Tim Duncan’s greatness isn’t just about the numbers he put up or the awards he received.
Gather around the campfire, kids. I want to tell you about Timothy Theodore Duncan.
With Tim Duncan’s retirement just out of the way, a lot’s going to be written about Timmy over the next week. With Duncan and Kobe Bryant both retiring in the same year, we’re going to be hearing a lot about what they meant for the NBA and how their departure will affect the league.
For fans of the San Antonio Spurs, especially those who only caught onto the team in the 2000s, this is going to be surreal. Timmy’s tenure and productivity for so long is almost incomparable.
But, what I want to talk to you about today isn’t the stats or the accomplishments. A lot of other people are going to write about those. I don’t think I can make those numbers and awards any more special than what they are.
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For the record, we’re talking about a walking double-double who came two blocks shy of the only quadruple-double in NBA Finals history and a man who was regular season MVP, NBA Finals MVP, a multiple-time All-Star, multiple All-NBA first team selection and multiple All-Defensive first team recipient.
They’ll be listing the hardware for hours when Timmy heads into the Hall of Fame.
I don’t want to talk about that.
See, I’ve got this list. I’ve had it since my college years and it’s basically a list of my heroes, the kind of people I’d like to be like. It’s pretty exclusive, so it’s really short. In fact, in only has three names on it: Jesus, Superman, and Tim Duncan.
You might notice that, of those three, only one of them really fits in the realm of actual human being.
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I want to be clear, my parents are my heroes. They have to be, for raising me. When I talk about my heroes list though, I’m talking about those guys that are larger than life.
They fit in that same pantheon the old Greeks used to put the gods, when they’d talk about that time when Hercules wrestled a bull or when Perseus cut the head off of Medusa the snake woman. That’s where Tim Duncan stands with me.
Like a lot of fans of the NBA in the 1990s, I loved Michael Jordan. Every kid wanted to be like Mike. I was young though.
The end of the ’90s was happening at the same time I was really coming into my own, getting ready to go to college, and bracing for that adulthood thing everyone had been telling me was coming sooner or later.
In other words, when Tim Duncan joined in the San Antonio Spurs in the 1997-98 season, I was just starting to make decisions for myself. It was the first time I was looking around and deciding what I wanted to be like.
I’d always liked the Spurs. In my family home, David Robinson was a saint. My mother enjoyed basketball more and more as she got older, but even when she wasn’t much of a fan, she loved The Admiral. Maybe it was because DRob always had a lot of character himself.
He was a real family and church kind of guy that didn’t bring a lot of drama. I liked David, but like Jordan, he was from an era just a few years behind me. My era of basketball? It was defined by the Kobes and Duncans of the world. Thing was, I came to respect the heck out of Kobe’s game, but it was Duncan that changed my world.
I still remember that first championship, in 1999, and the way Duncan jumped all over the court when the buzzer went off at Madison Square Garden. It was Game 5 of the NBA Finals, and it was the first time the Black and Silver went to the top of the mountain.
There I was, with my parents because they wouldn’t let me drive (a wise choice given my terrible driving record up until then). 2003 though? That was my year. That was me, as a young man, really soaking in victory with a team I loved.
That playoffs started with me skipping the reading I should have been doing for my class finals to watch the Spurs bounce back to beat the Phoenix Suns in the first round, an angry girlfriend glaring over my shoulder the whole way.
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The second round shifted to Los Angeles, where a Lakers team every Spurs fan on the planet hated was waiting to knock the Spurs out of the playoffs for the third year in a row. Except, this time it didn’t happen.
The Spurs knocked the Lakers off their three-peat pedestal. To be honest with you, it was a borderline miracle in the eyes of a lot of San Antonio fans.
Then they nearly choked away their success in the third round, when the Dallas Mavericks looked ready to knock out San Antonio. A still-sharpshooting Steve Kerr saved the Spurs and sent team on to a NBA Finals against a Jason Kidd-led New Jersey Nets.
I spent every game of those Finals on the couch with my best friend, ordering pizza and Coke while we stressed out about our chances for victory.
Humorous side note, a still relatively normal acting Shia LaBeouf was starring on a show called Even Stevens at the time, and whenever the stress got too much for us, my friend and I would switch to the Disney Channel for some laughs.
When Duncan pulled down those championship and MVP trophies, it solidified him as a repeat champion and one of the greats of our era. It happened at a time when I was just becoming a man myself, and watching this guy Timmy, who conducted himself so humbly and yet was so dominant, really struck a chord in me.
I’d always thought admiring people, like sports players or movie stars, was a pretty dopey idea. Tim Duncan though? He was different.
He was the kind of guy I liked, the kind of guy who just got it done. He let his game do the talking, and he racked up five championships in the process. He beat the best of his day. He didn’t do it all the time or every year, but he showed that he could go face to face with anyone and come out a winner.
When he lost, he handled it like a man should, with some grace. You never had to worry if Duncan would be there to congratulate you for beating him at the end of the game. Win or lose, Duncan took the bad with the good.
He could have left San Antonio and tried to form a super team in Orlando in 2000. He could have talked a lot of trash or disrespected others at the end of a game. He didn’t. He went up against Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Kidd, LeBron James, and more.
The list goes on, and he won a lot more of those games than he lost. Just check the winning percentage for his career.
The Tim Duncan that stands in my pantheon though? He’s not there just because he was a winner. He’s there because he was a good loser, who congratulated you when you beat him. He’s there because he was a teacher, who helped younger players develop, even guys that he was playing against.
He’s there because he handled his family business privately and loves his kids. He’s there because he likes Dungeons & Dragons, not to mention a round of paintball. He’s there because he owns a car customization shop he can go back to in his retirement.
He’s there because he gave me some of the greatest memories of my life. He’s there because he taught me to take the bad with the good, and keep working toward the great.
He’s there because he showed me an example of what it’s like to go after your dreams and do it while helping others get there too. He’s there because he walked off the court one day, and none of us realized it was his last game.
He’s there because as great of a player that he was on the court, he was one heck of a guy off the court. Yeah, Tim Duncan was a great player, but he’s going to continue to be a great human being, and that’s something not even Father Time can ever take from him.
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That’s the story of Tim Duncan that I’ll always tell.