Can We Stop The Tim Duncan Is The Greatest PF Charade

[murksiderock]

He wasn’t better than Dream.

I'll take this debate, but I'll need some help on exactly when Dream's prime was...

Duncan was a Top 10 player from the moment he came into The League until 2009, that's a 12-year run as an elite player. Hit Top 5 Year 2 and held that thru Year 10, 9-year run as upper echelon elite. Spent about 5 years as arguably the greatest player in the game...

Just going off of Duncan's 12-year full prime, here's the work he put in:

•21.4/11.7 on .507 shooting (23.3/12.6/.501 playoffs)

•never missed playoffs

•led 60-win teams three times, won 50 games every year

•consistently great versus other All-Timers of his era: 100% vs LeBron/KG/CP3 (1-0)/Nash (5-0)/Kidd (2-0), 2-2 vs Dirk (.500), 2-3 vs Shaq (.400), 2-4 (.333) vs Kobe, 0-1 vs Malone/Stockton...only lost 7 series vs other All-Timers when in his prime

•4x champ as #1 (4-0); 4-2 in WCF; only lost on the 1st Rd once

•3x FMVP, back-to-back MVP, ASGMVP, 9x 1st Team All-NBA, 8x 1st Team All-D, ROY

What was Hakeem's prime? Because Duncan's resume is as good as any center's and he was consistently even stronger in the playoffs than he was in the regular season. After Mike retired, Shaq is the only player who had a stretch as unanimously the best in the game, every other year Duncan was on the short list of Top 3 or so guys in the conversation, thru Year 10...

 

[murksiderock]

@who_better_than_me what was Dream's 5-year peak?

Duncan's 5-year peak was 2000-01 to 2004-05, Year 4 thru Year 8. Complete domination, went from 22.8/12.3/.504 in the regular season to 24.3/13.7/.492 in the playoffs, put up a 30-20 Finals game, dude was dominant...

Obviously Hakeem was as well, but it's hard for me to see Hakeem's case over Tim. Tim bodybagged all PF/C challengers at his peak besides Shaq, and he and Shaq were a back and forth thing, no complete domination by either. My thought is Dream was considered the greatest big of his day, at least for a stretch, but he also spent a portion of his career in the weaker conference and was a perennial early exit, as well as missed the playoffs, whereas Tim played in the power conference his entire prime and never missed the postseason...

Says something to me about the ability to elevate your team and consistently push them forward...

 

[Easy-E]

It's 2020 and we're arguing positions....

 

[Bigblackted4]

He was a power forward for like 4 years, he’s clearly a center but whatever

 

[Bigblackted4]

@who_better_than_me what was Dream's 5-year peak?

Duncan's 5-year peak was 2000-01 to 2004-05, Year 4 thru Year 8. Complete domination, went from 22.8/12.3/.504 in the regular season to 24.3/13.7/.492 in the playoffs, put up a 30-20 Finals game, dude was dominant...

Obviously Hakeem was as well, but it's hard for me to see Hakeem's case over Tim. Tim bodybagged all PF/C challengers at his peak besides Shaq, and he and Shaq were a back and forth thing, no complete domination by either. My thought is Dream was considered the greatest big of his day, at least for a stretch, but he also spent a portion of his career in the weaker conference and was a perennial early exit, as well as missed the playoffs, whereas Tim played in the power conference his entire prime and never missed the postseason...

Says something to me about the ability to elevate your team and consistently push them forward...

You do know the reason why he didn’t win, he lost his team to drugs and injuries. By 88 I think he has like 4 fellow starters from the 86 team that were done because of drugs or injuries. He also has horrible coaches. Duncan came into a perfect situation with one of the GOAT coaches.

 

[murksiderock]

You do know the reason why he didn’t win, he lost his team to drugs and injuries. By 88 I think he has like 4 fellow starters from the 86 team that were done because of drugs or injuries. He also has horrible coaches. Duncan came into a perfect situation with one of the GOAT coaches.

Yeah I understand that, my thing was in the weaker conference he struggled leading deep playoff runs...

Maybe I'm looking at this thru a lens of how we judge players now, that wasn't important at the time. But I can't imagine an All-Time great player struggling to win in the weaker conference, I mean theres examples of this with Iverson, Pierce (pre KG/Ray) and others, and its held against them to a degree when we start comparing directly to other great players. "Winning", meaning, not necessarily winning a championship every year, but missing the playoffs and/or going out in early rounds consistently is a black mark...

It just seems to me that a guy with that level of greatness should have been able to have his team more consistently competitive....but I don't disagree with the Duncan point, he walked into the easiest situation of any GOAT candidate besides Russell. Lotta guys coulda won 5 chips (or more) playing there for their entire careers, I think that's a fair point...

How was Dream H2H vs his competition? Even in losses Duncan was still great, and generally he put the beats on everyone except Shaq more often than the other way around, and Shaq's case vs Duncan is helped greatly by having Kobe take over some of those series for him...

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Idk...Whatever that nikka was he got the job done. I guess the perception would be to classify Duncan as a C because he played closer to the basket and kinda moved like a C. I certainly recall the man starting next to David Robinson and I'm almost positive D Rob dont play PF tho.

One of my favorite unknown basketball facts is that Pop started a frontcourt of Tim Duncan, David Robinson, and Will Purdue for the entire 1998 playoffs. Those three averaged 50 points, 30 rebounds, and 7 blocks against the Jazz and still lost the series because the backcourt couldn't score and they had no bench.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

@who_better_than_me what was Dream's 5-year peak?

Duncan's 5-year peak was 2000-01 to 2004-05, Year 4 thru Year 8. Complete domination, went from 22.8/12.3/.504 in the regular season to 24.3/13.7/.492 in the playoffs, put up a 30-20 Finals game, dude was dominant...

Obviously Hakeem was as well, but it's hard for me to see Hakeem's case over Tim. Tim bodybagged all PF/C challengers at his peak besides Shaq, and he and Shaq were a back and forth thing, no complete domination by either. My thought is Dream was considered the greatest big of his day, at least for a stretch, but he also spent a portion of his career in the weaker conference and was a perennial early exit, as well as missed the playoffs, whereas Tim played in the power conference his entire prime and never missed the postseason...

Says something to me about the ability to elevate your team and consistently push them forward...

You do know the reason why he didn’t win, he lost his team to drugs and injuries. By 88 I think he has like 4 fellow starters from the 86 team that were done because of drugs or injuries. He also has horrible coaches. Duncan came into a perfect situation with one of the GOAT coaches.

I'm on Hakeem's side here. He led the Rockets to the Finals in just his 2nd season and took 2 games off a vastly superior Celtics roster despite getting double-teamed and triple-teamed on the regular. He led squads of role players to titles in 1995 and 1996. And in the seasons in-between, when you look at his actual performances he was balling out, he just didn't have shyt around him.

You need a TEAM to win in the NBA. Very, very few players in NBA history have elevated clearly inferior teams to Finals apperances and titles. Hakeem is the perfect example of a baller who did his shyt in the playoffs but didn't have the team to make it work.

 

[who_better_than_me]

@who_better_than_me what was Dream's 5-year peak?

Duncan's 5-year peak was 2000-01 to 2004-05, Year 4 thru Year 8. Complete domination, went from 22.8/12.3/.504 in the regular season to 24.3/13.7/.492 in the playoffs, put up a 30-20 Finals game, dude was dominant...

Obviously Hakeem was as well, but it's hard for me to see Hakeem's case over Tim. Tim bodybagged all PF/C challengers at his peak besides Shaq, and he and Shaq were a back and forth thing, no complete domination by either. My thought is Dream was considered the greatest big of his day, at least for a stretch, but he also spent a portion of his career in the weaker conference and was a perennial early exit, as well as missed the playoffs, whereas Tim played in the power conference his entire prime and never missed the postseason...

Says something to me about the ability to elevate your team and consistently push them forward...

I was most likely say his prime years was 1990-95. That’s when his game was most polished and not so predictated on his athleticism speed and power

 

[FTBS]

OP forgot to mention he gave that work to Shaq on the regular, despite being outmanned, as well. Doesn't matter what you call him, he's one of the GOAT bigs .

Kareem
Tim
everybody else

 

[Bigblackted4]

Yeah I understand that, my thing was in the weaker conference he struggled leading deep playoff runs...

Maybe I'm looking at this thru a lens of how we judge players now, that wasn't important at the time. But I can't imagine an All-Time great player struggling to win in the weaker conference, I mean theres examples of this with Iverson, Pierce (pre KG/Ray) and others, and its held against them to a degree when we start comparing directly to other great players. "Winning", meaning, not necessarily winning a championship every year, but missing the playoffs and/or going out in early rounds consistently is a black mark...

It just seems to me that a guy with that level of greatness should have been able to have his team more consistently competitive....but I don't disagree with the Duncan point, he walked into the easiest situation of any GOAT candidate besides Russell. Lotta guys coulda won 5 chips (or more) playing there for their entire careers, I think that's a fair point...

How was Dream H2H vs his competition? Even in losses Duncan was still great, and generally he put the beats on everyone except Shaq more often than the other way around, and Shaq's case vs Duncan is helped greatly by having Kobe take over some of those series for him...

Make sense I’ll give you some numbers

88 Playoffs one series he Averaged 37.5 and 16.8 with 2.3 steals and 2.8 Blocks.

89 Playoffs one series he averaged 25.3 and 13 With 2.5 steals and 2.8 blocks.

90 Playoff series he probably should have won went up against magic and his team performed. He only averaged 18 and 11 with 2.5 steals and 5.8 blocks per game. Had he shot better than 44 percent they may have won.

Next year he averaged 22.7 and 14.7 with 1.3 steals and 2.7 blocks. Loss to Magic and probably should have been better.

Next year 42-40 no playoffs

Next year they won a playoff series but loss the second to the Sonics in 7(a lot of people say it’s their best team not 96) in the playoffs he averaged 25.7 and 14 with 1.8 steals and 4.9 blocks. Shot 52 percent.

His playoff numbers were pretty much always phenomenal.

 

[invincible1914]

They do it to keep him from looking weak against the other great C's and to have him compete with people like KG/Malone where he has more standing.

fukk that 7 foot tuna fish sandwich.

....

Or he was drafted to the same team that already had David Robinson and they just kept him there.

He played C on offense but PF on defense. People wont say it, but Hakeem did the same thing at times.

 

[Hey_zeus]

The Coli looking at the calendar and coming through with playoff-level shytposting even when we don't have the playoffs.

Nah, it's opening week level hypothetical trash all on the first page.

 

[SunZoo]

Or he was drafted to the same team that already had David Robinson and they just kept him there.

He played C on offense but PF on defense. People wont say it, but Hakkem did the same things times.

Or, what I said lol

 

[invincible1914]

Or, what I said lol

You don’t even believe that. Everybody hating on Duncan hating cause he didn’t play for their team.