Spurs Should Bench De'Aaron Fox for Dylan Harper After Game 1 Struggles

The San Antonio Spurs used to treat Manu Ginobili as their playoff trump card. He'd come off the bench for most of the regular season and then open the postseason as a reserve as well. But when someone finally managed to stress the Spurs out? That's when they played the Ginobili card.

Ginobili came off the bench for eight of the first nine playoff games of San Antonio's 2005 NBA title run. When the Supersonics tied their second-round series 2-2, Ginobili was inserted into the starting lineup and the Spurs didn't look back. When they fell down 0-2 to the Hornets in 2008, when the Thunder tied their second-round series 2-2 in 2012, and even four games into the 2013 Finals against the Heat , starting Ginobili was Gregg Popovich's favorite playoff adjustment. That's when you knew the Spurs were serious.

There was never any question about whether or not Ginobili was among San Antonio's five best players. Depending on how you feel about Tony Parker, he might have even been the best Spurs guard. Bringing him off the bench was a balancing mechanism more than anything. Ginobili was a better playmaker than Parker, so he was better equipped to lift bench units. Parker's scoring fit with the starters, and separating them made it easier to maximize both as ball handlers.

That's not quite what's happening for the Spurs with Dylan Harper and De'Aaron Fox  during this playoff run. Their offensive skill sets are somewhat similar as downhill guards with shaky jumpers. There are obvious differences, but Fox is the starter because, well, Fox is the starter. He's been the starter all year. He's a 28-year-old All-Star who just signed a max extension. Of course, that guy is going to open the season starting over a rookie. And when your team wins 62 games with that starter in place, sticking with what has worked is a reasonable inclination.

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But when things got tough for San Antonio's last contender, they played the Ginobili card. In the biggest games, you just want your best players on the floor. And right now, with the Spurs trailing the Knicks 1-0 in the Finals  after Wednesday night's Game 1, it certainly seems as though Harper, a 20-year-old rookie, is just a better player than Fox.

It's not a completely fair comparison. They're both somewhat hobbled. Harper, the No. 2 pick in the 2025 Draft, has been dealing with an adductor strain since the Western Conference Finals against the Thunder. Fox missed the first two games of that series with a high-ankle sprain. Harper has recovered faster. Fox's steadier, veteran hand was necessary in that specific matchup.

Stephon Castle turned the ball over 20 times in the first two games of the Oklahoma City series. The Thunder live off of live-ball turnovers, so even with Fox shooting less than 37% from the floor and 23% from deep, his presence in the starting five was an absolute necessity. The Spurs don't beat the Thunder without a low-turnover ball handler. His 15 points in Game 7 helped get San Antonio to the Finals.

But the Knicks are a different sort of opponent. Only the Pistons forced more turnovers than the Thunder this season. The Knicks were a below-average turnover-generating defense. What San Antonio needs against New York is rim pressure and defenders who can hold up on Jalen Brunson .

The Spurs scored just 42 points in the paint in Game 1, down from the over 52 they averaged in the regular season and the 49 they scored per night in the first three rounds of the playoffs. Harper generated 10 of those points. He's been among the best rim-pressuring guards of the entire postseason. He's averaging 4.7 shots in the restricted area per game in the playoffs. Among true guards, only Anthony Edwards , Tyrese Maxey and Brunson have gotten to the rim more this postseason. All of them play more minutes than Harper does, and none of them have matched Harper's 67.4% shooting in the restricted area.

Since coming back from that high-ankle sprain, Fox is attempting only 2.6 shots in the restricted area per game and shooting 46.2% on those looks while playing around eight more minutes per game than Harper in that span. Right now, he is really subsisting on jumpers and runners. When those shots go in, he looks good. His big Game 7 leaned heavily on the three above-the-break 3s that he made. In Game 1 of the Finals, he shot 1-of-10 outside of the restricted area. If he's not getting to the rim, he probably isn't scoring especially effectively.

As smaller, All-Star guards go, Fox is a reasonably effective defender. But "reasonably effective" still translates to vulnerable against Brunson. Julian Champagnie turned into Brunson's preferred target, and Fox held up reasonably well when Brunson found him. But Harper guarded Brunson across 14.4 partial possessions, according to NBA.com tracking data , and the most frequent feature of those possessions was New York trying to screen Harper off of him.

Harper, listed at 6-foot-5 and 215 pounds, is bigger than Fox (6-3, 185) and defends far more physically. That better equips him to guard Brunson and potentially switch onto bigger players as well. When Fox guarded Brunson in the March regular season games between these teams, for example, the Knicks had a lot of success getting Fox switched onto Karl-Anthony Towns , who had been guarded by Castle. That switch was available to the Knicks at the end of Game 1, but Brunson preferred attacking Champagnie.

The on-off numbers from Game 1 are a bit deceiving. San Antonio lost the Harper minutes... because almost half of them came with backup center  Luke Kornet on the floor. The Spurs were minus-7 when Harper played with Kornet and plus-2 when he played with Victor Wembanyama . Fox had a neutral plus-minus but lost his minutes with Wembanyama by four.

Could the Spurs play Harper and Fox together more? They were plus-5 when they shared the court in Game 1. But the Spurs have resisted putting all three of their top guards on the floor at the same time. Fox, Harper and Castle played 54 regular-season possessions together, according to Cleaning the Glass , and in the playoffs, they've only used that trio for 43 possessions.

San Antonio's season took off when coach Mitch Johnson made Champagnie a permanent member of the starting five over Harrison Barnes . The Spurs needed that extra shooting. Fox, Castle and Harper are relatively duplicative. They all want the ball in their hands. None of them is a high-level shooter. Removing Castle from the starting five is a non-starter. He's too important defensively and provides plenty of his own rim pressure.

The question now is Fox vs. Harper. In Game 1, Harper was clearly the superior player. That might have been because of injury, but there are between three and six games remaining in the 2025-26 season. There's no time for players to recover, and San Antonio has already relinquished home-court advantage in this series. Fox played 10 more minutes than Harper did in Game 1. He closed the game while Harper played less than four fourth-quarter minutes. These are the NBA Finals. The margins are tiny. A single lineup decision can swing games and games can swing championships.

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That's probably why Popovich turned to Ginobili for the biggest games of San Antonio's first dynasty. When your season is on the line, you want to win or lose with your best players. We all know where San Antonio's pursuit of a second dynasty is going. At some point, Harper is going to replace Fox in the starting lineup. The Spurs might have previously envisioned an extended transition, and perhaps even a Ginobili-esque high-profile bench role for Harper over the next year or two. They might have even watched Harper ascend through this postseason and planned to make him next year's opening night starter at point guard.

Whenever that switch happens, it will probably be permanent. That's a hard genie to stick back in the bottle, and there's no telling how Fox would react to getting benched. He's still needed in this series even if it's in a reduced role. But even if it's because of his ankle, he doesn't look like a star at the moment, and Harper is growing into a star far earlier than expected.

The Spurs have resisted making this switch at every turn. Harper was better than Fox in Game 1 of their second-round series against the Timberwolves . They won that series without changing the starting lineup. They won Game 1 against the Thunder with Harper starting in Fox's place, but gave Fox his job back when he returned from injury.

The Spurs' faith in Fox has thus far been justified. But there are no second chances at this point in the schedule. San Antonio is three losses away from elimination against, when you factor in injuries, the best opponent they've faced this postseason. They can't afford to hold one of their best players below 30 minutes anymore. If the versions of Harper and Fox we saw in Game 1 are who we can expect for the rest of the series, Harper should be starting. It's time to win or lose with your best players.

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_Originally reported by [CBS Sports](https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/spurs-dylan-harper-deaaron-fox-knicks-nba-finals/)._