Winning Is Fundamental: A #21 Gun Salute To Tim Duncan Upon His Retirement

Today we raise a glass to toast Timothy Theodore "Tim" Duncan, aka Big Fundamentals, aka Old Man Riverwalk, aka TD, aka TIMMAY, who retired yesterday with a legacy that was already in stone set for several years before we arrived here.

He retires as the best basketball player of his era, greatest power forward (unless he’s a center) ever, as well as best to lace ‘em up after Michael Jordan and before LeBron James.

Disagree?

Who You Got?

Don’t try to sell me on Shaq being that.

Shaq at his fiercest, like the 2001 near-perfect playoff season, in which he nearly caved in Dikembe Mutumbo's bird chest in for five straight painful NBA Finals games, was more dominant than Duncan, or just about anybody else who ever played for that matter.

But let's be real: Shaq dicked around a lot, also had considerably more glaring weaknesses in his game, played for six different franchises (more than any other great besides Moses), blew up bridges leaving each, missed far more time, and won a lot less.

Hakeem Olajuwon?

Dream On.

Kobe Bryant?

Don’t Make Me Laugh.

Timmy is a full tier above that ballhoggedy-chucker/borderline-sociopath.

Although the contrast between Kobe celebrating the finale of a season-long self-congratulatory retirement tour with an ad campaign during the NBA Finals in a helicopter wearing a Ghostbusters jumpsuit with his self-glossed bitten nickname on it, strapped with a proton pack attached, to be a sort of truth serum that's filled with Hi-C-Ecto-Cooler levels of delicious irony.

Because that is a fairly succinct commentary on the stylistic gap between these two players/personalities.

That’s also the type of gap the mainstream media, desperately wanted to use to differentiate Kevin Durant from LeBron James, blathering on endlessly about KD’s first (and last) OKC re-up compared to The Decision, but then also lapping up Kobe's revisionist history story of how being an asshole made his teams better.

Now that Bron has bona fides while KD left for his consecutive NBA Finalist, 73-win opposition, it’s back to the drawing board with that failed narrative for Durant.

That never really changed at any point when it came to Tim Duncan.

You really could make a fairly solid argument that Tim Duncan had more positive impact on the team that drafted him than anyone in the past half century post-Russell, including Magic and Michael and LeBron and Bird let alone Kobe.

None of them had anywhere near nineteen years as the centerpiece of a five-time champion franchise (the only titles in team history in either the ABA or NBA), while winning 60+ games each season, and a legit title contender in 16 of those years.

First man to be voted First Team All-NBA in each of his first 10 seasons.

The 3 (arguably could have been 5) time NBA Finals MVP, who gave us the best example of an individual-led NBA Championship in the modern era in 2003.

That 2003 season, played without any other teammates you could remotely call an All-Star at that time, a season in which Manu Ginobli was still a bench player in more than name only, David Robinson with a fork sticking out of his back, and 19-year-old Tony Parker was a rookie PG so skittish that Pop removed him for Speedy Claxton in crunch-time while a Young Stephen Jackson was the second option in the NBA Finals.

An NBA Finals in which the consecutive regular-season MVP Tim Duncan ended the New Jersey Nets with nearly a quadruple-double in the close-out including blocks.

People say that Duncan, and the Spurs teams crafted in his image, were boring.

I never understood that as an NBA fan.

The Spurs played several different brands of basketball during the Duncan era, some different enough that if you’re a basketball fan you’d almost have to enjoy one of them.

And please tell me who played in more memorable basketball games total over the past two decades than Tim Duncan and The Spurs versus…..the Lakers……Pistons…….Mavericks…..Suns…..Heat?!?

Timmy’s buzzer-beater on Shaq’s Phoenix squad in 2007?

Timmy’s not-quite-buzzer-beater-enough basket before DFish’s with .4 left in 2004?

That first half of Old Man Riverwalk Rim-Rattling/Rim-Narrowing Throwback Fury that he imposed on the Heat in 2013 Game 6 of the Finals?

Pop leaving Duncan off the floor to grab a rebound before Bosh kicked out to Ray Allen in the corner becoming one of this game's great "What If?" moments?

The blissfully incredulous look on his face during The Bob Horry Game in ’03?

Consoling Manu after his absolutely blowing Game 7 versus the Mavs in 2006?

Tim Duncan was boring?!?

Please.

Can’t you think of five to six trademark Duncan looks right now?

“FOUL?!? ON ME?!?!?”

Assume the clutch-and-protect rebound position.

The throw-back 23/21/game-winner from 2014?

The slouched head belying a quiet confidence and intensity that never had any time for Kevin Garnett’s studio-gangster nonsensical jawing?

Rubbing the top of his Little Buddy Tony “Pepe LePew” Parker’s head?

The Halloween Party

And who had more fun on the bench than Tim Duncan?

Getting Tossed For Laughing by Joey Crawford?

All fairly well embedded in most true NBA Fans memory.

As a matter of fact my own favorite Tim Duncan memory is a personal one, centering (seewutididthere) around this memorable moment turned .GIF of TD laughing in Dwight Howard's face after getting him tossed out of a second straight playoff game in the Spurs embarrassing sweep of the Lakers in L.A.

I arrived at a bar called South on Wilshire in Santa Monica to meet friends who were there primarily to watch a UFC fight that I couldn't care less about.

After getting there, my boy Castro casually mentions that Tim Duncan is chilling over in the room on the way to the men's room in the back.

With no intro I walk by his table, on my way to the men’s room in between fights, show him my phone then say 'Timmy, *thank you* for this .GIF' which I had just sent out in a text to a Laker Fan friend earlier that day, and then taking the phone back to scroll for its deal with it companion piece, while a bouncer at South starts rolling up on me like I'm trying to shoot the president, until Big Fundamental gives him the 'relax' look.

Tim starts laughing after examining both, gives me a pound, and I'm on my way.

Head to the men's room, a water closet as narrow as a walk-in closet, with a doorknob reachable from the sink I’m washing up, then turning to exit but nearly getting smacked in the face with the door swinging open, which gets stopped by my foot on pure reflex.

Look up to see Timmy again, this time with the 'did I just foul you, bro?' look on his mug, as we both exchange apologies, then let the other pass by.

As I'm exiting I can't resist, lean my head back around the door I'm exiting from, then say 'go get that fifth one, dude, that's the only way they're gonna get it, YOU are the best basketball player of this era, forget Shaq, and fuck Kobe'.

*Duncan gives off a bemused 'you mad?' grin as he settles into a space beyond the partition*

'Thanks man, appreciate that'

Departed the men's room so he could perform a fundamental duty in peace, before potentially going on to win another ring, which he would one year later.

When it comes to a player in my lifetime who did more to reward the franchise that drafted him, there fundamentally is no one greater.