![]() No matter the intelligence of the opponent, or the fact they knew what was coming, nobody could stop Duncan’s pinpoint accuracy off the glass on medium-range jumpers.ĭuncan’s unstoppable bank shot played an instrumental role in the power forward piling up 26,496 points (15th all-time) on 50.6% accuracy. It’s actually a very accurate way to shoot, and more people should use it. “People work on their 3-pointers, their dunks or their step-backs. “I guess it’s just not cool,” Popovich said. Popovich certainly admired it, and often lamented its gradual disappearance from the modern game. ![]() Nonetheless, Auerbach, a Hall of Famer and winner of 16 titles, knew a little something about the game of basketball and would’ve delighted in watching Duncan wreck opponents with his patented bank shot. This mashup featuring Boston legend Red Auerbach seems fitting here because a month after the franchise changed his title from president to vice chairman of the board, the Celtics whiffed in the Draft lottery, missing on the shot to select Tim Duncan, despite holding the best odds (36.3%) of any team in the lottery. Croix so they could get to know one another. Popovich helped to plant those seeds with Duncan before the team even drafted him by visiting the forward for a few days in St. “I think the way Pop and Tim connected it also became a very caring environment.” “It wasn’t so regimented and rigid ,” Buford said. Buford explained to NBA.com that Duncan quickly “softened” the group. When Duncan arrived in San Antonio, the Spurs were already a veteran-laden team, operating in a regimented, militaristic fashion under Gregg Popovich. That kickstarted a decorated four-year college career at Wake Forest, culminating in the Spurs drafting Duncan No. I’ll never forget looking at Randolph Childress and saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got to go tell Odom not to redshirt this kid.’ We went down there and just told him.” ![]() “He was so even-keeled, and so competitive at the same time. “He was already playing like he belonged,” Duncan’s friend and Wake Forest teammate, Marc Blucas, told NBA.com. Croix as part of a basketball tour.īy 1993, a 17-year-old Duncan would step foot on campus at Wake Forest as the least-touted of the school’s three-man recruiting class.ĭuncan expected to redshirt, but his very first pick-up game on campus changed everything. Soon, the United States - specifically Wake Forest coach Dave Odom - would find out about the lanky kid from the islands after a group of American players visited St. Within a year of starting basketball, Duncan was already flashing potential at his high school, St. Before her passing, she made Duncan promise he’d obtain a college degree. That same year, his mother, Delysia Ione, would die from breast cancer. Like many other local swimmers, Duncan tried switching his training site to the ocean, but a fear of sharks pushed him out of the water.ĭuncan wouldn’t pick up a basketball until age 14. Croix as one of the most devastating hurricanes ever. That all stopped when Hugo, a Category 4 storm, hit St. Having learned to swim at an early age like most kids in the Virgin Islands, Duncan loved to swim competitively, and by 13, he had clocked some of the fastest times in the United States in the 400-meter freestyle. Croix, Virgin Islands in 1989, erasing his dreams of becoming an Olympic swimmer because it destroyed all the local pools, eventually pushing him to the basketball courts. Hurricane Hugo swept through Duncan’s hometown of St. ![]() That’s how Duncan became the only player to start for an NBA championship team in three separate decades. 1 pick of the 1997 NBA Draft played for 19 years, making 19 consecutive playoff appearances in which he walked away with five titles and three NBA Finals MVP awards, not to mention two regular-season NBA MVP awards. ![]() It’s true, Duncan played one of the most fundamentally sound games of his era, but the stoic big man routinely flexed a penchant for pulling off the amazing. There’s the power forward catching errant shots off the rim with one hand, and switching hands midair for the putback jam, or Duncan hauling in the seemingly impossible alley-oop on the inbounds play from Sean Elliot. There’s Duncan snagging a rebound, dribbling coast-to-coast and breaking down LeBron James with the crossover to get to the rack. There’s the off-balance shot over Shaq, the off-the-glass alley-oop to himself, and the monstrous one-handed jam over Ben Wallace - none of the plays necessarily “fundamental” by definition - but fundamentally great, nonetheless. Shaquille O’Neal’s nickname for Tim Duncan, “The Big Fundamental,” suggests boring and uninspiring, belying the beauty of the game orchestrated by arguably the best power forward to ever lace up a pair of sneakers. ![]()
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