Highest reasonable ranking for Tim Duncan?

[Narigo]

Probably 4th. I don't see him as good as Jordan Kareem and Bron

[OhayoKD]

Hope you don't mind the delayed response. As of late, real-Life hasn't been very kind to my burgeoning forum career

Because MJ is your #1 and one of the 4 players you can't see Duncan above. So when you list a bunch of stuff that applies harder to Jordan, referencing MJ makes sense. It also helps that we just had a whole big drama because people voted duncan over mj while others stated they were considering duncan over jordan. In fact I suspect that drama was what started this thread...

not every comment tangentially implying the presence of jordan is a deep thought about jordan.

They don't need to be. The thread is titled "highest reasonable ranking for Tim Duncan". How points raised for or against Duncan apply to players above or below Duncan is relevant. Hence I'm going to bring up people you rank higher than Duncan when there's a comparison to be made. That's how rankings work. If that type of discussion dissuades you from continuing, I understand, but it is relevant.

If you think there were other players which would have made for more relevant comparisons, feel free to highlight them. But when you use regular season success as a proxy for help(your first post presents the Spurs rs success as a negative for Duncan), and specifically hone in on coaching before talking about infrastructure...applying the filter of "guys who Duncan can't reasonably be placed over" leads to Mistah J as a top search result.

We are arguing that Duncan did not have an unfair advantage with Popovich relative to most all-time greats including the guy whose even better coaching situation(again, schematic shift -> team gets exponentially better over the course of a season) has not prohibited him from a literal #1 rating.

i never said it was unfair. re-read my post. i said he played for the most contenders. that doesn't mean he played for 19 unfair teams. merely that he had good coaching and good teammates for 19 years, more than anyone else. others had good situation the whole time but simply didn't play that long, others did play that long and did not have good coaching and teammates the whole time. duncan played forever and had good situations the whole time. i don't think this is controversial. the whole world praises the spurs coaching and organization.

Duncan also didn't always have a "good"(what an understatement)situation. The difference is Duncan found a way to win when the deck wasn't stacked(and it was never that stacked in his prime). And when he wasn't winning, he was always, as you say, "contending".

i don't know how to argue against this? what is a "good" situation in your opinion? like kevin garnett would have sacrificed a litter of puppies every season to get what tim duncan had. how much better does it need to be to be "good"? like his worst teams seem to trough at "david robinson is old but still protects the rim at an elite level, he has a DPOY perimeter candidate who leads the league in 3P% in bowen, and he has early ginobili and not very good parker, plus some other nice 3&D guys". that's pretty nice for the worst situation of your career.

Is Kevin Garnett one of the guys you're considering as obviously higher? Do you even rank him higher, like at all? If "who would be the most justified puppy killer" was the criteria, KG(maybe followed by Hakeem/Giannis) is in his own tier. But that's not what you're using here.

2003 is the worst cast Duncan won with. Who in the list of 7 you have ranked above(or the 4 you have clearly ahead) has done the deed with less?

and let's say we agree, duncan didn't have stacked teams. ok, who did he ever beat? beating shaq and kobe in 2003 seems to do a lot of the heavy lifting for duncan's legacy. but it was the worst kobe/shaq team from 2000-2004, only winning 50 games. with robert horry literally not making a 3 in the spurs series (0-18). the other victory over the lakers was before kobe was kobe. in 2005 he got nice but hardly legendary suns and pistons team.

So, to be clear... smoking the 62-win(+7 SRS) greatest offense ever(who had just decisively beaten a 58-win Mavericks side) before beating the defending champions(and one of the best full-strength performers ever) isn't legendary? If you want to take the regular season as truly indicative of what the Lakers were capable of(three-peat and another final appearance the following season not withstanding), fine. But knocking 2005 seems desperate. Of the 7 guys you have ahead, I'd imagine 2005's competition(historically strong first round opponent, best team of the rs/best offense ever, defending finals sweeper) would have a case as the toughest gauntlet most of those guys have ever successfully ran through. 2007 is also pretty strong as they, again, faced an unusually strong first round opponent, again beat the 60-win, +7 srs Suns, to get to an easy finals opponent(who they proceeded to crush). Maybe explain your definition of "legendary?". Is "worthy opponent" restricted to the 73-win Warriors, the 72 Bucks, and the West-Wilt Lakers?

once the gasol/odom/bynum lakers and heatles rose up, the spurs stopped winning. then they snuck one in when wade and bosh were shells of themselves and before the rise of the warriors.

They "snuck one in" vanquishing the 59-win(+6.6 srs) Thunder. A team that won 60 games(64-win srs) the prior season, after winning at a 58-win pace and making the finals in 2012. What are you going for here?

The Spurs destroyed the fading two-time champs, after surviving a very, very strong first round opponent, obliterating a very strong second round opponent(good rs and then beat another 55-win team in the first round), and triumphing against one of the most "legendary" opponents you can find. The previous season, the Spurs nearly took out an all-time-great Miami team in 6, after utterly demolishing a solid set of conference opponents. As with any title team, there were injuries to complimentary pieces to help. But that is a constant. Going from 90 to 2022, the only examples I can think of for a champion didn't benefit from an opponent missing a key piece was the 2012 Heat(who barely survived their own injury scares) and the 1994 Rockets who faced a rusty point guard as opposed to an absent one.

There was nothing "sneaky" about the Spurs winning those years(if anything, they were unlucky not to win twice), and when they returned to their pedestal, they did so by surviving (and by some measures, thriving) against a gauntlet.

On the court, Duncan was still quite arguably the best player on these teams despite injury(04/05) crippling his prime. Off the court, Duncan tangibly made their success in the 10's possible, making decisions most greats would not allowing his front-office to restock in a way that wouldn't be possible if Duncan had acquired the league's biggest contract, gotten paid big dollars when he was well-past superstardom, or if he'd threatened to jump-ship unless he was paid way way more than everyone else in the league.

he was in shangri-la and was still window shopping.

And? My point here is Duncan's effect on "winning". Whether it's better to spread success across multiple franchises or help one team hoard the glory is a philosophical matter I have no opinion on. Duncan didn't go window shopping for money, he went window shopping because T-Mac was a better co-star than over-the-hill D-rob. Luckily for San Antonio, Rivers choked. Was it lucky for Duncan? Hard to say.

But now that "intangibles" are our focus...

like most things in life, there are trade-offs.

For there to be a trade-off, there needs to be something party b(machismo-flexing "alphas" in this case)offer to off-set what is offered by party A. You expounded that what they offer is better outcomes in situations of incompetence. I made an argument against them offering better outcomes which you reduced to "player say/do bad thing". But my point was not "Player do/say bad thing". Two Jordan quotes show him not actually knowing how to build a good team. Quote three shows him not taking responsibility when adversity hits(which it often does when surrounded by incompetence). You bring up Curry/Draymond, but uh...Jordan is not Draymond:

“His greatest strength was his knowledge of how things worked on the defensive end of the floor,” he said. “Scottie was the voice of our team—figuratively and literally, as he did a lot of the talking and kept our team on the same page. When he wasn’t at the top of the key harassing a guard as a special assignment, he was on the backside of our defense talking his teammates through different situations, whether it was a double team, trap or some other important aspect. Because of that, he was very vital to the run that we made.”

https://www.nba.com/bulls/history/pippenhof_jackson_100730.html

I'll probably have to get the book and save the exact quote myself where he talks about Scottie on both ends because I'm sure it'll be useful in future discussions lol. Specifically remember him saying Scottie was the guy that told everyone where to go in the triangle in that book.

You make a point of pointing out that alot of the mythos is myth...

we say duncan did it, it was his culture that made it all possible. if it's the bulls, we say jordan's fire drove everyone to be at their best at all times. if it's the lakers, then magic's culture of sharing the ball and his enthusiasm carried the day. larry bird's workmanlike attitude is the reason in boston. bill russell's selflessness is the reason for the 60s celtics.

...and then you fall hook, line, and sinker for mythology to push a false choice. Jordan did not run things in Chicago(though he may have wanted to). Pippen orchestrated, Phil strategized, and the Bulls FO made smart roster decisions before shifting how the Bulls handled fitness. What exactly are you crediting Jordan for "running" that Duncan apparently didn't? When we talk about Duncan taking paycuts to help the Spurs extend their window of contention, that's not a myth. That's what actually happened. When you present tsundere steph as uber-alpha Dray, that's mythology.

As it is, we actually got to see what happened when Jordan got his chance to run things on a franchise that needed to be saved from its own incompetence...

Was he really? On the court he might have been more valuable but if the reports of his destroying the #1 pick in the whole draft Kwame Brown's confidence and getting the team to trade Rip Hamilton for a washed Jerry Stackhouse, I think he was actually a negative for the franchise. He set back the rebuild seriously and didn't push the team successfully anywhere. The front office liked him because he pushed ticket sales but as a fan, I strongly wished he had never decided to come back.

...and he made everything worse?
https://youtu.be/AnOQWc1ps5w?t=16

But hey, I think this board is a bit tired of all this Jordan-talk. So let's cross-examine the other alphas.

Kobe/Shaq had the infrastructure, they had the GOAT-lvl coach, and they had a big fun market to entice all the stars and co-stars a basketball player could ask for. Here we come Chicago! 6 rings ain't a...oh, right. Well, at least Kobe learnt how consent works.

Larry Bird was a fighter! and he fought and fought and...broke his hand.

KG? Well, let's just ignore Minnesota, Ray Allen, and tunnel on the good times. KG probably did something with all that intensity and work ethic. Thing is, KG actually ran the defense(and to an extent, probably the offense). Pippen is probably a more apt comp(and no, this kind of thing does not show up in PER).

And then there's Lebron. The guy who knows the play-book on both ends, has all the skills to execute, and the experience of a man whose played the most minutes of anyone in nba history. He's been running near everything courtside for almost his whole career, resulting in an "influence on winning" that has perennially outstripped his slashlines in a manner which leaves skeptics little recourse beyond a series of flimsy hypothesis about why being good at everything is actually bad.

If there was ever an example of a guy who could just "takeover" and tell everyone how to do their jobs...
https://www.nba.com/news/wizards-russell-westbrook-traded-to-lakers

For all that coveted IQ, the most useful thing LeGm's ever done is use the power of friendship to entice good basketball players to play with him. When faced with adversity in 2021, man's response was to blow up a roster which was literally league-best when healthy. And even if you like LeGM(resigning JR Smith for over a hundred million is certainly...bold), Lebron is more Regina George than he is Kobe/MJ.

Funny enough, the gold-standard of succeeding among incompetence is probably...Hakeem. Someone who showed unreasonable patience among coked out squad-mates and a trashy, trash fo. He's probably the best Duncan equivalent, and I think if I wired you to a polygraph and asked if Shaq or Jordan are handling that dumpster-fire as well as Hakeem did(and Duncan hypothetically might), you'd probably need a pin to get away with "yes".

Getting back to basketball...

you tend to attach meaning to things i never said and then tell me i took things out of context. for example, me specifically saying manu was amazing "per minute" and then you emphasizing "per minute" and acting like i said otherwise.

I am acting like you didn't let the distinction influence your takeaway. The players you compared manu to, Kareem, Kobe and Pippen, were not "per minute" superstars. Pippen led a 58-win team(full strength) in 94, The Lakers dropped dramatically(67-win to 54) over a substantial(14 gms/season) sample without Kobe, and Kareem was the best player on Magic's title team having spent the previous decade taking a juiced peak signal from the man in Chicago, and repeating it over and over and over again. You ignored the distinction fcor the comparison you were making, creating a questionable conclusion.

Similarly, you disregarded that David Robinson was not the same player who won 58 games in 1996, and then when that was brought into focus, you decided to double down with "the team won 50+ a bunch with D-rob". I could have simply taken the Spurs record in 1997 and pretended Robinson didn't exist, but just like you ignoring D-rob's decline, that would make for a very flimsy point. That said, even if we pretend D-Rob didn't get hurt, and then pretend he didn't see his production and minutes steadily plummet, I'm not sure that helps you, because like I said before, the 1994 Bulls played 58-win ball at full-strength. Then, unlike D-rob's Spurs, they elevated in the post-season.

As for why I think Duncan is the signal and not the noise?

R E P L I C A T I O N

As we covered above, with less help than the Bulls at their highest (before two of the good players you mentioned were drafted), Duncan led the Spurs to sheer dominance. For 2004/2005 we have a sample of off much larger than all the playoff stuff you've been citing combined putting the Spurs without Duncan at 40 wins(no D-Rob). Finally, given the improvement in cast you referenced between 03 and 05, we can ballpark the cast for Duncan's second triumph at around where Jordan supposedly didn't even have a chance. Speaking of which...

the "star" part of that equation only gets you so far. duncan compared to hakeem or kareem or bird or jordan isn't swinging teams by 20-30 wins compared to those guys. i suspect we're operating in the low single digits in win differentials even between the best and worst of those guys

Citation needed.

You say "Duncan would be the only situation", but uh, based on what we have, that's isn't close to true. The guy who apparently "didn't have a realistic chance to contend" saw his contemporary get similar support and hit the ground running(1986) before lady luck tried to turn Dream into proto-KG. Lebron and Kareem hit your bar for "contention" consistently. Russell hit the bar of "champion" throughout. And based on what those teams actually did(as opposed to you throwing guesses at a wall), plenty of that was happening with the amount of help you're assuming makes contention untenable:

jordan got a crap team and then one stable run. we'll never know if he could do it in another way because he had no realistic chance to contend in any other iteration.

Crap teams, have been made contenders many-a times. And honestly even if you wanted to ignore history to make the case 85-89 was completely untenable for any player ever, you really can't do this with 1990, where the triangle had the Bulls hitting their 1991 o-rating by the 1990 playoffs. To be clear, that Bulls, team was very good. Jordan lost.

And there's obviously 1995, where a team that qualifies as "stacked"(53-win srs without Jordan) didn't come close to winning. And no, I'm not moved by "let's discount it because Jordan decided to retire".

For posterity, your initial argument was not "Duncan had a generally good situation for a long-time", it was "duncan was on contenders his whole career so winning 5 rings isn't good enough". IOW, you twisted Duncan contributing to very good teams as a knock. As if it would have been better for him to quit and give up and say "I don't have a chance, it's not my fault, my organization isn't serious about winning!". SRS and regular season success are not proxies for "help". Duncan being on 19 contenders could be because he was carried, or it could be because he was crazy good. My guess is that it varied, but we're not going to get anywhere if we're taking the final win total as some sort of proof.

[ceoofkobefans]

Highest I tend to put TD is 4th all time but if you lean heavy to longevity and give a high end TD eval and a low end MJ eval I could see TD over MJ potentially as well