NBA: 2000s All-Decade first team

First Team: F – Tim Duncan:

2000s Resume: 10 seasons, three NBA titles, two NBA Finals MVP awards, two regular season MVP awards, seven-time All-NBA First Team, three-time All-NBA Second Team, seven-time NBA All-Defensive First Team, three-time NBA All-Defensive Second Team, 10-time NBA All-Star, 21.4 PPG, 11.7 RPG, 3.3 APG and 2.3 BPG, 25.4 average PER

It’s hard to remember a time when Tim Duncan didn’t have an old man’s game and it’s even harder to remember that at one point, the idea that there’d ever be a greater player than David Robinson in San Antonio Spurs franchise history seemed ludicrous. But by drafting Tim Duncan first overall in 1997, the Spurs altered the course of their franchise forever, slowly becoming a model of success for the rest of the league to respect and try to imitate.

Though the confines of this decade exclude two of The Big Fundamental’s championships, Duncan in his prime was a sight to behold. He wasn’t overwhelmingly athletic like Kobe, he wasn’t a s**t-talker like KG and he wasn’t as flashy with the ball in his hands like Nash. But every calculated move Duncan made was unstoppable, almost like the game of basketball was simple math to him. The rest of the power forwards and centers in the league are still trying to figure that math out decades later.

Duncan and the Spurs have often been unfairly labeled as “boring,” but it’s only because they’re so consistently successful and play fundamentally superior basketball. The google-eyed face Duncan makes when he’s whistled for a call he disagrees with is easy to make fun of, but Duncan is one of the NBA’s all-time great winners, a top eight player of all time and in the first decade of the 2000s, was arguably the league’s best “power forward” as a two-way machine that got buckets, blocks, wins and championships.

Next: Shaquille O'Neal