Duncan's Greatness Definitely Wasn't Handed To Him

[mystargtr34]

Parker is the best finishing Point Guard in the entire league... but its fair to say he is an average passer for the PG position.

[Allanon]

And he has done it without John Stockton. He had no Kobe Bryant or Dwyane Wade or even Penny Hardaway. He had no Steve Nash.

Duncan has had no point guard, is what I'm saying.

It's a great article on Duncan but inaccurate in terms of point guard. Duncan's always had better point guards than Shaq. The last really good Point Guard the Lakers had was Magic. Maybe Van Exel but he got traded away too quickly.

[ShoogarBear]

Reminds me once again of Robinson saying we will all realize we took him for granted once he is gone.

I presume Robinson said this about Duncan, not about himself.

[duncan228]

I presume Robinson said this about Duncan, not about himself.

Yes, he was talking about Duncan.

[mystargtr34]

It's a great article on Duncan but inaccurate in terms of point guard. Duncan's always had better point guards than Shaq. The last really good Point Guard the Lakers had was Magic. Maybe Van Exel but he got traded away too quickly.

you cant be this dumb.. or is just ignorance ? Being that you started watchin basketball in the last couple years i would assume you realise that now days its not just Point Guards who can create. Penny Kobe and D-Wade were better than nearly all point guards at their respective times at creating openings for everyone, Shaq included when he played with them.

God.

[Deuces88]

This article points out the obvious. Parker is a shoot-first PG. The real "PG" is actually Duncan. The guy is just a friggin great passer. If you sit and watch a Spurs game and watch Duncan's passing carefully, you'll see how efficient he is. His passes are rarely picked off.

I guess he developed these good passing skills because he is double-teamed a lot throughout his season and he has taught himself to find the open man very quickly. But, you cannot deny he has great court vision. The only reason he doesn't get a lot of assists on the stat sheet is because even when he gets people like Parker or Ginobili open, they either miss the jumper or drive to the basket. It must be nice for a slasher to have an open lane frequently when the big man draws the defense so well.

[mrspurs]

poor ole timmy..if he had just half the speed and bounce some of the other nba stars have....timmy would be unstoppable....its hard work that got timmy here....someone said shaq shot over 2000 freethrows in playoffs...but cos he didnt care to work on it...he still sucks...work work work.......go spurs go

[timvp]

Eh, I don't like that article. Once upon a time the article was true but no longer. Ginobili and Parker do a lot of heavy lifting for this team. The Hornets series pretty much proved that Duncan can play like complete crap and the Spurs still can ride Ginobili and Parker to wins.

Duncan is a great, great player and probably a top five player of all time and a top three player today ......... but he doesn't do it by himself.

[diego]

parker does set up tim. as much as a nash or stockton set up their respective bigmen? no, but he does it. so does manu. and oberto too.

the thing is that timmy is seldom covered in a way that allows you to just run him off a screen for an easy layup, and hes not athletic enough to be getting "easy" oops all game.

and i think duncan's career will be extended by that. tim always has those "quiet" double-double games where the other team never leaves him alone, and he doesnt do anything "spectacular", but he still manages to control the game without dominating the ball. he will continue to be the ultimate decoy for tony parker, as teams will always prefer to test parkers jumpshot or finley's defense (etc., not picking on those guys!) than to flat out challenge tim duncan.

[SpursIndonesia]

That's exactly what i'm trying to tell, LJ. If the context is pre 2007 Spurs, then it's quite true bagging in Tony for his lack of playoff contribution, but this year Tony ?

Tony doesn't do playmaking like Nash or CP, but that's already described frequently as a design by Pop himself. And we do know that the current collection of Spurs players, they're not exactly 40" leaper athletes, so we can't really compare situation beetween PG from other teams, whice were given free reign, the matching teammates & system to play with.

Rather than the Duncans, the Spurs have developed into a true big three powered team as of now, and the NO series prove that notion exactly. TD's still the franchise player & the Spurs foundation, but Tony and Manu have clearly added more stakes into this team equation, no doubt.