The Spurs are ahead of schedule, but Dylan Harper is falling behind. Not in the sense of skill, of course. He's a phenomenal young player. But if the former Rutgers star wants to etch his name next to some of the great prospects before him, he needs to get back on the court. He's already missed ten games, and his counterparts are thriving, leaving him in their wake.
Harper was already fighting an uphill battle to win Rookie of the Year, and this absence is going to make it almost impossible to make up the ground necessary to make history. San Antonio stood a reasonable shot at housing three consecutive ROY winners, but that's looking more and more unlikely with each game the second-overall pick misses.
Harper can still make the All-Rookie Team
Rookies are not subject to the 65-game rule, so that's not the issue with winning the ultimate award for first-year players. It's the competition. The athletes taken in the lottery of the 2025 NBA Draft are hooping! Most of the guys haven't missed any games, let alone ten of them. They're putting up numbers and leaving Harper behind.
Kon Knueppel has scored over 300 points already this season. For comparison, D. Harp has only put up 84 points so far. The funny part is that he still has one of the highest points per game averages for the rookie class (14). He's just not playing enough, and when you're out of sight, you're out of mind.
NBA.com writer Steve Aschburner didn't even include him in last week's NBA Rookie Ladder update. There are at least ten players ahead of him—one for every game he's missed (just kidding). But seriously, unless Kon, Cedric Coward, and Cooper Flagg fall off a cliff, he's not winning that award this season, unless he all of a sudden turns in one of the greatest rookie seasons we've ever seen.
The All-Rookie Team is the most realistic goal for him now. While the class is playing well, there aren't ten impenetrable spots on the first and second teams. If we were to take the full list of ten from Aschburner's rookie ladder and project those guys to be the ones to make it, we can easily see a path to taking one of their spots.
In order, the players listed are Kon Knueppel, Cedrick Coward, Cooper Flagg, Ryan Kalkbrenner, VJ Edgecombe, Jeremiah Fears, Derik Queen, Ace Bailey, Tre Johnson, and Collin Murray-Boyles. Most of them have earned their spots by playing one side of the ball, but only a couple are doing it on both sides like Harper was.
Don't let the naysayers tell you that these things aren't important. If they weren't, the NBA wouldn't have them, and the players wouldn't react to winning them. One of the most popular memes in the NBA community over the past years was Kevin Durant's "You're the real MVP" moment, speaking to his mother, as he cried during his Most Valuable Player award acceptance speech. Be serious.