Creating San Antonio Spurs All-Decade teams for the 2010s

Point Guard: Tony Parker (2009-10 to 2017-18)

Statistics for the Decade:

• 14.9 points, 5.9 assists, 2.4 rebounds, 0.7 steals per game
• 49.5 percent from the field, 35.0 percent from 3-point (1.0 attempts), 78.5 percent from the free throw line
• 55.0 true shooting percentage, 48.5 win shares, 7.8 value over replacement level

Try not to look so surprised.

Tony Parker will someday see his name on the Naismith Hall of Fame ballot, in large part because his prime dovetails between two different decades. By the time the 2010s came around, Parker was already on the back half of his career, with the best years in his rear view by the end of San Antonio’s final championship run.

Despite the limited time to operate, only 13 point guards produced more win shares than the six-time All-Star over that run. Until his swan song in Charlotte, Parker was also one of his three point guards to play a postseason game in both decades of the 21st century, joining Jeff Teague and Patty Mills.

As is the custom for nearly all of the San Antonio Spurs’ greats, raw numerical totals seldom do justice in explaining how spectacular the players were.

For Parker, perhaps the most telling stat comes from his winning pedigree. In 2015, Parker produced the most wins by any player in NBA history in their first 1,000 games (a record that would later be surpassed by another Spurs great by the name of Manu Ginobili).

And by the end of his career, only six players (Kareem, Parish, Duncan, Stockton, Malone and Nowitzki) produced more wins individually.

As the byproduct of four championships, the 2007 Finals MVP was known for ramping up his play during the second season.

On your next off day, take a moment to watch Parker go toe-to-toe with two-time Most Valuable Player winners Steve Nash and Stephen Curry, or stand out as the best player on the court at times during those epic Spurs-Heat and Spurs-Thunder series.

To put a number to that: Parker saw bumps in his per 100 possession numbers in points (up 1.3). Efficiency wavered, but he remained as solid a second option as one could imagine. A large part of that stems from Parker’s willingness to become at least a league-average 3-point shooter, and then an elite scorer from mid-range.

From 2002-10, athletic peak Parker shot just 40.5 percent from 16 feet and beyond and 31.2 percent from deep. Under fine tuning, he turned that into 41.5 and 34.2 percent respectively.

For a player who finished within the top-six in Most Valuable Player ballots twice in an era some consider to be the most talented, Parker is seldom brought up these days.

The metrics may never completely justice, but he’s a player who boasts quite the case to be the one of the 10 greatest floor generals to ever lace them up. Even if we’ve never heard anyone refer to him as the “Fiery Francophile.”

Others considered: Patty Mills, Dejounte Murray, Bryn Forbes