Column: In praise of NBA's overlooked superstar

Eight straight All-NBA first teams beginning with his rookie season (and a first, three seconds, and a third after that with no appearances outside the top 15). Thirteen straight seasons on the All-Defensive first or second team. Exactly one season outside the top 10 in rebounds and none outside the top 10 in defensive rating (an estimation of points allowed per 100 possessions), including 11 straight in the top four. Eleven straight seasons in the top eight of MVP voting, with two straight victories. Eleven straight seasons in the top 10 in blocks. Produced a double-double in 70 percent of his games and averaged a double-double overall each season. Four championships as the leader of his team.

So who is this? Am I once again extolling the virtues of some forgotten rando? Will this player turn out to have played for the Syracuse Nationals or Kansas City Kings or Sheboygan Redskins or Pittsburgh Ironmen or something like that? No, the player described above is still active, still racking up double-doubles and still anchoring his team’s interior defense as he finally reaches his decline years. I’m talking about the most underappreciated NBA superstar of this generation: Tim Duncan.

Perhaps it’s become cliche to write about how Tim Duncan is ignored, even though by almost all accounts he is among the 10 best NBA players of all time, and perhaps it now happens so often that he’s no longer ignored. But when I look at his career statistics and accolades, it is truly astonishing how consistently excellent Duncan has been, and how his very presence ensures that the San Antonio Spurs can never be ignored as contenders.

Duncan’s averages per game are consistent enough, but as he’s begun to play fewer minutes due to his advancing age, his per-36-minute numbers are even more mind-boggling. Duncan’s seasonal points-per-36-minutes averages all fall between 19.2 and 22.6, while his rebounds are between 10.5 and 12.2. He takes and makes about the same number of shots every year, keeps his number of assists and blocks consistently high for an interior player, and has scored fewer than 10 points in a game 39 times in his career so far, for an average of three times per season.

These point numbers may not seem as gaudy as those of the other players in the running for best of the generation, like Kobe Bryant or Shaquille O’Neal. But Duncan’s greatness has always been best expressed in a team context. If a teammate like Manu Ginobili or Tony Parker — or one of the random players the Spurs always seem to turn into a useful rotation guy — has it going on a given night, Duncan is content to slip into the background a little bit on offense, protecting the rim and playing stellar help defense while still taking advantage of his unblockable bank shot to score a quiet 20 points.

The best example of Duncan’s ability to do exactly what the team needs is the Spurs’ astonishing record over the past 13 seasons. Since Duncan joined the league, San Antonio has won at least 50 games every full season (going 37-13 in the shortened 1998-99 season), made the playoffs every season and, as I mentioned earlier, won four championships, in every case with Duncan as the best player on the team. The Spurs have also been renowned for having the best or close to the best team chemistry in the league, seamlessly integrating old and new stars alike into the core of Duncan and head coach Gregg Popovich.

Kobe, Shaq, Wilt Chamberlain, even Michael Jordan: You name the star, they played on a couple of mediocre teams. Nobody wins 60 percent of his games his entire career except Duncan and the greatest winner of all time, Bill Russell, with 11 championships in 13 seasons. Even then, Russell’s teammates were as good or better than Duncan’s, and the .705 winning percentage of Russell’s teams doesn’t exactly blow Duncan’s .695 out of the water, especially when you consider the higher level of competition in the current NBA.

Let’s also not forget that Duncan has been capable of putting the team on his back when necessary. Consider his 34-24-7 (points-rebounds-assists) averages against the Dallas Mavericks in the 2003 Western Conference Finals, or his phenomenal 21-20-10 with eight blocks when the Spurs eliminated the New Jersey Nets in Game 6 of that year’s NBA Finals. Even when he is shooting poorly, he has always found a way to anchor the team, such as his 10 straight double-doubles to close out the 2005 playoffs despite a worse-than-usual field-goal percentage.

Shaq may have the dominant flair, and Kobe the killer intensity, but for year-in year-out professionalism that always gives the team the best possible chance to win, I’d take Duncan, the Big Fundamental, and so would the most consistently successful pro sports team of the past 15 years.