Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper: Can the NBA’s New Dynamic Duo Get the Spurs to the Promised Land?

Before Jay-Z, everything seemed to be turning around. The San Antonio Spurs were down two games in the NBA Finals to the New York Knicks, but they’d surged to an early lead in Game 3. It was the first Finals game played at Madison Square Garden in 27 years, and the young Spurs guards Dylan Harper and Stephon Castle showed up that night anticipating a much more bloodthirsty crowd than the one they found waiting for them. “It was underwhelming in that first game,” Castle recalls. “They made it seem like it was going to be way crazier in there.”At times during the previous series against the Thunder, Castle says, “OKC was way louder than MSG.” He and his Spurs weren’t expected to escape that series. But the team—the second-youngest ever to reach the NBA Finals, after the ’77 Trail Blazers—was already an anomaly before it defied expectations against Oklahoma City and attempted to make history against New York. NBA players typically don’t reach their peak until their late 20s, but the Spurs were led by 22-year-old Victor Wembanyama, built like a teenage Groot and just as lethal; Castle, who is 21; and Harper, a 20-year-old rookie still acclimating to playing big minutes.On Harper: Jacket by Dolce & Gabbana. Shirt by Bottega Veneta. Pants (throughout) by Amiri. Sunglasses by Ahlem. Watch and necklace by Cartier. Ring (throughout) by David Yurman. On Castle: Jacket by Ralph Lauren Purple Label. Sweater and belt by Brunello Cucinelli. Sunglasses by Montblanc. Watch by Cartier. Ring (throughout) by David Yurman. After finishing the previous season with a losing record, they became a championship contender at near-unprecedented speed. Wembanyama’s emergence as one of the best players in the world certainly helped, but even a seven-foot-four French wunderkind with a near-10-foot standing reach needs support. “Jordan doesn’t win without Pippen,” says Kirk Goldsberry, who covers the NBA for The Ringer and worked for a time as strategic-research vice president in the Spurs’ front office. “Magic doesn’t win without Kareem. Steph doesn’t win without Klay and Draymond. To win the NBA championship, you have to have multiple Hall of Famers. And it looks like the Spurs have three of them.”It’s not overstating the talent level of the Spurs’ young core to suggest they can bend the arc of the NBA’s future toward themselves, provided they can avoid the many pitfalls—salary-cap squeezes, inflated egos, physical misfortune—that can undo a promising team along the way.But after disposing of the reigning champs and back-to-back MVP winner Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in Oklahoma City, the Spurs faced a new challenge in the Finals—a swarm of celebrities sitting courtside. During the fifth and final game, Harper ran out of the tunnel and spotted one of his favorite actors, Michael Rainey Jr., from the show Power, who’d flown out to San Antonio for the game and had made no secret of his allegiance: “Like, the whole series, he posting Knicks, Knicks, Knicks,” Harper says. “I damn near blocked him at one point.” At the game, he did the next best thing, pretending not to notice Rainey as he jogged onto the court.Harper had tried the same tactic with Jay-Z, which worked until the rapper started to heckle him. “Come on!” Hov yelled, according to Harper. Then Jay raised his hands to form a Roc-A-Fella diamond in the air, as if casting a spell on the visiting team. “We started losing,” Harper says. “Shit went downhill from there.”On Harper: Shirt by Wythe. T-shirt, his own. Boots by Tecovas. Watch by Cartier. On Castle: Jacket by Hermès. Shirt by Tom Ford. T-shirt by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello. Jeans by Wrangler. Boots by Tecovas. Necklace, his own. Bracelet (throughout) by David Yurman. When we meet at a quiet brunch spot in Los Angeles, the ever-so-slightly older Castle—wearing a West Coast Choppers shirt, Chrome Hearts necklaces, and a distressed hat stacked atop a Chrome Hearts durag—is the first to arrive. When Harper rolls up a few minutes later in a gray Nike Nocta sweatsuit, they immediately lock into a conversational shorthand as rhythmic as their game.“Get the braids,” Castle encourages Harper.“Not for no photo shoot, bro,” Harper says.“That’s when you was in your prime, bro. That’s why you was dunking shit, for real,” Castle says.“I was dunking on n-ggas with the braids in,” Harper accepts.Castle grew up close to Atlanta but declined to work out for the Hawks—who had the number one pick in the 2024 draft—partly to avoid getting relegated to off-ball duties alongside his hometown team’s then centerpiece Trae Young. Instead, after winning a national championship as a freshman playing for the famously merciless coach Dan Hurley at the University of Connecticut, he went fourth, to the Spurs.Castle’s dad played with Spurs legend Tim Duncan in college at Wake Forest; Harper is the son of five-time NBA champion Ron Harper, who collected rings as a Bull and a Laker while setting up Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kobe Bryant. Harper and Castle attended basketball camps and games alongside other high-level prospects, quietly orbiting each other but never colliding, until Castle dunked on Harper during Harper’s very first day of practice with the Spurs. At another early practice, it happened again. An errant shot caromed off the rim, and he went to grab the rebound.“I was like, I hope this bitch don’t bounce,” Harper remembers thinking. “It bounced perfectly in Steph’s hands.” Castle came flying in, grabbed the ball, and dunked on Harper. The validity of this dunk remains a point of historical contention and comes up more than once during our conversation.“You dunked on me off a putback,” Harper says. “You counting that?” Castle just nods.At first, Castle says, he sensed “secret animosity” from Harper, who dogged his new teammate up and down the court—“trying mad hard,” Castle adds—in practice. Harper had been drafted onto a team already stacked with talented guards; as Spurs head coach Mitch Johnson points out: “There’s a natural narrative that could be put on the situation—[a] crabs-in-the-bucket, which one of you guys is going to make it out type thing.”But Castle saw Harper’s potential as a backcourt mate immediately; from the start of the Spurs’ training camp, he carried the bench during scrimmages. “It was never ‘We’re better with that guy versus that guy,’ ” Johnson says. “It was always them together.”The pair are boys off the court. “Unfortunately,” Castle jokes. They communicate as if they’ve been teammates for decades—sharing silent glances or chuckles, wordlessly telegraphing their responses to my questions. They are hyperaware of the fact that my recorder is running, looking at it for even the most benign answers. Who’s your favorite player? Michael Jordan, Harper says. (“My dad is, like, close with him…I feel like I’m obligated to like him.”) Who are the toughest guys you faced off against in the playoffs? The Minnesota Timberwolves’ diet version of MJ, Anthony Edwards, Castle says. Harper’s face shatters into a grin. “Scoot,” he says, shouting out the Portland Trail Blazers’ up-and-down young guard Scoot Henderson. After a minute, Harper cites Jalen Brunson and Gilgeous-Alexander as well, along with OG Anunoby. “He’s not even that hard to guard, though,” Castle notes. “He just doesn’t miss it.”Talent in the NBA is like star power in Hollywood: When you see it, you know it unequivocally and immediately. It’s the answer that keeps coming up when I ask each person I speak with at what point they realized how special these young guards were—the only measuring stick they needed was a set of working eyes. De’Aaron Fox, the veteran Spurs point guard, says he could see it after the first game he played with the duo, against the New Orleans Pelicans. “That was the moment,” Fox says. “We already knew that we had a chance to be good, but I was like, ‘We can be really good.’ ”The arrangement of a basketball team is as unique a thing as there is in sport—a small and delicate ecosystem, like a jazz band. It lives somewhere between sports like tennis, which hinges on a player’s individual drive, and football or hockey, which requires a submission to the homogeneous body of the team to win. The Spurs have a generational superstar in Victor Wembanyama, but if they end up making good on their abundant potential, Harper and Castle’s connection will also be part of the reason why. The power of friendship can make or undo a team—and Harper and Castle are intimately aware of how important it can be.“We lost to fucking four best friends,” Harper says, referencing the Knicks’ core, three of whom played together in college. “I think being friends off the court makes you better,” Castle says. Harper adds, “It makes everything flow better.”At the start of the Spurs’ last golden era, Tim Duncan, David Robinson, Sean Elliott, and Malik Rose famously bonded by playing the video game StarCraft on their way to a championship win in 1999. Castle and Harper’s Spurs have forged similar traditions. After a short spell of playing cards—during which Harper lost $5,000 in about three days—the team mostly pivoted to board games curated by Wembanyama. “Vic be finding the most random games possible,” Castle begins. Harper finishes, catching the lob: “And it’ll be like 15 of us playing that shit.” (Werewolf, which is billed as “a party game for devious people,” was a big hit.)On the road during the season, the Spurs do activities together and always make sure to celebrate a teammate’s birthday. “Remember Houston, when Vic went off?” Castle says, jogging Harper’s memory of a particularly epic night. After beating the Rockets in a late-January matchup during the slog of the season right before the All-Star break, the team went to dinner, then ended up at some after-hours spot, where Wembanyama—whom Castle describes as a goofy, “regular-ass 22-year-old”—fully let loose alongside the rest of the team, according to the two guards.“First time ever, probably,” Harper says. “And then we lost to Charlotte the next game. We all learned our lesson.” But in a league where team chemistry can make all the difference, maybe a few regular-season wins are worth trading for boosts in camaraderie.The history of the NBA is full of teams that peaked too early. An unexpected loss to the Houston Rockets in the ’95 Finals should have been only a speed bump for Penny Hardaway and Shaq’s Orlando Magic on the way to many titles; the Oklahoma City Thunder, blessed with three future MVPs in Kevin Durant, James Harden, and Russell Westbrook, was supposed to be booking a timeshare in the Finals even after losing to the Heat in 2012. Neither of those teams made it back.But Johnson believes his team has something unique in the Castle-Harper pairing. “To have two young men, with the talent and the potential and the future that’s right ahead of them, not only complement one another and be happy for one another, but to really, truly celebrate each other’s success—I’ve never experienced anything like it,” he says.Goldsberry goes further: “When you have three dudes who could all be First Team All-NBA, and they’re all 22 or under—I mean, who wouldn’t be confident?”When I conjure the ghost of would-be dynasties past, Harper and Castle both assert that this Spurs team is built to withstand the forces that undid those teams. “Because we don’t have no egos. They had strong egos in that locker room. Strong-ass egos,” Castle says, referring to that star-studded 2012 Thunder squad. “That’s why we’re so good,” Harper says. “We’ve got eight people on the team that, if we all had an ego, we wouldn’t blend together.”Harper and Castle are discussing how short this offseason has felt for the pair when a smile erupts across Harper’s face.“I’m going to win Sixth Man of the Year this year,” he says.“No you’re not, bro,” Castle scoffs.The reference—to the prize awarded to the best player who comes off the bench—is surprising; only a month earlier at a press conference after the Finals, teammate Devin Vassell suggested that Harper had been frustrated with “playing time and different roles that he was in.”“I’m going to win Sixth Man of the Year,” Harper insists.“You’re not going to be Sixth Man,” Castle says. “Who are you going to be Sixth Man for?”“I don’t fucking know—God?” Harper answers.You don’t actually think you’re going to come off the bench, do you? I cut in.“What’s the political answer here?” Harper says, looking down at my recorder again. He calibrates his voice into its cheeriest pitch: “I’m going to do whatever the team needs me to do, man. If that’s come off the bench….”He stops. “That’s crazy. Fuck no. I ain’t coming off no bench.”“Bro, all you got to know is you going to be in the starting lineup,” Castle says, ending the discussion. “Be ready to hoop.” (Later in the conversation, Harper walks the Sixth Man thing back: “I was lying,” he says. “I had a smile on my face.”)When I talk to Mitch Johnson in early August, I ask about the possibility that he’ll start Harper, and he answers in perfect coachspeak: “I don’t envision anybody being in the starting lineup yet,” he says, before adding, “Dylan and Steph will have very big roles.” However, he knows it’s only natural for any player in the league to be uncomfortable with anything but the biggest possible role. “I would hope that every player wants to make all the shots and to guard the best player and to play all the minutes and to score all the points and win all the games.”Jacket by Jacquemus. Shirt by Wythe. T-shirt, his own. Pants by Amiri. Boots by Tecovas. Fox has eagerly taken on the role of mentoring the young guards even though their ascension may come at the cost of his starting job. “I’m not worried about it at all,” the nine-year NBA vet says. “That’s not my decision to make. I go in, I control what I can control, and try to help put us in the best position to win.”In Castle and Harper, you can see the early outlines of an all-time NBA pairing. “Even if Victor Wembanyama vanished,” Goldsberry says, “the Spurs, having these two dudes, still have one of the brightest futures in the league.”Defining those early contours requires not just sorting out roles but also figuring out everything else that comes with being a star player in the league. The outfits, of course, have become increasingly essential. So much so that before a Finals game in New York, Harper and teammate Carter Bryant went shopping for outfits to wear to the game the next day. “We definitely went to Balenciaga, got a bunch of shit,” Harper says.Despite playing until mid-June in the Finals, the two have already filled their calendars back up with basketball activities. Harper says it took his body weeks to feel normal again after the long playoff run, but lately he’s been working out, running stairs in Santa Barbara. He’ll head to Turks and Caicos this weekend with his brother—Celtics wing Ron Harper Jr.— while other teammates go to practice with Fox in Houston. In late July, they’ll travel to Paris for a Wembanyama-organized hangout that’s about as mandatory as an unofficial team event can be. “You want that max [contract extension] next year, you’ll be there,” Harper tells Castle, when the latter says he doesn’t have to attend.Harper is already scheduled to be back in San Antonio for two weeks at the start of August. “They got you on that rookie plan,” Castle observes. Before long, training camp will ramp up. Another season, another shot for the two guards to meet their goals: to make the All-Star and All-Defensive teams, Castle says, and—they both say this nearly simultaneously—“Win a championship.”Coat by Zegna. Shirt by Wythe. T-shirt, his own. Pants by Amiri. Boots by Tecovas. Belt by Stetson. “I’m over it,” Harper says of the Finals. “You over it?” he turns to ask Castle.When I ask if any moments from the series still haunt him, Harper fishes his phone out of his pocket to revisit one of the most painful beats, just to prove how over it he is: OG Anunoby’s tip-in from Game 4, which capped off a 29-point Knicks comeback, the largest in Finals history. As a fan, even a month later, watching this is like watching a character wander into the basement in a horror movie; I want to yell at him to stop.As the Knicks dug their way out of the hole, Harper and Castle could feel the floor of Madison Square Garden quaking underneath their feet. “That’s the loudest I’ve ever heard an arena,” Harper says, scrubbing through an Instagram clip. He eventually finds the angle he’s looking for and points to his reaction under the basket, the O of his mouth growing in slow motion.“That shit is hilarious,” Harper says.“No,” Castle says, turning away, “I don’t be watching that shit, bro.”“I got to watch it, bro. It happened,” Harper says.It took Harper several weeks to wash the taste of the Finals loss out of his mouth, but it got easier when he restarted his workouts. “It helps me work out harder,” he says.Every great team in NBA history has painful playoff series on their résumés; it’s a credit to this Spurs squad that theirs just happened to come in the Finals. Castle and Harper have put the loss behind them—“Just for the offseason, I’m over it,” Harper says—but they’re trying to take the necessary lessons from it, too. “I don’t think it’s like, ‘Oh shit, we made it there, it’s easy,’ ” Harper says. “It’s more that we understand what goes into [making] it. Now, we got to do it.”I ask them to project out over the next five years. How many Finals appearances do they envision? “Hopefully five,” Harper says. “I mean, that’s the goal.”Castle finishes his backcourt partner’s thought one more time: “We finna go back.”PRODUCTION CREDITS:Photography by Gem HaleStyling by Marcus CorreaFor Dylan: Barbering by Chris NopyFor Stephon: Hair by Gidget Daniels; barbering by Justin LovingoodGrooming by Hee Soo Kwon using Davines and La Mer.Tailoring by Yelena Travkina and Zoya MilentyevaProduction by Cynthia Hadden at Lyric ProductionsA version of this story originally appeared in the October 2026 issue of GQ with the title “Two Big Reasons the Spurs Will Be Back.”