Small Bit about Duncan in Stein's Power Rankings.

[BillMc]

In today's ESPN power rankings, Marc Stein says:

Mr. Duncan threatens to become the first player EVER to average better than 17 and 9 this late in life.

http://espn.go.com/nba/powerrankings/_/year/2013/week/7


Impressive...and a little surprising. I thought Kareem was still putting up those numbers at 36. I only really recalled him falling off a statistical cliff at 38. But checking out basketball reference : http://www.basketball-reference.com/...abdulka01.html shows the Captain was still an elite scorer but his rebounding wasn't like Timmy's at this stage of the game.

Cheers to TD in uncharted territory.

[will_spurs]

Sadly Marc Stein has bad memory. Usually when talking about players performing well late in their career, the name Karl Malone should ring a bell. The Mailman was 36 when he averaged 25.5 and 9.5... actually better numbers than his MVP season the year before.

[timvp]

Sadly Marc Stein has bad memory. Usually when talking about players performing well late in their career, the name Karl Malone should ring a bell. The Mailman was 36 when he averaged 25.5 and 9.5... actually better numbers than his MVP season the year before.

Technically Duncan will turn 37 this season while Malone turned 37 after that season ended ........ so that could be Stein's reasoning.

Plus it was the heart of the steroid era when Malone "accomplished" that feat.





P.S.

FKM

[BillMc]

Sadly Marc Stein has bad memory. Usually when talking about players performing well late in their career, the name Karl Malone should ring a bell. The Mailman was 36 when he averaged 25.5 and 9.5... actually better numbers than his MVP season the year before.

Well, Stein (and I guess by proxy me) stand corrected. Yeah, I should have thought about Malone.

[FkLA]

Meh Malone was basically a mid range jump shooter off the pick and roll that sometimes kneed his way to the basket. Those arent really things that significantly diminish with age. Timmys showing is much more impressive imo.

[Arcadian]

Plus it was the heart of the steroid era when Malone "accomplished" that feat.

Is there any evidence that steroids were used in the NBA?

[will_spurs]

Technically Duncan will turn 37 this season while Malone turned 37 after that season ended ........ so that could be Stein's reasoning.

Well, he still had 3 great (and 1 nice) seasons after that, so it's not like Malone's production dropped off suddenly when he turned 37 either. He started his career much slower than Duncan, but he was a force until 39.

And there's a 3 month difference between their birthdays, so I'm not sure there's much to read into that anyway.

Plus it was the heart of the steroid era when Malone "accomplished" that feat.

I'm not going into that tbh. The fact stands that he got his MVP at age 33 and 35, and younger players didn't.

This being said, FKM