He won rings with both Jordan and Kobe—here’s what Dylan Harper’s dad brought to the game
During a stellar NBA career, Ronald Harper won five NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls and LA Lakers.
As expected, Duke freshman Cooper Flagg was selected with the No. 1 overall pick of the 2025 NBA Draft. Close behind, however, was fellow teenager Dylan Harper, who was selected by the San Antonio Spurs.
Harper averaged 19.4 points per game in his sole year at Rutgers University, also putting up an average of 4.6 rebounds and 4.0 assists. The 6ft 6in guard was named to the Big Ten All-Freshman Team for 2025 and he looks set to follow in his father’s famous footsteps.
His dad - Ron Harper - played for 16 seasons in the NBA across four teams. He started off with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 1986, before moving on to the Los Angeles Clippers in 1989.
However Harper Snr. is best known for his times with the Chicago Bulls (1994-1999) and the Los Angeles Lakers (1999-2001), two of the most dominant teams of the modern era. He was present for the second of the Bull’s legendary three-peats alongside Michael Jordan and later joined the Lakers team of Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal.
In an interview with Stacey King last year, Harper revealed that Michael Jordan was the greatest that he ever saw. But admitted that Bryant was the next-best.
He said of Bryant: “He’s probably as close as anyone else to ever gonna be competing with MJ. He was a very competitive competitor. He patterned his game, walked and talked like MJ, and be like MJ. And them two became special close at the end of my career. When you watch MJ, you see him, it’s the same thing.”
“What I tell people separates Kobe from MJ, MJ was about 230 pounds, and Kobe was about 210. And you know, the physicality that MJ played with on the offensive and defensive end will wear him down. But as far as athletic-wise, the same fadeaway, the jump shot, the midrange game, Kobe had all of that and will compete until the end of the day... like MJ.”
Although Ron Harper never made the NBA All-Star game, he was a regular presence for two of the greatest teams of all time.
He started all 82 games of the Bull’s treble-completing 1997/98 season, the last that Michael Jordan played in Chicago. He then ended his career with a second straight championship with the Lakers, alongside two of the games biggest-ever talents. It’s an incredible NBA legacy, one that his son will have a hard time replicating.
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