This goes back to the question of better basketball player vs. valuable to the team player. CP3 is very arguably the superior talent to TP with respect to court vision, passing ability, etc., but would CP3 have been willing to subordinate his game (assist, scoring, whatever is important to him) to fit into the Spur's system as Pop beat into TP in the early years of his career? Very few 'stars', imo, would have been willing to subordinate their games to that of another team member in the same way that TP did in his very early years when he had basically no role other than "bring the boll up the court and geev it to Teemy", who would then dribble it until he either scored or got double teamed, at which time he would pass the ball to a perimeter player for a shot?
Tp has never had the level of raw talent that Tim or Manu have had. But he took all the beatings from Pop and learned to do what Pop wanted done...again and again and again. I honestly can't see CP3 having gone along with that.