Does someone have a good overview of the effects of Tim Duncan's knee problems?

[B-Mitch 30]

To preface this, I should mention that Tim is one of my favorite players ever. That being said, one thing that's made evaluating his peak interesting to me is the meniscus tear in his left knee he suffered at the end of the 1999-2000 season. I've heard a few people say that started a gradual deterioration of his knee, which is why he was severely load managed for much of his career. However, I can't find many sources talking about this issue in depth. Here's my general questions:

1. Other than the usual wear and tear, what other injuries did Tim suffer in that and his other knee before his retirement?
2. Is there that much of a noticeable drop in athleticism between 2000 Tim and his best season in 2002-2003?
3. Besides the aforementioned load management, how did the injury alter Tim's game in the years to follow?

[LakerLegend]

To preface this, I should mention that Tim is one of my favorite players ever. That being said, one thing that's made evaluating his peak interesting to me is the meniscus tear in his left knee he suffered at the end of the 1999-2000 season. I've heard a few people say that started a gradual deterioration of his knee, which is why he was severely load managed for much of his career. However, I can't find many sources talking about this issue in depth. Here's my general questions:

1. Other than the usual wear and tear, what other injuries did Tim suffer in that and his other knee before his retirement?
2. Is there that much of a noticeable drop in athleticism between 2000 Tim and his best season in 2002-2003?
3. Besides the aforementioned load management, how did the injury alter Tim's game in the years to follow?

Duncan was only really load managed once he hit his 30's, and a lot of that probably had to do with how many postseason games he'd already played.

Look at Magic, in the 91 finals he was 31 years old but he'd come into the league at 20 years old and made deep postseason runs basically every year, so he'd already played as many postseason games as Jordan would in his entire Bulls career.

Duncan was never a guy on relied on pure athleticism anyway, because he wasn't some great athletic (in the traditional sense in terms of speed, vertical etc.), but he was a different kind of great athlete.

Reddick said someone he knows sent him this list of what they thought constituted a great basketball athlete and Duncan had a lot of these in spades, things which a knee that was slightly suboptimal wouldn't affect anyway:

Change of Direction
Balance
Coordination
Change of Pace/Deacceleration
Strength
Vertical
Pliability/Flexibility
Reflexes
Stamina
Pattern Recognition
Spatial Awareness/Court Mapping
Anticipation
Cognitive Load - How many things can you process at once.

[AdagioPace]

I thought about the same topic when I saw Eyetoma's "Embiid GOAT thread" upstairs in the general board. He didn't rely totally on athleticism but TD's mobility/agility and load-bearing over time were certainly affected. Who knows, maybe Timmeh would have given us more seasons at the 02 or 03 level (which by the way occurred after the injury) or maybe he just would have been able to play more minutes. Two perspectives here: how injury affected Timmeh in his peak years and how it affected his playing time over the rest of his career.

[DirtyDez]

I think he got the long term surgery in 2000 not the Dwayne Wade “removal” one which tanks your longevity. His issues in the mid-2000’s was a lot of fluke ankle roll type stuff. Big men just don’t age well from the physicality of that era. He was arguably the best player in the league at 30 years old and still an all NBA caliber player in to his mid-late 30’s. I don’t think injuries affected his career anymore significantly than other superstars from that era.

[One_and_Done]

Duncan's prime was 98-07, but his peak was 02 and 03. That was the best combination of athleticism and skill, regardless of the 00 injury. What slowed Duncan slowly was the foot injuries, the first of which was mid 04. After that, Duncan dropped to about 90-95% of his peak in 02 and 03. It also probably contributed to him overcompensating, which couldn't have helped with the knee injury long term. 08 Duncan was still an incredible player of course, but it wasn't prime Duncan level of impact. That's fine though, the guy was 31. Most bigs tend to slow down around then.

07 was his last prime year. After that the knee injuries had dropped him down a little as a player. He had a revival in 2012-14, after he slimmed down, so that his knees had less weight to carry.

[canada_dry]

From 2008-2012, basically before losing weight to get lessen the load onchis knees , he looked pretty effected. Once he lost that weight he kinda had a career resurgence from 2013-2015.

The knee injury resulted in the huge knee brace, effecting some mobility... he also gradually let go some offensive responsibility to his 2 euro guards to lessen the load on him. That was probably as much pop trying to preserve duncan as it was actively enabling tony and manu.

So no surprise his scoring average really not be that high after 2003 or 2004 , off the top of my head. The averages fell to about 20, then 19 or so.... while manu and tonys usage rate went up.

Just how i remember it happening, off the top of my head.

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