I struggled for months. Literally. Months. I waffled between a lot of different subjects trying to decide what my first blog post was going to be about. Would it be about this new ridiculous movement to hand out more T's than Ford. The new softness of the NBA. This weird camaraderie that we have going on in the league thats borderline weirder then Magic and Isaiah's first kiss. Literally, millions of story lines could have been explored until I finally settled on Tim Duncan. Fitting. Fitting because Timmy D is going to be, by all accounts the greatest Powerforward, and one of the top 5 forwards ever, with a fundamental game that people settle for but don't prefer to see.
This particular season has been one of the more interesting seasons that we've seen in a while. With so many exciting and new faces, it feels like the future is trying to hurry up and forget about the past. We'd rather see Blake Griffin put up great rookie numbers and dunk on people like Dominique on HGH all the while falling out of the playoffs on a 30 win clipper team. We adored Kevin Love's Moses Malone impression so much that we almost ignored the fact that the Wolves are a terrible 17-64. Meanwhile the Spurs are contending for best record in the league. Although Tim Duncan has experience a down year, its the intangibles that make the "Big Fundamental" the greatest ever. By no means are Manu and Parker hall of fame candidates - although Manu will go down as one of the best foreign players ever. They have no player in the top 30 in scoring. Timmy is 13th in rebounding, and tony parker, the 07 finals MVP meanwhile ranks 14th in assists. Kevin Love leads the league in rebounding. Blake Griffin leads the league in "omg" factor. Theres something missing here.
Karl Malone, Charles Barkley, Kevin Garnet and Dirk. What do they have in common? Well, they all have MVP trophies, but so does Timmy. No. Add up their championship rings and 4 of the greatest powerforwards of all time can't even say they match him...combined. Even if you discount the two rings that Timmy won with David Robinson - even though the last championship they could've replaced David Robinson with that guy from the street ball court - he still has more championships, and finals mvp's than the four have combined. KG wasted some prime years on some poor teams, but if you sit there and tell me that KG's teams were that much better than Timmy's I'd respectfully disagree. If ESPN paid me I'd run down the numbers why Tim Duncan was the greatest. Why Timmy is one of the few players to capture mvp, and finals mvp in the same year. Why hes one of the few to have a finals mvp and rookie of the year trophy in the same year. Why Karl Malone played with one of the top 5 pg's of all time, and they couldn't get it done when Jordan was gone. Or why Charles Barkley forced a trade after playing with Moses, and a last legged Dr J to go to a 50 win suns team. Then played with Hakeem and Clyde and still came up short. Why Dirk has two MVP's and has been on countless 50-60 win teams, and coughed up his best chance in an albeit controversial Finals series. Why KG ran into the road block of the Lakers/Spurs. Timmy D ran into the same road block, stampeded it. Met it again. Was stopped. Then, stampeded it again. Or how he saved David Robinson from being the west coast Patrick Ewing. We could do this all day. But it remains, these facts are as indisputable as Timmy's bank shot.
Good article, great points.
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