is Tim Duncan a top 5 player of all time?

[70sFan]

The things you listed (rebounding, rim protection) are because of height, not talent.

I don't care if it's talent, height, or some magical superpowers - the fact is that Duncan was significantly better rebounder and shotblocker, which is extremely impactul on basketball court. We're not talking about who has a cuter skills, we're talking about who's better basketball player. Basketball is a sport that gives big men significant advantage and I don't care if you like it or not.

And no, Duncan was not a better inside finisher...

[/quote]
He is, based on all the available numbers we have. Duncan scored significantly more points under the basket on significantly better efficiency.

[HeartBreakKid]

Lol at saying Duncan is only better at things because of height. Okay, Kobe is only better than Duncan at dribbling and perimeter defense (not even always ) because of height also... guards are better than bigs at some things because of their size also.

It's basketball, your height is part of your talent. And relative to position, Tim Duncan is better than all of those things than Bryant is anyway.

[drza]

I think Duncan has a very strong argument to be ranked ahead of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. They're similar caliber players, and had a similar amount of longevity, but Duncan's advantages on defense tend to be more impactful than Kareem's offensive advantages. So, with that being said, I do think Duncan has an excellent case for top-5 of all time. There are a few players I'd tend to rank above him, but it's fluid, and on any given day he's got a real chance to be in my top-5 (if I have to make one. Somewhat ironically, I don't really tend to like doing that).

[LAL1947]

I think Duncan has a very strong argument to be ranked ahead of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. They're similar caliber players, and had a similar amount of longevity, but Duncan's advantages on defense tend to be more impactful than Kareem's offensive advantages. So, with that being said, I do think Duncan has an excellent case for top-5 of all time. There are a few players I'd tend to rank above him, but it's fluid, and on any given day he's got a real chance to be in my top-5 (if I have to make one. Somewhat ironically, I don't really tend to like doing that).

I'm lower on Kareem than most (he is #8 on my list)... but how are you going to explain away Kareem scoring 12,000 more RS points over a similar length of time? Do you feel Duncan's defense by himself will save his team 12,000 points more than Kareem?

That 12,000 difference between them is 4,000 more points than Joel Embiid has scored in his career thus far.

[falcolombardi]

I think Duncan has a very strong argument to be ranked ahead of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. They're similar caliber players, and had a similar amount of longevity, but Duncan's advantages on defense tend to be more impactful than Kareem's offensive advantages. So, with that being said, I do think Duncan has an excellent case for top-5 of all time. There are a few players I'd tend to rank above him, but it's fluid, and on any given day he's got a real chance to be in my top-5 (if I have to make one. Somewhat ironically, I don't really tend to like doing that).

I'm lower on Kareem than most (he is #8 on my list)... but how are you going to explain away Kareem scoring 12,000 more RS points over a similar length of time? Do you feel Duncan's defense by himself will save his team 12,000 points more than Kareem?

That 12,000 difference between them is 4,000 more points than Joel Embiid has scored in his career thus far.

Good thingh nobody has ever argued duncan over kareem based on scoring

[drza]

I think Duncan has a very strong argument to be ranked ahead of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. They're similar caliber players, and had a similar amount of longevity, but Duncan's advantages on defense tend to be more impactful than Kareem's offensive advantages. So, with that being said, I do think Duncan has an excellent case for top-5 of all time. There are a few players I'd tend to rank above him, but it's fluid, and on any given day he's got a real chance to be in my top-5 (if I have to make one. Somewhat ironically, I don't really tend to like doing that).

I'm lower on Kareem than most (he is #8 on my list)... but how are you going to explain away Kareem scoring 12,000 more RS points over a similar length of time? Do you feel Duncan's defense by himself will save his team 12,000 points more than Kareem?

That 12,000 difference between them is 4,000 more points than Joel Embiid has scored in his career thus far.

Short answer: yes. Defensive impact, especially among big men, is often a more important factor to their team's fortunes than scoring. Kareem is one of only a handful of big men in history that really had an all-history impact as a score-first player (Kareem, Shaq, Dirk, arguably Jokic, maybe a few others). Typically, I'd much rather my big man be defensively dominant and good offensively as opposed to vice versa.

Plus, elephant in the room, if you're going to compare volume boxscore stats you have to, in some way, account for pace. I've been in all the arguments through the years about pace adjusting, and whether it's accurate for high-volume/iso scorers because there are questions about scaling iso vs pace, and all that. I get all that. But just, KISS, you can't IMO make any sort of reasonable volume-based comparison of what a player produces in 110 possessions per game vs what another produces in 90 possessions/game. It's not viable. So, I'm one that (if I'm going to factor in volume box score stats) will often utilize either the per-100 numbers, or sometimes I'll look at the ratio of each player's volume vs their team's volume to try to get them on a similar level.

Anyway. As quick datapoints, I'll see your 12,000 more total points in their careers and raise you their scoring rate per 100 possessions:

Kareem: 29.9 PP100 (1974 season till retirement; 16 seasons (all they have on B-R))
Duncan: 29.7 PP100 (entire 19 season career)

Now, again, I don't particularly care about their relative scoring volumes. I tend to evaluate by impact, and to the degree I've been able to determine, I'm comfortable that Duncan's impact was larger than Kareem's. With that said, and with the pace adjustment caveats of the above paragraph in place...I'm kind of surprised, myself, at how similar those numbers were. BECAUSE so much of Kareem's legacy in these GOAT talks is based on his role as the scoring king, while Duncan is often considered just a "good" scorer in a historic sense. But, it really is true that the era that Duncan played in was one of the slowest, most-difficult-to-amass-points eras in NBA history. Maybe pace adjusting isn't perfect, but I think it's conservatively fair to say that on the continuum of NBA history, Duncan was probably a much better relative scorer than his volume stats indicate.

[homecourtloss]

I think Duncan has a very strong argument to be ranked ahead of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. They're similar caliber players, and had a similar amount of longevity, but Duncan's advantages on defense tend to be more impactful than Kareem's offensive advantages. So, with that being said, I do think Duncan has an excellent case for top-5 of all time. There are a few players I'd tend to rank above him, but it's fluid, and on any given day he's got a real chance to be in my top-5 (if I have to make one. Somewhat ironically, I don't really tend to like doing that).

I'm lower on Kareem than most (he is #8 on my list)... but how are you going to explain away Kareem scoring 12,000 more RS points over a similar length of time? Do you feel Duncan's defense by himself will save his team 12,000 points more than Kareem?

That 12,000 difference between them is 4,000 more points than Joel Embiid has scored in his career thus far.

How do you come up with criteria that puts Kareem at #8?

[falcolombardi]

I think Duncan has a very strong argument to be ranked ahead of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. They're similar caliber players, and had a similar amount of longevity, but Duncan's advantages on defense tend to be more impactful than Kareem's offensive advantages. So, with that being said, I do think Duncan has an excellent case for top-5 of all time. There are a few players I'd tend to rank above him, but it's fluid, and on any given day he's got a real chance to be in my top-5 (if I have to make one. Somewhat ironically, I don't really tend to like doing that).

I'm lower on Kareem than most (he is #8 on my list)... but how are you going to explain away Kareem scoring 12,000 more RS points over a similar length of time? Do you feel Duncan's defense by himself will save his team 12,000 points more than Kareem?

That 12,000 difference between them is 4,000 more points than Joel Embiid has scored in his career thus far.

How do you come up with criteria that puts Kareem at #8?

Too many losses with HCA

[Cavsfansince84]

Anyway. As quick datapoints, I'll see your 12,000 more total points in their careers and raise you their scoring rate per 100 possessions:

Kareem: 29.9 PP100 (1974 season till retirement; 16 seasons (all they have on B-R))
Duncan: 29.7 PP100 (entire 19 season career)

Now, again, I don't particularly care about their relative scoring volumes. I tend to evaluate by impact, and to the degree I've been able to determine, I'm comfortable that Duncan's impact was larger than Kareem's. With that said, and with the pace adjustment caveats of the above paragraph in place...I'm kind of surprised, myself, at how similar those numbers were. BECAUSE so much of Kareem's legacy in these GOAT talks is based on his role as the scoring king, while Duncan is often considered just a "good" scorer in a historic sense. But, it really is true that the era that Duncan played in was one of the slowest, most-difficult-to-amass-points eras in NBA history. Maybe pace adjusting isn't perfect, but I think it's conservatively fair to say that on the continuum of NBA history, Duncan was probably a much better relative scorer than his volume stats indicate.

I agree that Duncan's scoring is generally underrated though if we are comparing him to Kareem scoring efficiency also has to be taken into account. Kareem having a career ts+ of 114 to 104 for Duncan and 13 seasons of ts add over 200 to 1 for Duncan.

[HeartBreakKid]

I think Duncan has a very strong argument to be ranked ahead of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. They're similar caliber players, and had a similar amount of longevity, but Duncan's advantages on defense tend to be more impactful than Kareem's offensive advantages. So, with that being said, I do think Duncan has an excellent case for top-5 of all time. There are a few players I'd tend to rank above him, but it's fluid, and on any given day he's got a real chance to be in my top-5 (if I have to make one. Somewhat ironically, I don't really tend to like doing that).

I'm lower on Kareem than most (he is #8 on my list)... but how are you going to explain away Kareem scoring 12,000 more RS points over a similar length of time? Do you feel Duncan's defense by himself will save his team 12,000 points more than Kareem?

That 12,000 difference between them is 4,000 more points than Joel Embiid has scored in his career thus far.

How do you come up with criteria that puts Kareem at #8?

Not enough ESPN highlights. Not a perimeter player. Too far removed from Kobe Bryant's lore to be relevant.

obvious trio of reasons.

[Bad Gatorade]

But, it really is true that the era that Duncan played in was one of the slowest, most-difficult-to-amass-points eras in NBA history. Maybe pace adjusting isn't perfect, but I think it's conservatively fair to say that on the continuum of NBA history, Duncan was probably a much better relative scorer than his volume stats indicate.

I think there's an additional, almost-never-stated element to Duncan's scoring, and it's that in the regular season, Duncan essentially didn't try to score in garbage time (which, considering he was almost always on great teams, happened quite a bit to him). Using inpredictable's definition of garbage time, garbage time constitutes roughly 15-16% of the time on average, which would probably be a bit higher for the Spurs.

For example, for the 2002-03 season (this is when the trend really begins to become extreme), Duncan only took 12% of the Spurs shots in "garbage" time, increasing to 23% in normal time, 26% in clutch time, and 48% in clutch^2 time. Ignoring clutch^2 time (tiny sample size etc), here are the stats for the top 10 scorers that year -

McGrady - 23/28/26
Kobe - 24/28/34
Iverson - 24/30/32
Shaq - 13/19/15
Pierce - 20/24/31
Dirk - 13/23/24
Duncan - 12/23/26
Webber - 13/22/24
Garnett - 18/22/23
Houston - 16/22/23

A couple of the numbers seem smaller, but bear in mind that this is a total stat, not a "per possession" stat, so guys like Shaq will also be handicapped because of missing time during the regular season. The key thing to observe is that Duncan's ratio of increase is higher than any other player on this list, and this is a pattern that holds true for most of Duncan's career. As he got even older, this difference became even larger. For example, in 2007 and 2008, he took 20% of his team's regular shots, and only 9% of his team's garbage shots. Most star players shoot less in garbage time, but from what I've seen, post-2002 Duncan looks like the poster boy for not trying to score in garbage time.

Now, how about free throw rates? Here are the same splits for "percentage of team free throws taken by this player" -

McGrady - 28/38/38
Kobe - 30/33/29
Iverson - 27/33/34
Shaq - 29/36/40
Pierce - 30/37/43
Dirk - 23/31/40
Duncan - 15/32/34
Webber - 8/21/31
Garnett - 16/30/26
Houston - 13/24/21

Webber is the only player who really emulates Duncan here (and I suppose Garnett is not too far off for free throws), but this is also not reflective of Webber's career, whereas Duncan's splits are basically his typical career splits.

Now, this data is not perfect (in fact, I'd strongly change how they represent the data) and I think that the actual percentage of time each player spends in the clutch can impact these numbers. However, after looking through this in quite a bit of detail (and noting that Parker and Ginobili do not share such extreme ratios with Duncan prompts me to give Duncan the benefit of the doubt here.

In other words... Duncan has a very good case for being a better scorer than his raw numbers, because it seems like Duncan's garbage time numbers may actually be weighing down his per possession numbers more than we think they are.

[ronnymac2]

In my opinion, yes, Duncan is a top-5 player all-time. In fact, I'd say top-3. I do value longevity highly.