2000: Shaq
2001: Shaq
2002: Shaq/Duncan
2003: Duncan
2004: Duncan/Garnett
2005: Duncan
2006: Duncan/Kobe
2007: Kobe/LeBron
2008: LeBron
2009: LeBron
2010: LeBron
2011: LeBron
2012: LeBron
2013: LeBron
2014: LeBron
2015: LeBron
2016: LeBron/Curry
He would have been Finals MVP had the Spurs won (i.e. had Pop left him in the game to grab the le-clinching rebound).
Finals MVP level at ages 21 and 37. One of a kind.
2000: Shaq
2001: Shaq
2002: Shaq/Duncan
2003: Duncan
2004: Duncan/Garnett
2005: Duncan
2006: Duncan/Kobe
2007: Kobe/LeBron
2008: LeBron
2009: LeBron
2010: LeBron
2011: LeBron
2012: LeBron
2013: LeBron
2014: LeBron
2015: LeBron
2016: LeBron/Curry
You're re ed.
It would have been VERY close between TP and Duncan. I was sure Duncan was going to get FMVP at halftime, though. He had 30 and 10 at halftime. Why didn't we force feed him the entire second half? In the first half he was anally owning Chris Anderson, Bosh, Battier and whoever else they tried to guard him with.
But Duncan had what... 4 points and 4 rebounds in the second half and overtime combined? That's the definition of an all-time clutch performer... UMM... and then the epic game 7 miss that will always define his career
Dudes arguing over who the greatest is between Kobe V Duncan V Lebron like the way religious s argue over which god is the real god. I hope you all befriend JR Smith and go for a ride on the town.
Bull . For a player THAT accomplished with so many epic moments and clutch performances, why would one bad play define his career? Only an irrational hater would say something like that (or someone who primarily watched him post-prime).
I won't try to make excuses for his second half lack of continued dominance, but there was already one in your post...gameplan had something to do with it. And he was ing 37 years old, so you give him a break at that point. If a 30-10 first half from a 37-year-old isn't enough to secure a win, your team has bigger problems.
Nobody is a legend because they had an all-time great first half in the Finals. It's the 4th quarter that matters...
I'd say Duncan gets too much praise for his tranquil, nice-guy act, while Kobe gets too much popular hatred for "raping" a skank who clearly had emotional problems and wanted money...
You mean like game 7 of the Detroit series when Duncan put the Spurs on his back? Or the entire 03 run? Or the entire 99 run?
But let's judge a player at 37 years old. Lebron actually suck because of the 11 series. When did Kobe had a good finals? Orlando was barely average for a superstar. Jordan's wizard years, magic post hiv, bird with bad back. Yeah, let's s judge the players at their worst. Re .
Bird, Jordan and Kobe each were world dominator status for a lot longer than Duncan.
And moving goal post again.
It was: 4th quarter of finals only, and only when they sucked.
Now: totally subjective criteria with nothing to back up.
Neither Bird nor Kobe ever got the advanced stats Duncan had but they were bigger dominators. .
People putting rookie Lebron at best.
Just like the vibrator dominating you booty hole.
You don't even need advanced stats to see Duncan's superiority. Just based on the eye test, watching the Spurs offense of just dumping the ball to him in the post while anchoring the league's top defense at the same time is enough evidence to conclude that Tim was better.
2000-2002: Shaq
2003: Duncan
2004: KG
2005: ???(KG didn't make the playoffs, Duncan's feet issues, Shaq was on the decline)
2006: Wade
2007-14: LeBron
2015: Curry
2016: LeBron
2017: Dominos
2000-2001 Shaq
2002-2006 Duncan
2007-2016 Lebron
2017 - ? One of the three SFs in the league. None of them will win MVP despite having the best records in the league due to narrative and cir stances, but one of them is going to take it by year ends.
Kawhi might be too young though. Hopefully, not Durant... that as .
UNT with some of the worst takes in Spurstalk history in this thread.
Duncan's 2003 season is one of the top 5 seasons by any player in NBA history. He led a team of run downs and nobodies that would have been a 30 win team without him to an NBA le in dominant fashion.
@dsf was asking for objective measures, so I just pulled up advanced stats as an example.
But since you are on it, let's state some #s:
Duncan led the league in ws twice, OWS once, DWS 5 times, DBPM once, BPM once and VORP once.
In the playoffs, he led the league in PER twice, DRB% once, BLK% once, OWS twice, DWS and DBPM once, WS twice, WS/48 once, BPM and VORP twice.
Kobe led the league in usage rate 3 thrice (can you say chucker?). In the playoffs, he led it in WS once (not ws/48)
Larry Bird fared much better. OWS once, DWS 4 times, WS and WS/48 twice, BPM and VORP four times (and in a row, very impressive).
In the playoffs: OWS twice, DWS three times , WS twice and WS/48 once, OPBM once, BPM thrice, and VORP 5 times.
Duncan's got higher peak numbers though.
You are a troll. You're here to discredit Spurs and Duncan very subtly.
About the revisionist history from '16. Most had Curry as the best player in the league until the back half of the Finals, only to pretend that was never the case and it was always James.
Also, if James is going to get a free pass for not being the best in the regular season (and he hasn't been since '13), then why is '04-'07 Duncan not afforded the same respect?
- O'Neal '00-'02
- Duncan '02-'08
- James '08-current
- I'm going James until he can no longer summon a level that no other current player can, in the games/series it's needed most, in the playoffs.
- Durant has the ideal context to have the most efficient shooting season and exert the most effort on defense, in his career. That doesn't make him any better a player than he's been in recent seasons though.
- Curry's stature makes it so that he just can't affect the game enough defensively/rebounding wise.
Exactly. Trolls like UNT (whatever the his name is, don't give enough of a about him to even write it correctly) won't give Duncan the same respect everyone is giving Lebron James.
Duncan was the best player in '99, then Shaq took over for a couple of years, then TD again from '02 - '07 (maybe you can make a case for '08, but I guess I better give Kobe at least one of those years, or maybe '08 is where James started to take over).
Duncan's 2003 season (welp... actually just the second half of it + the entire playoffs) was fabulous no doubt, but you could argue Kawhi is having an even better year than that as a lone-wolf star this season (Kawhi only has one less 30 point game than Duncan had in 2003 this year, and we've got almost half the season to play).
I wouldn't call the 2003 le "dominant fashion" by any means... on the contrary, it was one of the least "dominant" championships of the last quarter century, maybe better than Miami '06 and Boston '08, but not much else. How many times were we on the brink of losing it all in 2003, in the playoffs alone? How many leads did we cough up or almost cough up because our offense was oft-dreadful that year? We were a very gritty and determined team that year and generally outstanding on defense, but we were FAR from world beaters. It wasn't at all like '99 or '07 where we buzzsawed our way through to the trophy.
, we were a little over half a 4th quarter away from going down 0-2 losing both home games to the #8 Phoenix Suns who had beaten us 4 out of 5 times that year up to that point, the only win for us being a regular season home win in overtime. That "Skunker 8" would have been an awful way to end David's career. Phoenix wasn't done with us, they tied the series 2-2 after we coughed up a 17 point 4th quarter lead in Phoenix. After finally getting through those pesky s, we faced the Lakers, against which we coughed up an 18 point lead in game 4 and lost, and were a lucky Horry in-and-out-and-back-in-and-back-out miss from coughing up a 27 point lead en route to a devastating 2-3 series deficit going back to LA which surely would have been the death knell for us. Then against the Mavs we coughed up near 20 point leads at home... TWICE, losing both times though we performed amazingly well in Dallas that year. Then we played the Nets in the Finals, a talent-starved team that had been swept easily by the Lakers the previous June. Instead, we won a very tough 6 game series in which we had to come back from 10 down almost midway through the 4th quarter to prevent game 7.
The complete an hesis of a "dominant fashion" NBA le, and largely had to do with Parker being an inconsistent turnover machine, Manu wasn't Manu just Emanuel Gee-noh-BEE-lee back then, SJax was hit or miss, Claxton had limited talent but was often better than Parker, and the rest of the team save for Duncan was just old. But they found a way and Duncan was fantastic that year.
Other than 2003 though, there's no way you can truly justify Duncan being the best player in the NBA in any other year. Manu was so often the better player in 2005, and that team was overall better and more well-rounded than 2003. By 2007, Duncan had lost his status as best player on the team after entering his post-prime in 2006 due to the foot injury that slowed him down for good.
Jesus Christ. All that energy to misunderstand what I said. Duncan was dominant, you dork, not the team. That team was the worst team we've had since pre-1998 and it won a le. None of what you said changes the fact that that was a 30 win team without Duncan on it.
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