Tim Duncan is retiring after 19 seasons with the San Antonio Spurs. Over the next several days millions of words will be written about his impact on San Antonio, on the NBA, on basketball. The Spurs have already put up a lovely career retrospective, with pictures, videos, and highlights from his every year in the league. The hashtag #ThankYouTD is trending on Twitter and Instagram. He’s retiring with what, by any reasonable estimation, is one of the greatest careers in the history of the league, up there with Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Michael Jordan and Bill Russell. During his nearly two-decade tenure the Spurs won 71% of their games. His 19 straight years of winning more than 60% is a record not just for the NBA, but also for the NFL, NHL, and MLB. Tim Duncan was drafted right around the time I entered high school, and has made my hometown team the most successful organization in American professional sports throughout my entire adult life. I’ll never, as a sports fan, have it any better than that. Thank you for the memories, Tim.
Tag: Tim Duncan
I drove down to San Antonio to attend the first game of the season with my Dad and watch the Spurs get their rings and unveil their fifth banner. I recorded the ceremony, and while I spent some time wrestling with the brightness settings on my phone, I managed to get some great moments (including a rare Gregg Popovich fist pump). Here’s what it looked like in the arena.
How on Earth did I miss Bill Russell telling Tim Duncan, immediately after a Spurs championship, “In the words of Star Trek, ‘Live long and prosper.'”
I’ve posted my own thoughts already, but after the jump is a whole mess of Spurs stuff that hit the internet after their championship.
There has never been a team like this before.
Over the course of the season–a season in which they had the best record in the NBA–no player averaged as many as 30 minutes a game. No player averaged as many as 20 points a game, though there were nine players that averaged between 8 and 17. The roster included eight international players, representing seven countries and four continents. They used 29 different starting lineups. There was a 38-year-old starter. There was a 22-year-old starter.
People talk about unselfish basketball. They talk about team-first basketball. They talk about the need to sacrifice individual achievement for the good of the group. These things are held up as lofty ideals that teams should strive for in an essentially star-driven league. But the 2013-2014 San Antonio Spurs embodied all of them, to such a degree that they will now be the measure by which such things are judged.
There were individual narratives, yes. There was Tim Duncan, becoming the first NBA player ever to start on championship teams in three different decades. There was Kawhi Leonard, emerging onto the national stage and joining Tim Duncan and Magic Johnson as the youngest Finals MVPs ever. There was Manu Ginobili, leading the Spurs comeback and silencing with thunderous authority those who said his career was over a year ago. There was Boris Diaw, waived by the worst team in NBA history, but a crucial starter on a championship team. There was Tony Parker, winning right next to him, the two of them best friends since they were teenagers in France, and coming right after they led their national team to Euroleague victory. There was Danny Green’s silky offense and suffocating defense, Patty Mills’s unfailing energy and scoring prowess, Tiago Splitter becoming the first Brazilian to ever win a ring. There’s R. C. Buford’s personnel, and Popovich’s plan. There were plenty of individual narratives.
But the most important narrative was the collective. This group of men suffered the most heartbreaking finals loss imaginable in 2013, and responded to it by trusting each other more, deferring to each other more, committing to the idea that the way forward was to forego personal accolades for team success. And when those choices led them again to the finals, against the same opponent, they produced the most crushing victory the NBA has ever seen. They set a record for shot-clock era Finals field goal percentage at 52.8%. They beat the Heat by an average 14 points a game, the largest average margin of victory in Finals history. They believed in each other, set records doing it, and emerged victorious.
I’ve run out of ways to describe how amazing this team was. But that hardly matters; they are a team for the ages. New things to say or no, I’ll be talking about them for the rest of my life.
Utter domination. The Spurs controlled the entire game and won by 21 points. I’m running out of ways to express how well the Spurs are playing. So here is just a list of some facts.
- Tim Duncan passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for most postseason minutes played in NBA history.
- Tim Duncan also passed Magic Johnson for most postseason double-doubles in NBA history, with 158. That is nearly two full seasons worth of playoff double-doubles.
- Tim Duncan is 38 years old.
- Kawhi Leonard had 20 points, 14 rebounds, 3 assists, 3 steals, and 3 blocks. The last player to put up a line like that in a Finals game? Tim Duncan, in 2003.
- Kawhi Leonard is only 22 years old.
- Boris Diaw had 8 points, 9 rebounds, and 9 assists. Last player older than 30 to do that in a Finals game? Michael Jordan in 1997.
- The Spurs join the 1960 Boston Celtics as the only teams in NBA history with three or more 15+ point wins in a Finals series.
- The Spurs are the first team in NBA history to win two Finals road games by 19+ points.
- The Spurs have won 11 playoff games by 15+ points, a record for a single postseason.
- The Spurs are the first team in the shot clock era to shoot 55% or better from the floor in three games of a single Finals series.
- Teams with a 3-1 series lead are 31-0 in NBA Finals history.
One more win. Go Spurs Go!
There are worse things than attending a close NBA Finals game which your team loses by just two points. I’m sure I think of one in a minute.
I flew down to San Antonio for this one. The game was competitive, exciting, though not what I’d call “good.” The officiating was ludicrous, and not just in a my-team-lost sort of way. In the there-will-probably-be-people-fined sort of way. Even with that, the Spurs could have had it. But they only shot 60% from the free throw line and their offense turned to poo in the last few minutes of the game.
Meh. Here are some pictures. I got a cool hat. Bring on game 3.
This week’s favstarred tweets.
https://twitter.com/ObiCynKenobi/statuses/472480567443726336
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Spurs win game 1. Tim Duncan shot 9 of 10, and had 21 points and 10 rebounds to lead his team in scoring. At age 38. He became the oldest player to do that since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar did it at age 40. And he’s now only one game behind Magic Johnson on the all-time playoff double-doubles list. Not bad for an old man. Next game is on Sunday, and I’ll be in the building for it. I expect to have no voice for days following.