The Weekside: The 3 great lessons of Tim Duncan

The long, illustrious career of Tim Duncan has come to a close. He had his bosses send out a press release to tell the world that didn’t even include a quote from the Hall of Famer himself.

It was the most Duncanesque end to the playing days of one of the finest to ever lace them up. In fact, there is no other player in history who “Duncanesque” could ever apply to in any way.

He was truly unique in a world where every new player is the Next Somebody or A Blend of This Guy With That Other One. There is nobody like Tim Duncan. He is an outlier in a sporting world where we are always looking for connections and comparisons.

Through it all, he entertained us, showed us a new way to dominate the sport, and he taught us so, so much. There are countless lessons to take away from the 19-year-career of the greatest San Antonio Spur, but here are three things the world has learned from Tim Duncan.

You Don’t Win Friends with Salad

There wasn’t a day in Tim Duncan’s career that he wasn’t great. He won Rookie of the Year and made First Team All-NBA in his first season. He won a title the following year. He has shared All-NBA honors with Michael Jordan and Anthony Davis, maintaining a level of excellence for a downright silly span of time. It’s like Jay Z was rhyming about Timmy when he said there’s never been nobody this good for this long.

Through it all, he never said much.

Tim didn’t really want the ancillary things that most sports stars do. That isn’t some credit to his character or a sign that he was able to sidestep vanity and the related pitfalls that most humans fall prey to. It’s simply a statement about his mental makeup. Even when he appeared in commercials and other money-making opportunities that come with such talent, he did not seem to be seeking the spotlight. More often, he hid from the fame that would normally come along with a career that, had he been in the military, would leave him with a jacket too heavy with medals to carry.

The young man entered the league the same way the heavily decorated graybeard left it: quietly. Jason Gay of the Wall Street Journal summed it up best: “I believe Duncan would have rather spent a season curled in the baggage hold of the team bus than collecting personalized rocking chairs and electric guitars from teams he tried to bury.”

Onlookers long labelled the Spurs boring because of this. I’ve always thought it was less boredom than it is something else. Duncan robbed people of what they want in sports and it left an un-fillable void.

The well-known secret about sports is that sports isn’t about sports. It’s about taking other aspects of society, culture, and life and proscribing our thoughts onto a sporting lens.

If you love Kobe, it’s because you love Gordon Gecko. If you love LeBron, it’s because you love Jay Z. If you love Steph Curry, it’s because you love Rudy.

But if you love Tim Duncan, it can only be because you love Tim Duncan.

He gave us nothing else.

Timmy’s public persona was and still is a blank canvas on which bank shot artistry came to life. He’s merely a defensively minded genius whose craftwork had to be appreciated in lieu of defining character avatars to latch onto. He’s a winner of trophies when the lights shine and a recluse when the game is over.

In the public eye, Tim Duncan was a basketball player and nothing more. Call that boring. For the rest of us, it’s why we love him all the more.

Get Your Rest

Tim Duncan took games off and stopped playing major minutes when he was 27 years old. It not only made him better in the playoffs, but it almost certainly lengthened his career. Is there any way the Spurs win a title when Duncan is 37 if this process hadn’t started a decade earlier?

“Duncan never sniffed the top 25 in minutes played in any season after 2002-03, and that the Spurs monitored his playing time obsessively, even incurring $250,000 fines if it meant giving their franchise player the rest he needed,” wrote Kevin Arnovitz of ESPN.

Arnovitz goes much deeper than Duncan, arguing that the NBA should have fewer than 82 games in its schedule, an obvious way to improve player health and game quality. That likely ain’t happening anytime soon. So teams that operate within reality should take matters into their own hands and start shortening the schedule themselves.

The marketing arm of the team will balk, but Duncan taught us that we need to give players more nights off.

Remember when LeBron went on a mid-season vacation and came back to turn around the Cavaliers franchise history over the following 18 months with back-to-back runs to the Finals with a ring on top? Most players can take three years off and not be as good as LeBron would perform after a back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back. But anyone can be a better version of themselves by getting a bit more sleep and not straining their muscles and ligaments way more than is necessary to figure out who the top 16 teams in the NBA are before the playoffs.

Duncan was a physical oddity, one of the few players to remain so good while being so old. But if more stars began sitting 10-12 games per year for solely rest reasons, everyone would be better during the gamest they do play. And careers would likely be stretched, allowing stars to maintain relatively high levels of play later into their mid- to upper-30s.

Be like Timmy. Call in sick to work.

Tim Duncan Is the Best Tim Duncan of All Time

Online sports media has evolved a little like Facebook. When blogs first hit, they were diverse in their approach to the game, and the debate was weirder. The coverage of the same league varied widely from one site to another. More than anything, the dozens — maybe hundreds — of small-time websites brought the bar stool and living room talk into the “printed” word.

The quirks of each player were discussed, and a lot of the conversation focused on who is better than who. Where does David Robinson stand in comparison to Patrick Ewing? Can Ray Allen shoot better than Reggie Miller? Who has the best crossover? Those were the topics we all liked to argue about during halftime or on the ride home from a thrilling game.

But eventually it stopped becoming fun. The mega-media companies jumped into the same swimming pool and began to rank the top 100 players in the NBA. The most famous sportswriter conducted an exhaustive investigation to put the best 100 ever in order. In very high profile ways, we began putting numbers on everyone, not just stats those that attempt to measure their contribution to the sport in some objective realm that doesn’t actually exist for any individual sports fan.

It all got very stuffy and overly serious. Somewhere along the lines, the dumb debates that were fun because they were unprovable — and more just an excuse to talk than ever an attempt to truly decide anything — became more than that. Humorless corporations turned banter into Serious Discussion. It was like waking up one day and realizing all your parents and bosses are on Facebook.

Tim Duncan’s late career helped show the pointlessness of it all.

I saw many people, on Twitter especially, go out of their way to say that, “Tim Duncan is in my top five all time” after he retired.

I hate to break it to you, but nobody actually cares.

Duncan, more than anyone else we’ve seen fade from the game in recent memory, doesn’t need any number beside his name. He is the superstar who shows the naked stupidity of these debates.
We all know he certainly doesn’t even care. And if Tim Duncan doesn’t care, why should you?

There isn’t anyone to compare Tim Duncan with. He’s just Tim Duncan. He was unique in this sports world for two decades, behaving, playing, and winning in a manner that nobody ever has. He changed over time and has the admiration of everyone who was lucky enough to be on his team. His Hall of Fame coach is as appreciative of Timmy as anyone.

That’s how we should be.

Don’t rank him. Just thank him.