The history of basketball can easily be broken down into eras based on the best player. There was the Bird-Magic era in the 80s, which gave way to the Jordan era of the 90s. Currently we live in what tentatively can be called the LeBron era since he is probably the greatest natural athlete to ever play the game. This started in 2008 when he pushed the Celtics to Game 7 and then won back-to-back MVPs in 09 and 10, and is poised to win his third this year. Even without a ring he is still the best regular season player. Of course if he doesn’t win a ring we have to rethink the last few years since how can you really be the lord and master of the league if you can’t climb the mountain? Should the Bulls or Thunder start winning rings this changes everything.
But still, between Jordan’s retirement in 98 and LeBron’s coming of age in 2008, we have a ten year gap that people will define differently. If you ask most people who the greatest basketball player was in that era after Jordan beats Utah and before LeBron starts having historic regular seasons and winning MVPs, they will say Kobe Bryant. Some might say Shaq since he swung the balance of power in the NBA after winning three titles in LA then making the Heat a championship team. Some may even say Allen Iverson was the guy in the first few years of that decade, but really there was one guy from the start of the 98-99 season all the way to the 2007 NBA Finals.
Kobe may have won the fan voting for the NBA’s Player of the Decade Award in 2010, but Kobe has quit in playoff games, thrown tantrums that forced teammates out of LA, and has missed the playoffs. Shaq got fat and his quality of play dropped drastically by the second half of that decade. Meanwhile Tim Duncan was the model of consistency, but he was lacking the flash and ego of guys like Kobe and Shaq and never got the attention he deserved. He has won all four series he’s played in the NBA Finals, making the Spurs the only franchise other than Jordan’s Chicago Bulls to win multiple titles with no defeats. In the history of the NBA only two teams can claim multiple trips to the Finals and leaving with the championship every time. Stunning.
Tim Duncan is maybe the most unexciting superstar in the history of basketball. Watch his top ten highlights on Youtube. They are not electrifying in the slightest. The Onion has a slew of hilarious stories about Duncan in situations where he hams it up by arching his eyebrow slightly, gives a speech on fiscal responsibility, give a three hour pep talk, and forwards an article on a particle accelerator to his teammates. They are weird stories and of course fake, but so little is known about Duncan you could easily believe any of these being true.
In Bill Simmons’ The Book of Basketballl, really it is just the NBA Bible, Simmons gives the quintessential account on Duncan’s career. Anything said here is owed majorly to Simmons for his work since I wasn’t following the league close enough in the first years of Duncan’s dominance to know what was what. Simmons wrote a text book on the NBA and classes should be taught on it. Anything you ever need to know about the game is summed up there, and his section on Tim Duncan is one of the most important parts.
Tim Duncan has never cared about personal glory or statistics. He’s always just wanted to get everybody involved, play good defense, and win. Whatever the Spurs need he does if it means they can win. Scoring, rebounding, defense, you name it he does it. When the Spurs needed a big three to force another overtime against the Suns in the Playoffs, the guy who hadn't even hit a three all season steps up and drills it to effectively end the Phoenix Suns.
His nickname is The Big Fundamental, the perfect fit for a player who goes out and plays perfectly. That jab step or post up followed by a bank jumper is one of the most unstoppable and devastating moves in the history of the league. He’s never had the flash or flare of other players from his generation so he never got the credit. Hell, if Kevin Garnett had won a ring or two on the Timberwolves who knows how much people would even bother remembering Duncan’s consistency?
And that is what makes Duncan so amazing. The man is consistent. His career averages of 20 points, 11 boards, 3 assists, and 2 blocks are pretty awesome and when you look at the career stats you see he only failed to average 20 points once in his first 10 years. The numbers have taken a dip lately as he’s getting older and now but he’s still putting up 14.7 points and 8.9 boards, with 2.5 assists. Part of it is age, and part of it is Coach Gregg Popovich saving Duncan up for the playoffs. Either way he still puts in effective minutes like his 21-13 game on Orlando just a week ago then his epic 16-19 with 5 blocks against the Thunder two nights later. Both games were wins. He had 19-17 with 5 blocks in a win against Memphis last month, preceeded by 13-15 against the Thunder. Last night he gave the Timberwolves 21 and 15 in yet another win. People don’t remember Duncan blowing up a stat line like LeBron James, but he gets big numbers and big wins.
In Duncan’s previous 14 seasons, the Spurs failed to win 50 games only one: the lockout-shortened 1998-99 season in which there was only 50 games. Every year he has played, the Spurs have been in the Playoffs. That’s coming up on 15 years straight now, a streak no other team in the league is close to right now. They have made the playoffs as a 5 seed once, and that was in Duncan’s rookie season in 1998, and as a 7 seed in 2010. Other than that there was 5 appearances at the 1 seed, 2 as the second seed, 4 as the third, and just one as the fourth seed. In a footnote from Simmons’ book, he points out that, “From 1997 to 2008, San Antonio finished 615-265 with him during the regular season, 91-57 in the playoffs, won four titles, and finished 4-0 in the Finals. Now that’s consistency.”
Currently the Spurs are the 2 seed in the West thanks to an unholy, MVP-level year from Tony Parker, but Duncan has aged with grace and taken on a supporting role perfectly and can still take over when he needs to, especially since Manu Ginobili has not been effective this year. But people don’t pay attention because, as Simmons points out, people are bothered that Duncan is so consistent. As Simmons says, “If you keep banging out first-class seasons with none standing out more than any other, who’s going to notice after a while?” It is the truth.
Duncan has back-to-back MVP wins in 2002-3, with his 2003 win being the last time somebody won MVP and an NBA Championship in the same season. As stated before the Spurs are the one of only two teams to win multiple NBA titles without ever losing a Finals series. Granted the titles were never consecutive, but pounding out great season after great season with no epic drama or failure to make the playoffs like some other greats from the post-Jordan era make Duncan a rare talent.
Underappreciated is the next word that comes to mind after consistent. As his career is in a decline, nobody is picking apart everything he does wondering if he’s still got “it” like they do with Kobe Bryant or did with Shaq. The sports press doesn’t crown Duncan after a big double-double like they do when Kobe goes out and drops 30 points. Duncan just plays his game, and the Spurs keep winning but people don’t take notice. Of course he doesn’t have more than maybe another season or two left since he’s winding down, but he still has those moments like when he abused Birdman a couple weeks ago.
It is very sad people just accept Duncan is great, but not exactly how great. He never had the high profile personality and moves of the guards like Bryant or Iverson, or the excitement of Shaq and Garnett, but he did something the rest of them didn’t do: win regularly. He is the greatest power forward in the history of the game and such an amazing talent yet he seems to be taken for granted.
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