The San Antonio Spurs have a problem — Dylan Harper is way better than anyone thought he could be this early in his career. I didn't say it was a bad problem, but it is still an issue nonetheless.
It's troublesome because they also have De'Aaron Fox, who has All-NBA pedigree and is making a ton of money, and Stephon Castle -- another young player that figures to be one of the cornerstones of the franchise moving forward.
Now, the Spurs are in an impossible situation. Harper is too good to keep coming off the bench, but so is Castle. Fox is also (probably) too good, and he's making too much money to justify a reserve role. And even if the Spurs were willing to bench him, would Fox accept this role?
The Spurs are trying to use the preseason to help solve this conundrum. Unfortunately, the solution they've come up with is bound to fail.
You can't start the three guards together
In their victory over the Phoenix Suns, the Spurs debuted a new starting lineup featuring Harper, Fox, Castle, Devin Vassell, and Victor Wembanyama. The team ultimately won 123-103, but their new opening alignment was far from the main reason why.
To start the game, their opening group was outscored 7-3 in the first five minutes. The team eventually hit their stride as the game went on, but this isn't the first time this group has struggled when sharing the floor together.
According to PBP Stats, the trio shared the floor for 25 minutes during the regular season last year, posting an abysmal -29.1 net rating. In the playoffs, we got an even larger sample (44 minutes), and the outcome was disturbingly similar (-24.9).
Now, I wouldn't be a true analytics advocate if I didn't point out that it is never wise to over-index on small sample sizes, but there is reason to believe that the data does tell the story in this situation.
To win in this league, you need talent AND lineup balance. A triumivarte of Harper, Fox, and Castle is a mighty talented one, but their skills are very redundant of one another. Namely, all of them are guards who play better with the ball in their hands and struggle to consistently burn defenses from beyond the arc.
And since you can only play five guys at once, by fielding three players who give you a lot of the same things, you are sacrificing in other areas. By playing all of them at once, that means that the Spurs will only have one above-average shooter (in this case, Vassell) next to Wembanyama, which makes it easier for teams to pack the paint on the prodigious Frenchmen without paying a penalty for it.
Unless one (or two) of these three guys because a marketably better off-ball player, this lineup is going to continue to bleed value on the offensive side of the ball.
As much as the Spurs refuse to believe it, this configuration is not a long-term solution, and the team is going to have to decide which of their talented guards they are going to risk pissing off by having them start games on the bench.
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