Has there been a more underrated great in the modern era of professional sports than Tim Duncan?
The man who is regarded as the greatest power forward of all time at age 37 outplayed the Miami Heat for much of Game Six and Game Seven of what was an NBA Finals that revitalized the league and led to its highest television numbers since the Jordan era that didn't involve the Lakers/Celtics. Yet we still aren't talking about Tim Duncan.
Tim Duncan put up 18.1 points per game in the 2013 NBA playoffs, his 16th year in the league. Averaging 10.1 rebounds, Tim Duncan averaged a double double in the playoffs. At 37 years of age.
Tim Duncan is nearly twice my age and he averaged a double double in the NBA Playoffs, a feat that would typically thrust players into the discussion of being one of the best NBA players of all time.
Yet no one seems to give any particular interest in praising the brilliant career of one of the best players to ever lace up a pair of basketball shoes. The new media with the attention span of a butterfly would rather pay attention to LeBron James in his 10th season in the league winning just his second title (on a team he famously handpicked.)
This isn't a surprise because Tim Duncan has kept one of the lowest profiles of any NBA athlete. While the media has labelled Kobe Bryant and James "The Next Michael Jordan" and debated over which two players are the next in line to be second behind Jordan in the pantheon of NBA greats, Duncan has been keeping his head down, not drawing attention to himself all the while having a career that has been so consistent even with age that it is now reaching to the point where Duncan should be entering conversation as one of the Top Five greatest players of all time. Yet it isn't happening.
Duncan plays in San Antonio, a city with just one professional sports team in the Spurs, a team that thrived off of defense and sharing the scoring load during one of the lowest scoring era's of the NBA in the post Jordan and post Shaq/Kobe Lakers era. An era that many were quick to dismiss as boring was faced by the Spurs, so naturally the media has called the Spurs the "boringest" team in basketball, giving Duncan, a player that never cared too much for his individual statistics and demanding the ball much anyways, a bad rap.
Yet Duncan is far from boring if you have ever played the game of basketball. A 37 year old who should be 25 pounds heavier than his glory days with knees made of dust by now actually dropped weight for the 2013 season and rededicated himself back to trying to win a championship after two years of not being able to get past younger teams in the Memphis Grizzlies and Oklahoma City Thunder.
With his minutes being controlled by Gregg Popovich to preserve his game for the playoffs, Duncan still managed to pull down a 17.8 points per game average and 9.9 rebounds per game during the regular season over 69 games.
At 37 years old, you would still want Tim Duncan for 69 games over a regular season than 90% of the league's power forwards, a feat that in itself speaks volumes to the man as a player.
Sadly as we all now, fans and the media live in the present now more than ever. With "breaking news" and storylines developing every hour, we often let ourselves get too caught up in what is happening now to place things in the proper context and appreciate the greatness of players who don't force it upon themselves to grab the spotlight.
A man with two MVP's, four NBA titles, three of those in which he was the Finals MVP, ten All-NBA First Team selections, eight All-Defensive team selections and a dominant run that has stretched all the way from 1998 to 2013 has yet to pick up steam.
In fact when Tim Duncan dropped 25 points in the first half of Game Six on the road in Miami, knowing that up 3-2 in the series it was the Spurs best chance to win a title, no one seemed to sit back and get caught up in a fact that at 37 nobody on the Heat, not even the MVP in LeBron James, had an answer for Tim Duncan. The Spurs came within two box outs and a last second three pointer in regulation from winning the NBA title nearly fifteen years after Duncan's first and if they did win, he surely would have won the Finals MVP.
The defining moment of one of the best NBA Finals of my lifetime won't be LeBron James earning his second title, or Manu Ginobili's turnovers and choke job in both Games Six and Seven. It will be of Tim Duncan going for the win in Game Seven, narrowly missing a hook shot over Chris Bosh and then the tip shot afterwards. After missing Duncan didn't sulk or whine for a foul like Kobe or LeBron would do, he ran the floor faster than anyone else on the court and slapped the floor with the fury of a man who knew that this might be his last chance to go out on top, a show of passion for defense that is leaving the game.
As I grow up the game I loved the most as a child is running out of players like Tim Duncan who show how the game is supposed to be played.
Tim Duncan has been one of the best players in basketball since the late '90s without padding his stats, hogging the basketball, or ignoring the fact that what happens on defense is often more important than what happens with the ball in your hands. "Timmy D" might hang them up for good this summer, and if he does I will always remember the 2013 Finals for being the champion in defeat and the best on the floor at 37.
