Duncan’s Place
Posted: March 29th, 2010 | Filed under: Other Sports | 102 Comments »
If you popped on SI.com, you will see Dan Shaughnessy’s interesting counter to my magazine story a a few weeks ago about Tim Duncan. My story was more about my endless fascination with Duncan — the main line was probably this one: “Has American sports ever had a player all at once so great and so unknown?” The man is so counter to today’s sports world — he’s the opposite of flashy, the antithesis of SportsCenter, the inverse of hype. He’s 1957 transported. He might be the greatest invisible player in American sports history.*
*And as I point out in the piece — with the perfect boring nickname: The Big Fundamental.
In the piece — right at the end, in fact — I called him one of the 10 best players in NBA history. That was not the point of the piece, but that was probably the headline. A letter appeared in Sports Illustrated two weeks later from Carl McCullough of Trinity Fla:
If Duncan is one of the 10 best NBA players of all time, then whom would writer Joe Posnanski take off this list: Abdul-Jabbar, Baylor, Bird, Chamberlain, Erving, Jordan, Magic, Robertson, Russell or West? Maybe there should be 11 players in the top 10.
Dan picks up on the theme today. He too lists off 10 players who have to on his Top 10 list … he added Shaq and Cousy to his list and removed Elgin Baylor and Julius Erving. He then listed off another dozen he decided to put ahead of Duncan — those two along with Kobe, Lebron, Olajuwon, Barkley, Karl Malone, Moses Malone (so Moses and Karl, but so far no Jeff Malone), Kevin McHale (Kevin McHale? Really? Over Duncan?), Pettit, Stockton and Isiah.
Look, there have been a lot of great players in NBA history … and those are some of the greatest. I think there are probably seven or eight guys who would be on just about everybody’s Top 10 list — Bird and Magic, Wilt and Russell, West and Robertson, Abdul-Jabbar, Jordan. After that, you have another few, as you can see above, who would battle for the final two spots.
But I think, once again, it’s just tempting to undersell Duncan. It’s tempting to undersell him because he just does the same thing every single year — 20-22 points, 10-12 rebounds, two blocked shots, first or second team All-NBA, first team All-Defensive. He has been Top 5 in defensive Win Shares every year (No. 1 four times), and top 10 in rebounds every year, and he always has been the best player on a team that has never won fewer than 53 games in a season.
I think this is a point that’s easy to overlook. It’s a short list of players who were CLEARLY the best player on four championships teams. That list would include:
1. Bill Russell, 10
2. Michael Jordan, 6
3. George Mikan, 5
4. Tim Duncan, 4
5. Magic Johnson, 4
Shorter list than you would expect, isn’t it?
Russell won 11 championships — you could argue that he wasn’t the best player on all those teams. He almost certainly wasn’t the best player on the 1957 team that had Bill Sharman and Bob Cousy (more on Cousy in a second), though he did grab 19 rebounds a game. A quick look at the Celtics championship Win Shares leaders:
1969: Bailey Howell, 11.3
– Russell second with 10.9
1968: Bailey Howell, 10.1
– Russell second with 8.2
1966: Bill Russell with 11.7
1965: Bill Russell with 16.9
1964: Bill Russell with 17.3
1963: Bill Russell with 13.5
1962: Bill Russell with 15.5
1961: Bill Russell with 13.0
1960: Bill Russell with 13.8
1959: Bill Russell with 12.9
1957: Bill Sharman with 12.4
– Russell fourth with 6.2
So as you can see, based on Win Shares (which, obviously, is only one measurement) Russell was pretty clearly the best player in eight of the 11 … and close enough in ‘68 and ‘69 (when he also served as coach) that I gave him credit for those. That gives him 10 championship teams where he was clearly the best player.
Because Russell was so dominant, the many, many, many, many (yikes) other Celtics Hall of Famers from that era really can’t be on the list. Bob Cousy won six championships, but it would be hard to argue that Cousy was clearly the best player on any of those teams. Those teams, after all, had Hall of Famers Bill Russell AND Bill Sharman AND Tommy Heinsohn AND Sam Jones AND Frank Ramsey AND K.C. Jones. And for fun they added Hall of Famer Clyde Lovellette at the end of his career, though he was not playing at that level at the time.
Point is: Bob Cousy changed pro basketball with the way he played. We are talking about the greatest players in basketball history, so there are no duds here — Cousy was magical. But if there was a draft tomorrow with a young Cousy and a young Duncan … I don’t see any argument for drafting Cousy.
The same, incidentally, can be said for John Havlicek. He played on eight championship teams, which is remarkable, but he was clearly not the best player on the first six. He was probably the best player on the 1974 championship team and might have been the best on the 1976 championship team, though in both cases Dave Cowens was at least his equal. My idea here is for someone to be CLEARLY the best player on at least four championship teams. Havlicek and Cousy just don’t quite get there.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a tough case. He was absolutely and without question the best player on the 1971 Milwaukee Bucks — even with an aging Oscar Robertson on the team. Abdul-Jabbar averaged 31.7 points and 16.0 rebounds — his 22.3 Win Shares that year was the fourth highest total of all time. And he was probably the best player on the 1980 Champion Lakers — that was Magic Johnson’s rookie year, and Norm Nixon was still playing a lot of point guard, and Jamaal Wilkes was still doing a lot of the heavy scoring. I think that was Jabbar’s team.
After that? Trickier. In 1982, Magic Johnson has more win Shares than Jabbar. Same deal in 1985. For the 1987-88 repeat, it was very clearly Magic’s team, and Jabbar was much more of a role player. Abdul-Jabbar finished fifth in Win Shares in 1987 behind Magic, James Worthy, Byron Scott and A.C. Green. And Michael Cooper played more minutes than Abdul-Jabbar in 1988.
So, what to do? My sense of it is that it’s only fair to Magic to say he was clearly the best player on four of the five Lakers championship teams. And that leaves Abdul-Jabbar as the best on two championship teams.
Then there are Shaq and Kobe. Again: Tricky situation. They each have four championships — three together and one apart. Kobe, I think, was the best player on last year’s Lakers though Pau Gasol actually scored more Win Shares. Shaq was clearly NOT the best player on the 2006 Miami Heat Championship team that had Dwayne Wade — even Udonis Haslem scored more Win Shares. And then … how do you split up their championships?
2002
Shaq: 13.2 Win Shares
Kobe: 12.7 Win Shares
2001
Shaq: 14.9 Win Shares
Kobe: 11.3 Win Shares
2000:
Shaq: 18.6 Win Shares
Kobe: 10.6 Win Shares
Shaq was almost certainly more valuable the first two seasons and it was close that third season. But once again … no clear choices here.
Even Larry Bird provides a tricky case here — he won three championships, so he could not make the list. But Bird was not CLEARLY the best player on that first championship team — that team had Cedric Maxwell and Robert Parish, both who scored more Win Shares than Bird. Larry Legend was PROBABLY the best player on the team, the championship difference, but that’s a different story.
Then there’s Duncan. Four championships. And there is no doubt that he was the best player on all four teams. In 1999, he led the team in scoring, rebounding, blocks and win shares. In 2003, his 16.5 Win Shares were more than double anyone else’s on the team and he was named league MVP. In 2005, Manu Ginobli was a valuable player — very close in Win Shares — but again Duncan led the team in scoring, rebounding, field goal percentage and his defensive rating was the best in the NBA. In 2007, he again led the team in Win Shares, and was once again rated (by his defensive rating and by Win Shares) as the best defensive player in the NBA.
This is just a rare thing. That’s not to knock the greatness of Jerry West or Oscar Robertson or Julius Erving or Elgin Baylor or any of the other great players listed above. But Duncan’s teams win games, and Duncan’s teams win championships, and he’s the best player on those teams.
I think basketball — because of the relatively small number of players on the floor at one time — rewards an individual’s accomplishments more than baseball and football.
– In 2001, Barry Bonds his 73 home runs and walked 177 times — no matter how you may feel he accomplished it, that’s about as great an offensive season as a player can have. His team did not make the playoffs.
– In 2004, Daunte Culpepper threw for 4,700 yards, 39 touchdowns, ran for another 400 yards and threw only 11 interceptions. His team went 8-8.
– In 2002, Priest Holmes in just 14 games (13 1/2 games, really) gained 2,287 yards from scrimmage and scored 24 touchdowns — he would have smashed both records had he not gotten hurt. His team went 8-8.
– In 2000, Pedro Martinez went 18-6 with a 1.74 ERA, set the ERA+ record with a 291* ERA+, struck out 284, walked 32, was about as dominant as a pitcher can possibly be. His team went 85-77.
*More later as Baseball-Reference thinks about changing the ERA+ system.
It’s not quite like this in basketball. The best players having the best seasons take their teams to the playoffs, often deep into the playoffs, sometimes winning championships. I’m not trying to push any mystical “he’s a winner” or “he’s a loser” stuff. This is just a factor of five players on the floor. One player can really influence the game. The greatest players — players who are terrific offensively and defensively, and consistent night after night — win. They might not quite win it all, but best I can tell just about all of the great players in NBA history have at least played in an NBA final.
Put it this way: By my count there are only 22 players who rank among the NBA’s Top 50 in both Offensive Win Shares AND Defensive Win Shares. Best I can tell, all 22 played in at least a Final. Seventeen of them won a championship — and in total they won 47 championships — and that doesn’t even include Bill Russell, who didn’t quite make it as an offensive player.
So, yes, great players influence games, seasons, championships. And few in basketball history have influenced games, seasons and championships more than Tim Duncan. You could argue about his place in the Top 10, and there are enough great players in NBA history to put an imposing Top 10 out there without Duncan on it. But, and it’s just my opinion I think he’s the best power forward in basketball history and the indispensable player on a four-time champion. Even if it doesn’t SOUND right, I think a Top 10 list is incomplete without him.
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Given that Shaughnessy’s argument boils down to little more than “no he isn’t,” this really isn’t much of a debate at all. Shaq is a non-negotiable choice over Duncan, he says. Why? Because he was so obviously physically dominant and because he played for a glitzier team? I love Dr. J, but over Duncan? No way. See how easy that is?
Nice argument, but I believe you’re thinking of the 2002 Chiefs team that went 8-8. The 2003 team went 13-3 and then wet their pants at home against Indy. Ugh. Stupid Chiefs.
I know you won’t say anything negative about Shaughnessy since you both write for SI, but thank you so much for that rebuttal to his half-assed article.
The Priest year was 2002. In 2003, the Chiefs went 13-3…
darn you, ron! i was reading and there you were, making my comment for me…
Well for sure Kevin McHale over Karl Malone, anyway.
“Given that Shaughnessy’s argument boils down to little more than “no he isn’t,” this really isn’t much of a debate at all.”
This. I mean, Shaughnessy’s article, like most of his writing, was embarrassing; devoid of anything more than ‘no, he isn’t.
I realize you can’t say anything against him because of your employer, but do you have to recognize him? Give his article, an article mind you, that shouldn’t make the sports section of a junior college newspaper, credibility?
The topic here shouldn’t be if Duncan belongs in the top 10 (he does), but how Shaughnessy even has a job writing, much less with SI.
Want to see why papers and magazines are dying? Take a good long look at your writing challenged co-worker.
Honestly, my first thought when I read it had less to do with Joe than with Bill Simmons, who also thinks Duncan is one of the 10 greatest NBA players ever. Shaughnessy hates Simmons so much that he might have just used Joe’s piece as a convenient means of taking a slap at Simmons, little-girl-on-the-playground style. I doubt he even believes what he wrote. It was just another opportunity for him to further define his rightful place as The Sportswriter Who Hates Everything.
Duncan’s baseball counterpart is probably Henry Aaron – consistently high production over a long career.
Duncan has more rings due to the fact that an individual has more impact in basketball than in baseball.
Hell, I don’t know. All I can say is that I’m drawn to this kind of professional athlete over the human highlight reels.
I have yet to read anything from Dan Shaughnessy that even suggests that he has a clue. What a tool.
“and he always has been the best player on a team that has never won fewer than 53 games in a season”
This is the key point here. Joe, I agree with everything you said, and I too hate all of the “he’s a winner” BS that people spout, but in basketball it really does matter. When the sport is 5-on-5 and you play both ends of the floor, then who your best player is really matters. And with Tim Duncan as your best player, you’re winning 50 games and competing EVERY SINGLE YEAR.
I repeat…50 wins every single year. I doubt there are 10 other players in NBA history you could honestly make that assertion about. I’m willing to listen to any argument against Duncan (nothing is non-negotiable), but the fact that he mentioned Barkley and Malone is embarrassing. They won zero combined titles as the best players on their teams.
I don’t want to jump on the hate Dan train here, but his argument is clearly fairly paper thin. As stated above, “no he isn’t” is pretty much the long and short of it. All of the actual evidence he cites is actually in favor of Duncan. The only ace in the hole he has is that Duncan won’t call himself one of the ten best.
I think the ones that obviously jump off the lists offered by the reader in his letter and by Dan are Julius Erving and Bob Cousy. They were both great players, and it’s hard to compare eras, but it just doesn’t seem like they were even in the same conversation as Duncan. Especially if you are only counting Erving’s NBA numbers, he’s not particularly close. And as stated above, Cousy played with a team full of Hall of Famers and shot 37.5 percent for his career.
Up until he started shooting people I would have offered up Marvin Harrison as the best possible equivalent to Duncan.
Shaugnhessy doesn’t do himself any favours when he lists a bunch of “better” players and then, after reaching his conclusion, actually goes and looks at Duncan’s statistics.
You know, I’m from Boston, and a big part of why I’ve turned from mainstream media to sports blogs is so that I don’t have to read past-their-prime knuckleheads like Shaughnessy anymore. It’s been working real good, too. Until now. The CHB doesn’t deserve a moment of your thought or time, Joe. Leave the old fool be, and let us rejoice as he slips into irrelevancy and away from the scene.
That was awesome.
trivia: Bailey Howell played college ball at Mississippi State. dude is still a legend in Starkville.
Love Duncan. Love that 12-16 foot bank shot. He’ll have a hard time getting to 50 wins this season without Parker for so long but watch out for them in the Playoffs.
Joe, that was brilliant. Has CHB not watched hoop for the past decade? As a Suns fan, I detest seeing Duncan on the court, but do I respect him? Sheesh.
He’s easily the greatest power forward of all time. The only real challengers (Barkley and K. Malone) have combined to win precisely zero championships.
I think the poster who compared his quiet greatness to Hank Aaron made a fine analogy. Indeed, the only flaw in the analogy? Duncan is actually better at basketball than the great Hammer was at baseball (I’m basing this on the idea that Duncan is certainly a top-10 all-time NBA player, while Hank’s inclusion in MLB’s all-time top-10 is at least debatable).
Anyway, CHB should stick to things he at least knows a little bit about.
“and close enough in ‘68 and ‘69 that I gave him credit for those”
“My idea here is for someone to be CLEARLY the best player”
Russell still clearly has the most but you need to decide which way you are going to count, close to best or clearly best.
Remember, Joe, CHB is the same guy who just flatly stated that Jack Morris was plainly better than Curt Schilling.
If you wrote up a rebuttal to everything he writes that’s wrong, you’d write a lot more, but would hardly have time for anything else.
He’s a hack, and a fraud.
One more cool thing about the Poz piece: until 10 minutes ago, I didn’t even know they HAD Win Shares for basketball.
That opens up a whole new way to compare players. The most intriguing sentence in the whole piece? The part about Kareem’s 1971 season being the 4th best all-time.
Now I want to know #’s 1, 2 and 3.
If the Celtics had won the lottery the year Duncan was the number 1 pick, do you think Dan would still be defiantly against Duncan as a top 10 all timer?
McHale over Duncan?
Really?
Insanity….
http://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/ws_season.html
Circle me Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr. Number 1 win shares season was Kareem in 1971-1972. Wilt and Kareem dominate the list.
I like the idea of the all-time draft that you mentioned in the Cousy section. Duncan would go top 10, easy.
This is not a knock on you, Joe, but it belittles you to even respond to a hack like Shaughnessy.
Bill @ #12 writes: “…Cousy played with a team full of Hall of Famers and shot 37.5 percent for his career.”
Which would be relevant if Cousy had been primarily a shooting guard, which he wasn’t. For his career, his FGPct was about 5% below the league average (.375 compared to .391–on average no one in the NBA could shoot in the 1950s; the league average didn’t cross.400 until 1961/62). But he was not in the league because he was a great shooter. Any more than Chamberlain was in the NBA because he could hit free throws.
the problem with Duncan is not that he’s a bland, unglamorous, fundamental, throwback player; the problem is that he’s all that AND HIS ONE DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTIC is that cartoon of outrage, “how can this be???” face he flashes three or so times a game, basically whenever a call goes against him.
so while I think you’re entirely right here,Poz; and while I agree that the CHB is a hack and a fraud unworthy of your response–
I can’t like Duncan. sorry…..
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by JPosnanski: Is Tim Duncan one of the 10 best ever? I think so. http://bit.ly/ddF2jb...
Hey Garrett, basketball win shares ARE pretty cool. I don’t know the answer to your question but I would guess Wilt’s 50 point season is one and Jordan probably has another.
I think we’re in the nascent stages of a true basketball stat revolution — Win Shares is a nice try, but if the philosophy behind it is similar to that of baseball WS, it is likely seriously flawed.
Individual production in basketball, after a point, comes at the expense of the production of other team members, and this can be antithetical to winning (which is, after all, the point). Whereas in baseball (batting, anyway), individual productivity relentlessly adds to team productivity.
Certainly that Win Shares leaderboard includes some of the best teams in NBA history, but it still strikes me as a list of those successful teams that relied most disproportionately on one player. Is that the same as “best individual seasons”? I would say fairly close, but no cigar.
One other thing that limits Duncan’s numbers (and thus people’s perception of him) is that Gregg Popovich clearly made a decision after 02-03 to limit Duncan’s playing time.* He hasn’t played 35 MPG since 03-04 and won’t even get to 32 MPG this season but his per minute rates this season are right in line with his career averages. As a result, Duncan ranks only 19th among active players in MPG and 56th career. Tack on another 10% to his numbers if he had played for another coach who was willing to ride him hard and suddenly his numbers go from 21.2/11.6 to 23.3/12.8.
* actually Pop clearly made that decision as an underlying philosophy – only 2 players have ever played 35 MPG for Pop – Duncan (his 1st 7 seasons) and Avery Johnson (once, in Pop’s 1st full season) (Sean Elliott played 35.7 MPG in Pop’s 1st season but a) Pop took over midway through that 96-97 season and b) Pop cut Elliott back from the 39.4 MPG he WAS playing to 32.6 before Elliott went down with a knee injury)
The thing that annoyed me about CHB’s column is that, as others have pointed out, he used zero evidence to back up what he said. No stats. Didn’t mention intangibles. He just threw out all these names and said that they were better players.
On a side note, I think Joe could say negative things about CHB but is just too polite. I mean Simers doesn’t exactly write that flatteringly about his colleagues at The Times.
Here’s a thought for a post, do a draft of all time players, drafting by their skills relative to their contemporaries (if based on skill and athleticism alone, the entire draft would be 10 rounds deep and be entirely made of players in the last 20 years, yes, the athletes of today are that much better than those of yesterday) here’s my poor, and not thought out attempt at a first round;
1. MJ (absolutely, no question)
2. Wilt
3. Magic
4. Oscar
5. Bird
6. Duncan
7. Lebron
8. Kobe
9. Kareem
10. Chris Paul ( yeah, I know, but I believe he’ll go down as the 2nd best PG of all time behind Magic)
[...] (Joe Posnanski, whose top-ten appraisal of Duncan beckoned Shaughnessy’s response, gives his 88 cents here.) [...]
#35, nice post, but, uh, there’s this guy you missed–I’ll give you a couple clues–first name: “Bill”–last name: “Russell”…..
How about an article comparing Wilt & MJ, so that Ross can see that the (absolutely, no question) leaves Wilt over MJ?
Classic Boston sportswriter arrogant ignorance.
If the Celtics had won the lottery in 1997, Shaughnessy would have been spending the last 13 years kissing Tim Duncan’s butt trying to get a book deal. Scratch that, he only would have spent the first three years, because Duncan would have bolted for Orlando at the first opportunity.
Joe, love the article, love your willingness to explain, research and back your statements with data. As always.
And I, too, find Duncan extremely unappreciated and one of the greatest players ever.
However, proving Duncan’s greatness by selecting players who were best players on exactly 4 championship teams is an analysis clearly aimed to help Duncan. Choose 5 – he doesn’t qualify, choose 3 – suddenly there are others, too.
Also, using Win Shares to show how some other players were not clearly best players on their respective championship teams, yet ignoring it for Duncan doesn’t really help.
If Win Shares are something to be taken as an argument, then Duncan was CLEARLY best player on only ONE championship team:
1999
Duncan 8.7
Robinson 8.4
2003
Duncan 16.5
Parker 7.7
2005
Duncan 11.2
Ginobili 11.0
2007
Duncan 11.1
Ginobili 11.1
So take out a truly dominant 2002-2003 season, and the CUMULATIVE advantage of Duncan over the “other good player on Spurs team” is 0.5 Win Shares over three championship teams, the margin that you yourself call “close”, even when comparing a single season contributions of Kobe vs. Shaq in 2003.
So, Win Shares can either be discarded as incomplete and flawed measure to compare players or a point can not be made that Duncan was CLEARLY the best player on 4 championship teams.
Also if winning and Win Shares are only relevant in years when a championship is won, perhaps a new stat called Championship Shares should be used. Something like adding the career Win Shares only in years the championship was won. I am not sure if this would be a very valuable argument, but I think it would come closer to what you were trying to show when comparing the best players on championship teams.
Again, I have no problem with your assertion of Duncan being much better player than assumed and I will not waste any time commenting Shaughnessy’s article. It is just that – used to the very high bar you set in statistical analysis – I am not all that convinced the analogy is perfect.
Two more points regarding Win Shares:
First an apology for I have mistaken a 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 seasons when looking up the Win Shares for the Spurs. It is the latter where they were tied and the former where Duncan did have a decisive advantage. So, my point needs to be changed and it now stands that according to the Win Shares analysis, Duncan was clearly best player on TWO championship teams. Not one, but also not four.
Second, I fail to see the logic in discarding the years where a team has not won the championship, yet using REGULAR SEASON Win Shares to determine who was clearly best player on the team. Regular season wins only get you to the play-offs. So, if a great season is statistically meaningless unless a championship is won, why not look at playoff Win Shares?
For example in 2005, Ginobili had 4.2 Playoff Win Shares opposed to Duncan’s 3.5 …
[...] original post here: Joe Posnanski » Blog Archive » Duncan's Place Harry's Place » Freedom of speech must be defended… even for …The Volokh [...]
The opinions of Dan Shaughnessy really aren’t worth thinking about. You probably just wasted your time. Interesting read, though. Even if I don’t care about the NBA.
Bill Russell is not a top 10 player. Man is amazing, but overrated. Offense much?
Duncan is a top 10 player. Kobe is not (yet).
Ryan (#34) said: “On a side note, I think Joe could say negative things about CHB but is just too polite.”
With someone as thin-skinned and petty as CHB, Joe did say plenty of negative things — albeit in his own polite, Cleveland kind of way.
Oh no, don’t argue with Shaughnessy. Arguing with Shaughnessy is like arguing with Ann Coulter. All it’s going to do is make you angry.
I love how Shaugnessy used Duncan’s own opinion of himself as an important piece of evidence for his argument. Duncan is a humble, historically aware guy. What kind of sane person says TO A SPORTSWRITER, “I’m one of the 10 best players, sure. Cousy? Punk. Dr. J? Please. I’m better than all but 8 or 9 guys. Ever.”
If Duncan had said that, Shaugnessy and just about everyone else would have ripped him to shreds. Duncan rightly trembles at the foot of all those great figures in basketball history. What rational person wouldn’t?
It’s our job to tell him, “It’s ok, Tim. You’re one of them.”
Pardon my ignornace, but what does “CHB” stand for?
Great post by Joe as usual, and lots of interesting comments. I have nothing to add to 99% of what’s been said.
What I do find interesting and worth commenting about, however, is what I’ll call the Julius Erving Thing.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s, so I saw Doc in his prime, and he was phenomenal in every sense of the word. From his afro/red-white-and-blue days, to his distinguished gent on the mid-80′s Sixers period, Doc was something to behold.
But how he EVER gets into these greatest players of all-time discussions is beyond me. He won one championship, and that was Moses’ team. And if it wasn’t Moses’, then it was Andrew Toney’s. Or Mo Cheeks’. I think of Doc’s role on that squad in the same way I think of Bobby Jones. Very different skill set, but limited. A very valuable second tier player.
In the 70s and early 80s, when he was in his prime, he just wasn’t in the same category as Kareem, Magic, or Bird. Which is one reason his teams got close, but didn’t win. With a better center than Daryl Dawkins, maybe he’d have won a championship earlier. But the legit guys in the top ten discussion didn’t need better centers. They won it on their own.
In the end, I’m not sure Doc is really much different than Dominique. A wonderful talent, a charismatic player to be sure. And a damn good one! But not in the Inner Pantheon discussion.
Doc’s legacy in the NBA is like Nolan Ryan’s. People conflate his gifts, his freakishness, his sheer watchability, with his value. But they ain’t the same thing.
And like Ryan, he’s not one of the all-time greats.
Daunte Culpepper also had 9 fumbles that year. How that stat is considered less important for QBs than ints is beyond me.
I used to love David Robinson so i was weird to be a fan of the Spurs from South Jersey, but i love to watch them. Duncan helped carry it over. It’s always been interesting to me that people hate on the NBA because there are no fundamentals and then don’t watch the Spurs because they are boring (or Detroit a few years back). Pick one.
The flaw in this system is that you can’t be considered a top ten player if you play with another top ten player during championship winning seasons. This logically doesn’t make sense, because you aren’t worse because you play with greatness. Abdul-Jabbar has more points than anyone in history, 6 MVPs, 6 championships but isn’t listed because Magic was considered more valuable.
Kareem is penalized for having is best years (MVP years) with teams that didn’t win the championship, but it would be hard to not call him a winner in any sense. And I can’t imagine anyone picking Duncan over Kareem to start any basketball team assuming no age difference.
It’s also important to note that he played in the West. To keep a team with a winning record in the East would be impressive. Maybe good circumstances could lead an Eastern team to victory one of those years. The West is a different story though. Winning teams don’t make the playoffs sometimes. Duncan’s teams do. Every year. And they win championships when they are there.
I once wrote Dan Shaughnessy a nasty email after he wrote a particularly mean-spirited piece about Pedro Martinez, my favorite player. I included my full contact information, and he called me.
He told me that people in Boston take sports to seriously, and that we shouldn’t get so upset when people white such awful bile like his article. It’s just sports.
So I asked him if it’s just sports, why does he write such mean-spirited drudgery? He said that’s he’s a reporter, not a cheerleader, and he has a duty to give “honest” reporting. Doesn’t that go against his first point: if it’s just sports, shouldn’t he write things that have a purpose other than angering sports fans? He told me that I was just a kid and I didn’t know what I was talking about.
What a fraud.
I stopped reading anything written by the man. I accidentally started reading one of his articles a couple of months ago without realizing what I was doing. It was so poorly written, I said to myself “why is the Globe letting some intern publish an article–don’t they have senior writers?” I scrolled up to the by-line and, sure enough, it was Shaughnessy.
Joe Posnanski, you are a great sportswriter because reading your writing makes watching sports more enjoyable–you add something to the experience of being a sports fan. You are value-added, a high VOPR player. Shaughnessy only detracts–he can’t hit, but he makes up for it by playing bad defense as well.
LOVE the journalist smackdown in this blog post. JoePos, you’re the man.
Keep up the great, great work.
I have to admit I started skimming when the stats got heavy, but I didn’t see an answer the the question of who you’d leave out of Shaughnessy’s list to add Duncan. Maybe it’s too easy to respond to any claim that a player should be in the top ten with, “Oh, yeah, who would you leave out of this list?” But if so, it compensates for the ease with which a writer can claim that a player should be in the top ten without, perhaps, fully considering who else could be in that list. Based on this discussion alone, I could name at least fifteen players who are clearly one of the top ten players of all-time—or at least, I could if I only had to name them one at a time, not as a complete list.
I’m also not convinced that whether a player was “clearly the best player on four championships teams” is all that relevant to whether that player was one of the ten best all-time. Do you really mean to suggest that if Bird and Johnson had played on the same team, one of them would not be among the ten best of all-time?
@33 Anon: That’s a good point about Duncan’s minutes per game. Could one make the argument that Pop wants his players fresh for the playoffs? Career, Duncan gets about 36.5 MPG and in the playoffs it’s over 39 MPG. I can’t decide if that’s significant.
@48 Ignorance Alert: http://www.sonsofsamhorn.net/wiki/index.php/Dan_Shaughnessy
In general: I don’t mean to pile on, but I honestly do not know how Dan Shaughnessy has a job as a writer. I’ve never met anyone who hasn’t hated him. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen someone write anything remotely positive about him. He’s a bad writer, he’s misinformed, he’s petty, mean, vindictive, and a lot of the time doesn’t even seem like he likes sports. How is he employed by anyone, much less the Boston Globe and SI? Also, if you’re looking for some laughs, go check out some of the Amazon.com reviews of his books. High comedy.
Timmy’s true crime with Shaughnessy et al.? He didn’t play in NYC, Boston, Chicago, or L.A. Also, he never had to “get over himself” as he wasn’t a self-aggrandizer in the first place (and thus he was perfect for teammates, for S.A. fans, and for Pop, R.C. & Co.). Shaq? Love him, but TD’s quite clearly his superior in all but mouth. Tally another trey for Joe Posnanski for this post, and for the great SI article.
I lived in San Antonio for seven years, during which the Spurs won three rings. The best we got in terms of big city media attention was grudging admiration, and not a lot of it. The same is true of Big Fundamental’s whole career. I doubt Shaughnessy has watched more than a handful of S.A. regular season games. So of course he wouldn’t know. Night in and night out, TD’s been the best player on the court an amazing amount of times, and has rewarded Spurs fans with amazingly consistent – consistently superior – play.
The big problem is that we BR’s are spoiled by this blog, so nearly everyone else’s writing sucks by comparison.
CHB=Curly headed boyfriend
Carl Everett called him that back in the mid-90s. Simmons shortened it to “CHB.”
@Clyons 9 – Aaron is an excellent choice but I have one better – Stan Musial.
@Mike 49 – I watched DrJ during his time in Va and then NY in the ABA as well and he surely was one of the most exciting players night after night. But that didn’t equate to being the best in the sense of winning.
Since I have rarely paid to see pro basketball, I suppose that means J could get my money faster than Tim but I sure would be MUCH, MUCH, much, much happier to have him on the team for which I root. Period!
All that said, precisely picking 4 championships with the player being the best on his team seems like it is cherry picking. Perhaps an analysis of how many championships were won and who was the best player on that team would lead to a top 10.
In fact I think that is exactly what Joe has done but codifies it as being “best player on 4 champions.” Regardless of whether it is cherry picking or no, Joe is correct in his assessment of TIMMY! And shaughnessy is once again someone who no one should bother reading.
I just clicked around the win shares stats. Can I share this:
http://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/ws_career.html
… because I had no idea that Reggie Miller had a better career than Magic Johnson and Jerry West or that Robert Parish was better than Larry Bird. This stat just doesn’t work.
John Stockton was a fine player, but any stat that shows him better than Magic Johnson is alchemy.
I side with Jim’s post @ 55. Joe’s argument is compelling but it’s incomplete without finally producing an actual top ten list.
Did Shaughnessy even re-read his article? It starts out like he thinks Duncan is lucky to make a few All Star games. Then he acknowledges Duncan’s numbers and later acknowledges his talents, but decides he still not a top 10 player.
It was a haphazard stream-of-conscious column. Sometimes those are great. Hell, Bill Simmons made a mint on them, but Shaughnessy would’ve been better off simply listing his top 10 and leaving the blather out.
Please please PLEASE stop using basketball Win Shares. ESPECIALLY defensive Win Shares.
The only instance in which you should take Charles Barkley over Tim Duncan would be if you were going to Vegas
Two words:
Kevin Garnett.
I agree with the conclusion of Duncan being underrated, but no one mentions his peer, KG, whom I think one could argue was close to his equal. So people are still holding the Twolve’s years of moderately good but not championship caliber against him? If KG and TD had switched places as rookies, do you really think MN would have won NBA titles and SA never even close?
@66
Barkley and Duncan are both top 10 players, so its a matter of taste. I have Barkley at 9 and Duncan around 8.
A lot of people are claiming that Shaughnessy’s column contained nothing other than “because I said so” to defend his rant about Duncan.
This is false. Dan clearly states that he went to the Spurs/Celtics game and watched Duncan play. After watching him play, he was even more convinced that Duncan was not only outside the top 10 but probably outside the top 20.
I, too, have a similar tale to tell. In the Spring of 2003 I was living in DC and had the opportunity to go see a Washington Wizards game. I was excited, because I had heard that Michael Jordan was the best player of all time.
Well, let me tell you – I saw Michael Jordan play that night and if he is the best player of all time then I am the Queen of Sheba.
The real problem is you read something by Dan Shaughnessy and considered it worthy of thinking more about. What a hack.
Win Shares do have a couple of problems, especially Kareem’s in the early 70s. Simmons goes into quite a bit of detail about how the early 70s mess up the NBA records because of all the talent in the ABA. Three examples are Kareem’s records, the 33 game win streak by the 1972 Lakers, and the career of Lenny Wilkens
Joe what I really liked is that instead of firing back at Shaughnessy with emotion you tried to lay out your case clearly. That’s a big part of what I like about this blog. I think the case for Duncan is pretty strong, too.
Saying that Barkley or Malone shouldn’t be ranked above Duncan merely because they have zero titles between them isn’t really a fair argument. Duncan never had to contend with a Bulls team led by Jordan in his prime.
There should be no shame in losing a finals in 6 games to the indisputable greatest player in the history of the game.
If Timmy had the personality jordan or kobe had more people would say he is a “top ten player”. Talent wise he definetely is, but he’s quiet about what he does and is not cocky.
Looking at the poll results on the right, I’m surprised more people don’t consider Karl Malone a top 10 contender. Maybe I’m looking at basketball through baseball lenses–where stats matter more than championships. But on stats alone, Malone is the best power forward ever.
I have to admit that I was sort of confused by Joe’s choice of statistic. Win shares isn’t that popular in the basketball community. I have a feeling that Joe was looking for a stat to use and saw win shares, reminding him of baseball so he just chose that one. I think Hollinger is the way to go. I also get the feeling that Joe is sort of out of his element when talking about basketball.
George Mikan?
I voted for the top ten before reading the article and I automatically did not vote for any active player (Hall of Fame standard was in my head), so no Duncan (or Kobe or LBJ).
At the end of Duncan’s career would I put him at the top of power forwards over Pettit? Hard to say as the different era’s get in the way of Pettit’s scoring advantage and unusual for his day of outside shooting. Pettit at his best and Duncan at his best is huge advantage to Duncan, but that is true of any modern player compared to the old-timers. Anyway I can see Duncan being called the greatest Power Forward after he retires; but don’t rush him. I sure like your definition of great by the example of who would get drafted above who at the start of their career but with foreknowledge.
As an aside, who of us that lived through it would have thought at the time when Dr J finally came over to the NBA that he would someday have a hard time cracking the top twenty!
Hardly anyone will put George Mikan in the top ten (I wouldn’t even put him in the top 25), but he dominated the league in his day about as much as Wilt and probably more than MJ.
For Josh in DC, Parish has exactly one more career win share than Bird in a career over 700 games longer. Same thing with the Miller-Magic example: Miller is a great player with slightly more win shares than Magic in a much longer career. Basketball win shares might not be a great stat, but your examples don’t do anything to debunk it.
Artis Gilmore, meet Joe Posnanski. Joe, Artis.
Shaughnessy loses quite a bit of credibility with the “makes me take him much more seriously. It’s like when you realize that Frank Thomas and Jim Thome are solidly ensconced in the 500 home run club” bit.
If you need Frank Thomas’s presence in the 500 HR club to take him seriously, you simply weren’t paying attention.
Also, a point about the Priest Holmes comment: Yes, Holmes had 24 TDs in 14 games and would have passed Faulk’s record of 26 if he’d been healthy for 16. However, Faulk also only played 14 games when he scored his 26 TDs in 2000. (It’s all academic anyway, since Holmes, Alexander and Tomlinson have all blown past 26 since then.)
Semantic question: How does Tim Duncan get the nickname “The Big Fundamental” when he shoots 68% from the free throw line? Isn’t making free throws a pretty fundamental skill in basketball?
The FreeDarko book has an amazing profile of Duncan which asks important questions like, ” “Can Duncan feel pain? … Does Duncan love? … Do the concepts of free will or consciousness mean anything to him?”
It would be worth buying for just that chapter, but the rest of it is as good or better.
@61: Yes, Miller has about 18 more Win Shares than Magic, but that’s in *483* more games. And yes, Parish has about 1 more career Win Share than Bird, but that’s in *714* more games. Context matters.
@76: In my highly biased opinion, Win Shares are better than anything Hollinger has come up with. I also think you’re off base when you suggest that Joe might be out of his element writing about basketball.
Thanks to everyone who corrected me on the win shares/games played argument. Honestly, I don’t know what I was thinking.
Amazing to see Parish so high up the list, though. Something seems odd about that (and I’m a Celtics fan) (well, I was until some time around when Reggie Lewis died, Pat Riley’s Knicks were good, and I realized the NBA is boring as hell) (couldn’t be happier about my decision, by the way). I’d think it gives too much weight to simply showing up, and yet John Havlicek isn’t THAT high on the list.
I just don’t trust this stat.
Regardless of what criteria Joe might have used to defend Tim Duncan it most likely would show Duncan to be one of the top players at all time anyway. Ask someone like John Hollinger if Tim Duncan is a top ten player of all time and you would also get a yes. Duncan’s per minute numbers and the ammount his winning his team has done and adjusting for eras clearly puts him in front of guys like Malone and Barkley and lets not even go to the defensive side of the court where its night and day.
@85: It’s not that surprising when you consider that (a) Parish played more games than any other player in NBA history (Havlicek played 16 seasons and Parish still played 341 more games than him) and (b) Parish was very good for a very long time (played in nine All-Star games; had nine seasons where he averaged at least 15 points and 10 rebounds per game; etc.)
I just don’t understand the singular focus on championships. Why do we care? I know the argument is that one guy on a basketball team makes more of an impact than in the other major sports, but you’re not winning a championship with one great guy – no matter how transcendent he may be. LeBron James is as close as we’ve gotten to the perfect basketball player, physically and statistically speaking, and he’s not won a championship. But that’s not his fault; he’s simply not played with a championship-caliber team. And anyway, it’s not like the best team always wins the ‘ship anyway.
So all I’m proposing is that ‘championships’ be rendered irrelevant when discussing the best players in basketball history – and, indeed, in any sport. Why reward people for having the good fortune/front office to be on a championship team?
@84: I think you just pulled a Shaughnessy and said win shares were better than Hollinger’s stats without giving reason and evidence…
Ha, my most hated sportswriter and my favorite sportswriter having a debate over my favorite NBA player! And of course my favorite sportswriter makes way more sense and comes off as a way better person and writer and makes the case for my favorite player.
Win-win-win-win-win!
I will admit that I don’t know much about the NBA because it is inferior to the college game. But I do know that Duncan is WAY better and McHale was and to compare the two is disingenous on the part of Shaughnessy.
I also suspect, since I live in the Boston area, that the reason that Homer Dan wrote that story was not to counter your overall point (that Duncan is a great player but simply unknown) but simply to beat the drum for past Celtic players. Just like several others have commented, he basically is saying, “oh yeah, but what about OUR guy.” It’s pathetic and unprofessional but typical of the sports scene in Boston whose reporters/columnists, are such homers and also have such an inferiority complex due to their ‘little brother’ status when compared to New York, that they simply MUST respond to any perceived slight no matter how detached from reality.
[...] * Joe Posnanski muses on Tim Duncan. [...]
Bill Simmons rated Duncan 7th.
Pedro is quite unusual. Supposedly the most dominant season ever, and his won-loss is a ho-hum 18-6?
And this is from the guy with the highest winning percentage!
Great stuff as always, Joe. In my opinion the automatic inclusion of players like Cousy, West and Oscar on such lists needs to be looked at a little closer. As ground-breaking as Cousy was in his time, I doubt he’d even make the league post-1980. West and Oscar were great, but neither won a championship until they joined forces with a HOF center. This while playing in an era where the overall talent and competitiveness of the league was nowhere near what it is today.
Dan Shaughnessy’s an idiot. Bill Simmons in his basketball book dissected Chamberlain better than anyone. He had very little competition other than Russell. That 50 per game season is a sham when you really break down the numbers.
Duncan is a top 10 player Joe, no doubt about it.
I find it amazing that Olajuwon is so little regarded when it comes to the all-time greats. He’d kill Jabbar or Chamberlain with his footwork. The guy crushed Shaq, Ewing and David Robinson in their PRIMES. Long live Hakeem.
I wonder what the reasoning is for the 15% who left Kareem out of their top ten. It’s pretty easy to argue he was the greatest player of all-time.
My guesses for two of the best Win Share years would be Wilt’s averaging 50 ppg and Oscar’s averaging a triple double. And actually, those are good, real good examples of why the premise is flawed.
Consider the first Duncan year, when Duncan had Robinson, or should I say Robinson had Duncan. Who was getting double teamed? Robinson, not the rookie. Compare that to Wilt’s best years, Oscar’s best years. They were the focus of the other team’s defense. What they did was in many respects harder than anybody on the Celtics, because the Celtics had so many options. I mean, even West had Baylor. I think West is better than any of his contemporary Celtics, even though he never won a title, because he had to do it without the same level of supporting crew.
So I think the whole premise is flawed. If Russell were on the Lakers, I think the Lakers would have had a lot of titles (with West as their best player) and the Celtics few if not none. If Russell were on any other team in the league, I don’t think he’d have gotten any titles, and again I think the Lakers would have had several titles. It’s not that Russell was so strong by himself (although he was a great player). It’s that when you’ve got all those other great players around you, something’s got to give.
[...] better than Charles Barkley, Karl Malone or John Stockton? Luckily, SI’s Joe Posnanski did the heavy lifting deconstructing and disproving this particular brand of crazy, but the larger question remains: what [...]
[...] better than Charles Barkley, Karl Malone or John Stockton? Luckily, SI’s Joe Posnanski did the heavy lifting deconstructing and disproving this particular brand of crazy, but the larger question remains: what [...]
@ Garret Hawk #18:
“I think the poster who compared his quiet greatness to Hank Aaron made a fine analogy. Indeed, the only flaw in the analogy? Duncan is actually better at basketball than the great Hammer was at baseball (I’m basing this on the idea that Duncan is certainly a top-10 all-time NBA player, while Hank’s inclusion in MLB’s all-time top-10 is at least debatable).”
I think that’s entirely a function of the history of professional baseball being more than twice as long as that of professional basketball. For example, if we limit the discussion to the “10 Greatest MLB Players since 1946″ (the NBA’s First Year), I think Aaron’s inclusion in the top 10 becomes incontrovertible.
Likewise, I agree completely that Duncan is in the top 10 right now, but I think in 30-40 years his inclusion will certainly be debatable. For example, look at Joe’s poll: Lebron James is currently 11th. I have little doubt that James will soon be a no-doubt Top 10 guy, which unfortunately means someone gets bumped. Much as I love Duncan, he’s closer to #10 than he is to #1.
[...] love a great, heated, animated discussion over the value of players. Joe Posnanski and Dan Shaugnessy go at it over how good Tim Duncun is. Posnanski with the last word: [...]