1 inconvenient Dylan Harper truth about Spurs’ NBA Finals meltdowns

On Saturday evening, the San Antonio Spurs’ 2025-26 season came to an end with a crushing Game 5 loss to the New York Knicks in the NBA Finals. The Spurs once again led this game for most of the way before falling apart down the stretch, with New York seemingly making every big play in crunch time.

Dylan Harper was the best player on the floor for the Spurs on Saturday, scoring 25 points on the evening. However, even he was not immune to the late-game difficulties that the team experienced.

“In the 24 minutes (Stephon) Castle and Harper were on the floor together in 4th quarters, Spurs were outscored by 26 points and missed 26 of 35 shots and had a 4:13 AST-TO ratio. In the 9 minutes Castle/Harper shared 4th quarter minutes WITHOUT (De’Aaron) Fox, Spurs were 2/11 FGs and outscored by 21 points,” noted Law Murray of The Athletic on Bluesky.

Indeed, while Harper was the only Spurs player getting consistent offense throughout the game, he couldn’t do much of that in the fourth quarter. The electric rookie had a chance to tie things up with around 30 seconds left in the game with a tough fast break layup, but he didn’t put enough on the shot, and it ended up falling just short.

Still, Harper’s late-game execution struggles are much more understandable given his status as a rookie than the shortcomings experienced by players like Fox, who missed a wide-open three in the final minute of Game 5 and finished 3/15 overall, not coming close to making amends for his disastrous performance in Game 4 of the series.

Harper and the rest of the young Spurs players will need to use this moment as a learning experience moving forward for the big playoff moments that are surely on the team’s horizon.

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