The Spurs just proved why they're so dangerous...

We are in for something special this year in San Antonio. Dylan Harper and Stephon Castle, while we didn't quite get that three-guard lineup, they showed up. Ignore the score, the starters, and what they did in this game. Show them Mitch Johnson and his rotations. Hey, he's making some bold choices, and they seem to be the right ones. We still have a lot to learn about the De'Aaron Fox situation. There's still a lot to talk about when it comes to the Spurs bench. But ultimately, this game showed what everyone was waiting to see for so long. We almost got the three-guard lineup, but we did get the starters going out, dominating, doing what they needed to do. Wemby showed up, Castle showed up, and most importantly, Dylan Harper showing why the Spurs are absolutely terrifying this year. We're going to break down a whole lot, not just, you guys know what the score was in the game, you guys know what happened, but we're going to do a bit of a deeper dive into it all and the stories behind it coming up on this episode of Spurs Digest. I am so happy to have Spurs basketball back. I'm so happy that this first game is in the books. I know it wasn't a win like I think a lot of us maybe wanted, but hey, we deal, we move forward. Take a look at the box score. If you guys haven't already, I'm sure you have. Feel free to pause, take a look. I'm not going to put this up for too, too long. I did want to shout out David Jones Garcia, though. 14 points, four rebounds. One of my favorite Spurs. He's probably, in my opinion, probably the top guy that could convert from a two-way to a standard contract at some point. more so than Jacoby Gillespie more so than Malik Brown who's been dealing with some back issues as well but yeah really really really fun stuff but ultimately the story here is just simply how well the Spurs played with their starters in this game like look the Hawks did win like I said I think we just got to ignore the score here 123 to 116 yeah we blew like a 20 plus point lead again but this one wasn't on the starters this one wasn't on Wemby this wasn't on any of that stuff like just look at the halftime stuff. Halftime, Spurs led the Hawks 69-62. Harper, 16-4-4. Castle, 14-4-3. Devin Vassell, 12-3. Champeny, 10 points. Champeny was also kind of rolling, but the starters looked so, so, so good. Spurs didn't win, but it's only preseason. The starters looked great. Harper looked awesome. Wemby played with patience. Castle looked explosive playing off the ball. KJ, Horne, Vassell, and Moore looked good tonight. That's the thing. Talent everywhere is exactly what I would describe the Spurs as. It feels like everyone on this team just had their place and they played it to perfection. Mind you, this was a game that did not involve Tobias Harris. It's a game that did not involve De'Aaron Fox. So there's still so much more untapped potential for this team. And I think there's just such a high ceiling right now. 55 wins? It's a very good chance. $25 nets you $34 on Kalshi. This video is brought to you by Kalshi, where you're trading against real users, not the house like traditional sports books. You're buying yes or no contracts on real life events, like the politics, like the weather right now, where it's very rainy where I am, or like your Spurs How about this? How about the number one seed in the NBA? $25 nets you almost $70. So if you're interested in trying out Kalshi, use the link in the pinned comment or description down below. Trade $25 using code DIGESTNBA and get $55 put into your account instantly. Thank you to Calshi for sponsoring this video. I am having a tough time picking who I want to talk about in this video, specifically. Well, we'll get into a few of them, but, like, just take a look at the depth chart for yesterday's game. Nope, not that. It should load in a second. Though, you can use that code if you want. Here you go. It was Champagnie alongside Vassell, Castle, and Harper. You know, there's a lot of guys who got some minutes. Harrison Barnes, we even saw Terrence Reed play 17. The thing is, though, we really, really, really wanted to see that thing that was teased. We wanted to see that three-guard lineup. And it's something that was teased before the game, before De'Aaron Fox showed up with general soreness, which does hurt. But it still doesn't matter. The whole team scoring was just awesome. It was spread out. Harper, again, 16-4-4 at half. Vassell, 12 points. Champagnie, 10-1-9-6. Yeah, second half was Jones-Garcia. And Jacoby Gillespie hit that deep three late, which was really cool. And just for your guys' information, here's what's coming next. We got the schedule coming up because this game, first preseason game, that's fine. Next game versus the Suns, Jazz, Suns, Kings. There is a Spurs game every two days until the start of the season, basically. Until that last game versus the Kings when we get a four-day break. Then we open the season versus the Thunder at home. So excited for that. But I want to start with just some De'Aaron Fox talk. He was scratched. It sucked. The three-guard look did get a bit delayed. But you know what? I think we got a little bit of a glimpse into how Harper and Castle would work together on the floor starting a game. Five guys we feel really good about was Mitch Johnson naming his starting five. And I believe this was before it was announced that De'Aaron Fox wouldn't be playing. And we got lots of talk from the guards themselves on this three-guard situation. Harper saying, we're going to be really hard to guard. Me and Steph get downhill. Fox has the same ability. There's going to be a whole lot of mismatches. We understand what we all have to do to win. It's going to be great. ultimately it's that it's the fact that they all know what they have to do to win they do every single one of these guys does Harper Fox Castle they all bring their own elements to this lineup and while we still didn't quite get to see it as like a starting lineup i still think there's a lot more to be unlocked coming up mitch johnson said look they're going to read into whatever they want to read into on the criticism of the three guys i don't think there's any criticism of the three guard i think a lot of people want to see this and i i think it might even hurt like who's gonna is this just because Tobias Harris is out because like it was gonna be Vassell with them right like that that's another kind of question that I had like when the regular season comes around are Tobias Harris and Julian Champagny coming off the bench are we starting Vassell at the four not something I necessarily thought because I think Vassell could be a fantastic six man but anyway regardless here the three guard debate has been this basically Harper shouldn't start yet Jared Weiss said October 3rd but October 5th Fox Castle and Harper shared the floor and then October 8th Mitch Johnson named them the starting three guards and I know it's just preseason and I know in like the second half the starters didn't play but this has gone from like kind of just a dream like oh yeah maybe eventually this can happen to like this is a reality and this is something other teams are going to have to face every night also the fact of the matter is San Antonio doesn't need to run you know this lineup with De'Aaron Fox starting at the point guard in every situation you have so much flexibility with your lineup there is a world where you have like a ton of legit NBA talent off, like, starting talent off the bench. Like, if you have Harris and Champagny coming off the bench alongside Keldon Johnson, holy crap. Like, you're just, your whole team is just completely changed. But, like, the one guy that we thought was going to come off the bench that has changed kind of this whole narrative, it is Dylan Harper. Because he is the one that actually showed up in this game. Not to say the other guys didn't. I thought all the starters did well. But when you're looking at this potential three-guard lineup, okay, it's really Dylan Harper, who has to earn his keep because Fox has been around the block. He's been there. He's earned it. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. Playoffs, whatever. Stephon Castle has earned it. It felt like both of those guys were the locks and Harper was the one that we weren't so sure about. But guess what? He's already showing it. He's already passed Keldon Johnson here in the plus minus. That's a strange stat to show. But anyway, Harper and Vassell. How about last year? Harper with him without Vassell. This is an interesting one, too, because Vassell opens up the floor for so many people. By the way, we did this also with Champagny on the live stream yesterday. The effect that the shooters have on the rest of the Spurs is incredible. Just take a look at yesterday's stream if you want, but look at the three-point percentage with Vassell last year, 49% without 29%. Most assists to Johnson, 47 assists, three-point percentage. Like the assists per game, true shooting goes way up with Vassell on the floor. It's just the shooting opens up so much for Dylan Harper, which is maybe one of the drawbacks of this kind of lineup. I know it's Vassell like he could help a lot but having both of Champagnie and Harris coming off the bench and having only Fox Castle and Wemby and then I guess like Vassell but like having three guys that are not necessarily known as shooters sharing the floor with guy a guy like Harper might hurt him a little bit considering again the stats show that him and a lot of other Spurs perform better when better shooters are on the floor but anyway that is what it is Dylan Harper though was the guy who absolutely showed up in this game. I'm so excited to see what's coming next. 16 points, and he looked just smooth. He looked like he got to every single spot he wanted to get to, and that makes the Spurs so scary, but again, it wasn't just him. There's so much to talk about. Wemby was patient. Wemby was out there doing some crazy stuff. I say patient while he took an insane step back three. He was rushing things a bit. He fell to the ground a couple times. Look, I know there's a lot that we have that we'll have to analyze with Wemby's game as we go forward, and a lot of it is nitpicky, because he's going to be arguably the best player in the NBA this year, and so naturally every little bit of offense isn't perfect, we're going to nitpick, but still, like, Wemby is so impactful, especially with Stephon Castle, by the way. Castle with Wemby scores a little bit less, but has much higher true shooting, the assists stay about the same, has a higher three-point percentage. Like, these are the effects that we're going to have to study this year. This is going into last year, and I think this is part of the reason we're going to see a lot of different lineups, whether starting lineups or lineups used throughout these games, because you're going to see the effects players have on each other, right? Naturally, when Castle's out there with Wemby, his scoring goes down. In a three-guard lineup, you're probably going to see Castle's points per game go down a little bit more because you have other ball-dominant guys in Harper and Fox out there as opposed to having guys like a guy like Champagnie, right? Champagnie, who's off-ball, doesn't need the ball in his hands a lot, isn't going to score a ton. You take him off for a guy like Harper, who's going to go out there and try and score, maybe leads your team in scoring. I think there's a world where Harper's the first option in a lot of games where he has the ball in his hands. I don't think it's crazy to say that. So analyzing these effects is going to be very important. How they affect Wemby, maybe most importantly, but how they affect each other, I still wish we could have got to see it, but I'm sure that we're going to see it before preseason's end because literally the plan was until like an hour before the game for Fox, Harper, and Castle to start alongside each other. But how about the depth? The depth is one thing I wanted to talk about too, and I wanted to mention Carter Bryant. Nice little game from Carter Bryant. Let's take a look at his specific stats here. I like Carter a lot. 23 minutes played. 11 points, five rebounds, three for eight from the field, two for five from three. Hey, 40% from three, one steal, one block, four turnovers. Like, you know, he's going to have to take care of the ball a bit. But I think just like we saw in summer league to some extent, in preseason, you're going to give him a bit more leeway to kind of try and do some extra stuff. Whereas the reality is once the regular season sets in, he's not going to be out there trying to create his own shot. He's not going to be out there trying to play make, dribble around people. He's going to be a slasher. He's going to be a three-point shooter, and he's going to be a defender. And that's what he's going to do. So I'm not worried about the turnovers. I'm happy to see two for five from three. Do that every game, Carter. You're a 40% three-point shooter. All of a sudden, you are one of, if not the most valuable three and D players in the NBA. If you can shoot 40% from three with his level of defense, there's almost no one in the world that I would rather have other than him. His defense is just so good. Tom Warzynski, Carter Bryant, and what Billy Donovan has been stressing to him at camp, be an MF-er on defense, be an MF-er on the glass. Just short and simple. Keep doing my job. What did he do? Well, he did that. and he's going to continue to do that as this season goes on. I'm very excited to see how his shooting evolves in particular. To take a look at last season, his field goal percentage over his last 20 games, very volatile for Carter Bryant. Naturally, that's going to happen when you have, you know, a lot of games where you're not taking a ton of shots, but I'm curious to see how this evolves, but also his three-point percentage this year. But final thing, though, the depth was the thing that shined. Harris and Quaintance were out, along with De'Aaron Fox, But the depth, Sean, in this game, I liked it. I like seeing Jacoby Gillespie hit some threes. I like seeing Terrace Reed playing 17 minutes and just doing what he needed to do, not scoring a ton. I love what the starters did. But the depth is what kind of gives you that extra boost, I think. When the starters come out, because especially if we are starting the three-guard lineup, as much as we want to see it, it then hinders your bench a little bit because you're going from having a legit creator off the bench, like Manu was in the past, Harper, to like, you know, you have to keep one of these guards on now with the bench lineup. Because if you take all three guards off, what are you running? Jordan McLaughlin as the point guard? Like, not really. Then you have Keldon, you have Champagny, you have Bryant, you have Tobias Harris, and then you have Luke Cornett. It's like, which one of them are really the creators? So you've got to keep one of the guards on. It's a bit funky, but to be able to have the depth, again, show up, play well, hey, that's good too. Maybe Jacoby Gillespie, David Jones-Garcia? Anyway, I want to end this off, though, by asking you guys, should the Spurs start Fox, Castle, and Harper together? Type A for yes, start all three. Type B for no, one comes off the bench. Doesn't matter who, if it's Harper or Fox or whoever you want it to be. Type C for yes, but not until playoffs. Save the three-guard lineup for the playoffs, maybe for a certain matchup. We'd love to hear your thoughts on all this. That will do it, though, for this episode of Spurs Digest. Thank you guys for tuning in every single day. We appreciate every single one of you. So happy Spurs basketball is back. I've been your host, Josh Goss, and I will catch you all in the next one.