Jimcs50
06-07-2005, 08:40 PM
Duncan makes splash without all the noise
Ian O'Connor
Duncan makes splash without all the noise
Tim Duncan, kid swimmer, is easily imagined diving into the St. Croix water without making a splash. Maybe he wanted to become the next Mark Spitz, but his Caribbean quest for Olympic glory must have been a pursuit of cool and silent strokes. Yes, Duncan had to be the one who touched the wall before his beaten opponents even realized he was in the pool.
So with all of that NBA Eastern Conference commotion in Miami on Monday night, it was no surprise Duncan was already toweled off and waiting deckside for the next race. His style isn't a style as much as it is a colorless testament to substance and smarts.
Never has a big man fit so perfectly inside a small market. As much as Shaquille O'Neal needed to escape Orlando for Hollywood, Duncan needed to settle into a San Antonio and stay there for the balance of his prime. The one time his eye wandered, Duncan wasn't measuring himself against New York skyscrapers for the money men on Madison Avenue. He was merely wondering if he could win more titles in the same Mickey Mouse town Shaq had deemed too confining for his cartoonish personality and tattoos.
But there's a price to pay for relative anonymity and for never advancing a personal agenda ahead of the team's. Duncan is his generation's best player, and yet he's been lost in the conversations over who was the more important Laker (O'Neal or Kobe Bryant?) and over who will grow into the more dominant star (Dwyane Wade or LeBron James?).
If Duncan found himself unwilling to live with this reality, he would've left the Spurs for a higher profile. Or he would've treated David Robinson then, and Manu Ginobili now, the way O'Neal and Bryant treated each other every day. Or he would've junked the fundamental, no-frills core of his game in favor of a bounce-the-ball-off-your-defender's-forehead path to the highlight shows.
Even though he's still young enough (29) to get with the times, Duncan isn't about to learn any trash-talk dialect. He hardly cares that he has bored people into forgetting he's joined Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain as the only centers to win multiple league MVP awards. Duncan is the NBA's answer to Pete Sampras, a champ who won't sell out, a respectful genius staying true to himself in a world far more interested in its McEnroes.
In fact, when Duncan issued his one and only headline-grabbing remark, he wasn't playing on the Spurs' dime. Foul-plagued the entire Athens Games tournament, he announced he was through with Olympic rules and told FIBA, the international governing body, to stuff it, saying it less diplomatically than that.
Duncan quickly retreated into the background. He comfortably blended in with the furniture before enduring two bum ankles and leading the Spurs to their third trip to the Finals, where he is also a two-time MVP. Two years ago, Duncan nearly quadruple-doubled the New Jersey Nets into oblivion. In 1999, he conquered the big-city side of the Hudson, finishing off the New York Knicks with 31 points after dropping 33 points and 16 rebounds on them in Game 1.
"The only person I was watching (growing up) was Magic Johnson," Duncan said then. "I always wanted to be Magic. I wanted to do the things he did."
Duncan doesn't have an ounce of Magic's Broadway flair, but he can handle the ball, pass it, run the floor, shoot jumpers off the glass (an otherwise lost art) and beat his man with either hand. Back in the day, these skills motivated Rick Pitino to leave his Kentucky Camelot for a $50 million gamble on the 15-win Boston Celtics, who had enough pingpong balls to believe Duncan would become their modern-day Russell.
The fickle forces of fate conspired against Pitino, and the Celtics haven't been to the Finals since. Those forces made Duncan a basketball prospect and future Hall of Famer in the first place; Hurricane Hugo destroyed his training pool, forcing young Tim to search for a sport by land.
The truth is, Duncan's been too precise, too perfect, to make a loud NBA splash. He'll never inspire a nickname like the Diesel. He doesn't have a signature move like the Dream Shake.
Duncan does have a masterful sense of how to play the game and a great talent for touching the wall first.
***
Ian O'Connor also writes for The (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News
Ian O'Connor
Duncan makes splash without all the noise
Tim Duncan, kid swimmer, is easily imagined diving into the St. Croix water without making a splash. Maybe he wanted to become the next Mark Spitz, but his Caribbean quest for Olympic glory must have been a pursuit of cool and silent strokes. Yes, Duncan had to be the one who touched the wall before his beaten opponents even realized he was in the pool.
So with all of that NBA Eastern Conference commotion in Miami on Monday night, it was no surprise Duncan was already toweled off and waiting deckside for the next race. His style isn't a style as much as it is a colorless testament to substance and smarts.
Never has a big man fit so perfectly inside a small market. As much as Shaquille O'Neal needed to escape Orlando for Hollywood, Duncan needed to settle into a San Antonio and stay there for the balance of his prime. The one time his eye wandered, Duncan wasn't measuring himself against New York skyscrapers for the money men on Madison Avenue. He was merely wondering if he could win more titles in the same Mickey Mouse town Shaq had deemed too confining for his cartoonish personality and tattoos.
But there's a price to pay for relative anonymity and for never advancing a personal agenda ahead of the team's. Duncan is his generation's best player, and yet he's been lost in the conversations over who was the more important Laker (O'Neal or Kobe Bryant?) and over who will grow into the more dominant star (Dwyane Wade or LeBron James?).
If Duncan found himself unwilling to live with this reality, he would've left the Spurs for a higher profile. Or he would've treated David Robinson then, and Manu Ginobili now, the way O'Neal and Bryant treated each other every day. Or he would've junked the fundamental, no-frills core of his game in favor of a bounce-the-ball-off-your-defender's-forehead path to the highlight shows.
Even though he's still young enough (29) to get with the times, Duncan isn't about to learn any trash-talk dialect. He hardly cares that he has bored people into forgetting he's joined Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain as the only centers to win multiple league MVP awards. Duncan is the NBA's answer to Pete Sampras, a champ who won't sell out, a respectful genius staying true to himself in a world far more interested in its McEnroes.
In fact, when Duncan issued his one and only headline-grabbing remark, he wasn't playing on the Spurs' dime. Foul-plagued the entire Athens Games tournament, he announced he was through with Olympic rules and told FIBA, the international governing body, to stuff it, saying it less diplomatically than that.
Duncan quickly retreated into the background. He comfortably blended in with the furniture before enduring two bum ankles and leading the Spurs to their third trip to the Finals, where he is also a two-time MVP. Two years ago, Duncan nearly quadruple-doubled the New Jersey Nets into oblivion. In 1999, he conquered the big-city side of the Hudson, finishing off the New York Knicks with 31 points after dropping 33 points and 16 rebounds on them in Game 1.
"The only person I was watching (growing up) was Magic Johnson," Duncan said then. "I always wanted to be Magic. I wanted to do the things he did."
Duncan doesn't have an ounce of Magic's Broadway flair, but he can handle the ball, pass it, run the floor, shoot jumpers off the glass (an otherwise lost art) and beat his man with either hand. Back in the day, these skills motivated Rick Pitino to leave his Kentucky Camelot for a $50 million gamble on the 15-win Boston Celtics, who had enough pingpong balls to believe Duncan would become their modern-day Russell.
The fickle forces of fate conspired against Pitino, and the Celtics haven't been to the Finals since. Those forces made Duncan a basketball prospect and future Hall of Famer in the first place; Hurricane Hugo destroyed his training pool, forcing young Tim to search for a sport by land.
The truth is, Duncan's been too precise, too perfect, to make a loud NBA splash. He'll never inspire a nickname like the Diesel. He doesn't have a signature move like the Dream Shake.
Duncan does have a masterful sense of how to play the game and a great talent for touching the wall first.
***
Ian O'Connor also writes for The (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News