How Dylan Harper’s brilliant NBA playoffs has happened, and 3 more standout players

We might be only two games away from the NBA’s conference finals, pending two decisive Game 6s played on Friday. It’s either that or Game 7s, famously the two best words in sports. Truly, the NBA season has winnowed down to its final, most important weeks. About a month from now, we’ll have a champion.

Our beloved ALLCITY Network teams, of the three that made the postseason, have been ousted, but NBA fans remain basketball fans — fan survey results coming next week! — during the playoffs. Here are the most interesting players who have shined, and are worth spotlighting, in the past week or so.

UP: Dylan Harper

Harper really might be San Antonio’s second-best player already. It often feels like that; I highlighted his ridiculous lateral movement in a similar piece late last month. But Harper remains so outstanding that I can’t help but write again about this incredible rookie who keeps clearing new barriers. For example, these are the only three rookies in NBA history who have played at least 10 postseason games while averaging more than 25 minutes on 60 percent True Shooting or better.

Harper’s counting stats don’t describe his impact. This one might: When Victor Wembanyama plays without Harper, San Antonio takes about 30 percent of its shots at the rim. When Harper played without Wembanyama, it’s still about 30 percent. But when you put them together, Spurs take 42.2 percent of their shots directly at the basket. It only makes sense: Harper’s already one of the league’s least stoppable drivers, and Wembanyama’s radius puts him closer to the rim from further away than any other player alive.

One reason for Harper’s brilliance is how effectively he creates great layups for himself. Among the 19 players who have attempted at least 50 layups this postseason, it’s no surprise that big men have taken the easiest ones: Wembanyama, Jarrett Allen, and Evan Mobley are the three players who have the highest shot quality for the layups they’ve taken. (This is boosted, of course, by how many easy dump offs and oops they’ve been fed.) Next, it’s LeBron James, who created great layups but hasn’t been able to convert them as efficiently as expected. This also tracks; the 41-year-old James still knows exactly how to get to the rim but isn’t the same destructive force he was most of his career.

Harper comes next. His layups come with an expected field goal percentage — a different stat than effective — is about 61 percent. He’s outperformed that, converting nearly 67 percent of those shots. Among this 19-player group, the four players with the worst expected field goal percentage are Cade Cunningham, Paolo Banchero, Tyrese Maxey, and Donovan Mitchell. All four players have also converted far more shots than what would be expected based on that shot quality, Maxey and Mitchell most dramatically. That makes sense: They’re smaller guards, which raises their degree of difficulty around the basketball; they’re so skilled that doesn’t bother them, which is what makes them superstars.

We know, of course, that the 6’5 Harper framemogs those two. But Harper’s most special skill is how he often he can create easy layups for himself that don’t even rely on his size. It’s stuff like this highlight Eurostep layup, of course. His biomechanics often deceive defenders into elevating for contests only for him to take one final step past them.

One more strength: Harper’s spin move has become one of the league’s best weapons because of how much power he retains after completing his 180-degree rotation. That Harper can explode forward out of these pirouette is a direct byproduct of his unique athleticism.

Harper isn’t quite Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but he’s not a normal rookie. Of course San Antonio has another special player already performing in the playoffs for them.

UP: Ajay Mitchell

Mitchell is the other lefty guard with James Harden-esque comparisons that has further elevated in this postseason. Just look at this:

We don’t yet have an update on Jalen Williams’ expected return, but Mitchell has been the player who’s stepped into a needed role as Oklahoma City’s second option, someone whose rhythmic stop-star movement inside the arc, while nowhere near as explosive as Harper’s, puts defenders on their back heels trying to keep up with what could be a clean pull-up 2 or a pass flung to a shooter roaming around the perimeter.

I almost made another comparison before remembering this tweet.

To avoid being guilty of this, I’ll stop here, but the looming Harper vs. Mitchell showdown might be the conference finals’ most intriguing duel if San Antonio does indeed close out its series against the Minnesota Timberwolves.

UP: Ausar Thompson

This is one of the best defensive possessions I’ve seen this postseason.

Only Wembanyama has more combined blocks and steals than Ausar Thompson does this postseason, and his ball denial has meshed perfectly with this postseason’s increase in off-ball disruption, which we noted a few weeks ago had been the postseason’s most prominent trend. Thompson’s presence has had an indirect effect on why the player listed next is even on this list.

UP: Dennis Schröder

Admittedly, Schröder’s an odd choice from me. He’s only scored double digits twice this postseason; he’s averaging about seven points in 16 minutes per game on just okay efficiency. His postseason on-off numbers are not flattering, either: Cleveland has been outscored by 34 when he’s on the court these playoffs, which is the worst mark of any player on the team. Why, then, has Kenny Atkinson increasingly trusted him as the team’s eighth man over Jaylon Tyson or Keon Ellis? I believe I can explain that.

The 32-year-old Schröder has one standout skill at this point of his fascinating career: He drives. Among the 48 players with at least 50 drives this postseason, Schröder ranks 13th per possession despite exclusively playing with another star ball handler. Within that same sample set, no player has shot less often than Schröder has in these playoffs: less than 40 percent of his drives end in a field goal attempt. It’s plays like this one that Atkinson’s looking for from his journeyman German.

Cleveland has consecutively played against two teams with unreal perimeter defenders; if the Cavaliers win, one reason to potentially favor them against New York is that the Knicks do not have players whose ball denial is quite on the level of Scottie Barnes or Ausar Thompson. (OG Anunoby, who we hope is healthy for the start of the next series, and Mikal Bridges aren’t quite on their level.) These two opponents have consistently pushed Cleveland’s star guards to the halfcourt line time after time, harrying how far away from the rim Donovan Mitchell and James Harden begin sets and disrupting Cleveland’s entire offense.

Schröder provides another dribbler who can create movement and defensive scrambles from his ball-pounding abilities. His minutes paired with Donovan Mitchell have been quite bad, adding to his poor on-off numbers, but Atkinson has deemed that necessary due to Mitchell’s tendency to tire out throughout games when asked to navigate backcourt ball pressure constantly throughout games. When those two play together, Cleveland also had an outlier 3-point percentage, shooting just 27.1 percent, which I ascribe more to randomness than anything else. The first and second on-off lessons named here apply in this instance.

When this trade was made, I felt like the consensus was that Ellis, not Schröder, would be the player more useful to Cleveland. Tyson’s regular season, too, was strong enough that he would be the hoped-for eighth man. But it’s the unkillable Schröder, now on his 11th NBA team and a genuine candidate to tie or break Ish Smith’s 13-team record, who once again has wormed his way into a small but necessary role for Cleveland.

Tim Cato is ALLCITY’s national NBA writer currently based in Dallas. He can be reached at tcato@alldlls.com or on X at @tim_cato.