Tim Duncans profanity

[xtremesteven33]

I dont know if yall have noticed but these past two games with New Jersey Tim Duncan has twice yelled out...

"Thats a F**KIN FOUL!! :madrun


The first time he yelled it right in front of the referee and got a technical(at Jersey,funny thing is he didnt even get fouled) the second time he just yelled it loud.....

so out of character, thats more of a Garnett kinda thing to yell the F word when upset.....i guess hangin around Pop will get you bad habits.

Does this seem out of character for yall old classic Duncan fans, the former Sportsman of the year, the shy quiet islander, the pushover Giant......

[AFBlue]

How many Spurs games have you seen?

Because Tim Duncan ALWAYS cusses. I don't know if it's a character thing, though I certainly wouldn't paint a "quiet" Duncan as someone who is so brash and outspoken on the court.

Still, I think it has more to do with the culture or standard on the court and the intensity with which the game is played. Th phrases "cusses like a sailor" and "cusses like an NBA superstar" are basically interchangeable.

Again, while it certainly doesn't seem like a "Duncan" thing to do, I'm not sure it's a hit to his character.

[m33p0]

only shows that he cares about the games as supposed to earlier in the season when a loss can easily be erased.

[xtremesteven33]

only shows that he cares about the games as supposed to earlier in the season when a loss can easily be erased.


makes sense....

[sa_butta]

First let me start by saying "that was a f**kin foul". Second I dont think it is out of character, he is just showing his frustration when he is being aggressive and still not the calls. While he maybe quiet and shy off the court, he is a different man on the court and I dont mind it at all.

[Obstructed_View]

Duncan doesn't lose his cool most of the time, but it doesn't mean he doesn't swear or get competetive. Kevin Garnett swears when he misses a basket, when he makes a basket, when he's playing defense, when he's walking out to his car...

[remingtonbo2001]

FuckFuckShitFuck

[TDMVPDPOY]

him pimpin man, dont hate

[Slydragon]

WTF do you care mute the tv while the game is on. :spin

[ancestron]

There simply isn't another word that succinctly expresses extreme frustration as well.
If Tim was like "Oh Phooey! Thats a dang foul!" no one would take him seriously.

Keep swearing Timmy.

[SenorSpur]

If you're surprised at that, try sitting courtside some time. Or read the lips of the players on broadcast television. Tim's reaction and language his standard fare for most NBA players.

[duncan228]

Nothing new here, he's done it for years.
I hear him say shit more than fuck, but he can swear with the best of them.
It does get more noticable as the season hits the home stretch, when the games matter more.

Those that say he doesn't show emotion on the court haven't watched him close enough. If his man gets by him for an easy basket he'll bounce the ball hard out of bounds before he tosses it to the ref for the inbound. He's hit the base of the basket.
He's not the stone face he was earlier in his career, he lets more show now.

[Dex]

Tim's been hanging around on Spurstalk too much. :lol

[stretch]

FuckFuckShitFuck
lol, blink-182

[GSH]

Nothing said on a basketball court, or while fishing, counts. You've never heard him say, "This is a stupid f***ing commercial, I won't do it." His record is clean. :elephant

[SpursWoman]

Huh? He curses like a sailor and always has.


I thought people wanting to annoint him into basketball sainthood were only being figurative. :lol

[Sec24Row7]

LOL... why do people insist on thinking that Tim Duncan is David Robinson... (David was known to swear a little too)

[Dex]

http://www.herloyalsons.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/ralphie_soap.jpg

[RashoFan]

LOL... why do people insist on thinking that Tim Duncan is David Robinson... (David was known to swear a little too)

AND.....David Robinson is a Sailor(once a sailor, always a sailor.....GO NAVY!).

[Supreme_Being]

Fuck x 10^999999999999999

[dbreiden83080]

Nothing new here, he's done it for years.
I hear him say shit more than fuck, but he can swear with the best of them.
It does get more noticable as the season hits the home stretch, when the games matter more.

Those that say he doesn't show emotion on the court haven't watched him close enough. If his man gets by him for an easy basket he'll bounce the ball hard out of bounds before he tosses it to the ref for the inbound. He's hit the base of the basket.
He's not the stone face he was earlier in his career, he lets more show now.

He does show more emotion now than he did before and i think that is about him really developing as a leader. He was less emotional when this was D-Rob's team and he laid back more and let him take the reigns. Really starting in 2003 when he knew it was Robinson's last year he stepped up the emotion in his game and leadership with his teammates.

[duncan228]

Really starting in 2003 when he knew it was Robinson's last year he stepped up the emotion in his game and leadership with his teammates.

It was indeed 2003.
From a Sports Illustrated article called "The Quiet Man" by S.L. Price.
Issue date December 15, 2003.

(This is just the end of the article. It's a wonderful piece, if anyone wants to read it all I have it.)

"Will he stand in front of you and say, 'This is my team?' Absolutely not," Amy says. "He's never going to put himself in a position where it's just about him. If it is, he's going to take a long, hard look at himself, because that's not the person he wants to be."
She's right on one count. Duncan isn't standing. No, he tilts his chair back and, face blank, quietly states what he has never been able to state before. "It is my team," he says. "It's got to be."

[honestfool84]

LOL... why do people insist on thinking that Tim Duncan is David Robinson... (David was known to swear a little too)


i've never heard the one where david (robinson) has been known to cuss..
he's a devout Christian, and even a pastor at one of the churches in town..

-David

[Viva Las Espuelas]

http://www.herloyalsons.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/ralphie_soap.jpg:lol

[jag]

Duncan doesn't lose his cool most of the time, but it doesn't mean he doesn't swear or get competetive. Kevin Garnett swears when he misses a basket, when he makes a basket, when he's playing defense, when he's walking out to his car...

haha i'll never forget KG getting into it with Duncan AND Robinson. Robinson threw him aside like a bitch.

[PM5K]

I figured he'd always done it but I'd never heard it, for whatever reason I've heard it a few times in games over the past two weeks....

Seems to coincide with our winning streak so.....

[carina_gino20]

It was indeed 2003.
From a Sports Illustrated article called "The Quiet Man" by S.L. Price.
Issue date December 15, 2003.

(This is just the end of the article. It's a wonderful piece, if anyone wants to read it all I have it.)

"Will he stand in front of you and say, 'This is my team?' Absolutely not," Amy says. "He's never going to put himself in a position where it's just about him. If it is, he's going to take a long, hard look at himself, because that's not the person he wants to be."
She's right on one count. Duncan isn't standing. No, he tilts his chair back and, face blank, quietly states what he has never been able to state before. "It is my team," he says. "It's got to be."

Do share. :)

[duncan228]

Do share. :)

The link I have doesn't seem to work. I'm trying to find another one.
But here's the article. It's a long one but it's one of the best I've found on him.

The Quiet Man
Two-time MVP Tim Duncan doesn't like to sound off or even share what he's really thinking. But the NBA's master of the mind game has one obsession: He needs to win at everything he does
By S.L. Price

After entering Wake Forest as an unknown, he exited as the NCAA's top player.

The basketball player is bragging again. It is endless. "Do you need a big man in the middle?" he says. He is scowling, shoving a basketball into your face. "Then I'm your man."
He has been doing this for 15 minutes: telling how great he is, how necessary, how unstoppable. "Do you need a guy who can score inside?" he says, cocksure, full of attitude, incredulous that you could even think about anyone else. "Outside? From the line? From just about anywhere on the court? Do you need a shot blocker?" He spins the ball on his finger, looks you dead in the eye. "Do you need an MVP on your team? Then I'm your man."
The director calls for a break. Outside the gym, which is tucked away at the end of a dim, hot hallway in New Jersey's Bayonne High School, the cluster of technicians, ad execs and handlers watching a monitor sit back, look at each other and begin cooing in relief and delight. "He's good! He's really good!" Truth be told, no one involved in this commercial shoot last summer for an Atari video game, Backyard Basketball, which was taped as Tim Duncan and his U.S. teammates practiced in New York City for the Olympic qualifying tournament, knew what to expect from their new spokesman. The San Antonio Spurs forward has, over the seven years of his NBA career, been a paragon of anticharisma. Addressing the world in a polite monotone, complementing his self-effacing game with a dullness so deep that it borders on funny, Duncan has never pounded his chest, drawn a finger across his throat or bantered about some reporter's wacky sport coat. Looking completely uninterested, he rattles off postgame clichés, then flees from the microphone as if from a burning automobile.

But today is different. Today, Duncan is anything but Duncanesque. Never mind that the words come from a script or that he's getting paid well to say them. To hear those words from that mouth is a shock akin to hearing a silent-movie star speak for the first time. Not that any of the words are untrue: Duncan has been named the NBA's Most Valuable Player the last two years. He is indeed your man if you've got a stake in the Spurs' drive for their third championship in six years, or in the U.S. team's hope of reclaiming its preeminence, or in some barroom argument about the one player to build a franchise around. What's surprising is that he's not hesitant to say so. He isn't going through the motions here. He's all edge and aggression, his eyebrows perfectly arched. Either he's the best actor since De Niro or, in sending out a message to an audience of seven-year-olds, Duncan has given himself permission to state his undeniable case.
"From just about anywhere on the court? Hey," he says sharply, "I'm your man."
Even when taping stops, the attitude doesn't fade, not completely. Duncan knows his own reputation, and when one of his representatives approaches to say how pleased everyone is with his performance, he begins to giggle. Duncan does this quite a bit when he's relaxed, but for those not accustomed to it, it's like watching one of those Star Trek episodes in which Spock drinks from the wrong cup and gets all goofy and human. Then someone shows Duncan the Backyard Basketball rating system of 1-to-10 cartoon balls for various skill categories, which has given Duncan low marks -- one ball only -- for outside shooting and, most egregiously, defense. "One?" he says. "But I've been named six times to...."
His voice trails into another giggle, because for someone named six straight years to the NBA All-Defensive first or second team, that's kind of funny. Duncan says no more, but he doesn't forget. When he goes back to be taped taking some shots, he waits until after he buries a succession of three-pointers before loudly chiding the game designers for their error.
"One ball?" he shouts. Swish.

Duncan's nickname, the Big Fundamental, has all the panache of an erector set. He describes talking about himself as torture, so why not just leave him alone? There are plenty of people willing to be expansive on the subject of Duncan. The problem is, they tend to inflate him to proportions he'd be horrified to contemplate. Flashier players go against type and hold Duncan in awe for his unselfishness. "Words can't even describe the type of player he is," Philadelphia 76ers star Allen Iverson says. Jason Kidd of the New Jersey Nets unloads so many compliments -- about Duncan's "rare" talent, his "first-class" graciousness -- that Kidd blushes. "People probably think I'm getting paid to say all these nice things about him," he says, "but there's nothing bad I can say."

From there, naturally, it's only a small step to seeing the 27-year-old Duncan as the answer to all that's wrong with the NBA, sports in general, the cult of celebrity and the corrupting influence of easy fame and big money. The best clues to Duncan's character lie in plain sight: Athletes reveal themselves most honestly in competition. His game has never been about risk taking or ego. "He's the ultimate team player," says Detroit Pistons and U.S. Olympic coach Larry Brown. "He's just as happy getting eight shots up and seeing his team win as he is scoring 35. It's what our game is supposed to be about. I laugh when people say he doesn't have enough pizzazz. I know him personally. He's incredible; his teammates love him. I would love my son to have him as his role model."

As a player, Duncan is a breed unto himself, a 7-footer who can score from the post and the perimeter and whose transcendent passing skills and underrated ball handling make him the funnel through which the Spurs' offense flows. Beyond that he has the quality most respected in the league: He's a winner. Shaquille O'Neal is an unstoppable force, but Duncan is the one player in the post-Michael Jordan era who knows both how to make his teammates better and when to take over.

Yet outside of San Antonio and summer coaching clinics and gabfests among his peers, Duncan's brilliance is greeted with a resounding yawn. Television ratings for the 2003 NBA Finals were down one third from the year before -- down, in fact, to their lowest level since the Nielsen rating system began keeping track of the Finals in 1976. Only one thing had changed since 2002: The small-market Spurs, led by Duncan, were back. Here he was at last, the athlete all the moralists and parents and columnists had been seeking for years, the role model, the anti-Me-Me-Me man, finally coming into his own, showcasing the type of game that hoops aficionados had feared was passing into history. But when it came time to watch, Duncan was found lacking.
Does he have to talk the talk, too? Maybe the NBA, in seeking to jack up ratings with years of personality marketing (Shaq! Michael! The Showdown!), has sold the game so far down the river that excellence isn't enough anymore. Maybe Duncan is the litmus test for separating the pure fan from those who are there for the spectacle. Maybe we like (or need) to watch a superstar perp-walk into a police station. Maybe, in the end, we say we value one thing -- teamwork, humility, good citizenship -- but really want its opposite and switching channels makes it easy to avoid the obvious. Nobody likes being caught in a lie.

Duncan's wife, Amy, tells this nice little story. Tim had left Wake Forest after graduating in the spring of 1997, and she had no intention of being "that girl back home." She knew all about pro ballplayers and the women on their trail. Amy was going to become a doctor. She wasn't going to be pathetic. She figured she and Tim were through. But he wouldn't have it. For eight months, throughout his breakout rookie year, he called Amy four, five times a day -- before practice, after practice, the moment he touched down in a new city --showing how much he needed her, sanding down her suspicion until, finally, the path between them was again as smooth as glass.

Now the subject is brought up to Duncan himself, and the atmosphere in the room changes. For the last few days he has chatted openly, even wittily, about everything from the effect of the Spurs' failed courtship of Kidd on Tony Parker ("His feelings got hurt by everybody, but you have to learn that it's a business") to Duncan's attitude heading into last spring's Western Conference semifinal against the Los Angeles Lakers ("Cool. They'd ended our season the last two years. We wanted to be the ones who sent them home. Let them have that feeling") to his famously vanilla quotes ("Wasn't I on si.com's all-boring team? I'm at the top of my game, baby!"). But now, on a close-to-the-bone subject like romance, Duncan shuts down. He smiles, he stares. He sits in a corner, leaning back in his chair. He doesn't say a word. His wife, sitting on the other side of the room, tries drawing him out.
"I was still in college, and we had those first couple of months when I was convinced you were going to go off and do bad things," Amy says. "Then all the uncertainties went away, and you did that for me, by calling and reassuring me that you weren't ... you weren't out there doing bad things. You rekindled that belief." The words hang out there a good 10 seconds. Finally Tim nods. "Sure," he says.
Everyone sort of laughs, but it's clear that she has put him in an awkward spot. Amy goes quiet, and soon she decides to move. She takes her book and goes outside to the balcony. There's nothing wrong, exactly. Anybody who knows Tim will tell you that Amy has broadened him socially; anyone who has seen them work a charity event knows that she's even more committed than he is to making an impact; anyone who hears Tim talk about Amy knows that he trusts her completely. "It's not a typical NBA relationship," says Tim's agent, Lon Babby. "It's a real marriage, a real partnership. You have no doubt they're going to be together in 30 years."
After 15 minutes Amy comes in from the balcony. She plants herself on the floor to Tim's left, near his feet. Once, almost imperceptibly, she leans forward and kisses his knee. He fields a few more questions, and she interjects a memory or clarifies a point. Tim never shows a trace of annoyance; no one doubts his intelligence, and he's secure enough to welcome being corrected. Asked if winning a championship is everything it's supposed to be, Tim says, "Yeah, it is, but it's a little miscon ... skewed? Mis ... con...?"
"Misconstrued," Amy says.
"Misconstrued," Tim repeats. "People say, 'You've done this once, you've won twice, what else do you have left to do?' That's the stupidest question I ever heard. To do it over and over again -- you can't beat that. Every time that you don't win it, it's more disappointing."

The afternoon before the U.S.'s Olympic qualifying opener against Brazil in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Duncan is banging around his hotel room, talking about the strangeness of playing against his homeland, the U.S. Virgin Islands, later in the week. The phone rings. "Come on up," Duncan says, then he puts down the phone and starts to laugh.
Rashidi Clenance and Duncan have known each other since elementary school. They competed for rival high schools on St. Croix, and they team up each summer for a youth basketball clinic on the island. When the knock comes, Duncan announces, "Here's this retard," and flings open the door. He hugs Clenance and, glancing down at the man's Duncan-endorsed Adidas sneakers, giggles, "You wearing the stripes! You got to represent!"
When his friends try to explain Duncan, the first place they turn is the island. Duncan grew up there with his father, jack-of-all-tradesman Bill Duncan, and mother, Ione; two older sisters, Cheryl and Tricia; and Cheryl's husband, Ricky Lowery, who was as close to Tim as a brother. Bill Duncan all but doubled the size of their home singlehandedly -- every nail and truss, every shingle had to be pounded and fit just right, above code -- and the house, like the man, was a rock. When Hurricane Hugo tore through in 1989, leveling trees, peeling the corrugated tin off the homes around them, the Duncans huddled in a small cinder-block bathroom while Bill sat out on a bed for five hours, eyeing the seams and just daring that roof to move. It didn't.
Self-reliance was valued in the Duncan home; self-importance was not. When Dave Odom, the coach at Wake Forest, called Tim in the fall of his senior year in high school to set up the boy's first interview with a big-time coach (the ACC! Division I!), Tim shrugged. "Yeah," he said, "you can come down if you want to."

Duncan is, at this point, the most famous athlete in Virgin Islands history. Yet some countrymen think that he doesn't care enough about the folks back home. "They see him being interviewed and expect him to mention the Virgin Islands more, say hello to home, whatever," says Clenance, now a prominent media personality on the island. "There are those who feel he doesn't do enough. Just because he doesn't do it in front of a television camera, some think he doesn't have that love."

The problem, though, is not that Duncan feels too little for his home. It's that he feels too much. The buttery tropical light, the blue-green waters stretching to the horizon: For most, they're just postcard images of an idyllic island. But for Duncan they carry memories charged with pain. Tricia was a backstroker for the V.I. at the '88 Olympics in Seoul, and at 13 Tim was considered one of the top U.S. freestylers in his age group; even then he had the rare ability to wall himself off from pressure. "I don't think it exists for him," says Michael Lohberg, his former swim coach. "He creates his own world." Their mother was the driving force behind those soggy training days, shuttling the children to practice, volunteering as a timer, repeating her mantra, "Good, better, best/Never let it rest/Until your good is better and your better is your best." During meets, beneath the water, Tim and Tricia could hear their mother's voice cheering them on.
"Timmy! Tricie! It was so embarrassing," Tricia says. "Now we would give anything to have that embarrassment."

On the day before Tim's 14th birthday, just weeks after the six-month power blackout caused by Hugo had fully lifted, Ione Duncan died of breast cancer. After Tim got the news from his father, who was at the hospital, he walked into Tricia's bedroom and told her. She began sobbing. She's sure that Tim must have cried too, but her lasting memory of that moment is of Tim walking out, silently planting himself in front of the TV and playing video games the rest of the morning. His birthday got lost in the grieving. By the time of the funeral he felt like an old man.
"I've been grown-up for a long time," he says. "I went through that with my mom, and I grew to where I understood life and death and everything in between. It does make you realize your own mortality and the mortality of the people around you. You understand that you're not going to be around forever. You're not invincible."
Bill Duncan worried about his son's stoicism, wondered how Tim could keep so much inside without cracking. Tim, certain to this day that he would have been good enough to swim for the V.I. in the Olympics, quit the sport cold. He began playing more and more basketball with Lowery, first one-on-one, then in pickup games. Lowery, a former player at Division III Capital University, took one look at Tim's big hands and springy frame, saw how much the kid hated to lose, and knew what he had to work with.
He put Tim through endless drills, dribbling on stones, up stairs, carrying Lowery on his back around the front yard. By the time Tim went to Wake Forest, he could score with his left hand as well as his right. Four years later, when Tim's number, 21, was retired after one of the great careers in college basketball history, Bill Duncan took a microphone on court and began talking about Ione and her death and how only he and Tim could know how proud she would be. Then he began to say the mantra again -- Good, better, best ... -- and Tim's defenses kicked in. He walked up behind his father, "draped him," Odom recalls, "almost like a vine," and said, "That's enough, Dad."

Bill Duncan died of prostate cancer during the 2002 NBA playoffs. Five days later his children and other family members went out on a boat to a point off St. Croix and poured their father's ashes into the sea. More than once during Olympic qualifying, Tim said how much Bill would have liked to be there, hitting the restaurants, soaking up his son's accomplishments in an island setting. Getting to the Olympics had always been a fantasy for Tim. That he couldn't do it with the Virgin Islands -- the island's basketball program was in disarray when he played his first competition for the U.S., in 1994, and international rules rarely allow a reversal -- was something he accepted.
But the game between the U.S. and the Virgin Islands is another matter. Tim has never been more conflicted. There's something disturbing about getting ready to destroy the team he once dreamed of playing for, the people he grew up with. He has already flip-flopped once, saying he wouldn't suit up, and then, the day before tip-off, decided to play. But now, the afternoon of the game, Duncan has changed his mind again. The V.I. team, missing three of its best players, has been pummeled daily in the tournament. During warmups, with the undefeated U.S. squad at one basket and the winless Virgin Islands team at the other, Duncan is shooting when he notices the islanders filing slowly off the court to their locker room. He stops, holds the ball and watches until every player is out of sight. He looks as if he wants to go with them. Just before tip-off, after the teams exchange gifts, Duncan smiles and shakes hands with as many V.I. players as he can. Then he tells Calvert White, the one he's known the longest, that he's sitting this one out.
The U.S. wins 113-55. Duncan refuses all interviews afterward, issuing a typically dry statement about this being "the best gesture to make" and "the right thing to do." He doesn't mention his mom's voice ringing over the water or the summer days spent pounding nails with his father or Hugo's terrifying howl or all those pickup games in St. Croix during which he discovered who Tim Duncan was. He doesn't mention loyalty. He doesn't use the word love.
"Now everybody knows Tim Duncan is from the Virgin Islands," Clenance says later that night. "Now they know that he's proud of that. This is the only way I know Tim to do things. Talk is cheap. This was the ultimate statement he could make today -- and he didn't even open his mouth."

The silent man makes everybody nervous. It's an old saw of negotiating that the less you say, the more your opponent reveals. Duncan lives this. There are players who babble and bait him, none more than Minnesota Timberwolves forward Kevin Garnett, whose athletic gifts as a 7-footer match (or even exceed) Duncan's. Yet Duncan never speaks on the court. "Emotion doesn't work for me," he says. "If I get too high or low, something always happens. If there's 10 seconds left and I hit a shot and I'm jumping up and down and high-fiving everybody on the side? It's a guaran-damn-tee that they're going to hit a shot and the game's going to be over. And I'm going to look like an ass."

But then there's the quality that separates Duncan from all the sweet-tempered giants who never panned out, the thing that makes him one of the greatest players ever: He enjoys what happens when he doesn't speak. It gives him control and, paired with his skill, frustrates his victims, shames them, beats them mentally as much as physically. Duncan isn't like Shaq, wearing out the opposition with his bulk. He's Garry Kasparov in hightops, a former psychology major who delights in the power of his silence. "You destroy people's psyches when you do that," he says. "You absolutely destroy them. They can't get inside your head. They're talking to you, and there's no response other than to make this shot, make this play, get this rebound and go the other way. People hate that."

When, during college, Duke center Greg Newton ripped Duncan for being "passive," "soft" and "babyish" after one game, reporters dutifully trotted to Duncan for a response, sure that he would rise to the bait. The insults were just too blatant. "He's a great player," Duncan said calmly, and Newton has been living down the comments ever since.

When Duncan distances himself from even his peers, it is as calculated as it is effective; it creates mystery. "People don't know anything about me," he says, "and it's good." Nearly any conversation with Duncan is on his terms. When Odom started pitching the 16-year-old Duncan on the merits of Wake Forest, he found himself competing with a football game on TV; holding his temper over such rudeness, Odom plopped himself down next to the screen so Duncan would be forced to glance at him during timeouts.
"[His aloofness] drives people nuts," Amy says, "and the fact that he knows that gives him the power. In our personal lives, neither of us is confrontational, but he knows that not saying anything, or saying, 'You're right,' infuriates me. It's very difficult to win an argument with Tim."
Ever. Remember: Duncan's a winner. That may sound elementary, but it's not. An athlete's drive often rises from sources far from competition -- from rage or poverty or violence or Daddy's leaving home, from the desire to be famous or loved. The game is almost incidental. Duncan comes from none of that. His body made him a good player, his work ethic allowed him to improve, but it's his basic need to prevail that made him excel. For Duncan, everything but the competition is incidental. He actually hated swimming; only the prospect of competing at the meets kept him going. He has resisted all thought of leaving San Antonio because its remoteness keeps the ancillary aspects of stardom to manageable size. "Everything I do is basic, and that doesn't sell," Duncan says. "I don't have the icing. My icing is, I just want to win." Such simplicity is boring to some, but for those watching closely, "there's a purity there," Odom says, "that's almost surreal."
Spurs coach Gregg Popovich saw that and used it. His greatest achievement may be that, before last season, he divined Duncan's deepest appetite and used it for his own purposes. With David Robinson slowed by injuries and without a firebrand leader like Avery Johnson, the coach pushed Duncan to break free at last of his own reticence. He insisted that Duncan be the one bucking up teammates with a word or a touch, the one working officials, the one suggesting plays and keeping order on the court. But Duncan resisted; he called himself "a blender, not a leader." Only when Popovich asserted that the team couldn't win otherwise did Duncan buy in. "That's the one way I could get it across," Popovich says.

Early last season some Spur made a mistake, and during the ensuing timeout Duncan sidled up to his coach and said, "Do I have him or do you have him?" Then Duncan took the player aside and talked to him, and Popovich knew the season was going to get very interesting. After that, Duncan seemed freer than ever, showing a flair that few imagined in him: a three-pointer here, a behind-the-back dribble there, all seven feet of him leading the fast break end-to-end. Now he was talking during huddles, now he was talking during timeouts, now he was slyly chiding Popovich for some backfired motivational ploy. Duncan had become everything the video game's commercial script claimed him to be.

"Will he stand in front of you and say, 'This is my team?' Absolutely not," Amy says. "He's never going to put himself in a position where it's just about him. If it is, he's going to take a long, hard look at himself, because that's not the person he wants to be."
She's right on one count. Duncan isn't standing. No, he tilts his chair back and, face blank, quietly states what he has never been able to state before. "It is my team," he says. "It's got to be."

[duncan228]

The link for the Atari commercial the article mentions is here:

http://www.slamduncan.com/media-videos.php#

[Dex]

Great article, 228. Was always one of my favorite write-ups.


Then someone shows Duncan the Backyard Basketball rating system of 1-to-10 cartoon balls for various skill categories, which has given Duncan low marks -- one ball only -- for outside shooting and, most egregiously, defense. "One?" he says. "But I've been named six times to...."
His voice trails into another giggle, because for someone named six straight years to the NBA All-Defensive first or second team, that's kind of funny. Duncan says no more, but he doesn't forget. When he goes back to be taped taking some shots, he waits until after he buries a succession of three-pointers before loudly chiding the game designers for their error.
"One ball?" he shouts. Swish.

Classic Duncan. :smokin

[Obstructed_View]

i've never heard the one where david (robinson) has been known to cuss..
he's a devout Christian, and even a pastor at one of the churches in town..

-David
You must not be a lip reader. :lol

[duncan228]

Great article, 228. Was always one of my favorite write-ups.

Mine too, and I've got plenty to choose from. Folders full. :)

One of the reasons I like this one is because he talks so much in it. There aren't a whole lot of them where you get so much of him in his own words.

[carina_gino20]

Wow. Just wow. I think I love Tim 10000000000000000000000000000000X more now. Of course Manu's a few notches higher. :lol

Thanks duncan228. That was a wonderful article. Spurs are lucky to have these guys that really just simply, honestly, want to win.

[Sec24Row7]

You must not be a lip reader. :lol

No shit... haha

[JamStone]

He's retarded.

[spursfan09]

Well if he's retarded; what are the Pistons? Kind of sad they couldn't take advantage of playing against a retard.

[bthewigwam]

That's a long fuckin article. Gread fuckin read. Fuckin thanks Duncan228.

[duncan228]

That's a long fuckin article. Gread fuckin read. Fuckin thanks Duncan228.

I fuckin warned you before the fuckin article that it was fuckin long.
Glad you fuckin liked it.

I've got fuckin longer ones on him if you're fuckin interested.

[Barbarian]

If there's 10 seconds left and I hit a shot and I'm jumping up and down and high-fiving everybody on the side? It's a guaran-damn-tee that they're going to hit a shot and the game's going to be over. And I'm going to look like an ass."

:lol

[mudyez]

http://a161.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/89/l_73f4c12455ab6ddd109f3b3acdcf0578.jpg

[JamStone]

Well if he's retarded; what are the Pistons? Kind of sad they couldn't take advantage of playing against a retard.

SMH guess someone always needs a smiley face icon :ihit in order to get sarcasm.

I was making a joke, :donkey.

Remember Tim Duncan saying "it's retarded" when asked about the dress code last year?

SMH

[jman3000]

it's purely a competitive reaction in my opinion. i yell whole sentences with nothing but cuss words if i'm playing shitty on a video game or something. if i see my gas light on ill utter a "mother fucker" or right before i sneeze ill say "son of a bitch".

no biggies.

[SenorSpur]

Thanks for the article, Duncan228.

You da Man! So is Tim!

[TampaDude]

haha i'll never forget KG getting into it with Duncan AND Robinson. Robinson threw him aside like a bitch.

Heh heh...yeah...if they ever made a statue of David Robinson, the statue would have to hit the gym three times a week just to look as good as DRob... :lol

[duncan228]

You da Man!

:lmao

It never gets old.

[travis2]

:lmao

It fucking never gets old.

Fixed ;)

[duncan228]

:lol Thanks travis2. I forgot what fuckin thread I was in.

[duncan228]

Now that we've established that Duncan can swear with the best of them does he get some street cred?

[travis2]

damn...who has the pic of Duncan with the headband and the tattoos? :lol

[DAINTX]

This profanity thread seems a little silly to me. A professional athlete who occasionally cusses... Wow! :wakeup The NBA is a man's world, kids. TD is simply a man going about his work. Now, if you can come up with a player who never uses a profanity, then you might have a story. :lol

[ancestron]

Shit piss fuck cunt cocksucker motherfucker tits fart turd and twat that was a good read.

[bthewigwam]

Assface is one of those really underrated cuss words that I feel should be used a little more often.

[G-Nob]

i've never heard the one where david (robinson) has been known to cuss..
he's a devout Christian, and even a pastor at one of the churches in town..

-David


Go back and watch some of the 99 finals games on the commemorative dvd set. You'll see some F'n cussin from the Admiral.

[duncan228]

Another good article on Duncan, this addresses the street cred and the NBA not being able to market him, a fact that is Duncan's choice as much as the NBA's.
It came out during the run for the title in '05.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/writers/chris_ballard/06/07/duncan/index.html

Run silent, run deep
Duncan's bland demeanor hides premier talent
Chris Ballard

Imagine a parallel universe in which Tim Duncan was the most popular player in the NBA. The streets would be dotted with black No. 21 Spurs jerseys, sportscasters would refer to him, shorthand, as "T-Dunc" or "Tim-peccable"; a sports drink would pump the jingle, "I Want to Get to the Rim like Tim!" and, across the gyms and blacktops of America, teenagers would catch the ball on the left block, mechanically turn, fire up a bank shot and then yell, "I just went TD on your ass!" He would have his own best-selling highlight video (Come Jump Hook With Me), nappy half-beards would be the rage and, instead of sticking out their tongues, youngsters would mimic the Duncan Blank Stare after made baskets.

But, of course, that is not the case. Rather, Duncan is referred to as a 'superstar' primarily by the few companies that he does represent, a not-so-klieg-light coalition of the ad community that includes H-E-B stores (Don't know what that means? You're not alone -- it's a grocery store chain in Texas and Mexico.), a video game called "Backyard Basketball" and forever-destined-to-be-a-soccer-company-or-a-dirty-acronym Adidas. Some commentators, especially those named "Skip Bayless," argue that Duncan is not a superstar because he is not exciting to watch. This very Web site, back in 2003, wrote a story called "Sports' Most Boring Superstars," in which the author listed the 'most yawn-inducing superstars' and put Duncan at the top, writing that his "Claim to Lame," is that "we'd rather have Shaq over for dinner." (Duncan, who has a dry sense of humor when he shows it, once said of his famously bland quotes, ""Wasn't I on SI.com's all-boring team? I'm at the top of my game, baby!")

Regardless, there is no disputing that Duncan is less visible, and less popular, than most NBA stars. Despite being a two-time league MVP, owner of two championship rings, and an all-the-time, All-NBA selection, he was eclipsed in popularity in the span of one season by Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James when the duo entered the league, and he will never be as recognizable a star as Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan or Allen Iverson.

Why is this?

Let's start with the obvious. He's not American, or at least not mainland American (he was born in the Virgin Islands); he plays in a small market; he plays the least-flashy position in the NBA (calling him what he really is, a center); he shows no emotion on the court or with the press -- "a paragon of anticharisma," as S.L. Price called him in a laudatory SI Sportsman of the Year feature in '03 -- and he doesn't make highlight-worthy plays, at least as judged by the arbiters of such worthiness, those tape-winders at sports networks.

Of course, this is exactly why many basketball aficionados love Duncan. He functions as a filter of sorts; if you are a true fan, you will appreciate the soundness of his game and find the beauty in his bank shot, his drop step, the way he rarely leaves his feet on defense. He is the anti-Vinsanity. New Jersey's Vince Carter is a player whose attributes are so wildly obvious, and acrobatic, that his myriad deficiencies are harder to spot to the novice fan. More than that, a player such as Vince -- a perennial vote-leader in the All-Star balloting -- is good at the things that are easiest for a casual fan to spot: dunking, making crazy shots and, well, jumping really high. If Carter is the wine cooler of the league, all sweetness and bubbles, palatable to even a 16-year-old, then Duncan is the aged Cabernet. You may not appreciate him at first, but, once your taste is refined, you understand what you were missing.

Still, there is another, simpler reason why Duncan is not more popular: He doesn't want to be. That's why he offers up meaningless quotes in a monotone voice, why he turns down offers to be on magazine covers flexing his bicep, why he is perfectly happy with the fact that you may know nothing, or next to nothing, about his family and his personal life. Think about it: He's one of the best, if not the best, player in the NBA, he's winning championships, he's getting paid like a Sultan and he's playing for the best organization in the league. What is another $10 million in endorsements going to do for his life? How are more screaming fans going to make him happier? Why in the world would he want to be a superstar, if what we really mean by that -- and by 'we' I mean the media and the fans -- is a marketable superstar? It may seem unlikely in celebrity-saturated America, but Duncan is opting out of the culture of idolatry. And, in spite of his superior skills, that may be the most remarkable thing about him.

[ancestron]

Tim Duncan.
I just wanted to type it.

[Brutalis]

Nothing said on a basketball court, or while fishing, counts. You've never heard him say, "This is a stupid f***ing commercial, I won't do it." His record is clean. :elephant
What the hell is your avatar? Just some dude dribbling for a second and repeating?

Um... k

[Brutalis]

Another good article on Duncan, this addresses the street cred and the NBA not being able to market him, a fact that is Duncan's choice as much as the NBA's.
It came out during the run for the title in '05.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/writers/chris_ballard/06/07/duncan/index.html

Run silent, run deep
Duncan's bland demeanor hides premier talent
Chris Ballard

Imagine a parallel universe in which Tim Duncan was the most popular player in the NBA. The streets would be dotted with black No. 21 Spurs jerseys, sportscasters would refer to him, shorthand, as "T-Dunc" or "Tim-peccable"; a sports drink would pump the jingle, "I Want to Get to the Rim like Tim!" and, across the gyms and blacktops of America, teenagers would catch the ball on the left block, mechanically turn, fire up a bank shot and then yell, "I just went TD on your ass!" He would have his own best-selling highlight video (Come Jump Hook With Me), nappy half-beards would be the rage and, instead of sticking out their tongues, youngsters would mimic the Duncan Blank Stare after made baskets.

But, of course, that is not the case. Rather, Duncan is referred to as a 'superstar' primarily by the few companies that he does represent, a not-so-klieg-light coalition of the ad community that includes H-E-B stores (Don't know what that means? You're not alone -- it's a grocery store chain in Texas and Mexico.), a video game called "Backyard Basketball" and forever-destined-to-be-a-soccer-company-or-a-dirty-acronym Adidas. Some commentators, especially those named "Skip Bayless," argue that Duncan is not a superstar because he is not exciting to watch. This very Web site, back in 2003, wrote a story called "Sports' Most Boring Superstars," in which the author listed the 'most yawn-inducing superstars' and put Duncan at the top, writing that his "Claim to Lame," is that "we'd rather have Shaq over for dinner." (Duncan, who has a dry sense of humor when he shows it, once said of his famously bland quotes, ""Wasn't I on SI.com's all-boring team? I'm at the top of my game, baby!")

Regardless, there is no disputing that Duncan is less visible, and less popular, than most NBA stars. Despite being a two-time league MVP, owner of two championship rings, and an all-the-time, All-NBA selection, he was eclipsed in popularity in the span of one season by Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James when the duo entered the league, and he will never be as recognizable a star as Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan or Allen Iverson.

Why is this?

Let's start with the obvious. He's not American, or at least not mainland American (he was born in the Virgin Islands); he plays in a small market; he plays the least-flashy position in the NBA (calling him what he really is, a center); he shows no emotion on the court or with the press -- "a paragon of anticharisma," as S.L. Price called him in a laudatory SI Sportsman of the Year feature in '03 -- and he doesn't make highlight-worthy plays, at least as judged by the arbiters of such worthiness, those tape-winders at sports networks.

Of course, this is exactly why many basketball aficionados love Duncan. He functions as a filter of sorts; if you are a true fan, you will appreciate the soundness of his game and find the beauty in his bank shot, his drop step, the way he rarely leaves his feet on defense. He is the anti-Vinsanity. New Jersey's Vince Carter is a player whose attributes are so wildly obvious, and acrobatic, that his myriad deficiencies are harder to spot to the novice fan. More than that, a player such as Vince -- a perennial vote-leader in the All-Star balloting -- is good at the things that are easiest for a casual fan to spot: dunking, making crazy shots and, well, jumping really high. If Carter is the wine cooler of the league, all sweetness and bubbles, palatable to even a 16-year-old, then Duncan is the aged Cabernet. You may not appreciate him at first, but, once your taste is refined, you understand what you were missing.

Still, there is another, simpler reason why Duncan is not more popular: He doesn't want to be. That's why he offers up meaningless quotes in a monotone voice, why he turns down offers to be on magazine covers flexing his bicep, why he is perfectly happy with the fact that you may know nothing, or next to nothing, about his family and his personal life. Think about it: He's one of the best, if not the best, player in the NBA, he's winning championships, he's getting paid like a Sultan and he's playing for the best organization in the league. What is another $10 million in endorsements going to do for his life? How are more screaming fans going to make him happier? Why in the world would he want to be a superstar, if what we really mean by that -- and by 'we' I mean the media and the fans -- is a marketable superstar? It may seem unlikely in celebrity-saturated America, but Duncan is opting out of the culture of idolatry. And, in spite of his superior skills, that may be the most remarkable thing about him.

Hmm good read.

[duncan228]

Hmm good read.

I like it. :)
It was the last page in the Sports Illustrated Special Edition for the '05 Championship.

I keep joking that if Kori started a Duncan only forum I could keep it filled by myself.
It's not really a joke.
I have a ton of stuff on him.
Anyone interested in articles or pics or his life story can PM me if they want more. I can usually pull stuff up by year and find anything someone might be looking for.

He really is my specialty. He fascinates me.
I'm afraid if I posted everything I have/get on him you guys will throw me off the board. :lol

[travis2]

stalker :lol

[TampaDude]

Simple math: TD = TCB = MVP

[duncan228]

stalker :lol

I've been called that many times.
By my own family! :lol

I follow Duncan closely...but from a distance.
I collect articles, pictures, memorabilia that I like.
I have nothing but respect for the boundries he's set. His privacy is important to him, everyone knows that.
I have stuff that would cross that line, I've never posted it.
I don't live in San Antonio but if I did I can promise that I wouldn't be going through his trash!

I've never seen him play in person, though if I ever get the chance I would try to get his autograph.

I'm quite content to watch from a distance.
It's an honor to be able to witness his incredible career.

[Brutalis]

The link I have doesn't seem to work. I'm trying to find another one.
But here's the article. It's a long one but it's one of the best I've found on him.

The Quiet Man
Two-time MVP Tim Duncan doesn't like to sound off or even share what he's really thinking. But the NBA's master of the mind game has one obsession: He needs to win at everything he does
By S.L. Price

After entering Wake Forest as an unknown, he exited as the NCAA's top player.

The basketball player is bragging again. It is endless. "Do you need a big man in the middle?" he says. He is scowling, shoving a basketball into your face. "Then I'm your man."
He has been doing this for 15 minutes: telling how great he is, how necessary, how unstoppable. "Do you need a guy who can score inside?" he says, cocksure, full of attitude, incredulous that you could even think about anyone else. "Outside? From the line? From just about anywhere on the court? Do you need a shot blocker?" He spins the ball on his finger, looks you dead in the eye. "Do you need an MVP on your team? Then I'm your man."
The director calls for a break. Outside the gym, which is tucked away at the end of a dim, hot hallway in New Jersey's Bayonne High School, the cluster of technicians, ad execs and handlers watching a monitor sit back, look at each other and begin cooing in relief and delight. "He's good! He's really good!" Truth be told, no one involved in this commercial shoot last summer for an Atari video game, Backyard Basketball, which was taped as Tim Duncan and his U.S. teammates practiced in New York City for the Olympic qualifying tournament, knew what to expect from their new spokesman. The San Antonio Spurs forward has, over the seven years of his NBA career, been a paragon of anticharisma. Addressing the world in a polite monotone, complementing his self-effacing game with a dullness so deep that it borders on funny, Duncan has never pounded his chest, drawn a finger across his throat or bantered about some reporter's wacky sport coat. Looking completely uninterested, he rattles off postgame clichés, then flees from the microphone as if from a burning automobile.

But today is different. Today, Duncan is anything but Duncanesque. Never mind that the words come from a script or that he's getting paid well to say them. To hear those words from that mouth is a shock akin to hearing a silent-movie star speak for the first time. Not that any of the words are untrue: Duncan has been named the NBA's Most Valuable Player the last two years. He is indeed your man if you've got a stake in the Spurs' drive for their third championship in six years, or in the U.S. team's hope of reclaiming its preeminence, or in some barroom argument about the one player to build a franchise around. What's surprising is that he's not hesitant to say so. He isn't going through the motions here. He's all edge and aggression, his eyebrows perfectly arched. Either he's the best actor since De Niro or, in sending out a message to an audience of seven-year-olds, Duncan has given himself permission to state his undeniable case.
"From just about anywhere on the court? Hey," he says sharply, "I'm your man."
Even when taping stops, the attitude doesn't fade, not completely. Duncan knows his own reputation, and when one of his representatives approaches to say how pleased everyone is with his performance, he begins to giggle. Duncan does this quite a bit when he's relaxed, but for those not accustomed to it, it's like watching one of those Star Trek episodes in which Spock drinks from the wrong cup and gets all goofy and human. Then someone shows Duncan the Backyard Basketball rating system of 1-to-10 cartoon balls for various skill categories, which has given Duncan low marks -- one ball only -- for outside shooting and, most egregiously, defense. "One?" he says. "But I've been named six times to...."
His voice trails into another giggle, because for someone named six straight years to the NBA All-Defensive first or second team, that's kind of funny. Duncan says no more, but he doesn't forget. When he goes back to be taped taking some shots, he waits until after he buries a succession of three-pointers before loudly chiding the game designers for their error.
"One ball?" he shouts. Swish.

Duncan's nickname, the Big Fundamental, has all the panache of an erector set. He describes talking about himself as torture, so why not just leave him alone? There are plenty of people willing to be expansive on the subject of Duncan. The problem is, they tend to inflate him to proportions he'd be horrified to contemplate. Flashier players go against type and hold Duncan in awe for his unselfishness. "Words can't even describe the type of player he is," Philadelphia 76ers star Allen Iverson says. Jason Kidd of the New Jersey Nets unloads so many compliments -- about Duncan's "rare" talent, his "first-class" graciousness -- that Kidd blushes. "People probably think I'm getting paid to say all these nice things about him," he says, "but there's nothing bad I can say."

From there, naturally, it's only a small step to seeing the 27-year-old Duncan as the answer to all that's wrong with the NBA, sports in general, the cult of celebrity and the corrupting influence of easy fame and big money. The best clues to Duncan's character lie in plain sight: Athletes reveal themselves most honestly in competition. His game has never been about risk taking or ego. "He's the ultimate team player," says Detroit Pistons and U.S. Olympic coach Larry Brown. "He's just as happy getting eight shots up and seeing his team win as he is scoring 35. It's what our game is supposed to be about. I laugh when people say he doesn't have enough pizzazz. I know him personally. He's incredible; his teammates love him. I would love my son to have him as his role model."

As a player, Duncan is a breed unto himself, a 7-footer who can score from the post and the perimeter and whose transcendent passing skills and underrated ball handling make him the funnel through which the Spurs' offense flows. Beyond that he has the quality most respected in the league: He's a winner. Shaquille O'Neal is an unstoppable force, but Duncan is the one player in the post-Michael Jordan era who knows both how to make his teammates better and when to take over.

Yet outside of San Antonio and summer coaching clinics and gabfests among his peers, Duncan's brilliance is greeted with a resounding yawn. Television ratings for the 2003 NBA Finals were down one third from the year before -- down, in fact, to their lowest level since the Nielsen rating system began keeping track of the Finals in 1976. Only one thing had changed since 2002: The small-market Spurs, led by Duncan, were back. Here he was at last, the athlete all the moralists and parents and columnists had been seeking for years, the role model, the anti-Me-Me-Me man, finally coming into his own, showcasing the type of game that hoops aficionados had feared was passing into history. But when it came time to watch, Duncan was found lacking.
Does he have to talk the talk, too? Maybe the NBA, in seeking to jack up ratings with years of personality marketing (Shaq! Michael! The Showdown!), has sold the game so far down the river that excellence isn't enough anymore. Maybe Duncan is the litmus test for separating the pure fan from those who are there for the spectacle. Maybe we like (or need) to watch a superstar perp-walk into a police station. Maybe, in the end, we say we value one thing -- teamwork, humility, good citizenship -- but really want its opposite and switching channels makes it easy to avoid the obvious. Nobody likes being caught in a lie.

Duncan's wife, Amy, tells this nice little story. Tim had left Wake Forest after graduating in the spring of 1997, and she had no intention of being "that girl back home." She knew all about pro ballplayers and the women on their trail. Amy was going to become a doctor. She wasn't going to be pathetic. She figured she and Tim were through. But he wouldn't have it. For eight months, throughout his breakout rookie year, he called Amy four, five times a day -- before practice, after practice, the moment he touched down in a new city --showing how much he needed her, sanding down her suspicion until, finally, the path between them was again as smooth as glass.

Now the subject is brought up to Duncan himself, and the atmosphere in the room changes. For the last few days he has chatted openly, even wittily, about everything from the effect of the Spurs' failed courtship of Kidd on Tony Parker ("His feelings got hurt by everybody, but you have to learn that it's a business") to Duncan's attitude heading into last spring's Western Conference semifinal against the Los Angeles Lakers ("Cool. They'd ended our season the last two years. We wanted to be the ones who sent them home. Let them have that feeling") to his famously vanilla quotes ("Wasn't I on si.com's all-boring team? I'm at the top of my game, baby!"). But now, on a close-to-the-bone subject like romance, Duncan shuts down. He smiles, he stares. He sits in a corner, leaning back in his chair. He doesn't say a word. His wife, sitting on the other side of the room, tries drawing him out.
"I was still in college, and we had those first couple of months when I was convinced you were going to go off and do bad things," Amy says. "Then all the uncertainties went away, and you did that for me, by calling and reassuring me that you weren't ... you weren't out there doing bad things. You rekindled that belief." The words hang out there a good 10 seconds. Finally Tim nods. "Sure," he says.
Everyone sort of laughs, but it's clear that she has put him in an awkward spot. Amy goes quiet, and soon she decides to move. She takes her book and goes outside to the balcony. There's nothing wrong, exactly. Anybody who knows Tim will tell you that Amy has broadened him socially; anyone who has seen them work a charity event knows that she's even more committed than he is to making an impact; anyone who hears Tim talk about Amy knows that he trusts her completely. "It's not a typical NBA relationship," says Tim's agent, Lon Babby. "It's a real marriage, a real partnership. You have no doubt they're going to be together in 30 years."
After 15 minutes Amy comes in from the balcony. She plants herself on the floor to Tim's left, near his feet. Once, almost imperceptibly, she leans forward and kisses his knee. He fields a few more questions, and she interjects a memory or clarifies a point. Tim never shows a trace of annoyance; no one doubts his intelligence, and he's secure enough to welcome being corrected. Asked if winning a championship is everything it's supposed to be, Tim says, "Yeah, it is, but it's a little miscon ... skewed? Mis ... con...?"
"Misconstrued," Amy says.
"Misconstrued," Tim repeats. "People say, 'You've done this once, you've won twice, what else do you have left to do?' That's the stupidest question I ever heard. To do it over and over again -- you can't beat that. Every time that you don't win it, it's more disappointing."

The afternoon before the U.S.'s Olympic qualifying opener against Brazil in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Duncan is banging around his hotel room, talking about the strangeness of playing against his homeland, the U.S. Virgin Islands, later in the week. The phone rings. "Come on up," Duncan says, then he puts down the phone and starts to laugh.
Rashidi Clenance and Duncan have known each other since elementary school. They competed for rival high schools on St. Croix, and they team up each summer for a youth basketball clinic on the island. When the knock comes, Duncan announces, "Here's this retard," and flings open the door. He hugs Clenance and, glancing down at the man's Duncan-endorsed Adidas sneakers, giggles, "You wearing the stripes! You got to represent!"
When his friends try to explain Duncan, the first place they turn is the island. Duncan grew up there with his father, jack-of-all-tradesman Bill Duncan, and mother, Ione; two older sisters, Cheryl and Tricia; and Cheryl's husband, Ricky Lowery, who was as close to Tim as a brother. Bill Duncan all but doubled the size of their home singlehandedly -- every nail and truss, every shingle had to be pounded and fit just right, above code -- and the house, like the man, was a rock. When Hurricane Hugo tore through in 1989, leveling trees, peeling the corrugated tin off the homes around them, the Duncans huddled in a small cinder-block bathroom while Bill sat out on a bed for five hours, eyeing the seams and just daring that roof to move. It didn't.
Self-reliance was valued in the Duncan home; self-importance was not. When Dave Odom, the coach at Wake Forest, called Tim in the fall of his senior year in high school to set up the boy's first interview with a big-time coach (the ACC! Division I!), Tim shrugged. "Yeah," he said, "you can come down if you want to."

Duncan is, at this point, the most famous athlete in Virgin Islands history. Yet some countrymen think that he doesn't care enough about the folks back home. "They see him being interviewed and expect him to mention the Virgin Islands more, say hello to home, whatever," says Clenance, now a prominent media personality on the island. "There are those who feel he doesn't do enough. Just because he doesn't do it in front of a television camera, some think he doesn't have that love."

The problem, though, is not that Duncan feels too little for his home. It's that he feels too much. The buttery tropical light, the blue-green waters stretching to the horizon: For most, they're just postcard images of an idyllic island. But for Duncan they carry memories charged with pain. Tricia was a backstroker for the V.I. at the '88 Olympics in Seoul, and at 13 Tim was considered one of the top U.S. freestylers in his age group; even then he had the rare ability to wall himself off from pressure. "I don't think it exists for him," says Michael Lohberg, his former swim coach. "He creates his own world." Their mother was the driving force behind those soggy training days, shuttling the children to practice, volunteering as a timer, repeating her mantra, "Good, better, best/Never let it rest/Until your good is better and your better is your best." During meets, beneath the water, Tim and Tricia could hear their mother's voice cheering them on.
"Timmy! Tricie! It was so embarrassing," Tricia says. "Now we would give anything to have that embarrassment."

On the day before Tim's 14th birthday, just weeks after the six-month power blackout caused by Hugo had fully lifted, Ione Duncan died of breast cancer. After Tim got the news from his father, who was at the hospital, he walked into Tricia's bedroom and told her. She began sobbing. She's sure that Tim must have cried too, but her lasting memory of that moment is of Tim walking out, silently planting himself in front of the TV and playing video games the rest of the morning. His birthday got lost in the grieving. By the time of the funeral he felt like an old man.
"I've been grown-up for a long time," he says. "I went through that with my mom, and I grew to where I understood life and death and everything in between. It does make you realize your own mortality and the mortality of the people around you. You understand that you're not going to be around forever. You're not invincible."
Bill Duncan worried about his son's stoicism, wondered how Tim could keep so much inside without cracking. Tim, certain to this day that he would have been good enough to swim for the V.I. in the Olympics, quit the sport cold. He began playing more and more basketball with Lowery, first one-on-one, then in pickup games. Lowery, a former player at Division III Capital University, took one look at Tim's big hands and springy frame, saw how much the kid hated to lose, and knew what he had to work with.
He put Tim through endless drills, dribbling on stones, up stairs, carrying Lowery on his back around the front yard. By the time Tim went to Wake Forest, he could score with his left hand as well as his right. Four years later, when Tim's number, 21, was retired after one of the great careers in college basketball history, Bill Duncan took a microphone on court and began talking about Ione and her death and how only he and Tim could know how proud she would be. Then he began to say the mantra again -- Good, better, best ... -- and Tim's defenses kicked in. He walked up behind his father, "draped him," Odom recalls, "almost like a vine," and said, "That's enough, Dad."

Bill Duncan died of prostate cancer during the 2002 NBA playoffs. Five days later his children and other family members went out on a boat to a point off St. Croix and poured their father's ashes into the sea. More than once during Olympic qualifying, Tim said how much Bill would have liked to be there, hitting the restaurants, soaking up his son's accomplishments in an island setting. Getting to the Olympics had always been a fantasy for Tim. That he couldn't do it with the Virgin Islands -- the island's basketball program was in disarray when he played his first competition for the U.S., in 1994, and international rules rarely allow a reversal -- was something he accepted.
But the game between the U.S. and the Virgin Islands is another matter. Tim has never been more conflicted. There's something disturbing about getting ready to destroy the team he once dreamed of playing for, the people he grew up with. He has already flip-flopped once, saying he wouldn't suit up, and then, the day before tip-off, decided to play. But now, the afternoon of the game, Duncan has changed his mind again. The V.I. team, missing three of its best players, has been pummeled daily in the tournament. During warmups, with the undefeated U.S. squad at one basket and the winless Virgin Islands team at the other, Duncan is shooting when he notices the islanders filing slowly off the court to their locker room. He stops, holds the ball and watches until every player is out of sight. He looks as if he wants to go with them. Just before tip-off, after the teams exchange gifts, Duncan smiles and shakes hands with as many V.I. players as he can. Then he tells Calvert White, the one he's known the longest, that he's sitting this one out.
The U.S. wins 113-55. Duncan refuses all interviews afterward, issuing a typically dry statement about this being "the best gesture to make" and "the right thing to do." He doesn't mention his mom's voice ringing over the water or the summer days spent pounding nails with his father or Hugo's terrifying howl or all those pickup games in St. Croix during which he discovered who Tim Duncan was. He doesn't mention loyalty. He doesn't use the word love.
"Now everybody knows Tim Duncan is from the Virgin Islands," Clenance says later that night. "Now they know that he's proud of that. This is the only way I know Tim to do things. Talk is cheap. This was the ultimate statement he could make today -- and he didn't even open his mouth."

The silent man makes everybody nervous. It's an old saw of negotiating that the less you say, the more your opponent reveals. Duncan lives this. There are players who babble and bait him, none more than Minnesota Timberwolves forward Kevin Garnett, whose athletic gifts as a 7-footer match (or even exceed) Duncan's. Yet Duncan never speaks on the court. "Emotion doesn't work for me," he says. "If I get too high or low, something always happens. If there's 10 seconds left and I hit a shot and I'm jumping up and down and high-fiving everybody on the side? It's a guaran-damn-tee that they're going to hit a shot and the game's going to be over. And I'm going to look like an ass."

But then there's the quality that separates Duncan from all the sweet-tempered giants who never panned out, the thing that makes him one of the greatest players ever: He enjoys what happens when he doesn't speak. It gives him control and, paired with his skill, frustrates his victims, shames them, beats them mentally as much as physically. Duncan isn't like Shaq, wearing out the opposition with his bulk. He's Garry Kasparov in hightops, a former psychology major who delights in the power of his silence. "You destroy people's psyches when you do that," he says. "You absolutely destroy them. They can't get inside your head. They're talking to you, and there's no response other than to make this shot, make this play, get this rebound and go the other way. People hate that."

When, during college, Duke center Greg Newton ripped Duncan for being "passive," "soft" and "babyish" after one game, reporters dutifully trotted to Duncan for a response, sure that he would rise to the bait. The insults were just too blatant. "He's a great player," Duncan said calmly, and Newton has been living down the comments ever since.

When Duncan distances himself from even his peers, it is as calculated as it is effective; it creates mystery. "People don't know anything about me," he says, "and it's good." Nearly any conversation with Duncan is on his terms. When Odom started pitching the 16-year-old Duncan on the merits of Wake Forest, he found himself competing with a football game on TV; holding his temper over such rudeness, Odom plopped himself down next to the screen so Duncan would be forced to glance at him during timeouts.
"[His aloofness] drives people nuts," Amy says, "and the fact that he knows that gives him the power. In our personal lives, neither of us is confrontational, but he knows that not saying anything, or saying, 'You're right,' infuriates me. It's very difficult to win an argument with Tim."
Ever. Remember: Duncan's a winner. That may sound elementary, but it's not. An athlete's drive often rises from sources far from competition -- from rage or poverty or violence or Daddy's leaving home, from the desire to be famous or loved. The game is almost incidental. Duncan comes from none of that. His body made him a good player, his work ethic allowed him to improve, but it's his basic need to prevail that made him excel. For Duncan, everything but the competition is incidental. He actually hated swimming; only the prospect of competing at the meets kept him going. He has resisted all thought of leaving San Antonio because its remoteness keeps the ancillary aspects of stardom to manageable size. "Everything I do is basic, and that doesn't sell," Duncan says. "I don't have the icing. My icing is, I just want to win." Such simplicity is boring to some, but for those watching closely, "there's a purity there," Odom says, "that's almost surreal."
Spurs coach Gregg Popovich saw that and used it. His greatest achievement may be that, before last season, he divined Duncan's deepest appetite and used it for his own purposes. With David Robinson slowed by injuries and without a firebrand leader like Avery Johnson, the coach pushed Duncan to break free at last of his own reticence. He insisted that Duncan be the one bucking up teammates with a word or a touch, the one working officials, the one suggesting plays and keeping order on the court. But Duncan resisted; he called himself "a blender, not a leader." Only when Popovich asserted that the team couldn't win otherwise did Duncan buy in. "That's the one way I could get it across," Popovich says.

Early last season some Spur made a mistake, and during the ensuing timeout Duncan sidled up to his coach and said, "Do I have him or do you have him?" Then Duncan took the player aside and talked to him, and Popovich knew the season was going to get very interesting. After that, Duncan seemed freer than ever, showing a flair that few imagined in him: a three-pointer here, a behind-the-back dribble there, all seven feet of him leading the fast break end-to-end. Now he was talking during huddles, now he was talking during timeouts, now he was slyly chiding Popovich for some backfired motivational ploy. Duncan had become everything the video game's commercial script claimed him to be.

"Will he stand in front of you and say, 'This is my team?' Absolutely not," Amy says. "He's never going to put himself in a position where it's just about him. If it is, he's going to take a long, hard look at himself, because that's not the person he wants to be."
She's right on one count. Duncan isn't standing. No, he tilts his chair back and, face blank, quietly states what he has never been able to state before. "It is my team," he says. "It's got to be."

Damn good read.

[Brutalis]

I like it. :)
It was the last page in the Sports Illustrated Special Edition for the '05 Championship.

I keep joking that if Kori started a Duncan only forum I could keep it filled by myself.
It's not really a joke.
I have a ton of stuff on him.
Anyone interested in articles or pics or his life story can PM me if they want more. I can usually pull stuff up by year and find anything someone might be looking for.

He really is my specialty. He fascinates me.
I'm afraid if I posted everything I have/get on him you guys will throw me off the board. :lol

Throw you off the board? How about I take you out to dinner instead? :lol

I used to have a timeline picture of Duncan at wake, rookie season, 4th season, 8th, and whatever was most recent. Old puter crashed lost it and other 290389230820398097097 Duncan/Spurs things.

[Brutalis]

I've been called that many times.
By my own family! :lol

I follow Duncan closely...but from a distance.
I collect articles, pictures, memorabilia that I like.
I have nothing but respect for the boundries he's set. His privacy is important to him, everyone knows that.
I have stuff that would cross that line, I've never posted it.
I don't live in San Antonio but if I did I can promise that I wouldn't be going through his trash!

I've never seen him play in person, though if I ever get the chance I would try to get his autograph.

I'm quite content to watch from a distance.
It's an honor to be able to witness his incredible career.

Well I'm not alone.

I've followed the Spurs (hardcore instead of mildly) in 1993, when I was around 9. Followed TD ever since he had pimples the summer he was drafted. And never have I got to see him play either.

Next season I plan on making a trip to SA though to catch a game. And not just any game, one against Dallas, LA, Phoenix or someone I really wanna see get beat down. Assuming you're not a minor you should come along somehow.

[duncan228]

Old puter crashed lost it and other 290389230820398097097 Duncan/Spurs things.

My worst fear!
I print articles I don't want to risk losing.
And, a neurotic admission, I have my stuff saved on a couple of computers so if one goes down I still have my stuff.
It's taken me years to gather it all, I'd be really upset if I lost it.

[duncan228]

Well I'm not alone.

I've followed the Spurs (hardcore instead of mildly) in 1993, when I was around 9. Followed TD ever since he had pimples the summer he was drafted. And never have I got to see him play either.

Next season I plan on making a trip to SA though to catch a game. And not just any game, one against Dallas, LA, Phoenix or someone I really wanna see get beat down. Assuming you're not a minor you should come along somehow.

:lmao
Been called a man here on ST but never a minor!

I want nothing more than to see Duncan play in person.
A hand picked game would be a dream but at this point I don't care anymore. I just want to see him live.
I've got an offer from a fellow ST poster who's in San Marcos. If I can get there I have a place to stay.
I'm working on it but money is an issue and it's not a cheap trip...I want great seats!

[Brutalis]

:lmao
Been called a man here on ST but never a minor!

I want nothing more than to see Duncan play in person.
A hand picked game would be a dream but at this point I don't care anymore. I just want to see him live.
I've got an offer from a fellow ST poster who's in San Marcos. If I can get there I have a place to stay.
I'm working on it but money is an issue and it's not a cheap trip...I want great seats!
Well dang I don't know how old you are, as if it's any of my business anyway!

I've been around just a few months before you came to ST and remember couple years ago you claiming in some thread you was a girl so I've known for a long while. :toast

Thought it was funny when you got the extra Spur for your patience and told myself like anybody is going to notice that and make a point of you not being a dude when replying to you haha.

But yeah I caught a game in Memphis, preseason though. Duncan sat out, and I got a picture of him coming out of the tunnel from halftime. He turned for a second let me snap a picture and went on. Hoping to get that as well as other photos from the game off the old PC that's being operated on.

Summer 2006, I don't remember who, offered me to come stay with him if I was planning on taking a trip to SA to see a game to save me hotel costs. At the time I was with my now ex girlfriend and we was having problems so it never panned out. Wasted 4 years on that liar and burned for it. Whew.

But really I wouldn't stay with someone that offered unless they knew Kori and hubby or was a regular at the ST G2Gs. I don't trust easy anymore.

Now that I'm a free bird I will be making that trip next season for sure. I have a nice Yukon that can make the trip easily and all I lack is planning, which game which seats and such. Was thinking it would be cool if ST regs that are abroad could all get together and plan a G2G in SA for a weekend for our first games and such but realized soon there isn't enough regs or interest.

I'd just like to meet the people I see posting everyday while there is all. Here in Arkansas it'd be a short trip (9hrs) and I don't know any Spurs fans here except for one, who started liking them when he got to know me.

[duncan228]

Thought it was funny when you got the extra Spur for your patience and told myself like anybody is going to notice that and make a point of you not being a dude when replying to you haha.

But really I wouldn't stay with someone that offered unless they knew Kori and hubby or was a regular at the ST G2Gs. I don't trust easy anymore.

I'd just like to meet the people I see posting everyday while there is all. Here in Arkansas it'd be a short trip (9hrs) and I don't know any Spurs fans here except for one, who started liking them when he got to know me.

I still get called a guy here almost daily. It's pretty funny, I guess it's a compliment on a sports board. I thought the spur would at least slow it down but it hasn't.

The poster that made me the offer I've gotten pretty close with. It started with PM's here and then we took it off ST and we email and talk on the phone. She even sends me local stuff that I can't get on ebay, like the Spurs Ice Cream. She records the local TV coverage and sends me the DVD. I trust her, we've been friends for a year now.

I'd love to meet some regular ST posters. I know a lot of it is "internet persona" but after a while you can get a feel for who you think you'd like in "real life." I spend a lot of time here, it would be cool to actually meet the people I like "talking" to.

I have no Spurs fans around me either, which is why ST is so important to me. It's my connection to my team, to other Duncan fans.

I couldn't drive to SA, it would have to be flying. Having a place to stay helps with some expenses but it's still in the "dream" stage.

[Rique]

First time poster, found your board about a couple weeks ago. So this is where all the Spurs fans are. Very good reads on Duncan. Thank you for sharing. Lived in SA for most of my life and now I'm in Piston-ville. Its cold and I only get to see one Spurs game in person a year. It sucks..haha. [/threadjack] I miss the Spurs atmosphere. Look forward to more posts!

[Brutalis]

First time poster, found your board about a couple weeks ago. So this is where all the Spurs fans are. Very good reads on Duncan. Thank you for sharing. Lived in SA for most of my life and now I'm in Piston-ville. Its cold and I only get to see one Spurs game in person a year. It sucks..haha. [/threadjack] I miss the Spurs atmosphere. Look forward to more posts!
Nice to meet ya. Spurstalk needs more opinionated fans so hang out jump in any thread and don't worry about some regs here they just like to pick on newer folks.

:toast

[polandprzem]

I used to collect Duncans and Spurs articles and pictures on PC, still I got them on some Cd's.

But I rethought it nad does not do it now.
Well I'm dowloading games and burning them into DVD's but it is all.

I've got many NBA cards (most upper deck) but they don't see the light. (Few Jordan cards, Hills rookie season, Duncans Wake Forest, rookie and other and so on ...)

But all those gadgets are not that important right now.
The love to the nba, the love to the spurs organization the love to TD is what matters. Live up the day, the rest is in the internet.

[td4mvp21]

I guess it is kind of surprising because Duncan always appears so quiet and mild-tempered in interviews and stuff like that. But he needs to say that if he isn't getting a fouled call. Like someone else said, if he said something like "Call the foul please" or "Oh crackers!" no one would pay attention to him. I don't really care either way, it doesn't make him a bad person or anything.

[WalterBenitez]

I dont know if yall have noticed but these past two games with New Jersey Tim Duncan has twice yelled out...

"Thats a F**KIN FOUL!! :madrun


The first time he yelled it right in front of the referee and got a technical(at Jersey,funny thing is he didnt even get fouled) the second time he just yelled it loud.....

so out of character, thats more of a Garnett kinda thing to yell the F word when upset.....i guess hangin around Pop will get you bad habits.

Does this seem out of character for yall old classic Duncan fans, the former Sportsman of the year, the shy quiet islander, the pushover Giant......

Probably were fouls, what else?

[milkyway21]

..thanks God, he's human after all.

forget about Duncan being stoic. I want a Tim Duncan who expresses what's good for this team.

carry on Tim! :flag:

[m33p0]

http://a161.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/89/l_73f4c12455ab6ddd109f3b3acdcf0578.jpg
one ball for defense? wasn't he named DPOY when that game came out?

and, oh, uhm... btw.... FUCK!

[carina_gino20]

duncan228, well I'm probably just as bad with my Manu collection... :lol

[BonnerDynasty]

You guys are seeing T Dunks, not Tim Duncan.

[duncan228]

duncan228, well I'm probably just as bad with my Manu collection... :lol

It's a harmless obsession.
It keeps me happy, keeps me distracted from things in my life that would otherwise make me unhappy.

Like I said, Duncan fascinates me. I love watching him play, the two and a half hours of game time are my escape. Like everyone does, I've got stuff in my life that's not fun to deal with. Duncan takes me out of that. I see nothing but good coming out of that. It's not avoidance, I deal with the shit I need to when I need to. But come tip off I disappear into the game and forget everything else. It works for me, it makes me better able to cope with the shit that is hard to cope with.

[ClingingMars]

D Rob was my role model growing up...but even I, at a Christian school with the word "Christian" across my football jersey, said things I regret in the heat of battle, and even on this forum. But online forums is where I get that shit out. oops, lol.

-Mars

[milkyway21]

It's a harmless obsession.
It keeps me happy, keeps me distracted from things in my life that would otherwise make me unhappy.

Like I said, Duncan fascinates me. I love watching him play, the two and a half hours of game time are my escape. Like everyone does, I've got stuff in my life that's not fun to deal with. Duncan takes me out of that. I see nothing but good coming out of that. It's not avoidance, I deal with the shit I need to when I need to. But come tip off I disappear into the game and forget everything else. It works for me, it makes me better able to cope with the shit that is hard to cope with. :reading :lol

it frustrates me everytime people starts a thread like..."trade Duncan, Duncan plays like Chris Webber, or Duncan is old" when ShaQ is older 4 yrs ago and some still call him the most dominating player in the NBA. Sometimes I'm like :pctoss

:lmao

[RashoFan]

Now that we've established that Duncan can swear with the best of them does he get some FUCKING street cred?

Fixed...
C'mom duncan228....don't fucking forget to type fuck in your next post in this fucking thread....
:D

[gospursgojas]

i've never heard the one where david (robinson) has been known to cuss..
he's a devout Christian, and even a pastor at one of the churches in town..

-David


You need to watch a game between the Spurs and the TrailBlazers during the '99 regular season... Big Dave went OFF on a ref... I mean bad. He got thrown out in the 4th. But the best part is that the Spurs were down by like 20 before he got thrown out and then they ended up winning the game

[MannyIsGod]

Some of you need to realize you have no idea what type of personality NBA players have simply because you watch them play a game from a distance.

[gospursgojas]

You need to watch a game between the Spurs and the TrailBlazers during the '99 regular season... Big Dave went OFF on a ref... I mean bad. He got thrown out in the 4th. But the best part is that the Spurs were down by like 20 before he got thrown out and then they ended up winning the game


LINK (http://asp.usatoday.com/sports/scores100/100088/100088349.htm)

My bad it was in the '99 '00 season...


Game Story

PORTLAND, Oregon (Ticker) -- The San Antonio Spurs took the loss
of their "Admiral" very personally.

Tim Duncan's go-ahead jumper with 36 seconds remaining capped a
furious late rally as the Spurs responded to center David
Robinson's ejection by running past the Portland Trail Blazers,
89-85, in an emotionally charged rematch of last season's
Western Conference finals.

Referee Bennie Adams made a questionable offensive foul call on
Robinson as he battled in the paint with Portland forward Brian
Grant with 3:16 to play. The normally reserved and congenial
pivotman went into a tirade, bouncing the basketball and making
accidental contact with Adams, who slapped him with a pair of
technicals.

"Dave getting kicked out of the game was an appropriate
response," San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich said. "You don't
see David do that very often. When he gets that angry, it's for
a reason. This was a special game for us. It was very special
and we kept fighting through all the adversity."

"When David Robinson was ejected, we kind of thought it was
over," Grant said. "It's a tough one to lose because we know we
put our hearts into it and we had the effort but they turned it
up and we couldn't score when we needed one."

Robinson trudged off the court, kicking a chair on his way to
the locker room. Trailing 82-75, the Spurs appeared to refocus
their resolve and went on a decisive 12-0 burst.

"I try not to let the officials get to me or get me out of a
game," Robinson said. "I thought some of the stuff was pretty
blatant and I had to say so. I'm proud of the guys, though."

Duncan, who had 36 points and 15 rebounds, made a nifty
between-the-legs dribble before beating the shot clock with an
18-footer from the left side that swished through the net,
giving San Antonio an 85-83 lead with 36 seconds remaining.

"Tim hit that fallaway and hit his free throws," Robinson said.
"He really played great. I don't mind some of the calls going
against me. Late in the game though, you have to let the
players play. I was in the locker room jumping up and down
though."

"I wanted to be more aggressive tonight and it started on the
glass," Duncan said. "That's where the effort was. This is a
huge win for us. We need road wins badly, especially with the
playoffs coming. They are a very talented team and they still
have a better record than us. But this was a big confidence
builder."

Robinson finished with 15 points on 7-of-9 shooting and seven
rebounds in 29 minutes for the Spurs, who have won five of their
last six games to move one-half game ahead of Phoenix for fourth
place in the West.

Scottie Pippen scored a season-high 25 points for the Blazers,
but followed his teammates' lead by virtually disappearing down
the stretch.

"Good teams find a way to win down the stretch," Pippen said.
"It was a good lesson for us to learn that we need to find a way
to execute down the stretch."

Portland has struggled mightily since having its season-high
11-game winning streak snapped and has lost four in a row at
home for the first time since February 1996.

The Blazers were swept by the Spurs in last season's conference
finals. They appeared on the verge of their third straight win
against San Antonio this season before faltering in crunch time.

"It was a very disappointing loss for us," Portland coach Mike
Dunleavy said. "It compounds the issue of what we are going
through. I don't see our guys panicking. Naturally, we want to
win every game but this is not as critical as the playoffs."

Avery Johnson scored 14 points for San Antonio, which fell
behind by as many as 11 points in the fourth quarter and was
down 82-75 with 3:37 remaining after Rasheed Wallace buried a
21-footer.

Stoudamire's technical free throw made it an eight-point bulge
before Duncan made a running jumper and two free throws around a
20-footer by Johnson to cut the deficit to 83-81 with 1:44 left.

After a turnover by Pippen, Duncan drew a foul from Wallace and
knotted the contest with two more from the line with 1:18 to go.
Duncan's go-ahead jumper was followed by two clutch free throws
apiece from Johnson and Mario Elie as the Spurs walked off the
Rose Garden floor with a hard-fought win.

San Antonio shot 48 percent (33-of-69), held a 43-32 advantage
on the boards and overcame 17 turnovers.

Wallace scored 17 points, Grant 11 and Steve Smith 10 for the
Blazers, who shot 40 percent (33-of-82) and committed just eight
turnovers.

Robinson scored 10 of the Spurs' first 15 points and he and
Duncan combined for 26 in the first half, giving San Antonio a
43-40 lead.

Portland appeared to gain the upper hand in the third period,
outscoring the Spurs, 26-18, to pull ahead, 66-61, entering the
fourth quarter.

Greg Anthony hit a free throw, Pippen a 20-footer and Anthony
followed with a 3-pointer as the Blazers opened a 74-63 lead
with 9:33 to play before the Spurs mounted their comeback.

"I usually don't challenge our guys," Popovich said. "We know
who we are. But tonight, hopefully it's a good sign for us.
Consistency is the thing we're after. We had it the entire year
last season and we're just finding it now."

"When you are in a funk, you find ways to lose games," Anthony
said. "It was not good execution. It was not good court
awareness and Duncan made tough shots. You are up 10 points
with four minutes to go. If you are executing down the stretch
and scoring, you put more pressure on them. We never put any
more pressure on them at that point."

[mikejones99]

great game, fuck is just a word so people should relax.

[polandprzem]

It's a harmless obsession.
It keeps me happy, keeps me distracted from things in my life that would otherwise make me unhappy.

Like I said, Duncan fascinates me. I love watching him play, the two and a half hours of game time are my escape. Like everyone does, I've got stuff in my life that's not fun to deal with. Duncan takes me out of that. I see nothing but good coming out of that. It's not avoidance, I deal with the shit I need to when I need to. But come tip off I disappear into the game and forget everything else. It works for me, it makes me better able to cope with the shit that is hard to cope with.

My problem was that, well I am fascinated with Tim as well, so every game I was lucky to see I was watching what Duncan was doing on the floor.
How he gets to low block, how he passes, how he runs, how he uses both hands to take adventage on offense etc.
It's pretty dfficult to make a recap what was going on on the floor and how everybody else were playing, were they switching on D or not and things like that.
:toast

[polandprzem]

"Good teams find a way to win down the stretch," Pippen said.
"It was a good lesson for us to learn that we need to find a way
to execute down the stretch."

Then it happend few weeks after that game ...