YouTube Gold: The Great Tim Duncan

Boring and wonderful

It doesn’t sound like a compliment, but it really is: Tim Duncan was boring.

Why?

Because his skills were so high-end, so polished, and his personality so low-key, that watching him, you could forget how great he was.

You could watch a game and not realize that he had 27 points and 18 rebounds. He just went about his business in such a quiet way that you didn’t realize how big his impact was.

Drafted out of Wake Forest by San Antonio Spurs in 1997, Duncan teamed up with David Robinson at first for a second Texas Twin Towers after Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson went there in the 1980’s.

Duncan won his first title with the Spurs in 1999; he would go on to win four more and missed a sixth just barely when his winning shot attempt rimmed out.

Generally speaking, he was boringly brilliant, but that’s not to say that he didn’t make great plays. He did.

Top Ten lists are pretty arbitrary, particularly over a 19-year career, but this isn’t a bad attempt. It gives some idea of Duncan’s greatness and his mastery of basketball basics. The best part though is the #2 play, where you see something quite rare: Duncan reacting emotionally.

He was highly unusual in many ways but the man was a natural-born winner.