Those who try and make the case for Duncan like to point out how his stats Per 48 Minutes are still comparable to those he had earlier in his career. To them I say that if you need to bring up Per 48 Minutes stats to make your argument then you really don’t have one. You can’t ignore the fact that Duncan only plays 30 minutes a game and gets the occasional game off. You know who doesn’t need his Per 48 Minutes stats to help his argument? The guy who at times this past season PLAYED ALL 48 MINUTES.
That’s not even the worst argument for Duncan. That distinction belongs to Bill Simmons who likes to point out that Duncan came within a Derek Fisher miracle shot in 2004 and a careless Manu Ginobili foul in 2006 from possibly winning five straight titles from 2003-07.
How about he wins two in a row just once before we speculate on how close he came to winning five in a row?
Both the Spurs and Duncan’s most ardent supporters like to point out that unlike Timmy, Kobe was on three teams from 2005-07 that missed the playoffs, won only 45 games, and won only 42 games. That’s a very strong point, and other than his one-trophy advantage in both regular season and Finals MVPs, Duncan’s strongest argument. The problem with it is that if you made a list of the five best teammates Duncan played with over this entire career, he never had to play without at least one of them.
Beyond that, Tony Parker was 19 and Manu Ginobili was 25 when they joined forces with Duncan and Robinson. He was never on a team that had to rebuild their roster on the fly without cap space. That’s not a criticism. It’s actually a big plus. But the credit for that doesn’t go to Duncan just like the blame for the Lakers shortcomings shouldn’t fall on Kobe. It goes to the Spurs front office that is clearly the NBA’s best. Had they not planned so well for life after David Robinson there’s a good chance that Duncan would have explored his options when he opted out in 2003 instead of signing an extension — the same way he did when he flirted with the Orlando Magic in 2000.
Now compare that infusion of youth to the 2004 Lakers roster that preceded the only season in which Kobe missed the playoffs. Besides losing future Hall of Famers Shaquille O’Neal, Karl Malone, and Gary Payton, that team also lost Rick Fox, Horace Grant, and Derek Fisher. O’Neal was replaced by Chris Mihm, Malone by Lamar Odom, and Payton by Chucky Atkins. Not exactly equal talent.
By mid-March they were 32-32, despite Rudy Tomjanovich resigning as head coach 43 games into the season. But then Lamar Odom suffered a torn labrum and missed the season’s final 18 games. The Lakers would go on to lose 16 of those 18 games with either Slava Medvedenko or Jumaine Jones replacing Odom in the starting lineup. If you consider Odom to be one of the best five teammates that Kobe has played with, those 18 games he missed in 2004-05, plus the 26 he missed due to both a sprained MCL and another tear to the same labrum in 2006-07, were big reasons for the Lakers missing the playoffs in 2005 and winning only 42 games in 2007. Had they kept both Kobe and Shaq from that 2004 team and started them alongside subpar talent like Medvedenko, Atkins, and Jones, they still would have been a safe bet to win 50 every year.
I won’t deny that the Spurs team that Duncan won his first ring with in 1999 was also extremely old. But because they still had both Duncan and Robinson is the main reason they continued to win at least 50 games in the seasons before Parker and Ginobili arrived. In the three seasons following their first championship, Robinson only missed eight games combined. By the last of those three seasons, Parker had joined the team. The following season, when Robinson was ready to call it a career, Ginobili had arrived.
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If this were a debate about the best front office in the NBA, it’s a no-brainer. The way the Spurs have drafted guys like Parker and Ginobili after every other team passed on them, the way they’ve stashed guys in Europe like Tiago Splitter, traded surplus role players like George Hill for the pick that became Kawhi Leonard, and signed guys that other teams have given up on like Danny Green, is now the model that every team strives to emulate.
At the same time, you can’t deny the Spurs lucked into Duncan. If not for the injured back and broken foot that cost Robinson 76 games for a team that won 59 the season before his injuries, Duncan would have ended up on one of 14 other teams. It’s easy to forget that Robinson had won the MVP two seasons before the team drafted Duncan and was also runner-up to the MVP in both seasons before and after it. So while the Spurs moves have been both brilliant and shrewd, you can’t discount the role that luck played in adding years to their shelf life as contenders.
As for Kobe vs. Duncan, neither fan base would trade the memories they’ve had with one for those of the other. If this were based solely on who was the better teammate, I’d probably give Duncan the edge. But the fact that Kobe finished top-5 in MVP voting in all four years since Duncan’s last top-5 finish, despite having played 4,000 more minutes over his career, can’t be ignored.
Even if the Spurs were to beat the Heat and equal Kobe’s five titles, that still wouldn’t be enough to surpass the Lakers. Repeats, three-peats, and head-to-head playoff records are a much more deserving tiebreaker than consecutive 50-win regular seasons that more often than not, ended in disappointment.
Now if the Spurs manage to win the title this year and next year, and Duncan wins another Finals MVP and gets voted first-team All-NBA again with a healthy Howard, then I’ll gladly bestow the title of the Best Franchise of the 21st Century upon the Spurs and re-evaluate the Kobe vs. Duncan debate.
Until then, the lack of a repeat combined with the Lakers edge in head-to-head playoff match-ups are both too big to ignore. If that’s not enough, you’d also have to dock the Spurs for having won one of their four titles in a 50-game season and winning the other three while the Lakers were either rebuilding or attempting to do something that hadn’t been done in 41 years — win a fourth straight championships. By comparison, all five Lakers championships came during this Spurs run of 50-win seasons.
That doesn’t mean that what Duncan and the Spurs have accomplished doesn’t deserve recognition, because it definitely does. But saying what they’ve accomplished is equal to or greater than what the Lakers have accomplished during this era is nonsense.
So for now, second-place will just have to do for San Antonio.
