Boris Diaw knows the deal: Tim Duncan is forever.
The 39-year-old Duncan is prepping for his 19th NBA season with the San Antonio Spurs. He will be just the third player in league history to spend at least 19 years with one team, joining John Stockton and Kobe Bryant. Though he signed a two-year deal with a player option for 2016-17, there’s a chance that next season could actually be his last. If it’s not, 2016-17 would seem to be the obvious choice.
Or, you know, maybe not.
As Boris Diaw said, per Sports Illustrated (h/t ProBasketballTalk):
I don’t know – six, seven.
I have no idea, but he’s always good. He’s always great. He’s just a great example for all the young kids, everybody.
He’s always 100 percent when we do practice. He’s always the first guy to the gym and working. He’s got a great work ethic.
He doesn’t jump as often, and so he doesn’t wear his ligaments and his muscles and everything. He’s just playing the same very basic basketball, but it works so great because he’s such a master at all the moves and everything. So, that makes him be able to take advantage of players who are more athletic and younger than him.
Sounds about right.
When I first read the title of the initial post, I assumed this was going to be some sort of blatant joke. And it is. Another six or seven seasons would demand Duncan play until he’s almost 50 years old, which is straight up impossible. But Diaw still provides a nice technical answer at the end, focusing on Duncan’s ligaments and the way he jumps. It’s almost half-serious.
It’s not, of course. But this is Duncan in a nutshell. He’s been so good for so long, we’re left to ponder, even if jokingly, whether or not he’s human.
Ahem:
#Spurs pic.twitter.com/hpUZtpH88Y
— Dan Favale (@danfavale) August 8, 2015
It’s going to be weird when he actually isn’t around. Same goes for Manu Ginobili. And Gregg Popovich. And Tony Parker. LaMarcus Aldridge and Kawhi Leonard will outlast all of them, meaning that, some day, the dynastic Spurs we know now are going to look much different. And that’s a tough pill to swallow, given how consistent they’ve been since Duncan took the floor in 1997. It’s impossible to imagine a world in which the Spurs aren’t dominant, and it’s equally possible to picture a dominant Spurs team that doesn’t include the core that has carried them to this point.
Fortunately, we don’t have to picture it.
Not yet.
These Spurs have at least another year of looking exactly like the Spurs we’ve come to know, love, appreciate and, for a select few fanbases, fear.
