away, and his web factors per 100 possessions (in keeping with ESPN Analytics) trails solely Knueppel amongst rookies.

It’s straightforward to think about a situation by which Harper was requested to play a extra dominant function — as each Victor Wembanyama and Castle did throughout their rookie seasons, and as each Knueppel and Flagg have accomplished — and prevailed in the voting.

“If he had those opportunities,” Castle stated, “it would be no question he’d be it (the Rookie of the Year).”

But that’s not what the Spurs wanted from him. In Wembanyama, Castle and Fox, they already have been loaded with stars to function the point of interest of the offense.

What they requested of Harper, arguably, was much more difficult. They wanted a super-talented man to determine how you can thrive at each ends of the courtroom alongside all of these three older stars, and so they wanted him to do that whereas being OK with letting his teammates get the shine.

“That’s a hard thing for someone who’s basically been a superstar his whole life,” Fox stated.

“Not once have I felt him not want to (embrace a supporting role),” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson stated. “I’m sure he has, because he’s human. But it’s nice to see him get rewarded for putting the team first.”

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His rewards, clearly, will likely be completely different than Knueppel’s or Flagg’s will.

Harper, whose March Madness-less season at Rutgers nonetheless makes him the good-natured goal of ridicule amongst the Connecticut, Kentucky, Duke and North Carolina alumni in the Spurs’ locker room, ought to get loads of postseason expertise over the subsequent month.

And past that? Having cemented himself as an integral half of the Spurs’ long-term future, Harper is aware of precisely how he suits. In that regard, the Rookie of the Year voting is irrelevant.

“Just not comparing myself to anyone, and just kind of running my own race,” Harper stated. “We’re all in different situations. I’m blessed being in this one.”