H o o p s C o r n e r . c o m
-------------------- February 24, 2005 The dirt on Tim Duncan.
Perhaps the highest achieving player with the least flaws or dents in his NBA career today is the San Antonio Spurs' Tim Duncan. The power forward's NBA debut has been nothing short of spectacular, neither has his performance. He has met every expectations bestowed on him since being selected in 1997 as the Spurs' first overall draft selection. From the above you might think everything is all and well but truth is, not quite. In fact he's been so good at what he has done so far that he has not raised peoples' curiosities to take a keener look at him and scrutinize him further. The reason why he hasn't been under the microscope is probably because that he has excelled so quickly, so brillantly and so timely (as almost no one ever does), and with great success, that no one even imagines him being scrutinized. Mind you we are just focusing on his basketball activities. So far, even if you took a good look at Tim Duncan chances are you might not find any dramatic news, or find any place that discusses his shortcomings either. Until now. At least with us the veil has been lifted, especially with the result of the U.S national basketball team's finish this summer olympics. Watching Manu Ginobili in the 2005 All-Star game brought back memories. The first dirt scoop on Timmy is that, he never shouldered any blame for the Lakers' dousings of the Spurs. While the marquee matchup was perhaps Robinson-O'neal, the leader of the team is the pace setter for the squad not the second option. During L.A and San Antonio's Western conference battles, all blame for the Spurs' failures was wrongly directed at David Robinson, when he only had limited impact on the team. Everyone failed to realize that the main culprit during the trashings was not Shaq the player assigned to David Robinson, but rather Kobe Bryant, who always performed on such on an inspired level. It has to be noted that if the Lakers' #8 kept the same pace in their series as throughout the playoffs he would have always been the playoff MVP. So if Shaq wasn't as grand against the Spurs that means David Robinson was keeping some of his duties in check. That should lead us to now take a look at Tim Duncan. Sure he always performed formidably yet whenever results were poor the blame was either towards an aging David Robinson, or the team as a whole. Never at Duncan in particular. In comparison when the Lakers lost to Detroit in the 2004 Finals all fingers were pointed at Shaq and Kobe. Though the championship count is close at 3-2, ever since the Lakers became primed with Phil Jackson at the helm it's actually 3-1, with a 4 to 1 edge in NBA finals appearances. Tim Duncan was achieving more than any other power forward, but not more than the best big man. No one dared compare him to O'neal. Technically they play different positions, but that souldn't have mattered, they're both low post players. While this may seem like ancient news let's not forget that Duncan was originally a center out of college. Our other dirt on Tim Duncan is in regards to the 2004 Summer Olympics. When the U.S came away with the Bronze medal, all hosts on talk show radios were talking about players such as Allen iverson and Stephon Marbury with Saturn sized egos. If anyone was MVP of the U.S team it must have been Allen Iverson. It was so obvious that no one wanted to look at the hard evidence, namely the medal placement game between the U.S and Argentina, and nearly all the other games. No one wanted to tarnish the perfect reputation of the public and the press' darling. All that was said about Larry Brown was that despite having Tim Duncan at his disposition he could only manage a Bronze. Are you kidding me? They placed third IN SPITE of him!!! In the medal placement game, Argentina having realized the inability of Tim Duncan to quickly rotate on a pick and roll, had his man come out to the 3-point line so many times to pick Allen Iverson. And I mean it was the same play. After the first two three-pointers went through you just said O.K Tim will be on the guy this time. Then you realized you were dangerously wrong. He was making rookie mistakes. Who was the one launching those 3 balls that did the U.S in? Tim Duncan's Spurs teammate Manu Ginobili. Come on Tim you've got to have known his skills by then. If you watched that sequence you know that those were the moments that decided the game. As proof of this if you can get a copy of the taping you will even hear the NBC announcers mention Duncan not rotating. The loss knocked the U.S out of Gold Medal contention. It's not just that game mind you, in all the other games, everyone's favorite big man seemed to have a chronic inability to stay in games for more than 15 minutes at a time. All the while he kept arguing with the referees. Sure perhaps as the lone center there, he might have been a target, and there were some bogus calls, but the whole U.S squad had them, besides as an established professional and as some said the best in the world, such technicalities should have been formalities for him. I figure that the U.S team was setup with Duncan as the go-to-guy. So him not being there did foil some plans. No one is perfect and certainly Tim Duncan has had more conquests than failures. However the blame for a major event such as the Olympics have to be justly directed. -------------------- Next: The Jump Previous: All that glitters is not gold Back to articles © 2001-2005 H o o p s C o r n e r . c o m, All rights reserved Terms of service Privacy policy Contact |
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