San Antonio Has Three Starting Guards and One Season to Sort Them Out

The Spurs spent their summer being told they're the NBA's next superteam, and the market mostly agrees. San Antonio enters the 2026-27 season at +260 to win the title — an implied probability of roughly 27.8% — with a win total set at 59.5 after a 62-21 campaign in which they finished third in the league in net rating (8.0) and outscored opponents by 8.1 points per game.

All of that is remarkable for a team that was down 4-1 to the Knicks in the Finals three months ago. But the most interesting thing happening in San Antonio this week isn't the trophy odds or the record-breaking interest in the franchise's upcoming regular-season trip to Europe. It's the fact that the Spurs still don't know who their starting backcourt is.

Three guards, one basketball

De'Aaron Fox, Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper all returned last season, and all three have a defensible claim to the ball.

The season-long numbers look fine on the surface. Fox averaged 18.5 points and 6.2 assists on 48.5% shooting across 73 games. Castle put up 16.6 points, 7.4 assists and 5.3 rebounds in his second year. Harper, a 22.7-minute reserve, shot 50.4% from the floor.

Then you look at how the season actually ended, and the picture gets murkier. Over Fox's final 10 games, he averaged 12.0 points on 35.3% shooting and 24.0% from three. That's the version of Fox that has fueled a cottage industry of trade speculation this month — proposals sending him elsewhere, debates about whether San Antonio's best lineup even includes him.

Meanwhile, Harper's last 10 games were the opposite story: 13.8 points on 49.0% shooting with 5.9 rebounds in under 27 minutes a night, all off the bench, and a plus-minus of +32 across that stretch. He is the reason the "best lineup" conversation exists at all.

Why this is a performance question, not a gossip one

It matters because the Spurs' margin at the top of the West is thin and measurable. Against Oklahoma City last season, San Antonio went 6-4 across 10 meetings — including a playoff series that swung on single-digit games. The Thunder posted the league's best net rating (10.6); the Spurs were third. That's the gap a healthy, coherent rotation is supposed to close.

With three ball-handlers competing for two lead spots, the risk isn't talent — it's fit. San Antonio's late-season offensive efficiency dipped (99.8 points per game in the most recent weighted window), and the team's last-10 net rating sat at just 1.6 despite the gaudy full-season figure. A backcourt with redundant skill sets can coast through January and stall in June. That's roughly what happened.

There's also the roster math around it. Adding Tobias Harris gives the Spurs a shooting forward, but it pushes Harrison Barnes toward a smaller role and raises questions about Keldon Johnson's future — the same Johnson who appeared in 83 games last season and shot 51.9% from the field. Depth is a luxury until someone has to be told to sit.

The insurance policy

The Spurs did address the more frightening variable. This summer deepened a bench specifically built to survive stretches without Victor Wembanyama, whose blood-clot condition drew a public warning from Chris Bosh in August about staying on top of it. Wembanyama's own last-10 line — 25.9 points, 9.1 rebounds, 3.0 blocks — is the reason those insurance minutes might never be needed. But the organization clearly isn't treating his availability as guaranteed.

Which circles back to the guards. A team with this much talent can absorb a lot of things. What it can't absorb indefinitely is three starters' worth of ego sharing 48 minutes.

Training camp is where Mitch Johnson starts answering it, and the answer will shape whether San Antonio is a Finals rematch or a second-round exit.