A friend of mine on a certain private forum has for some months been taking on the absurd task of describing in great detail every single substantial player in the NBA, from rotation players to superstars. He has a bit more experience with many of these players than I do. But today he's covering Tim Duncan, our mutual favorite player. And, being that this is a basketball blog which has had at its emotional center The Big Fundamental, I think I should do the same here on Pearls of Mystery. And for the last week I've been trying to think of what to say, even writing a secondary post to bolster the argument in favor of Tim Duncan's era (and by extension, in favor of Duncan himself). So, for a few absurdly long posts, I'm going to talk about Tim Duncan: his playing style, his personality, and today, his simple, raw success.
In sports, the bare facts aren't so meaningful without context - the name Bill Russell next to that freakish number of titles, the video game numbers from Wilt's great 1962 campaign, Jordan's clipped parabola six-peat, and 72-10? They show a great deal of historical imbalance in favor of those players and teams, sure, but I could probably win 11 of 13 championships against third-graders, and so could you. By myself. No, we have to ask: were these players conquering historically great times or stealing titles from historically weak times? This is relevant because how you see the last decade in the NBA should naturally determine (to great extent) just how you choose to view Tim Duncan's four titles. I mean, it's a good question: are these four titles mere low-hanging fruit - transitional years in a transitional era - or are they representative of a historically great player conquering historically great opponents?
At first glance, four titles might even seem like a misprint to you: who actually remembers the mostly forgettable 1999 title against the Knicks? Who remembers the defensive slugfest against the pitiful Nets in 2003? How about the 2007 Finals, that - far from a brilliant display of domination - sort of just felt like what should have happened to LeBron long ago in the playoffs? While I think most (even quite casual) basketball fans abstractly acknowledge Duncan's greatness, it's also easy to view the titles with befuddled amazement and sometimes with disdain and injustice (the 1999 "asterisk" and the 2007 Horry cheap shot on Nash). The East seemed hard pressed to field a single historically great team in the 2000s (realizing only the Pistons and the Celtics). When Duncan slapped down the East's survivor, 3 times it felt like child's play and only once did you get the sense that he actually needed teammates to win the title. While in theory that sounds great for a player's legacy, especially an absurdly team-first superstar, it ends up making his own success seem easy, and by extension, the quality of his opponents seem mediocre. Honestly, it makes a lot of sense. If what is supposed to be your best opponent turns out time and again to be harmless, then how are you supposed to be regarded as a great conqueror in the same chain of reasoning? Consider the following:
-Russell faced an increasingly desperate West/Baylor tandem year after year after year, a tandem that finally absurdly added Russell's great rival Wilt Chamberlain for Russell's final year, and Russell still won.
-Jordan had to take down the Magic Lakers, the Barkley Suns, the Drexler Blazers, the Payton-Kemp Supersonics, and the Stockton-Malone Jazz: historically interesting and often great teams.
-Magic, Isiah, Bird, and Jordan had each other to contend with in their title years. Just to get to the Finals in the East meant taking down one or two historical-level players and then facing (in all likelihood) the Magic/Kareem Lakers. What a quarry was a title!
-Duncan's Finals opponents were pathetic: The 1999 Knicks were an 8th seed living on a series of miracles, the 2003 Nets just didn't belong, and the 2007 Cavs...well... Moving on, Duncan has only gotten the benefit of a great Finals series once (in 2005).
All of this is true, and if it were the whole story (as it often seems) it would be pretty powerful evidence against keeping Duncan on an all-time team in favor of, say, Oscar Robertson. It just doesn't seem like a strong legacy at first glance.
But, as I talked about a couple weeks ago, the Western Conference in the 2000s was absurdly overpowered. And the past 15 years in the West - easily the deepest era (even only allowing the Western Conference) in NBA History at the power forward slot - constitutes Tim Duncan's career. Top-heavy, bottom-heavy, whatever you want to say: The Western Conference was and is heavy from #1 to #8, and except for 2009 and 2011, Duncan led the Spurs past a tough first-round opponent every single year.
With all the depth in the West, the 2000s should not have been a decade for one to dominate, especially a power forward. But Duncan did. In his 14-year career, his Spurs won at least 50 games* every year. His Spurs took home 4 Finals trophies. His Spurs knocked on the gates of the title door more often than they did not. Because of the depth in the West, Duncan's Spurs won staggeringly consistently while the other team's HOFer PF or C played in direct opposition to him. That's fact. That's dominance.
*or, in 1999 currency, at least 31 games
In the history of the league (by my count) there have been 10 teams that were perennial title threats for the better part of a decade: The 1960s Lakers and Celtics, the 1980s Lakers and Celtics, the 1980s Sixers, the 1990s Bulls, and the 2000s Lakers, Mavericks, Pistons, and Spurs. Each of these dynasties had varying levels of total success (titles, conference titles), consistency (few first-round exits, decent roster stability), and longevity (self-explanatory), and I think those traits, in order, can be used to rank dynasties well.
The 1980s Sixers had the least longevity of all 10 teams, only knocking on the door for an (albeit successful) four year stretch, the 1960s Lakers, along with the 2000s Mavericks and Pistons, had the least success among the remaining 9 (though the Lakers' dominance of the West was spectacular and the Mavs are still amazingly consistent), and the 2000s Lakers had the least consistency among the remaining 6. I think the Spurs survive each of these filtrations with relative ease, coming out fifth. That is to say, what Duncan has done with the Spurs is an (albeit distant) 5th place behind the Michael Jordan Bulls, the Bill Russell Celtics, the Magic/Kareem Lakers, and the Bird/Parish/McHale Celtics in terms of long, untouchably historic dynasties.* And Duncan has been at the center of it. That's dominance.
*The only reason I give the nod to the Celtics over the Spurs is because their peak success (from 1984-1987) is one of the highest in sheer basketball terms of any of the dynasties. And, you know, the strength of their opponents and the incredible cultural relevance of the rivalry.
To put the man's career into perspective: in ten of the first eleven years of Duncan's career*, the Spurs got past the first round of the playoffs. While this is kind of interesting by itself, more interesting is something else that happened in these first ten playoff runs. You see, Duncan either won the title or lost to the eventual Western Conference champion in each of these years. Of the six times they lost? They were pretty clearly the second-best team in the Western Conference for at least three of those years ('04,'06, '08). In 2001-2002, Duncan's best teammate David Robinson was struggling in the twilight of his career, and the Kings had a much stronger case for second place. In 1998, the Rockets put together a really solid run against the Jazz. The Spurs still had a decent argument for second-best team with 56 wins...in Duncan's rookie season. And the West has only rarely been eclipsed by the East since Jordan's retirement. Putting this all together, for Duncan's first 11 years, the Spurs were a top 5 team, largely because of Duncan. That's dominance. What else can you say to that?
*That is, Duncan's first ten playoff runs. See, Duncan was injured in 2000 and missed the playoffs (his team got eliminated by Kidd's Suns) after guiding the team to 48 of their 53 wins.
But despite staying competitive with and often beating the West's best (an endless series of incredible teams and players) year after year after year, we don't remember any of that as distinctly as we remember changing the channel on another dull Finals. We don't as well remember the playoffs before the Finals and what we do remember is a dull, classy guy whose seemingly cynical, weirdly crafty, and often cheap teammates and coaches just happened to help him bury the most exciting, likeable players and teams in basketball year after year after year. His titles feel like transition years because he seems like a player that does not start or finish eras, the constant, always-already substance to whom miracles and career years are the only possible antidote. The 1999 run had two incredibly memorable shots for the Spurs - Sean Elliott taking the Blazers down with a 3 so that the Spurs won in 4 games, and Avery Johnson taking the Knicks down with a wide-open midrange shot so that the Spurs could win in 5 games. Meanwhile, in 2004, 2006, and 2008, the decisive shots and games were miracles and unexplainables. How can you tell your kids a story about a great player when his best stories are losses and his greatest victories are inevitabilities? Bill Simmons and Joe Posnanski, to their great credit, can and do, but they seem to be the exceptions: Most of even the highest praise for Duncan is tinged with a sense that all we can do is marvel that a player was that good for that long and couldn't give us anything beyond impeccable substance, talent, and character - not even a style beyond some vague allusions to D&D and The Crow. His legacy is (to large extent) just his deeds - nothing more, nothing less - and in the ESPN era we see how much that actually counts for. That said, it is only a tragedy in the public sense: I don't think he cares at all about any of this. Heh.
Whatever the case, a few facts jump out at us, without much countermanding evidence. From 1998-2002, the Spurs were the silver of the league. From 2003-2007, the Spurs were the gold of the league. Since then, they've been the bronze of the league - the ultimate baseline standard for a contender. And most of this has to do with Tim Duncan. No, ultimate champions don't have phases, but maybe that's the problem: He's not an ultimate champion; he's just a baller that for a time - his time - was irrefutably the best player in the league and for an even longer period of time made his team one of the best in the league year after year. Just a baller, a great competitor, and a man of high character. Yes, he is not an ultimate champion. But he's the greatest of his era, and in our capacity as chroniclers of basketball and its culture, we should give Tim Duncan the equivalent of a medal for what he's done, because we're here and we still remember. Let's make this medal one-third gold, one-third silver, and one-third bronze, one for the three phases of his career. This is a medal that stands alone. Yes, let other medals be the more gilded. Let other medals be the more a-gleaming. Yes, let other medals be studded the more with gems and let other medals have contours and angles that time cannot forget. Yes: Let other players have their anthems sung from the highest. And when the other medals melt away after one hundred eons, let Duncan's shine on: For no other medal in our time is for a man of all seasons, and no other medal is quite as pure or right.
In sports, the bare facts aren't so meaningful without context - the name Bill Russell next to that freakish number of titles, the video game numbers from Wilt's great 1962 campaign, Jordan's clipped parabola six-peat, and 72-10? They show a great deal of historical imbalance in favor of those players and teams, sure, but I could probably win 11 of 13 championships against third-graders, and so could you. By myself. No, we have to ask: were these players conquering historically great times or stealing titles from historically weak times? This is relevant because how you see the last decade in the NBA should naturally determine (to great extent) just how you choose to view Tim Duncan's four titles. I mean, it's a good question: are these four titles mere low-hanging fruit - transitional years in a transitional era - or are they representative of a historically great player conquering historically great opponents?
At first glance, four titles might even seem like a misprint to you: who actually remembers the mostly forgettable 1999 title against the Knicks? Who remembers the defensive slugfest against the pitiful Nets in 2003? How about the 2007 Finals, that - far from a brilliant display of domination - sort of just felt like what should have happened to LeBron long ago in the playoffs? While I think most (even quite casual) basketball fans abstractly acknowledge Duncan's greatness, it's also easy to view the titles with befuddled amazement and sometimes with disdain and injustice (the 1999 "asterisk" and the 2007 Horry cheap shot on Nash). The East seemed hard pressed to field a single historically great team in the 2000s (realizing only the Pistons and the Celtics). When Duncan slapped down the East's survivor, 3 times it felt like child's play and only once did you get the sense that he actually needed teammates to win the title. While in theory that sounds great for a player's legacy, especially an absurdly team-first superstar, it ends up making his own success seem easy, and by extension, the quality of his opponents seem mediocre. Honestly, it makes a lot of sense. If what is supposed to be your best opponent turns out time and again to be harmless, then how are you supposed to be regarded as a great conqueror in the same chain of reasoning? Consider the following:
-Russell faced an increasingly desperate West/Baylor tandem year after year after year, a tandem that finally absurdly added Russell's great rival Wilt Chamberlain for Russell's final year, and Russell still won.
-Jordan had to take down the Magic Lakers, the Barkley Suns, the Drexler Blazers, the Payton-Kemp Supersonics, and the Stockton-Malone Jazz: historically interesting and often great teams.
-Magic, Isiah, Bird, and Jordan had each other to contend with in their title years. Just to get to the Finals in the East meant taking down one or two historical-level players and then facing (in all likelihood) the Magic/Kareem Lakers. What a quarry was a title!
-Duncan's Finals opponents were pathetic: The 1999 Knicks were an 8th seed living on a series of miracles, the 2003 Nets just didn't belong, and the 2007 Cavs...well... Moving on, Duncan has only gotten the benefit of a great Finals series once (in 2005).
All of this is true, and if it were the whole story (as it often seems) it would be pretty powerful evidence against keeping Duncan on an all-time team in favor of, say, Oscar Robertson. It just doesn't seem like a strong legacy at first glance.
But, as I talked about a couple weeks ago, the Western Conference in the 2000s was absurdly overpowered. And the past 15 years in the West - easily the deepest era (even only allowing the Western Conference) in NBA History at the power forward slot - constitutes Tim Duncan's career. Top-heavy, bottom-heavy, whatever you want to say: The Western Conference was and is heavy from #1 to #8, and except for 2009 and 2011, Duncan led the Spurs past a tough first-round opponent every single year.
With all the depth in the West, the 2000s should not have been a decade for one to dominate, especially a power forward. But Duncan did. In his 14-year career, his Spurs won at least 50 games* every year. His Spurs took home 4 Finals trophies. His Spurs knocked on the gates of the title door more often than they did not. Because of the depth in the West, Duncan's Spurs won staggeringly consistently while the other team's HOFer PF or C played in direct opposition to him. That's fact. That's dominance.
*or, in 1999 currency, at least 31 games
In the history of the league (by my count) there have been 10 teams that were perennial title threats for the better part of a decade: The 1960s Lakers and Celtics, the 1980s Lakers and Celtics, the 1980s Sixers, the 1990s Bulls, and the 2000s Lakers, Mavericks, Pistons, and Spurs. Each of these dynasties had varying levels of total success (titles, conference titles), consistency (few first-round exits, decent roster stability), and longevity (self-explanatory), and I think those traits, in order, can be used to rank dynasties well.
The 1980s Sixers had the least longevity of all 10 teams, only knocking on the door for an (albeit successful) four year stretch, the 1960s Lakers, along with the 2000s Mavericks and Pistons, had the least success among the remaining 9 (though the Lakers' dominance of the West was spectacular and the Mavs are still amazingly consistent), and the 2000s Lakers had the least consistency among the remaining 6. I think the Spurs survive each of these filtrations with relative ease, coming out fifth. That is to say, what Duncan has done with the Spurs is an (albeit distant) 5th place behind the Michael Jordan Bulls, the Bill Russell Celtics, the Magic/Kareem Lakers, and the Bird/Parish/McHale Celtics in terms of long, untouchably historic dynasties.* And Duncan has been at the center of it. That's dominance.
*The only reason I give the nod to the Celtics over the Spurs is because their peak success (from 1984-1987) is one of the highest in sheer basketball terms of any of the dynasties. And, you know, the strength of their opponents and the incredible cultural relevance of the rivalry.
To put the man's career into perspective: in ten of the first eleven years of Duncan's career*, the Spurs got past the first round of the playoffs. While this is kind of interesting by itself, more interesting is something else that happened in these first ten playoff runs. You see, Duncan either won the title or lost to the eventual Western Conference champion in each of these years. Of the six times they lost? They were pretty clearly the second-best team in the Western Conference for at least three of those years ('04,'06, '08). In 2001-2002, Duncan's best teammate David Robinson was struggling in the twilight of his career, and the Kings had a much stronger case for second place. In 1998, the Rockets put together a really solid run against the Jazz. The Spurs still had a decent argument for second-best team with 56 wins...in Duncan's rookie season. And the West has only rarely been eclipsed by the East since Jordan's retirement. Putting this all together, for Duncan's first 11 years, the Spurs were a top 5 team, largely because of Duncan. That's dominance. What else can you say to that?
*That is, Duncan's first ten playoff runs. See, Duncan was injured in 2000 and missed the playoffs (his team got eliminated by Kidd's Suns) after guiding the team to 48 of their 53 wins.
But despite staying competitive with and often beating the West's best (an endless series of incredible teams and players) year after year after year, we don't remember any of that as distinctly as we remember changing the channel on another dull Finals. We don't as well remember the playoffs before the Finals and what we do remember is a dull, classy guy whose seemingly cynical, weirdly crafty, and often cheap teammates and coaches just happened to help him bury the most exciting, likeable players and teams in basketball year after year after year. His titles feel like transition years because he seems like a player that does not start or finish eras, the constant, always-already substance to whom miracles and career years are the only possible antidote. The 1999 run had two incredibly memorable shots for the Spurs - Sean Elliott taking the Blazers down with a 3 so that the Spurs won in 4 games, and Avery Johnson taking the Knicks down with a wide-open midrange shot so that the Spurs could win in 5 games. Meanwhile, in 2004, 2006, and 2008, the decisive shots and games were miracles and unexplainables. How can you tell your kids a story about a great player when his best stories are losses and his greatest victories are inevitabilities? Bill Simmons and Joe Posnanski, to their great credit, can and do, but they seem to be the exceptions: Most of even the highest praise for Duncan is tinged with a sense that all we can do is marvel that a player was that good for that long and couldn't give us anything beyond impeccable substance, talent, and character - not even a style beyond some vague allusions to D&D and The Crow. His legacy is (to large extent) just his deeds - nothing more, nothing less - and in the ESPN era we see how much that actually counts for. That said, it is only a tragedy in the public sense: I don't think he cares at all about any of this. Heh.
Whatever the case, a few facts jump out at us, without much countermanding evidence. From 1998-2002, the Spurs were the silver of the league. From 2003-2007, the Spurs were the gold of the league. Since then, they've been the bronze of the league - the ultimate baseline standard for a contender. And most of this has to do with Tim Duncan. No, ultimate champions don't have phases, but maybe that's the problem: He's not an ultimate champion; he's just a baller that for a time - his time - was irrefutably the best player in the league and for an even longer period of time made his team one of the best in the league year after year. Just a baller, a great competitor, and a man of high character. Yes, he is not an ultimate champion. But he's the greatest of his era, and in our capacity as chroniclers of basketball and its culture, we should give Tim Duncan the equivalent of a medal for what he's done, because we're here and we still remember. Let's make this medal one-third gold, one-third silver, and one-third bronze, one for the three phases of his career. This is a medal that stands alone. Yes, let other medals be the more gilded. Let other medals be the more a-gleaming. Yes, let other medals be studded the more with gems and let other medals have contours and angles that time cannot forget. Yes: Let other players have their anthems sung from the highest. And when the other medals melt away after one hundred eons, let Duncan's shine on: For no other medal in our time is for a man of all seasons, and no other medal is quite as pure or right.
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