by Simmons Bill
Dad made a face. He played with his hair. He seemed confused. “A whole column on Tim Duncan?”
“You wouldn’t read it?”
“I don’t think so. I’d see the headline, skim the first two paragraphs, and flip to the next article.”
“Seriously? He’s the best player of the past ten years!”
“Nahhhhhhh,” Dad maintained. “Nobody wants to read about Tim Duncan. He’s not that interesting.”
At least that’s what Dad keeps telling himself. Duncan’s prowess had been a sore subject with him (and me) since the 1997 lottery, when the Celtics had a 36 percent chance of landing the first pick and San Antonio plucked it away.50 Our lost savior carried the Spurs to four titles over the next decade, a number that could have stretched to six if not for Fisher’s miracle shot in 2004 and Nowitzki’s heroic three-point play in 2006. What did we miss besides a slew of 58-win seasons and a few titles? For starters, the chance to follow the most consistent superstar in NBA history: just year after year of 23–12’s, 25–13’s and 21–11’s with 50% shooting. He kicked things off by submitting one of the best postmerger debut seasons: 21–12, 271 stocks, 56 wins, first-team All-NBA and Rookie of the Year. He captured a title in his second season, succeeding McHale and Hakeem as the Dude with the Most Low-Post Moves Who Should Be Double-Teamed at All Times. And it went from there. His placid demeanor never wavered, nor did his trademark shot (an old-school banker off the glass). Still chugging along as a top-five player after 1,000-plus regular-season and Playoffs games, he made up for the natural erosion in physical skills with an ever-expanding hoops IQ; he’s been the league’s smartest player for nearly his entire career. 51 If there’s a major difference between Young Duncan and Older Duncan, it’s how he kept improving as a help defender and overall communicator. Whenever I watch the Spurs in person, that’s the first thing I always notice: how well they talk on defense. It’s a friendly, competitive chatter, like five buddies maintaining a running dialogue at a blackjack table as they figure out ways to bust the dealer. Duncan remains the hub of it all, the oversize big brother looking out for everyone else, the one who always seems to be throwing an arm around a teammate’s shoulder. He’s their defensive anchor, smartest player, emotional leader, crunch-time scorer and most competitive gamer, one of those rare superstars who can’t be measured by statistics alone. Fifty years from now, some stat geek will crunch numbers from Duncan’s era and come to the conclusion that Duncan wasn’t better than Karl Malone. And he’ll be wrong.
Now, I’m not a fan of the whole overrated/underrated thing. With so many TV and radio shows, columnists, bloggers and educated sports fans around, it’s nearly impossible for anything to be rated improperly anymore. But I say Tim Duncan is underrated. You know what else? I say he’s wildly underrated. Four rings, two MVPs, three Finals MVPs and nine first-team All-NBA nods …
and he’s still going strong. Do you realize his best teammates were Robinson (turned thirty-three in Duncan’s rookie year), Ginobili (never a top-fifteen player) and Tony Parker (ditto)? Or that he never played for a dominant team because the Spurs were always trapped atop the standings, relying on failed lottery picks, foreign rookies, journeymen, aging vets and head cases with baggage for “new” blood? Maybe that’s one reason we failed to appreciated him: he never starred for a potential 70-win juggernaut that generated a slew of regular season hype. Another reason: even at his peak, he always had a little too much Pete Sampras in him. He lacked Shaq’s sense of humor, Kobe’s singular intensity, KG’s menacing demeanor, Iverson’s swagger, LeBron’s jaw-dropping athleticism, Wade’s knack for self-promotion, Nash’s fan-friendly skills or even Dirk’s villainous fist pump. The defining Duncan quality? The way he bulged his eyes in disbelief after every dubious call, a grating habit that became old within a few years. His other “problem”
was steadfast consistency. If you keep banging out first-class seasons with none standing out more than any other, who’s going to notice after a while?
There’s a precedent: once upon a time, Harrison Ford pumped out monster hits for fifteen solid years before everyone suddenly noticed, “Wait a second—Harrison Ford is unquestionably the biggest movie star of his generation!” From 1977 to 1992, Ford starred in three Star Wars movies, three Indiana Jones movies, Blade Runner, Working Girl, Witness, Presumed Innocent and Patriot Games, but it wasn’t until he carried The Fugitive that everyone realized he was consistently more bankable than Stallone, Reynolds, Eastwood, Cruise, Costner, Schwarzenegger and every other peer. As with Duncan, we knew little about Ford outside of his work. 52 As with Duncan, there wasn’t anything inherently compelling about him. Ford only worried about delivering the goods, and we eventually appreciated him for it.
Will the same happen for Duncan someday? It’s not like he lacks numbers or credentials. He closed out a ’99 Lakers sweep against Shaq with a 37–14–4 and a 33–14–4 in Games 3 and 4, averaged a 27–14 in the ’99 Finals, and became the second-youngest player to win Finals MVP. He carried a truly underwhelming supporting cast53 to a high 2002 playoff seed by topping 3,200
minutes, 2,000 points, 1,000 boards, 300 assists, and 200 blocks by season’s end. In the ’02
playoffs, battling the two-time defending champs with a crappy team and Robinson missing the first two games, Duncan averaged a 29–17–5 in a five-game loss to eventual champ L.A. (superior to Shaq’s 21–12–3). During one seven-game stretch against the Lakers and Mavericks in the ’03
Playoffs, he averaged a 31–17–6 (and closed out Shaq’s team with a 37–16–4). 54 He cruised to a 2003 Finals MVP by throttling Jersey with a 24–17–5, closing the Nets out with a near quadruple double (a should-have-been-legendary 21–20–10–8) and getting little help from an aging Robinson (playoffs: 7.8 PPG, 6.6 RPG) or anyone else (Parker, Ginobili and Stephen Jackson combined for less than 37 PPG and shot 40 percent combined). After a discouraging summer in 2004 (Fisher’s shocker and a crushing Olympics defeat), 55 a visibly worn Duncan adopted Pedro Serrano’s bald/goatee look, fought through nagging injuries and led the Spurs over Detroit in a choppy Finals, winning Finals MVP by default despite Ben Wallace and Rasheed Wallace tag-teaming him for seven games. (Phoenix’s Mike D’Antoni summed it up best: “[Duncan] is the ultimate winner, and that’s why they’re so good…. I hate saying it, but he’s the best player in the game.” Translation: Duncan is so good, I just threw my 2005 MVP under the bus.) When he captured a fourth title with his best Spurs team (2007), he officially grabbed the “greatest power forward ever” belt. For his first twelve years of his career, Duncan was never not one of the league’s top three most untradeable players. 56
And yet … you’re not totally sold. You remember Shaq bulldozing everyone for three straight Finals. You remember Hakeem grabbing the center torch in ’94 and ’95. You remember Moses carrying Philly in the “Fo Fo Fo” season, beating up Kareem and putting up that crazy 51–32 game in 1981. You don’t really remember Duncan going Keyser Söze on anyone. That’s what bothers you. To be ranked this high, you had to kick a little ass, right? (Here’s my counter: Look at his 2003 season again. He left a trail of asses. It’s true.) But really, that’s what made him more special than anything—like Bird, Russell and Magic, he always saved his A-game for when his team desperately needed it. The perfect Duncan game? Twenty-two points, 13 rebounds, 3 blocks, get everyone else involved, anchor the defense, win by 10, everyone goes home. He didn’t give a crap about stats. He really didn’t. Remember when the media stupidly voted Parker the 2007 Finals MVP? Nobody was happier for him than Duncan. That’s what makes Duncan great. If you want to play the “What unique trait will we remember about him?” card, go with this one: he could also play any style. During the deadly slow-it-down, grind-it-out, defense-beats-offense era (1999–2004), Duncan won two titles. During the transition period as everyone adjusted to the new rules (2005–6, when the NBA called hand checking and allowed moving picks), he won a third title. In the drive-and-dish/offense-beats-def
ense/smallball era, he won a fourth crown and excelled as one of the few big guys polished enough to punish players down low and talented enough to guard quicker players on the other end. For the purposes of this book, he made everyone else better and came through when it mattered. I don’t know what’s left.
You would have wanted to play with Tim Duncan. The man had no holes. Except for the fact that my dad probably skipped this section of the book and went right to Wilt.
6. WILT CHAMBERLAIN
Resume: 14 years, 13 quality, 13 All-Stars … MVP: ’60, ’66, 67, ’68 … runner-up: ’62, ’64
… Finals MVP (’67, ’72) … ’60 Rookie of the Year … Top 5 (’60, ’61, ’62, ’64, ’66, ’67, ’68), Top-10 (’63, ’65, ’72) … first 3-year peak: 43–24–4 … second 2-year peak: 24–24–8 …
3-year Playoffs peak: 32–27–4 (35 G) … leader: scoring (7x), rebounds (11x), total assists (1x), FG% (9x), minutes (8x) … season records: 50.4 PPG, 27.2 RPG, 72.7% FG … career records: 30.1 PPG, 22.9 RPG, 50-plus games (118), most points (100), most rebounds (55); consecutive scoring titles (7) … career: rebounds (1st), points (4th), minutes (4th) … 30–22
for 10 straight seasons … best player on 1 champ (’67 Sixers) and 1 runner-up (’64
Warriors), 2nd-best player on one champ (’72 Lakers) and 3 runner-ups (’69, ’70, ’73
Lakers) … 30K-20K Club (only member)
We already said more than enough about the Dipper, although his ’67 and ’72 seasons remain a testament to the “Wilt could have been the greatest player ever if he knew what he wanted”
argument. Last winter I met a longtime Celtics fan named Paul Kelleher, one of those classic Boston Irish old guys with white hair and a kicking accent. He had been coming to the Garden since the fifties. Of course, I had to ask him about Russell and Chamberlain. His response: “Wilt was the most talented player I ever saw, but Russell just wanted it more.” And I thought, “Great—I wasted a ten-thousand-word chapter explaining what this guy just summed up in one sentence.”
But that was a nice way to put it. 57
Still, I couldn’t let the book slip away without passing along one dissenting opinion about Wilt, so I enlisted my friend Chuck Klosterman58 and gave him five hundred words. Here’s what he wrote.
Nobody ever rooted for Goliath when he was alive, but I feel for him now that he’s dead. How can you not? Wilt Chamberlain is the archetype of a tragic figure—a widely criticized, universally unappreciated, self-destructive coach-killer who happens to be the greatest tangible basketball player of all time. I can’t think of any other athlete whose reputation is so vastly inferior to his actual achievements. Are there any other two-time NBA champions who are perceived as failures by virtually all basketball historians? I can’t think of one. Is it reasonable for a man to average 50.4 points a game while finishing second in the MVP voting?
It is not. But this is Wilt’s legacy (and it always will be).
The problem, of course, is my use of the word “tangible.” Anything described as “tangibly good” is inferred to mean “intangibly flawed.” This is why Chamberlain always loses in any comparison with Bill Russell. Russell possessed intangible greatness, which means sportswriters can make him into whatever metaphor they desire. Russell was the central figure for a superior franchise, so history suggests he was the greater, more meaningful force. His wins validate everything. If you side with Chamberlain, it seems like you’re siding with the absurdity of numbers. But consider this question: In an alternative universe (and with a different attitude), could Chamberlain have been Russell? Probably. Could Russell have been Wilt? Never. No chance. Chamberlain is the only human who could have ever been Chamberlain.
Basketball was a different game in the 1960s, so certain statistical anomalies are irrelevant. But get this: In 1961–62, Chamberlain scored 60 or more points in fifteen different games. Michael Jordan accomplished that five times in his professional life. Since his retirement in 1973, no player’s single-season rebound average has equaled Chamberlain’s clip for the totality of his 1,045-game career (22.9). 59 You can come up with these kinds of factoids all night; Wilt’s numerical dominance is so profound that people have stopped thinking about it. And even when they do, it tends to work against him: when writers cite the year Chamberlain led the league in assists, it’s generally used to show how Wilt was confused (he seemed to believe piling up assists proved he was unselfish, which is kind of like claiming you’ve slept with 20,000 women to prove you were interesting). He just didn’t get it. He didn’t understand team dynamics or the reality of perception. But how much does that matter now? If Chamberlain’s personal statistics are moot, so are Russell’s achievements within the context of his team. They’re both historical footnotes. The real question is this: who was better in a vacuum? If we erase the social meaning of their careers—in other words, if we ignore the unsophisticated cliché that suggests the only thing valuable about sports is who wins the last game of the season—which of these two men was better at the game?
It’s possible the answer is still Russell. But everything tangible points to Wilt.60
5. LARRY BIRD
Resume: 13 years, 10 quality, 12 All-Stars … Finals MVP: ’84, ’86 … MVP: ’84, ’85, ’86 …
BS MVP (’81) … Runner-up: ’81, ’82, ’83, ’88 …’80 Rookie of the Year … Top 5 (’80, ’81,
’82, ’83, ’84, ’85, ’86, ’87, ’88), Top 10 (’90) … All-Defense (2x) … leader: threes (2x), FT%
(4x) … 5-year peak: 28–10–7, 51% FG, 90% FT … 4-year Playoffs peak: 27–10–7, 50% FG, 90% FT (84 G) … ’84 Finals: 27–14–3 … ’86 Finals: 24–10–10 … ’87 Playoffs: 27–10–9, 43.9
MPG (23 G) … career: 24–10–6, 50% FG, 88.6% FT (9th ) … highest career APG, forwards (6.1) … Playoffs: 24–10–6.5, 89% FT … best player on 3 champs (’81, ’84, ’86 Celts) and two runner-ups (’85, ’87) … member of ’92 Dream Team … 20K Point Club.
And you worried this book would be biased? Hah! The Bird-Magic argument mirrors Oscar-West because we reached a definitive conclusion—Oscar was better than West (1965), Bird was better than Magic (1986)—that shifted improbably over the second half of their careers. Would you rather have nine transcendent seasons from Bird, followed by a four-year stretch where he wasn’t remotely the same (and missed 60 percent of his games), or a twelve-year stretch of A-plus Magic seasons without a dip in impact? I’d rather have those three extra Magic years. And if I get struck by lightning or a telephone pole falls on me, so be it. 61
We covered Bird’s brilliance in the prologue but didn’t delve into his numbers enough. Bird filled box scores to the degree that Boston reporters started a fantasy league modeled after Bird’s all-around brilliance in 1984 or 1985; as far as I can discern, it was the first of its kind. They threw in money, drafted teams of players, added up their points, rebounds and assists (the 42 Club premise, basically), and the team with the highest total took the prize. Since Bird was the obvious number one pick, they called it the Larry Bird League. Larry even drew their draft order for the first few years—or so they claimed. When people are creating fantasy leagues and naming them after you, you’re breaking new ground, no? So how do we measure that impact? I created a simple formula that’s the bastard cousin of the 42 Club—add up a player’s final placements in the NBA’s yearly rankings for points, rebounds and assists per game. The lower the number, the better. For instance, Bird ranked second in points, eighth in rebounds and nineteenth in assists in 1985. So …
2 + 8 + 19 = 29.
That’s a better score than you think. If we made 33 the cutoff point, limited the list to players who made the top twenty in all three categories, only counted post-Russell players62 and called it the Legends Club, only eleven post-1969 seasons qualify: 1976 Kareem (18), 1972 Kareem (21), 2003
Garnett (24), 1986 Bird (25), 1974 Kareem (26), 1979 Kareem (26), 1985 Bird (27), 1984 Bird (30), 1970 Billy Cunningham (31), 1981 Bird (32), 1982 Bird (
33). That’s it. Magic didn’t make it. Neither did Jordan or LeBron. Bird made it four times and nearly five (with 35 in 1987). He’s also one of three players to crack the top fifty all-time in the three most relevant per-game career categories. As well as the top 75. And the top 100. And the top-125.
Bird: 24.3 PPG (16th), 6.3 APG (41st), 10.0 RPG (46th)
Wilt: 30.1 PPG (2nd), 4.4 APG (126th), 22.9 RPG (1st)
Oscar: 25.7 PPG (9th), 9.5 APG (4th), 7.5 RPG (129th)
Elgin: 27.4 PPG (4th), 13.5 RPG (10th), 4.3 APG (133rd)
Garnett (ongoing): 20.2 PPG (53rd), 11.1 RPG (29th), 4.3 APG (135th) Cunningham: 21.2 PPG (35th), 10.4 RPG (37th), 4.3 APG (137th)
Magic: 19.5 PPG (63rd), 7.2 RPG (145th), 11.2 APG (1st)
And we didn’t even mention that he’s the ninth-best free throw shooter ever (89 percent), or that he came within a heartbeat of being the only member of the career 50–40–90 Percentage Club (finishing with 50% FG, 38% 3FG, and 89% FT). That’s the crazy thing about Bird: his game was never about stats, but nobody put up numbers quite like his. So there you go. Allow me three lingering Bird-related what-ifs that don’t include the name Len Bias, just for kicks.
No. 1: What if Bird’s back had held up? Five Hall of Famers were fascinating from a “How long could they have kept going at a reasonably high level if they hadn’t been sidetracked or retired prematurely?” standpoint. Stockton and Havlicek could have prospered as role players into their mid-forties; they were physical freaks along the lines of Jaclyn Smith still looking boinkable after she turned sixty. Magic would have reinvented himself as a power forward had HIV not derailed him, and since he loved the limelight too much to walk away, his last few seasons could have been more depressing than Pacino/De Niro in Righteous Kill. McHale’s Panda Express menu could have worked forever had his legs held up; he could have gone on low-post autopilot. And Bird would have happily evolved into an overseer/faciliator (his role on the ’91 and ’92 Celts when he wasn’t in traction), hanging out on the perimeter, launching threes, swinging the ball, feeding big guys and soaking in the “Lar-ree!” chants. Like Matt Bonner on his greatest day ever. This would have kept going until he turned forty-five or became bored, whichever happened first. Ironically, Bird’s skill set lent itself to an unusually long career even though his back believed otherwise. 63