“SGA and JDub. We beat them, but\u2026 damn\u2026 them two kinda hard.” That’s how Dylan Harper summed up the two toughest defenders he faced during the 2026 season, a year when the Spurs rookie became one of San Antonio’s most valuable contributors in the postseason.<\/p>\n
The real test came during the Western Conference Finals against Oklahoma City. San Antonio won a grueling seven-game series 4-3, but not without Harper spending significant time against two of the league’s best perimeter defenders. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander\u2014the 2026 regular-season MVP\u2014and Jalen Williams both made Harper’s breakthrough playoff run considerably harder.<\/p>\n
Williams presented a particular challenge: he was dealing with late-series injuries yet still managed to be a major headache for the rookie. For someone playing significant playoff minutes as a first-year player, matching up against defenders of this caliber felt like jumping into the deep end.<\/p>\n
The Finals appearance itself was historic for the Spurs\u2014their first in a decade. San Antonio lost to the New York Knicks in the championship series, but Harper’s candid respect for Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams said something about how tough the Western Conference really was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dylan Harper, a Spurs rookie, named Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams as the toughest defenders he faced in 2026. San Antonio beat Oklahoma City in the Western Conference Finals before losing to New York in the NBA Finals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n